Lets do a bit of viral promotion, via Twitter & Facebook.

I have tweeted this link to my 100+ followers, maybe a few more tweets and RT's may connect with a buyer or two, we can but hope.

http://bit.ly/4BmVcF

David 

You could always try The3dStudio.com with a few of your images, they pay 60% commission, you can set your own prices default $12, and no waiting to reach the minimum payout, and they have customers.

David 

<...
>...
The royalty commission structure of the sites, their greed, or your perceived "class system" has nothing to do with this topic.

Hi Whatalife,
Sorry if I am reading your replies wrongly, there are lots of ways many sites use incentives to bring in buyers and contributors, by setting targets with upload or commission rewards, or just financial gain through affiliate and referal links, I do know there are some contributors on other sites that have no portfolios only affiliate accounts, and that is something you have indicated.

I could understand your points about dilution if one of the established site with millions of assets went on a drive to recruit new contributors, but this is a new player looking for contributors to build a library or collection, and we know that for any agency to attract customers it will have a target number of assets it needs to trade.

The point I was trying to make about the 'class system' is simple, a buyer will search and purchase an image, one contributors payment can be 50% less than another contributor, but the images are 'equal products' in size, quality and content, is one contributors image really worth 50% more than anothers because they have uploaded or sold more assets, I would think not, but that is for another thread.

Back on Topic:
It looks to me like The3dStudio are looking to build thier library and offering an incentive to those that are willing to network to fellow artists for them, they could have used a different approach and offered a lowered commision and used the difference in revenue to spend on direct marketing, I.M.H.O. the use of the affiliate incentive will benefit it's contributors longer term, all the website can hope for long term viral growth.

David      

Recognition score
( if you saw it )
Your score: 70%
Average score: 92%


Temporal memory score
( when you saw it )
Your score: 94%
Average score: 68%

These photos were in neither section:
1 false positive

I only knew 70% of the images I had seen, but at least 94% were in the right section.

David  

The Forums are a tool required to build a 'community' and it saves being a proper business that pays for content from it's suppliers, photographers are able to dicusss how to improve thier skills, what kit to use and share thier positive experiences with every extended licence sale getting a "YaHoo" followed by a list of "well done" replies.

But as the community grows and they become less of an asset, and if you have an elite set of contributors with a bit of back biting, or your business is going through transitions and the contributors do not like you cahnging policy, you have to protect the business.

There are two different approches I have seen, the first cheapest option being to use the elite contributors to police the forums and stamp on any dissent, the second is to close all forums except one ot two leaving the communication channel open, and the stocksite then can manage and police this cut down version of the forum.

I have contributed and used the forums on IS, SS and Alamy and all police the forums and will delete posts and even bar anyone that has negative comments to post, that brings home the point that they are running a business.

David

Jonathan,
I thought it would be a good read for anyone in the industry at any level, even the comments at the end of the blog post are worth an extra read.

Anyone thinking of becoming a new start-up should read what made Istock a success, and with contributors the comments about open community put a smile on my face    

Anyone can copy the iStockphoto model, but it would be difficult to create a community like iStockphoto today. The real secret at iStockphoto is the openness and connection between photographers and designers.

David  

I guess we all just agree to meet right here, 2 years from today, andd see how much free stock imagery is available, and what that's done to the microstock market.

Lets not wait 2 years but go back 9 years, in 2000 there was a website launched by a photographer named Bruce Livingstone to provide designers with 'Free Images', they were called IstockPhoto I wonder what ever happened to them?

As an experiment I started giving away my photographs. Members to the site suggested that they would also supply photographs if we built the mechanism. Jeffrey Zeldman and I were chatting about the old subscription models like ArtToday.com and how iStockphoto could be different. iStockphoto started as a simple photo sharing system for designers and photographers

Services might start as Free but the concept soon dies!

David  

I have friend who is web designer... He works for big american company for a 10 years or more, I think....

He said:
"Before microstock was very hard to find "good enough" photo on free photos site, I need several hours to find subject for my project, often with too bad quality...

After start of microstock I never go on free sites again...
For 15 $ I have too good photos for site which I'll charge a few thousand dollars to my client... Before microstock I have to (very often) to take my compact camera and try to shot some isolation or some object on white, only because I couldn't find that motive on internet...
That was big waste of time for me"

If he worked for a big American company and is charging a few thousand dollars, why was he even looking for 'Free Images' spending 'Several Hours' looking at 'Bad Quality', the savings alone for the hours he charged looking for free images or playing with his P&S would have more than covered the cost of safe quality images from an agency.

This type of thing so de-values microstock I hope the end clients get to read this topic, the artist gets a few dollars and the designer wastes chargable time passing this onto the clients few thousand dollar fee, is the designers work worth that much more, microstock should have a good look at introducing licences that stop this kind of commercial abuse.

David    

The Vetta files are more unique, firstly they are exclusive to Istock and secondly less likely to be an impulse buy, someone with a few credit to burn is not likely to buy from Vetta, but they will buy from the library to use up a few credits, the price point will mean less buyers but the revenue should be better or balanced.

What is the better RPI for an image 100 @ $1 or 10 @ $10, none as both gross $100, however if the image is more suited to the regular microstock library and finds itself in the Vetta collection, the contributor might get an initial kick out of having the image in the collection at the longer term cost of reduced revenue as it might lose sales it would have got in the general library, so it is Istock getting a right balance which is more important than contributors ego's.

If Istock opened up the collection to less than worthy images, and worthy does not mean just quality but availability to purcahse, then they might be doing the collection and the contributors no favours.

David    

Yes I realize that but as about 15% of my earnings were from US sales  I expected to pay 30% tax on that as I haven't filled in the form yet or in other words have about 5% deducted from my earnings  or am I missing something.

Yeah sorry did not see it for looking it should be 4.5% on that basis, 1% would meant that 3% of your sales were US, something was lost in the calculation or reporting somewhere.

David 

I'm really not found of IS's payment set up. I requested money on the 13th (Thurs.). According to the calendar paypal payments are usually made on Mon. so I expected payment on the 17th. That was a holiday so I expected payment on the 18th. Still nothing. I looked all over the site to see if I was reading the calendar wrong and eventually wrote a note to support.

I got a response from support that it's was "processed" on the 17 (on a holiday?) and that I would be payed on the 24th. No where on the calendar does it spell out that you have to wait over 10 days from the time you request the money before you get it.

Lets look at this from thier perspective as a business, hundreds or thousands of payments could be requested in the database on any Thursday by the photographers, so we have a transaction with a status of 'requested', these would not even be looked at on the first day, and then overnight a function sets the status 'to be processed', Friday these requests are checked and the status is changed to 'processed', then they are sent to be authorised by the finance team and the status becomes 'authorised', after they are authorised the system will change the status to 'paid' and create a BACS file for bank transfers which will be uploaded to the bank, the bank queue the file and process the payments, other payment providers like PayPal are then processed, then last the checks will be printed and posted out.

This process in a normal business system could take several days due to the manual steps to avoid any mistakes and fraud and would give you a payment terms code to reflect this, this is usually Invoice after 30 days and payment within 30 days, a good deal would be a payment within 14 days, they are dealing with thousands of suppliers so expecting a payment in 4 days that includes a weekend is not realistic, so ten days is a good turnaround for any company with so many suppliers.

David  

Maybe I should have only had 3, Photographer, Entrepreneur or Other  

It is quite interesting so far and blows a few pre-conceptions away, with over 25% making a full time living from photography that would include microstock revenue as 'all or part' of thier income, Illustrators might have selected other or media which increases the number.

The other main industries that have high numbers are the more high paid job sectors, 'boys with thier toys' and not Joe public with thier point  & shoot, how many of these would ever earn enough from photography to give up the day job, it might be considered a sideline in retirement, which shows that the part time revenue from microstock might not be the main reason for contributing in a lot of cases, I like many had my DSLR kit before I even discovered microstock and a few IT guys I work with have top drawer DSLR cameras just for social use.        

David