I am wondering what are the best types of photo contests you have seen or participated in?  Which ones don't you like?

Are there sites that put on good photo related contests that you really like?   

how long should the deadlines be?

what are good prizes?  what do contributors like the most to get?  just cash?

How many people should share in the prizes?  top 3?  top 5?  Does it matter how many?

Who should be the judges?  The website? The community?  What works best?

I'm open to any ideas and interested to see what people like.  You don't have to answer all the questions but would be interested to hear some of your thoughts.

Thanks, John

Thanks peep.  I was just as excited as you were ;-)  Here is to many more sales as well. 

Can I ask you a question? Were they bids you received and accepted or negotiated  OR  were they people just buying your content ala carte, on demand?  Thanks

Congrats sharpshot.  I have to look to see which image sold.  Here is to many more!

@tan510jomast  Thanks.  Just want to learn as much as I can from the community and also make sure I know how we are doing.  The good, the bad and the ugly.  hahaha.  Are you signed up over at CC?

we definitely will when i am up in syracuse again visiting my parents.  i have a hard time getting up there and live down in nyc year round.  love the cuse though.

Ahhhhhhh it's been working.  I am sorry.

Try these instructions.

SmartFTP

1. Create an account for the Cutcaster FTP. Go to File > New Remote Browser.
2. On the New Remote Browser dialog box, put in www.cutcaster.com as the host and enter login information as Username: anonymous and leave the password field blank.
3. Set the folder path by putting on the Path field: <your Cutcaster FTP folder ID>. (Your Cutcaster FTP Folder ID is shown on the upload start page of the site).
4. After reviewing the account details, click OK to connect to the Cutcaster FTP account .

5. Transfer/upload your files to your Cutcaster FTP folder . Once you have finished uploading ALL the files, go back to the site and click the refresh button on the upload start page and your files will be processed.

NOTE: Do not click the refresh button while some files are still being uploaded through FTP. Click only the refresh button after ALL the files have been successfully transferred.

6. After clicking the refresh button, you will now be able to see your files on the site and process them.

NOTE: For files that have IPTC data, they will be automatically placed on the Submit page of the upload system.

Even though she has not collected anything yet, this is a great start and a good way to scare other would be thieves once they see that eye popping number.  The more publication and press this gets the better it is for everyone even if she doesn't collect the whole sum.  I am glad to see she registered her work and the result was that she had some re-course in the court of law.  Others should take note. It's the only way to collect a large sum.

whoops missed this paulo.  sales are starting but we haven't started our marketing push yet which i outlined above.  we are still getting more images into the marketplace and reaching out to buyers to tell them about the site and what we are doing with it.  so far so good though.  i'd love to have you join and sign up.

Hey Uncle Gene,

Yeah Oboy is right and we are moving to new servers  I spent all weekend migrating the image files because it is a better place to store data.  Your images are definitely not deleted, rejected, lost or voted off the island but we have them on the new S3 servers.  Its a service provided by Amazon.  This is just temporary that they are gone as we move all the files off and redirect our feeds to pick up the files from amazon.  

I didn't want to take the site offline, send out an email or contact all the contributors individually so I just blogged about it at www.blog.cutcaster.com.  I think I learned a lesson that I have to find new ways to get out that info bc I think some people were confused and others found the info.  If you have any thoughts on the best way to notify users of a change on the site let me know. I'm still learning ;-)

John

So Uncle Gene, I see what you mean now with Zymm.   Should i just make it to the user has to log in on a separate log in page and not be able to log in through the UN and PW field on the homepage or other pages on the site.  That way I can make sure the person is logging in via https.

Thanks for the help and I will work on this.  First thing is th FTP which is almost done.

I might be a bit confused.  Once you are logged in for the first time and taken to your studio page you see the HTTPS so you logged in securely. 

I've looked at how other sites do it and no sites have a secure login.  Check out SS or SV for example.  Not throwing them under the bus ;-)  You log in on a http url.

What I think you could mean and something I will change tonight is the registering for an account on a HTTPS page.  is that what you are talking about?  The register process?  Most sites don't do this but if you think this will protect everyone better, I have no problem doing it.  Its a minor change.

John

@ Uncle Gene.  I added the secure check-in right now so it is now https when you log in and you are secure. So rest assured the signing in is totally secured and I have checked the logs to make sure we had no breaches and we haven't. 

As for communications I will work on that but please just email me if you have any issues and put in the subject line your inquiry.  I will respond quickly. 

As for the FTP I will be up all night putting the finishing touches on it and rubbing out the bugs but it is really almost done.  I am not sure where you found that quote about the FTP on the site but it doesn't even make sense to me so I see why you are confused.  hahaha.

Thanks Joma st for the kind words and I really do appreciate any and all criticism about the site so I can make it better.  I am here to learn and make it better for everyone so I want to work together.  I can only wish to be a small part as successful with my vision as Bill Gates was but you are right that we all have to start somewhere ;-) 

@ dbvirago...You are absolutely right and I am working double-time to test and de-bug the last of the little issues with our FTP and new bulk uploader which will have 5 steps so a contributor will know where their files are in the process.  Upload, Describe, Submit, Pending, Reject.  In addition I will work on the message on the homepage as well so it is less confusing for a potential image buyer.  Do you have any specifics you think will really work besides some of the obvious?  I am all ears.   

@Contakt.  loved that hilarious analogy.  I've never heard that one but I'm going to use it with your permission.  hahahah.  Thanks and we are still not done with making all the changes and rolling out some new features.  But dbvirago is right about the FTP and being a serious site.  I am going to have that de-bugged and put on the live site immediately.

That is a great and fair question Cshack.  I've left my job trading stocks about 4 months back and invested a good chunk of my money so I've put a lot of faith into believing I can build something different and unique that will make me stand out from the other sites.  I also work day and night and weekends to make sure I am there if people have questions and don't hide myself, as the CEO, behind a PO box or some 800 number.  I'm there for everyone and anyone and you can ask people who have emailed the site how fast the responses are and how we want to treat people.
On the marketing front and I don't want to give away too much on a public forum but anyone is free to email me any questions or thoughts they might have....
I have a large percentage of my overall budget dedicated to marketing efforts and getting buying traffic.  Structurally - we have broken down our customer categories by segment: ad agency, publisher (mag, news, web, book), printing, corporation (marketing), new media (wireless, tech, gaming), and TV/Broadcast and have built up a huge database of buyers as well as brought in people to help us build new relationships with the buying community..
In addition we just launched our Affiliate program and reward people for sending us buyers (10% of sales for 2 years) and sellers (5% of sales for 2 years), we have joined an affiliate network to drive traffic, built out a massive plan for using Google Adwords, been tinkering with our pages to optimize them better for Google (work in progress ;-)), gotten organic traffic with our blog at www.cutcaster.com/blog and other blog articles written about us which you can find online under a simple Google search using Cutcaster, press releases and lastly designing books we will send out to clients and emails with our contributors work.. This is a slice of some of the things we are doing and are acutely aware of how important it is to have sales on the site.  If anyone wants to chat further about it or have suggestions I am all ears.

Thanks.