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General Midstock / Why does midstock not work?
« on: August 25, 2008, 08:37 »
I sell my images macrostock and microstock (different images of course). I have tried various midstock sites as well, but the results have been very disappointing.
I really like the idea behind midstock: In theory you can put more work in each image to produce better images than the microstock ones. You still don't need anything "special" in images as in the macrostock world. The images would still be very affordable for smaller businesses. Something like $50 is a very, very cheap image in advertising.
But why doesn't customers buy midstock images, only cheap and expensive images?
One thing is propably that customers are also divided to big corporations and "mom & pop" stores. (yes I know, big corporations also use some microstock for some minor projects)
One thing is also that most of the midstock sites are flooded with microstock images and that is not a good thing. Why would anyone pay $50 for an image that can be bought for $5 at a micro.
In my dream midstock site there would be a restriction to sell the same images on the other sites too cheaply, let's say a web sized image shouldn't be sold anywhere under $10. Also a per-image exclusive site could be a good idea, but only if they have decent marketing budgets. Also a place with only exclusive images you can't buy anywhere else. The exclusive images only site should also be a bit more picky about the images and accept only good images.
Ok now I have this out of my system...
I really like the idea behind midstock: In theory you can put more work in each image to produce better images than the microstock ones. You still don't need anything "special" in images as in the macrostock world. The images would still be very affordable for smaller businesses. Something like $50 is a very, very cheap image in advertising.
But why doesn't customers buy midstock images, only cheap and expensive images?
One thing is propably that customers are also divided to big corporations and "mom & pop" stores. (yes I know, big corporations also use some microstock for some minor projects)
One thing is also that most of the midstock sites are flooded with microstock images and that is not a good thing. Why would anyone pay $50 for an image that can be bought for $5 at a micro.
In my dream midstock site there would be a restriction to sell the same images on the other sites too cheaply, let's say a web sized image shouldn't be sold anywhere under $10. Also a per-image exclusive site could be a good idea, but only if they have decent marketing budgets. Also a place with only exclusive images you can't buy anywhere else. The exclusive images only site should also be a bit more picky about the images and accept only good images.
Ok now I have this out of my system...