Quote from: wakecrazy on May 27, 2012, 01:39

Just to let everyone know, we made some updates to the project (outlined our updated base contributor rate, etc...)

http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse

nice job, looking forward to see it live

The project is live

Quote from: wakecrazy on May 24, 2012, 21:19

I guess I'm not sure what you're asking. But are you saying the lowest contributor rate should be 50%? I totally understand about those agencies saying different things. I'm curious to know if any of the stock sites have been built by contributors?

I think he is saying 50% would be a good starting point. 50% is generally considered a fair rate, and many agencies offer that now. I really don't look at many new agencies to submit to unless they offer that (among other things). I know of a few agencies that were started by microstock contributors, and many contributors run their own personal sites (mine is in my signature). I guess in a way most of microstock was built by artists (both as owners, buyers and contributors).

That really is a great point. Well to be honest, all of your points are great. I really enjoyed looking at irockstock, I didn't realize that was run by you. You should be very proud. I really do appreciate all the feedback. I've just felt a lot of frustration from other contributors on big sites like istock and we all wanted to band together to actually make a difference out there. I do have several people involved in this, but again, they couldn't risk losing their exclusivity until this is a functioning site. You have to pay the bills at the end of the day you know?

$150 For the Contributor

You will receive a 100% royalty rate for your first 100 sales.

how long till those 100 got into our account?? 

seriously pull the base for 50%, I am sure you know many new agencies "giving us" those numbers, best of luck

I guess I'm not sure what you're asking. But are you saying the lowest contributor rate should be 50%? I totally understand about those agencies saying different things. I'm curious to know if any of the stock sites have been built by contributors?

Quote from: wakecrazy on May 24, 2012, 19:54

Although the royalty rates are direly important for a contributor, by saying that the lowest we pay out is 35% is really for the contributor who just uploads stuff for the sake of uploading it, with no tie to our community.

I'm not really sure what that means either, but I guess there is not much point in speculating or guessing. When do you think you will have a functional site?

I really want to build this thing with everyone on board, so again, I appreciate all the comments. If you all don't think that having a scale based on involvement would work, that's fine, let's figure out something that will.

As far as a functional site, the firm building the website has begun Phase 1 and should be complete in the middle of July. Phase 2 is the development of The Showcase piece, which will be wrapped up by October.

Everyone,

Thank you for all the feedback, it's great to hear all of this (even though some isn't great feedback that I want to hear). I've really poured my heart and soul into this over the past year and it's finally coming to fruition. One of the reasons I wanted to post in this forum was to work through these objections and truly build a contributor built website. By listening to feedback that everyone has we can either kill off certain elements in the site, or build new ones in.

Although the royalty rates are direly important for a contributor, by saying that the lowest we pay out is 35% is really for the contributor who just uploads stuff for the sake of uploading it, with no tie to our community. We want to have the contributors involved in our processes and decisions that are made with regards to the website. There is no other website out there that does that (to my knowledge). By building more of a community, the buyers and the traffic will organically come to the website. We will have a very aggressive marketing and SEO budget that will drive the ads to get buyers to the site, but without great contributors, we don't have great content. By making the contributors a part of the review process for acceptance and having them involved in other areas of the website, we don't need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every month on "overhead." Therefore, we can afford to pay out really high rates (75-80%). We can't get to that point without everyone's help though.

I apologize if the music was too loud or you think the video is horrible. I didn't want to go out and spend $2,000 to have a video made, so I made it myself to the best of my ability.

I would also like to address the comment "Why should I pledge money for this when it doesn't look much different to lots of other failed sites?" Although right now, this looks like a replication of any other stock site, trust me when I say, this is going to go MUCH deeper. Please understand that we can't lift up our hood and show everyone the insides before it is built. In the public arena our idea would get ripped off in a heartbeat and we would be left with nothing. We have major plans for contributors to make royalties on much more than when someone just simply purchases and downloads their image.

Feel free to DM me and I will give you as much information as I can without the need to sign an NDA.

We just went live at http://www.indiegogo.com/creativewarehouse

The one thing that isn't on the project preview yet is our contributor royalty rates. These will start at 35% and work there way up to as much as 70%. One of the things we will be doing at Creative Warehouse is really creating a community that helps regulate the content on the site and is very "hands on." We want everyone to feel a sense of ownership at Creative Warehouse, and we want to end the corporate feel that all microstock sites have. So the more involved you are in our community, the higher your royalty rate.

How can we sustain a 70% royalty rate? Well, it's really all in the numbers. If we don't have a huge corporate staff and have only the key people that we need, we don't have the massive overhead that all the other sites have. In addition, we are going to have other ways that 1 piece of artwork generates recurring income for a contributor, besides the obvious royalty from a consumer downloading the image. We can't discuss any of these tactics publicly yet because we are closing the first round of funding, but let me tell you; You'll love what we are building!

If you would like to see a quick preview of our project, DM me and I'll send you the link.

Thanks everyone!

Thanks! I just sent you the link to the "preview" via DM. Let me know if you didn't get it.

Hello everyone! I'm new to the board.