why pay when you have PhotoBucket and simmilar... for free?

Peter, nothing is free someone is paying, the free space is paid for by the users that want the enhanced packages, when you join these services you soon see the limitations, with $33 and the Amazon bucket I can upload and store 1000 images at 5100 x 3400 for a year, now I have a flickr pro which is about the same and I only have a couple of hundred 500px longest side low res images uploaded, a lot of the bucket services do not store and host the images, they use services like Amazon and sell you a folder in thier bucket.

The way I would see this going would be that you can own your own bucket with amazon and pay only for your own use and not others, the object is to give the Photographers control of thier own assets, how many full resolution images are out there with the stocksites where you have just handed over most of your portfolio this is really about DAM (Digital Asset Management), and we just give ours out for others to manage.

David         

After several discussions on the forum the concept is going through a transition and the new thinking is more along the lines of a service provider

As the Photographers put many images on their own sites and already have them with stock imaging sites we would not want to cut this revenue, we already have a mix of websites and services on different platforms this would make it very hard to have a standard website template, so we would need to look differently as a service, and at storage and retrieval services like Amazon Web Services, where each photographer would manage their images in a uniform structure via an applet which will allow uploading to Amazon as well as other services to extract the data and thumbnails.

The idea behind the collective is that we do not want to undercut each other, or drive down prices, but we do want to get a fair return, so we would still need to set as a collective the minimum prices these would be based on an existing service "Sales Price" where the image licence is already on sale, these prices and competition rules would need to be agreed by anyone using this model or service

Once we have formulated a template and structure, creating a desktop applet to upload to Amazon will not be hard as I have already done some windows image applications extracting and saving data and creating thumbnails, once we have data showing a large number of contributors and image counts available then Agents, Brokers, Buyers and website designers would be interested

The buyer or broker would be able to search for images and return the inventory data in very small packets with the thumbnails that matched the search in the agreed format to their desktop applet, website or catalogue, this would suit direct image buyers as they would get images in different price bands, so they can fulfil a Request.

As we are setting the 100% cost we want, it would be up to the agents and broker to set their commission level and not the other way around as it is now, so the dog would wag it's own tail.

So what we are thinking of is a system where the Photographer stores their own data via the desktop application in a set template format, this would be full size, comp, thumbnail and xml data packet, and we then give a set of free tools that would allow anyone to setup a website or service to use this data, and they would then instantly have data and images available as thumbnails and a system where the Photographer gets paid as the buyer, agent or broker calls off the full size image and licence.

A service like this would mean that Photographers can still use existing website services to sell licences for the same or different images, and also have other direct sales transactions that cut-out the middle man.

We still need to maintain a central site where brokers and buyers can download applets which will meed to develop as things change, and this site would also have the photographers central data and read only bucket access codes for data and thumbnails to facilitate the services.

Questions still are how do we organize to agree a structure to create the services, but if you now have an image on a website that charges $10 for a large size then we could add that image to the pool at $8-$9 to the Photographer, it is not about saving the buyers money but facilitating a central service that returns images at all prices.

The agents, buyers and brokers then get uniform data, the collective becomes a repository so developers can create a thumbnail search engine for stock images.

The plus points to this model is that the photographers will just be backing up their images in a structure and to a template for online storage in a format that will allow sales to be generated directly.

A buyer could setup an Amazon account and just download our desktop application, enter the image details and fetch thumbnails from all different photographers accounts to their own buckets, and the cost of this service is spread between Photographers and image buyers, the Photographer pays for their own storage bucket, the transfer of data between buckets is free, the broker or buyer covers the cost of getting the data from their bucket to their website or desktop, the sales could even be brokered by Amazon. 

Cost to the Photographer to use Amazon S3 as a backup and collective service is about $35 a year per 1000 images, any sales could negate this.

David

You didn't add one crucial part in your pool:

4. Stop supporting rip-off agencies ;-)

This option is already a choice every photographer has, the collective is to find a way for photographers to get the best return and have a more contractual price base, when you sign for a website you agree to the T&C at that time, part of these is that the site owners can change the price structure without consultation although you agreed to the prices at the time, if they change them to a level you do not like, then you can leave.

We will not be able to change what the industry charges the client for an image and we would not want to price an image out of the market, so the idea is to find the best return 

David 

Following on from the recent thread about a Photographers Collective to give the Photographers more of a say in pricing and direction, there seems to be several options to go forward.

This is a simple Poll without getting into the detail

Option 1: Join together to talk to the Stocksite Owners and Stock Artists Alliance to get a representative voice and be able to put the Contributors perspective across to the agencies that manage our images

Option 2: There is a lot of marketing, programming, project management skills within the membership here and other photographers, also a wealth of experience of the stock imaging trade, should we try to pull these together to create a Fair Trade website owned by the photographers as shareholders where percentages are higher and retained earnings returned to the membership

Option 3: Do you think it is all just hot air and will never come together so we have to put up with the control the Stocksites have and make our own choices   

An alternate business model - each photographer has their own portfolio online, and independent brokers provide marketing and search and transactions (forwarded to photographer - cut). Brokers could be specialist or general, and provide the 'reliability' by representing only trusted contributors (content-wise). Happens in other industries - accommodation, care hire, insurance, etc.

Agree 100% already thinking along those lines and this thread has me doing some research

The problem with stocksites is they are a retail business and in the present model they want the stock as sale or return, and do not want to pay for it, what the real model should be is as a merchant that sits between the vendor and customer and runs thier business at a fixed percentage and minimal costs.

Lets look at how to maximise our revenue by the use of a merchant, and what is already out there, first thing is the photographer holds the fullsize images until a sale is made, when a sale is made the transaction is between the vendor (photographer) and the buyer and the full size image goes to the merchant to broker for the licence duration, the merchant then invoices the photographer for a transaction fee, if the business is just an online one then overheads are small so the fee could be set at around 10% - 12%

How could this be done, here is my idea, each photographer signs up to "Amazon S3" and create a file bucket of thier own and uploads thier images via an applet supplied free by the website, Amazon S3 charges a small fee to the photographer for storage and bandwidth usage, this cuts down the bandwidth  and storage costs for the main sales website, the photographer manages thier images on the main website, the website will retrieve 170px longest side thumbnails from the Photographers Bucket and only store them for searches, the main site will run on the thumbnail images only, and only registered buyers will be able to view and download a watermarked comp at 450px longest again this will be retrived in realtime from the photographers bucket, pricing would be global and banded and the buyer would be able to filter on price bands, buyer could have discounts based on purchase value with a maximum of 20%, image licences RF, RM, Commercial and Editorial, and Exclusive would affect the prices.

How does that sound?

David          

are we now talking about co-existence rather than elimination of the middle man?

The middle man cannot be eliminated as in any collective there will be ongoing costs, software, hosting, legal, marketing these are all middle men that need to be funded, look at it from another perspective some of the sites that already exist were bank rolled from venture capital or other investors and had the funding pulled, so how will this site be funded or the workload shared evenly, are a few going to create the site for the many on an equal share footing, the internet is changing daily and the site would need to move with these trends.

To do this with minimum risk you would need to control costs and allow the growth to be organic, this could not happen overnight, and you would be looking at investing at all levels for about three years, only photographers that were in it for the long haul should be involved and contribute on an image exclusive basis to start, RM and RF no subscriptions but with middle price points for volume.

Looking back on a few threads this model will not suit many here, the number of times I have read that a Photographer has uploaded to a New site, gave it two months, stopped uploading and is then posting negative feedback in the forum about all the work they have done uploading, so it would be important that contributors understood that they could not judge the site as a failure for 2 -3 years, that other were working just as hard trying to tune the website, and that there is a minimum time needed for organic growth to maximize the contributors return.  

David      

Like many other Yes and No!

Yes, I take a much better image from a technical perspective and have a lot to thank the forums for.

No, Shooting for stock has changed what I shoot and why, also how I interact with the subject, now I have stopped shooting stock as I want to build a collection of images that I took because I saw a good shot, and I wanted to take it with no stock agenda, in 18-24 months I will look at my collection again.

Just as a idea of what I mean about stock affecting the interaction with the subject, I went to the coast with my daughter and grandchildren at the weekend, my 4 year old grand daughter was playing in the waves, I lifted the camera to take a shot, she looked up, stopped, grinned and said "Smile!", this took a snap of a family member to a stock style image, and a good reason to change direction.

David   

Hi madelaide,
I am not sure about the "Namespace" or masking the url, I know that Photoshelter had that function but I do not remember how to do it, look for a user forum for Geosites and ask the question there, or a google search works in most cases.

Regards

David

Hey, it's me again. 

Edited to add a question: Can anyone translate the answer below (from Hawk Host's support) to plain English?  Is this the same in other places?
Q: "Is there any fee when I use my own domain?"
A: Not unless you want to transfer the domain registration to us, otherwise you'd just update the nameservers with your registrar

Two options if you already own a domain:
First is to transfer the domain, some providers lock the domain to thier service so a fee may need to be paid Second is to get your existing provider to point your domain to the new server, that is like an IP re-direct, but keeps you tied in to your existing ISP.

If you have an existing website with a good name then it might be worth the transfer fee, if not look to register a new Domain, where you could keep both running for another 6 - 12 months and re-direct from the first domain to the new domain, later on close the first account.

David 

I use https://www.redfoxhosting.com/ have done for about 3 years, they have up to date servers and support SQL and .Net Framework 3.5, they have mySQL packages from �3.99 a month, I am running 5 websites (12 domains) for �15.00 a month all with SQL 2005, ASP 2 and .Net Framework, PHP and MySQL, each has webmail email accounts that you can link with outlook, when I register a new domain I register .com, .net and .co.uk and then use domain alias to point them all to the .com site, I registered 3 last night for a new project total cost for 2 years �25.00

I also have ftp access and can use Filezilla to upload the files my sites all run with Open Source (free) DotNetNuke which comes with many modules as standard, other commercial modules can expand the websites which are plug and play, now I can set a DNN site with a SQL backend and have it running in a few hours, the hard work is content and geting traffic to your website.

It is really a matter of planning if you really need a site, ask yourself who is it for and who will visit, how will they get there, what will make them return where you are with a simple html website and where you want to be in a few months will the Service Provider be able to allow you to grow as required.

One thing that website like this one have is ever changing content, which will bring visitors back, if your website is to static then it is often only friends and family that will re-visit.

David 

I have looked at all the different flavours, Drupal is not that good with Images and Galleries, and I do not have php skills so Iam looking to use DotNetNuke and buy xMod, I will have to create the tables by hand but xMod looks good for the rest if I can sit it between the gallery and store modules, I am still looking so will update if I find anything else.

Regards

David 

Hi CofkoCof,
Thanks for the link I have had a look, there are hundreds of solutions out there but none I have found that do real RM price calculations.

Just to explain how I see that any site that wants to sell Images to real Commercial Buyers should work:
1. Firstly no Flash intros or galleries
2. The home page should have not much more than a search module allowing selections for released yes/no, editorial or commercial, orientation, people etc:
3. After a search this should take you to image selections where you could download a comp or add to lightbox.
4. RM Licence pricing unlike RF is specific to the use and the price is calculated on many variants:
Image use (Advertising), Details of use , Image size, Print run, Inserts & Placement.         
Starting date & Duration           
Territory,  Country & Region
Product industry & Industry details                                                   
Based on these Variants the Price is calculated for that Purchase
 
This is what a buyer of RF Images would expect to be asked and just by looking at the main Image sites you will see no bells and whistles just easy navigation and fast pages, that is what I want to achive a package by Photographers for Photographers free to use that we can all use and cut out the middle man.

David