Well, since you're on the topic sharply_done, I believe in the concept of social networks. You're exactly right- they can give you exposure. But on the comment of flailing at LuckyOliver, I'll have to disagree. We are actively working with our photographers to build their presence.

As our site continues to grow, I believe that our contributors will gain more than just a check in the mail from us.

I'll update everyone here and keep it simple. Talk is great, but actions mean more.  We're dedicated to earning your trust. I appreciate the feedback.

Let me outline a few points:

1. We've known the Zazzle guys from their early beginnings and I talk with their founders on a regular basis. In fact, they messed up one of my orders before a trip and the founder had the shirts delivered personally to my house the next morning before 8am. If there was a problem, it would be resolved immediately. Connections are important.

Our service is really not set-up for someone to resell images at $50 a pop- their service is more geared toward individuals who create products. Our target is more small businesses that need images on packaging or other digital products. I firmly believe the extended license opportunity will benefit our photographers greatly.

2. Collecting thousands of images can be done overnight-building a community of artists however takes time. We want to create opportunity for those that work with us.  We've paced ourselves to win business.  We've tried to set realistic goals for people without setting the wrong impression.

3. "Not impressive." Sure, I understand.  At some point every company has to start from something small. Momentum is the key metric for us right now. All our data points are going up week by week- we try to share pieces of this information.  The intention is not to toot our horn- it's to give Carnies some transparency in the business. It's a difficult balance to share information. Every competitor is looking at what we're doing.

As we expand our presence, we'll try to share more of our activities. In the meantime we're nose down cranking and making LuckyOliver a great place. Thanks for the discussion!

Michael, if you're in the south bay (San Jose) be sure to drop by our office!

There are a couple of places (I guess pricing is relative...)

Keeble & Shuchat in Palo Alto (north of San Jose)
http://www.kspphoto.com/

San Jose Camera (I buy equipment from here)
www.sanjosecamera.com/

Both places are pretty good...but you get the typical sales staff that knows it all...and gives you that feeling of "why would you need this camera"

Hope this helps.

Ha! I'll reply again.  Professorgb, I like your thinking. It's worth looking at in the future.

I'll have to be honest with you though, we're in the midst of working on many new features for buyers- as well as marketing, so this might take awhile before we circle back around to the idea. I understand the desire to increase royalties per image- right now we're focused on getting more downloads.

Where will growth occur over the next couple years?  As designers become aware of their options, movement between agencies will slow down.  Getty has figured this out. Saturation in one market means that growth has to occur in another. Getty brought images online. Who will connect image buyers online?

The largest business growth in the next few years will be small businesses and consumers.  Publishing tools will continue to make it easy to 'do it yourself'. Companies positioned for this area will see growth. These segments are difficult because the image needs vary, the price point is aggressive, and the marketing needs to be both broad and vertical.

http://www.luckyoliver.com/bank/purchase

Here is our size chart- we cut it off if it falls below a certain dimension. We've talked about lumping the rest of the remaining pixels into the largest size available, but with our extended license rollout it got put lower down the priority list.  If you offer a buyout or extended license the full size image is available.

The jump between 5mp (most cameras now) and 12 mp is quite large. There is a large pricing gap between large and both x-large for that reason.

Guys, the Buyout option only shows up if you select an image to be exclusive. It gives you the option to set your own price. This is on every photo page in your portfolio section.  Hope this helps!

TGT-
I didn't really see what you wrote as negative!  I'm an evangelist for everyone on LuckyOliver, so I want people to know why we support certain ideas and features. We can't please everyone, but we want photographers and illustrators to know why we make decisions.

It's not even reasonable to expect everything we do will be liked. We have many great relationships with members who don't always like everything about us.  It's more important that we have a forum to discuss ideas.  You win some, you lose some. We do listen

We appreciate your efforts!

Void-
Like you said, the proof is in the pudding. Building a company takes time.  I admire the job Shutterstock has done in building a great site.  It's taken them 4-5 years to build their company.  I applaud them for their efforts, but we don't want to be another Shutterstock. We've been live for 8 months.  The site is still not buyer focused, but we have made some huge strides in the last two months.

And yes, you have some parts correct about Google, but 'on page' content is only one part of how Google works.  Google has over 100 variables they play with in determining the value of a web page.  One of the largest factors is PageRank.  Think of the web as a series of connected pages- Google tries to make sense of this mess through links.

I don't want to go into specifics of what we're doing, but I can assure you that Leaf's page didn't get higher simply because of the 'on-page' content-it has just as much to do with who and how many people linked to his page. I've been doing this for ten years, increased many businesses revenues online and have helped build ClickTracks, an award winning web analytics software.

We're not always right, but this is a good direction for LuckyOliver. Again, I appreciate the effort everyone has put into LuckyOliver. We had another record sales, download and traffic month.  Thanks!

tgt-
It's good to have a dialog about this...I even think it is ok to write your concerns on the LuckyOliver blog. Let me outline a few more thoughts on the subject.

1. We have a long term strategy that involves many different types of marketing activities- one that cannot be ignored is Google. The beast has to be fed. Comments are a great way to feed this monster.  There are a number of technical reasons for our set-up (I won't bore you with all the details, but the site is built to benefit our contributors). While we can say 'write only positive comments', it's not really helpful to the community, nor would it build trust with our customers.

2. It might be odd, but a photo with a negative comment that gets 2 views a day from Google is more likely to be sold.  You'll have to trust us on this. From the limited dataset we have, people still buy photos that are overexposed and crooked. Sometimes they just need THAT image.

3. Remember, Bouncers are helping filter photos before they go on the site. Giving photographers the option to further comment ties the community together. Yeah, I know how other stock sites are...but we're not like them, nor do we intend to be like them. Education is important- the web provides a great place to learn.

Amazon proved that you can still sell products that half of customers don't like- marketing with only positive feedback doesn't always work.  Most buyers would prefer to know more about what they're buying. If you look at my comments 90% are positive.  The other 10% I find a way to spin the negatives in a way that isn't 'the right way', but as an alternative.

4. Let me give you an example: Remember Leaf's photo of the chiwawa?
http://www.luckyoliver.com/photo/79609/chiwawa

He gets 15-30 views on this photo from Google everyday with the word 'chiwawa'.  I'm guessing if everyone commented on his photos, it would increase his ranking on Google. There are a number of factors for this...but it's a great example from this group.

5. People buy from people, not just a nameless database.  Comments are a way for the character of the site to come alive.  Customers will gravitate towards optimism, education and high quality. In the conversations I have with customers they typically comment on how they enjoy the openness of LuckyOliver. That's not created by me, it's all of you guys coming together to share your ideas and photos.

6. Here is more thoughts on the idea:
http://www.luckyoliver.com/blog/153/comment_coaching
http://www.luckyoliver.com/blog/126/More+on+Comments
http://www.luckyoliver.com/blog/144/hey_you_cant_say_that


While we're not always right, we're going to continue to support comments.  Right now it's helping immensely- if it looks like it's a dud, we'll be the first to admit it. Thanks for everyone's participation...you guys are really fun to read.

Bryan

Madeleine and Pixart- I've worked on these 60 start-ups in a consulting capacity.  They've rented my brain   Zazzle, ClickTracks, Photobucket, etc. I've helped a number of companies make a lot of money- but it's always a team effort.

LuckyOliver is my baby. We're building the business one day at a time and putting the pieces in place that will enable this company to have a long life. It's not about getting in and out- it's about creating a place that people will continue to learn, find great photos, make money and have fun.  We're committed to supporting our photographers and helping them make money. It won't work any other way.

It's really great to see the contributions Carnies have made to LuckyOliver- it's our job to create more opportunity and sales. I go to bed every night thinking about the next day- you can ask my wife - I'm obsessed with building off our momentum (by the way, she is a sweetheart for dealing with me). Hopefully you can see that same energy in our entire staff. My family, however, still doesn't understand why I sit in front of the computer so long.

And yes, I love my job- though I can probably do without domain issues...

Ha!  Pixart, I ask myself this everyday.  We have a dedicated team of people working on different parts of the business.  I try to participate in all aspects to truly understand how to manage the growth. 

As we grow, I'll continue to push more responsibility over to individual team members.  I'm kinda like a coach.  You'll find me all over the place giving advice and constructive feedback, but I try not to micromanage people. I hire motivated people that aren't averse to taking risks.

I've helped over 60 start-ups over the last 10 years.  The most common problem a start-up company faces is hiring the wrong person at the wrong time. We try to keep things lean and mean- it keeps us focused on creating value instead of building unnecessary organization. It also means we're filling in the holes with everyone's time.

Probably more than you were looking for...

I'm just razzing you Leaf.  I figure I should poke our competitors every once in awhile   You're doing a fine job on this forum.

So, I think these istockphoto news bits are interesting...umm not unlike spam ...but I thought I would report on the swag situation over here.

Let's see, shutterstock gave us lip balm and istockphoto gave us lens cleaners....but I didn't see any $10 mousepads.  Nice guys though.

Best quote from a photo equipment booth to us (as he's eating an ice cream bar):

Me: "Is your marketing guy here? This is some cool low-cost lighting equipment."

Him:"Honestly, I don't care...this is my 28th day on the road." Walks away.

Overall I'd say the show has been ho-hum. I think there are about 30 companies selling iPod covers.  I think the world is now protected.

Madelaide- the problem with the reviews...you guys slammed us over the holidays!  I made a mention of it on the blog.  We're responding by training more bouncers- but it takes a little time.  We have a 6-7 day backup...but were jammin'. I appreciate everyone's patience- scaling this operation takes a little work. We just want to make sure we're doing it right.

Sorry, your ISP might take awhile to get the updated DNS information.  The problem has been resolved, but some people may not be able to access the site.

Guys, it should be fine now- we had a mix up with our domains.  We appologize for the problems.  I'll do a blog follow up.

Sorry gang...We're on it.  I appologize for the problems.

Both good ideas. 

Void, I also noticed you had a single Oliver buy a number of your images this weekend.  Congrats! We've tried to scale the information so that it grows with the site- we still have a lot of buyer features we're working on right now.  Three months ago downloads wouldn't have mattered much...now it's starting to pick up so the information becomes more useful. We're going to be doing a lot more information sharing with our Carnies- hang in there!

Searching for Void would be cool (it's on the feature list), but it would return a result of null anyway

Sorry, this is a thread off topic...just wanted to reply to lizard.

Yes, we've taken a few borders-we're going to allow them now. We're also going to be setting up a photographer review board to keep our team on our toes, thanks!

Void, totally understand.  I'm not suggesting you're doing anything wrong.

We're in the early stages on building a customer base- I thought I would convey the images that are selling well on our site right now.  I'm guessing these are also big sellers on other sites as well.  As our reach becomes greater, a larger pool of our images will become marketable. People concept shots sell well. 

I also wanted to convey as a general trend, the photogs that seem to upload on a regular basis have more downloads.  This trend has changed a bit since we introduced our related images.  This is specific to our site.

Our growth is being measured by weeks now, so I'm optimistic that we're on an upward trend that will benefit our members. I'm ok with being in the second group now, but we're not satisfied with just resting in the middle. I appreciate all the hard work our Carnies have put into our site.

Void- I took a look at your portfolio, you've got some good images- it's a bummer we haven't got you any downloads yet! Hopefully you'll get one soon- things have been picking up. Our top photographers have around 300 downloads- but you can guess that they have a lot of planned people concepts. They also upload on a regular basis.

We're in the middle of the pack- we've still got a lot of work to do- but we're gaining ground every month.  This market is still very new and we feel there's room for innovation. We're going to continue to work our butts off.

ehmmmm.... perhaps instead of 'less productive', let's call it 'alotta heart' Leaf.

I'm not biased though. That's just me

Ok guys, it looks like we have a fix to the connection issues.  It turns out that Qwest did not propegate our IP, so anyone on their network would not be able to connect.  We think this might have been around 5% of people.  Please let me know if you are still having problems.

If your interested, I've followed up with some more details in the comment section of my post:

http://www.luckyoliver.com/blog/152/web_site_update

I posted this on our blog.  I want to make sure people here also get the information.

Ok gang, I'll give everyone an update on a couple problems we had last week.  Needless to say, it's been a bit frustrating, but I want to let people know we're working hard to get things resolved.  I'll outline the issues so nobody is left in the dark.

1.   Saturday we had an application error (500 Internal Server Error). It was sporadic throughout the day.  The problem was resolved early this morning.  It affected all users.  We transitioned our files over to our new SAN on Friday night which caused problems for our application. This shouldn't be a problem in the future.

2.   Website connection issues.  We transitioned to a new IP on Monday of last week. 95+% of users are fine. However, a few customers are unable to access www.luckyoliver.com on certain networks (Qwest is one of them).  We are going to shift back to the old IP address to resolve the issue. This should happen within the next 24 hours. We're working with our hosting provider to fix the problem.

3.   Login issues.  We transitioned to a secure login over a week ago. We also voided cookies.  Two problems now exist, but we've isolated the issues.1. Deleting your LuckyOliver cookie corrects the problem. 2. If that doesn't work and you use Internet Explorer on a PC, check your security software. Set luckyoliver.com to the allow list. These issues affect less than 1% of people. 

4.   Email went down Sunday night. If you haven't heard back from me, please be patient. I'll make sure to get back to you once we're back up.

I appreciate everyone's help- we're going to get things back in order.