Well said RacePhoto!
I believe too that only time can tell how it will work out.
In the future the will probably be some tweeking of prices and limits/day, but we have too test this model to know how to tweek it.
We need Mostphotos to survive and step up to the next level and in order to do that we have to beat some competitors on the way and bring new ways and ideas into this business.

It is said that one of the keys to success is to constantly changing and improving. But of course we can't make it without the help of our members. 

Hello RacePhoto!
It depends on how many images a photo-buyer will download. Statistics (from other agencies with the same prices) shows that in average photographers will earn 0,3 €/image from a subscription plan.

When you opt out, your images will be excluded and will not be available for sale via subscriptions. Both high res and low res will be gone.
If a customer has bought subscription he wont even be able to see your images when he is loged in, because you have excluded them. We dont want to confuse the buyers with "you can download this but not this". When the buyer buys a subscription we'll only show the images available on subscription.

The customers can buy your images via creditcard when they are logged out. Just like the way it used to be. Excluding your images from the subscription means that your target customers will mainly be one time customers, dropping in via Google.

You will definitely make a higher revenue on Mostphotos if you are a part of the subscriptions. Because that way you will target two type of customers, singel buyers and regular customers.

/Arian

The reason why we haven't emailed our members about the subscription yet, is because the sub plans has been in a beta version. The reason why we made it visible online was to see the reactions of our photographers and see how it works in reality. This strategi has worked out well because we've already tweaked it a lot since we launched a couple of days ago.

Must also point out that we haven't made it visible to our customers yet, no marketing has been made and therefore not a single subscription has been sold yet.

Singel purchasers and subscription customers are two different type of buyers. If we don´t have subscription plans we are loosing subscription customers, easy as that.

* The deal is still at 50% on all sales, including the subscriptions.
* The minimum limit on 10€ to make a withdrawal is still the same.
* The setting to option out from the subscription is also available.


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Like we all know there are new stock agencies launching every day. Most of them don't survive long. What makes a site survive is either a LOT of money or the site must have something unique. Mostphotos has survived because of the business model that stands out in the industry and we are working further on that.
The MP crew does't have a lot of money, but what we have are skilled developers and we are using that to our advantage. Marketing will come, but when the site is ready.

Like I have said the subscription plans are something we pushed online yesterday for testing. No fuzz or marketing has been made.

Now that we have seen the reactions we decided to give an option out setting.
The setting can be found in the setting page → site → subscription settings

This is how we always have worked, constantly developing new stuff. We are always open for feedbacks and we change and modify stuff to find a balance.  It is not an easy task to keep so many members happy.

As far as I know , no message from you Magnum.

Hello Cricket!
[email protected]

/A

me to 


That is the big nut to crack.

Mostphotos has a more complex and intelligent backbone that is not showing on the outside. I will not go in to the technical details, but for example if you behave bad on the site, like in this case, voting low on pictures that does not deserve it, it will affect your trustworthiness. So what I want to say is that if you in someway behave badly, the site will automatically notice that and your reliability will go down, and next time your word will be less worth.

So in other words by behaving badly you just destroy for your self.

Then I reffer you to my point nr 2 and specially the last row.

Then I reffer you to the first point that I wrote..

I think I have said this a thousand times now here on this forum, but I do it again.

1) The ratings and comments does not have such a big impact on the index. Number of sales and views from buyers is the big variables.

2) Why not have fun at the same time as making money. But if you don't want to just don't participate on the community. You don't even have to log in, though you will get an email as soon as you have sold photos. Then log in request the withdrawal, and then don't come back ´till you sell again.
We have a lot of members enjoying the community.

3) It is not true that sales has been suffering because of the ratings. Those figures are not public, where did you get that from. Second of all buyers don't see any comments, ratings or index. How can they then be affected.

I don't think it is because making mockups. I just believe they are really irritating to them.

But since the members has shown this reaction now, we will put them back.

But I hope you guys are understanding our dilemma. We must have more sale arguments to increase the sales.
The other big stock-agencies, either has subscription packages, very low prices or no watermarks etc. They are giving up something to increase the sales.
MP:s unique selling point will be in its huge portfolio of "reality shots" and editorial shots of famous people. But the problem is that we dont have that huge portfolio right now. Catch 22, we need more photos.

First of all I would like to say that this is an action we took due to the previous thread where people where open for taking away the watermark for serious buyers. But as everybody knows MP has been "on the photographers side" ever since the beginning and all actions and decisions can be reversed. So be calm and understanding. Let us discuss the matter.

We have had some pressure from the buyers side to make this possible or else they will turn to sites like these below to name a few where photos are all without watermark:

http://www.alamy.com/
http://www.sxc.hu/
http://www.johner.se


The only reason why we has taken this action is because we want to increase sales. Everybody is shouting "don't lower the price" instead give the customers something more.
We are torn between to worlds, should we listen to the buyers and increase sales, or should we listen to sellers and get more photos. Like I have said we are on the photographers side, but it feels that some sort of sacrifice needs to be made in order to gain sales.

The watermark is onley disabeled for buyers that have active credits. That meens that if a buyer have credits he will see all the photos without watermark, but if he dont buy any photos within a month his account will be inactive and the watermarks will be back on all photos.
Arian

There has been sales:
http://www.mostphotos.com/forumviewthread.php?thread=1017

And what has MP done:
http://www.mostphotos.com/forumviewthread.php?thread=1328

Quote from: Runamock on March 26, 2008, 09:55
MP is a democratic site but as in any democracy you need to take part for it to work.

Amen to that 

The ratings has not such a big impact on the index.!!!
You can not lower the index by giving a photo 1 or 2 in rating.
The system is more intelligent than that.
For example if you behave bad on the site, like in this case, voting low on pictures that does not deserve it, it will affect your trustworthiness. So what I want to say is that if you in someway behave badly, the site will notice that and your reliability will automatically go down and next time your word will be less worth.

But as I have said earlier the way buyers react is the main variable for the index.

Can I say something and this I say from my own experience as a photo-buyer and also based on the material that I have seen being sold on MP:

It is not always the quality that matters. Often buyers want a specific photo and when they find the right one they often can live with some grains or out of focusness.

All the fun stuff like, ratings, comments, and points or even the index is not visible for the buyers so just don´t worry about that. The points that you mention is a figure to keep track of how active the member are. It has nothing to do with you being a good or bad photographer.
Then there are always people that can cheat the system by making scripts that can fake logins and comments. But that actually wont make you sell more photos.

There are in fact a lot of members that dont sell on regular bases. But they surely enjoy the community, and that keeps them still on the site. So as a matter of fact some functionality it does have or else it would not bee there.
We are 8 dudes working on MP and all the functions that we build in and decisions that we take are carefully planned out and discussed on our forum on the site, we have no secrets.

I really don't want you guys to take me as a cocky fellow, that I am not. It is not my intentions to make personal-attacks. But sometime I just want to stand my ground when I see some points being misunderstood. I hope it´s ok.

Hello Richard (RT)!

I don't know if you have seen my previous posts here regarding the rating system. The rating has a very low impact on the index. So just see the ratings and comments as fun thing.


* The MPI is partly built up around the votes, comments and views your picture has.
* The MPI also looks on the persons that voted, commented and viewed the photo.
* The clicks that a photo gets has a very big impact on the MPI.
* The way buyers act on the site has a very large effect on the MPI.



Regarding to the quality issue that you brought up:
We will try our best to keep an open community that is self-filtrating.
1) You can always zoom on all the photos to determine the quality.
2) If you find a photo with really poor quality you can always report it via the report button. Photos that get more than x number of reports from different users will automatically be set in quarantine.


Arian

we are upgrading some hardware and the site will be up in no time. In about half an hour or so.

Regarding to your slow connection: Where do you live?

Hello Pixart!
The case you are describing is not really an issue, and of that we can see proof of in our top lists. If a person with 20 friends rate up a bad photo, that photo will probobly end up in the top list. And when a bad photo will be exposed in the top list there will be thousands of other members that will rate that photo down. The only ones that will loose in this case are those 20 that gave high rates on a photo that ended up with a low average.
And like I said previously the ratings and comments has just a small part in the calculation of the index.


Hello Stitcherladyxx!
Do not worry about those low votes or bad comments. Because buyers wont see those. Only when you are logged in as a photographer you will see the hole community part of Mostphotos.
When you are logged in as a photo-buyer the environment is built to suit their needs. And buyers are not really interested to read comments and ratings, because they often has tight scheduls, they just want to come in, buy a good photo and go.

--
Regards
Arian Bahrami

The ratings and comments is just a small piece of the MP-index. The MP-index actually works really nice now and we are constantly tweaking it to become more and more accurate. We have two guys constantly working on the Index right now and they are doing a great job. So please have faith.



I have explained it here in this thread, where we can see an example.
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php/topic,3718.0.html

Regards Arian

Hello Pixart!

If you vote a 2 on a photo that has an average of 8, then you are abviously doing something that you shouldn't and that is something that the system recognize. Mp-crew is not doing anything manually regarding the the MP-Index.


The issue with the speed is also something that we are aware of. The reason is because our servers are in Sweden and you probobly are somewhere far from us. We are at this moment looking for some investors to invest money to our site, and the first thing we will invest in are in some servers across the world. This will definitely solve the speed problem.

We have been working really hard but as you know it is darn difficult to compete with the major stock agencies since we don´t have the big bucks that they have. But we are working day in and out, concentrating on selling our members photos on our own market, scandinavia.

People People!!
Know before you hate!

Mostphotos has a very complex backbone that wont allow these kind of photos to appear in the results for buyers.

The system is democratic and MP is accepting every photo uploaded. The photos ranking  depends on how popular they are. The more popular a photo becomes the higher it climbs in the search results.

Those seagul photos has a MP-Index around 10.
The most popular photo the last three days has a MP-Index close to 500.
See what I mean.


I have described this more in detail here in this thread:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php/topic,3722.0.html