lol hack no   its a numbers game. if you are on 8 sites that avg $15 each day you would have to make $120 each day on the other , and if you avg $50 each day on 8 sites thats $400 a day on one exclusive site hey but in the end its your choice

I am not a vector artist and I am sure I will be put right if I am wrong, but from reading the comments above the two main sites for vector sales in any volume and revenue are IS and SS, so you may not get 8 sites that average �15 a day and the low earners will drag down the averages, I know on SS you can delete and take an image off line within 24 hours, any move to IS exclusive will be easier if you concetrate on sites with an easy in and easy out policy, however it might be a good policy to start with just these two for a year.

IS limit the quantity you can upload so growing your portfolio will take much longer than at SS, SS have a fast turn around and with no restrictions on the quantities you upload you will get sales faster, take note of what has been said though, IS is better for higher quality vectors, research what is already on offer at both sites and look at what you have to contribute and where it fits in.

I know that many say it is a numbers game and SS will get you a faster return, but the revenue per download will be much less at SS than at IS, but the volume of sales at SS will be higher.

Many Photographers decide and target which sites to upload a specific image to based on content, others upload everything everywhere, and have the same image returning values from a $0.25 subscription to a $20 extended licence.

Some are happy to have their assets downloaded in high volume and lower revenue per download at SS, others feel that model is not for them and get to the same revenue point for lower quantity and higher rate at IS, but many just upload to both and after a year cannot justify going exclusive because they have many more assets with SS than IS and each site is returning good revenue.

The exclusive call will be hard a year down the line, many exclusives defend going exclusive, some opted in and back out again as it was to restrictive, many will say it is not worth it but have never been exclusive themself, so it is a personal choice with no right or wrong answer just like macro vs micro, but you need to forget the community side of stock and put on your business head and look at what system gives the best return on investment and suits your portfolio quantity and workflow.

One thing I found as a part time contributor was that I could not invest the time to maintain the volume for SS, and I reached the same revenue at SS and IS at the same time but with far less assets on IS due to upload limits, the overhead cost in time and effort for 'feeding the beast' at SS was much higher than IS, as downloads for an asset peaked on SS within a few days and then dropped off, on IS there were a few views when the image was in the latest uploads, then steady views and downloads over a much longer period.

David    

You guys... not sure if you noticed, but ... this is a thread from over a year ago and was resurrected by the addition of a random, off-topic question.

Oh well 

I have now connected DWL to the Bloggers of the world, it's part of a plan to get indexed by Google and a bit more exposure for this idea.

http://digitalweblogistics.wordpress.com/ (Link added to microstockgroup)

The logo has been designed to give Digital Web Logstics an identity!

There is some positive feedback from twitter contacts, and a few more are now following and other tweeters are forwarding my tweets to their contacts, all good networking and publicity.


David

Great Input,
It seems the idea is getting discussed here and in the Group site, for now we should not get bogged down in fine detail at this stage, that will be dicussed at each stage.

KISS is a modern acronym for the empirical principle "Keep it Short and Simple," or the more recent and disparaging "Keep it Simple, Stupid", KISS states that design simplicity should be a key goal and that unnecessary complexity should be avoided.

Initail process is to agree that the concept is really viable, and discuss the foundation this has to be a solid engine where modules can be devloped for the different outlets.

I see the debate on pricing, the idea is to have different price bands with levels, these will have a lower and upper level, where the photographer places an image will be thier choice, but the image will only belong to one price group, so if you have 10,000 images or 10 the revenue per sale would be the same if they are all in the same Price Band and Level, that is what the buyer has to pay you.

If you contribute to one of the microstock agencies and your same image is on sale via the engine, you might choose a price band of microstock and a level of medium, you would now be competing with your own images, but any sales will come at 100% to the photographer at the time of sale.

I do not see there is a problem as many already have the same images with Shutterstock and Istock, there is a difference with the sales price to the Customer and revenue to the photographer.

An Idea has been floated that we set the retail selling price and a rebate value that will be paid to the Agent, this can also be discussed as it would allow for a fairer system for direct sales to the public via blogs etc:, currently the Music CD and Video DVD Sales work use this model, the price is set the same and global for all outlets, then discounts and rebate % are agreed with each merchant or Agent.

David    

It's not really a global search engine, I think an api is a better word to use, you want a way for distributors to be able to display the images, whether via a global search, or categorised thumbs, or both.. you just want as many re-sellers as possible to plugin to the group's images in exchange for their commission based on the sale price (set by the image owner)..

Thats correct, I have created a simple graphic overview model and posted it on the group site, so you can get a better idea of the flow in a visual format.

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/digital-media-artists-alliance/web/model-overview

It is not a website but a search and logistics tool, the API would not be public there would be some form of registration, the API would only grant access to metadata and thumbnails until a transaction takes place, the agreed price bands would cover all media RM, RF, Micro Midstock and Macro the Artist woud decide where each image fits, keywording would have to be an agreed  CV controlled vocabulary, the scope is massive when you think about digital media delivery this way, from Bloggers, Agencies, Merchants, Organisations and Direct Client Sales

These are some of the issues that need to be sorted out, Warren asked what is in it for Him, the concept is what share of work you put in, you get that same percentage share of the enterprise, there are a lot of options, one missing member at the moment is the marketing and business head.

The database indexes the metadata including the location of the images, and an indexing engine stores and retrieves the data, at the moment the best starting option is a product called Zebra, if it kicks in big time then a more commercial engine could be looked at.

David  

Free tickets if you register online, I will be going on the Thursday.

The knowledge-based conference and exhibition for pro-photographers 
London Islington�s Business Design Centre

Thursday 18th June - 10am until 6pm
Friday 19th June - 10am unitl 5pm

The DPI show has been designed to be the knowledge centre for professional photographers and agencies active in advertising, fashion, photojournalism, sports/action, portraiture, wedding and lifestyle photography.

The DPI show will feature the second year of the hugely successful BJP Insight series which will include seminars from many of the leading lights in the photographic market. It provides an opportunity where you can interact with people who have been influenced by photography and in many cases have in turn influenced the world.

http://www.dpishow.com/

http://www.dpishow.com/visitor_seminars.asp

David  

I f&^cking LOVE this idea, well done David for putting it to paper..

Many years ago a group of photographers got together and founded a little company called Magnum. They came up with a 'new' concept, that instead of having the client dictate the price and keep rights to all photos shot under contract, the photographer should set the price, keep the copyright, and sell TO MULTIPLE clients. The idea was new, the usual people said it would never work, and those people are now posting to microstock enoying the copyright these people brought abaout, and they are still saying ideas like this will never work.

Time to get a backbone and take power back from the agencies. THEY SHOULD NOT BE SETTING THE PRICE, YOU SHOULD BE!!!!!!!!!!! I really hope this idea works.. also another two cents, I would much prefer a yahoo or google group if possible? I haven't heard of the other site and I'm imagining most people have to sign up to join the group..

Thanks for the positive input, I am finding it hard to put the concept across, that it is not another agency but a search engine that connects photographers (Digital Artists) to Customers and Agencies that want to include thier images.
 
That's a plan I wil look at setting up a Google Group today.

David

I joined the group but wouldn't it be better to have this discussion here?

Hi Sharpshot,
As this would be a project that would take about a year to bring about, and there would have to be a lot of discussion threads to keep it on track, I thought it would need it's own place.

We would feedback to this forum

David.

I thought it doomed to failure but I didn't want to rain on your parade.

Thanks for the reply, likely the same one that many start ups have had, some fail some do well that is the way of it, there was a guy who's idea was giving away images for free, just imagine that for free, he started a website called istockphoto, I wonder what happened to that idea, it could never work but maybe as things went on he may have monitized it in some way.

David  

Tabitha, is a real nice person to donate all that money to charity, I suggested that she should contact the charity direct!

She said there was a problem as a $5000 fee needs to be paid to release the funds, so if you all want to chip in I will collect the money and send it to her  later

David.

I would think that your surgeon is not a different buyer but more like the mainstream, if it was only designers and art directors there would be less revenue, many new microstock buyers that would or could not use a designer do thier own layout and copy.

Microstock opened up Image supply to many new Customers, you mention designers and advertizing, but there are many others users that are not designers that will use microstock for presentations, community leaflets, websites, articles, blogs, even students homework etc:

I have purchased $1 images for a personal website and a presentation before, and I am an IT consultant not a designer or AD, the reason was simple the images add value and are affordable, on the other side I know my limitations and have just paid over $100 for a website logo for my IT business website.

I did have a problem finding the right business images searching on several microstock sites, the main problem I found was finding a set of business images from the same photographer that have the same look, feel and models, if you try it yourself think of an online business and look for 10 images that fit together for a website or presentation, it is hard to get a consistant flow of images, I think a lot of that is the stocksites only taking so many similars from a shoot or theame.     

If we take your cosmetic surgeon, the images were likely selected by the surgeon and passed to a designer to layout and produce the copy, I am sure the surgeon could earn more in an hour than what the designer would charge.  

David

This is a big problem on two side, the agencies are driven by the Customers and think they get feedback of what a Customer wants through 'lightbox requests', and from the search data of the many Customers that do thier own search, however the Customers will likely know what style of images they can source from which websites, so if they are looking for one category of images will go to one website and another for other images.

The thinking could be 'this site does not supply backgrounds, landscapes, travel, nature, street photography etc:', so buyers are not going to search or get good search returns at these websites, and the inspectors are going to reject these categories of images as not required based on searches, and photographers will be confused as to why one site rejects and another will accept.

There is a huge cost to the Photographer, Stocksite and the Environment with this policy, the Photographer preparing and uploading just to be rejected on some sites, the Stocksite is paying the inspectors to inspect images they do not want, and the environment for all the fossil fuels used to create the power for the uploading, Inspecting, rejecting and preparing.

There is also a large financial penalty being paid by the Photographers that have sales at these websites, as thier sales are the revenue that pays for everything, but if the websites let Photographers and Customers know what style of images they supplied by a simple website list or email then they could cut costs all around, and do thier bit for carbon reduction.

David       

Old Hippy, is wrong on so many points, maybe some time on research would help.

It was camera manufactures that created the digital cameras and made them affordable, so everyone could compete on an equal footing where skill not money now matters.
The internet created the distrubution method to upload and display the images to customers all over the world.
The software companies created tools to prepare and correct the digital images and the payment gateways.
The traditional agencies shut the doors on new photographers and microstock was created.
Flickr opened up the social photography sites where photographers can compare images.
Microstock gave everyone images at an affordable price and allowed the use of images for many millions of NEW users, that just want a couple of images for a website or article and would never have brought an image from a traditional site.

I remember the high street with a lot of traditional outlets, they have all gone and we go to the superstores now, times changed and so did buying habits.

There are many other reasons traditional sales are falling, one being the traditional customer base, newspapers and magazines, these are struggling to survive as the internet becomes more available and faster more and more people get the news online, how many 20 somethings do you see reading a newspaper or magazine?

But hey whatever it is the Micro shooters to blame!

David