Exactly. They get paid for advertising us. That's all there is to it. They earn money which helps them keep their site alive and we get a lot of potential buyers which is good for us. This is how ALL the stock agencies operate.

Oh my god. I seriously can't believe that a question like that is being asked here. I thought this place was for discussing legitimate issues and not nonsense. What kind of agency gives away your photos for free without you knowing about it???

Quote from: cclapper on September 13, 2010, 12:52
So I would appreciate a yes or no answer from you Peter...are my images automatically going to be placed on RGB and given away for free every time I upload to StockFresh?

Are you nuts? Why would we give them away for free?

Quote from: cclapper on September 13, 2010, 12:21
Wait a minute...I just want to be sure I'm understanding...
If my photos are placed on StockFresh, are they automatically going to RGB?

Why would they go to RGB? It's a completely separate site.

Quote from: massman on September 11, 2010, 21:37
It may be worth a trip back to this thread, just as a reminder http://www.microstockgroup.com/stockxpert-com/revenue-plummeting-at-StockXpert/

I'm going to say this one more time: Overall sales on StockXpert were fine despite all the rumors, surprisingly even subscriptions didn't manage to cannibalize everything... It would've even survived being disconnected from SXC. However, we were adding 40-50,000 images and who knows how many new contributors each week and downloads ended up being split up between more and more people. There's just a lot more supply than demand.

Quote from: madelaide on September 10, 2010, 01:26

Quote from: peter_stockfresh on September 09, 2010, 20:37
You won't be able to opt out of subscriptions, but only photos up to M size are included.

How sad. Most sales fall in the XS-M range anyway, so for most buyers this suits perfectly well.  And there goes our images to rapidshare & such, as seen so many times.

Although there's some overlap, subscription buyers are a different market. You have to commit for over $200 per month on most sites. That doesn't work for the majority of users who just need a few images at a time. They might make a dent on PPD sales but won't replace them. On StockXpert most contrib complaints were about XL+ sub downloads because royalties are the same for each size and of course customers tend to download the largest sizes whether they need them or not.

As for image pirating, not having subscriptions doesn't make any difference. It's an interesting topic though because I'm sure many people here contribute to a stock agency that's pretty much connected to a Rapidshare-like service and nobody seems to have an issue with it. But that's a different story

Quote from: rubyroo on September 09, 2010, 20:38
Out of interest, will you be feeding through via another SXC-style site?  I recall someone at iStock saying they were really amazed at how much iStock purchasing arose via that route.

Well, I'm not sure if you're aware, but many top contributors left SXC after the transition and started a new site at http://rgbstock.com . RGB is growing very fast and although I'm not involved in that project I'm sure we'll work something out together.

You won't be able to opt out of subscriptions, but only photos up to M size are included. So it works for bloggers,  websites and magazines who need a ton of images and you won't feel ripped off with 35c XXL downloads.

Quote from: Vonkara on September 09, 2010, 20:16
And finally, I don't try to harm your Stockfresh product guys. I just can't handle the StockXpert wooyaying, since at how the agency ended

I don't think anybody likes how it ended. I remember though when Getty shut the site down there were people cheering in the istock forums. I found it really interesting. Noone's cheering now. Strange turn of events!

Quote from: Vonkara on September 09, 2010, 06:49
They offer 50% until they become enough big to sell their subscription plan again. This is for attracting new contributors. I won't forget those dudes from StockXpert starting to sell our extended licence at sub prices. No one live on 14 sales a month.

What are you talking about? Even though StockXpert had subscription plans, you had to buy extended licenses separately. Here's the license agreement, you can see it for yourself: http://www.stockxpert.com/support/help/2_3

If you are referring to JIU and Photos.com over which StockXpert had no control whatsoever, those deals were optional for contributors because people hated the idea of mandatory opt-in (even though almost everybody stayed opted in afterwards).

The icing on the cake is that the wast majority of our customers preferred PPD to subscriptions anyway.

Quote from: ayzek on September 08, 2010, 16:07
Why dont you leave this to your customers. a review (upload) system should be realy nice according to selling performance. No inspectors and no review times. Pics that are not selling for some time period should be deleted.

All files need to be checked for quality and legal issues. You wouldn't believe what people upload sometimes...

Quote from: ayzek on September 08, 2010, 16:07
How many images do you have i dont know but i saw your collection is not differnet than others. There is so many people has got more than 5000 pics in their portfolia and you can find their images cheaper in some other stocks. This is not a good kind of diversity. Also, did you reviews all their images? What dou you think about the exclusivity for having uniqe colection?

We have over 250,000 images at the moment. Some sites might be a little bit cheaper, but I think these prices are fine for now. If it turns out that we're too expensive, we can always adjust them. One thing is sure, we don't want to be too cheap though. As for exclusivity, it doesn't make sense because we've just started and there's nothing we can offer to exclusives yet. Maybe when we get big!

Quote from: dnavarrojr on September 08, 2010, 14:30
Ditto...  The folks at Stockfresh don't answer emails... I'm not impressed so far.

Not sure where you wrote, but we haven't received any e-mails from the address in your account. If you use the online form, we will definitely get it.

Quote from: rubyroo on September 08, 2010, 10:54
It seems (looking at the discussions) that some buyers have a sense of ethics and do care about the cut to the artist - so why not use that as part of your USP?

I forgot to include that. I believe customers - being creatives themselves who also hate when their work is undervalued - do or should care about the cut contributors get and we do point it out on our website that we're giving them fair royalties. I'm pretty sure many customers are unfamiliar with the royalty rates at different agencies though and they need to be educated. For this we need the help of contributors too.

Quote from: FD-regular on September 07, 2010, 12:59
So I'd like to see first if they will become another Crestock: top quality for peanuts, - or become a little more relaxed like DP and grow quickly. Since for now, they don't have any USP over the 10M image sites.

Each agency has their own ways, goals and resources. We certainly don't want to be like Crestock. Not sure how relaxed DP reviews are, so I can't comment on that, but we're trying to find the right balance between flooding the site and rejecting everything. Diversity is important.

As for USP, with this logic we're doomed already because we're never going to get as many images as the big 5. When we get to 5M they're going to have 20M. While microstock is about quantity to some extent, there are a lot of other factors that can make someone stick to a site such as the UI, search results, customer service, prices, and personal preference in general. Not all people like to shop at the same place. That having said 1M pics is the absolute minimum in this business to be taken seriously, but as a customer I wouldn't choose a 10M site over a 5M site just because of the numbers. I'd do a search and see if I like the results.

I know everyone's waiting impatiently and you want to kill us already... Please rest assured that we're working on getting all the content online. The vast majority of people have what it takes of course and few applications get rejected, so basically it's just a matter of time. We'll get to every single person. Just remember that there are a LOT of images to deal with!

Quote from: FD-regular on July 11, 2010, 13:27

Quote from: sjlocke on July 11, 2010, 12:54Posting about rejections without posting samples of the images?  Not much point really.

Speaking of silly rejections (sorry Komar to hijack your thread for a short moment) our new kid on the block, StockFresh, rejected this lifestyle image of a Muslim girl with the argument that I need to change the background. Now it is shot with a lens that produces a beautiful bokeh (Canon 24-70/2.8 ) and the tropical suburban background isn't that sloppy I figure. I can't grasp why beginning or low-sales sites are so anal-retentive in their rejects. The result is I halted my uploads to StockFresh, till they find some less ignorant reviewers.

I think this image is on the borderline because the background is very contrasty and that can be considered distracting. There's nothing wrong with it otherwise, so I approved it after all. Unfortunately reviews can never be 100% objective, but the guys are doing their best. If you don't agree with a rejection, you can always e-mail us and we'll look into it.

Quote from: FD-regular on August 17, 2010, 02:41
I was accepted very early but I don't like their reject reasons. Very Veerish. They just like overwhites in studio, very unlike STX. In fact, this not at all STX any more, for those that suffer from phantom pain.

This is funny because we have the same reviewers and same rejection reasons we used to have on StockXpert, especially in the early days

Quote from: mtkang on August 16, 2010, 16:57
hi all, remember there is promote code 'fivefree' to get 5 free credits, can download 5 free small size pictures

that promo code was for selected offers only which have expired, so it's not going to work at the moment.

Quote from: Smithore on August 16, 2010, 10:49
There is definitely something wrong in all the new incoming microstock sites like Stockfresh. It's lacking of real professional spirit. Only 24 files can be submitted a day, that's ridiculous for starting. The sites opened with tons of already over used pictures of the most famous microstockers, always the same photos everywhere...  nothing new at the horizon...copy and paste, cloning and cloning again...nothing exciting.

Everyone's just trying to sell what sells well. You might be bored with the top sellers, but customers sure aren't, at least not yet... You have every opportunity to create any kind of image you like and revolutionize the business like those people did. You can have the next big idea. As for the limit, it might sound ridiculous, but when there are hundreds of people just like you (even thousands on large sites) trying to upload 25 images per day, you can do the math how crazy things can get.

Quote from: zager on August 12, 2010, 15:09

Quote from: peter_stockfresh on August 12, 2010, 15:04

QuoteWe are all Mac obsessed, drink bucketloads of Starbucks

I'm sorry, but... Oh. My. God. 

Hi Peter :-) I hope you've enjoyed CEPIC as I did and you'll show up some smart ideas on your site! Let's do a Hungarian/Czech cometition game ;-) You guys made a nice site anyway! Good start!

You already won Press release of the year, what else is left for us? 

QuoteWe are all Mac obsessed, drink bucketloads of Starbucks

I'm sorry, but... Oh. My. God. 

Hello Everyone,

Finally I had some time to pop into the forum, so here are some updates on how things are going:

First of all thank you very much for your continued patience as we're getting up to speed. We reached the 200,000 image mark last week and have over 350 contributors on board. There are about 500 contributors waiting at the moment. The vast majority of applications get accepted of course (some sooner, some later), but if we let everyone in at the same time there's going to be chaos! We still have a very very small team which we will soon start to expand to be able to handle more images. Anyway, once you're in, reviews are quick. We're doing our best to get everyone's content online as soon as possible, with the least effort required. By the way we're starting to see some sales which is great considering that we haven't really started marketing the site yet. We're going to work on that as well in the near future.

If you have any questions, you can reach me directly through the contact form on the site.

Thanks!
Peter

Quote from: cclapper on June 21, 2010, 18:59

Quote from: sjlocke on June 21, 2010, 18:46

Quote from: peter_stockfresh on June 21, 2010, 17:00
eventually we're going to review all the regular applications

Sucks to be 'regular' .

Ha! I thought the exact same thing.

Oh come on

Quote
I really hate false advertising. I'm starting to lose my enthusiasm. We get enough of this kind of stuff from all the other sites.

What's false advertising exactly? We've been in contact with contributors months before the launch. Actually the site's been ready for a long time, we just didn't want to unveil an emtpy store. We're processing content from new contributors even as we speak, and eventually we're going to review all the regular applications and start letting everyone in. A lot of things are going on now so please bear with us for a little while! Thanks!

Quote from: grp_photo on June 17, 2010, 11:38
They killed Stockxpert (no one forced them to sell) I don't see any reason to support them (my personal loss because of the sale is immense - of course the owners made their millions). On a second note - Stockxpert was only successful because of SXC.hu as they sold that one too I don't think they will ever made it, the time for new start-ups are over you even see very substandard results from start-ups with such mighty companies like Deutsche Telekom (Polylooks) and Corbis (Veer) in the background.

We didn't kill Stockxpert. We decided to team up with Jupiterimages right after launch (2006) so they could help us grow the site. Nobody thought that the whole economy would eventually crash and Jupiter was going to be sold. Some things are just beyond our control, and I think it's everyone's loss, not just yours.