Evo jedan pozdrav i iz CG..

Nisam znao na ovaj forum pa sad neltih i regitrovah se..

but after over 25 years of use, who cares?

well, how can it be a vintage tripod when it is not a wooden one? 
i still remember those days with wooden badminton, tennis racquets...

I agree, we all need help.  Why not go for some of the buyers and contributors that are fed up with istock?  Get some publicity going, raise non-exclusive commissions to 50% and cutcaster will be talked about everywhere.  There is a good opportunity now and I would love to see cutcaster doing better, rather than languishing with the sites that look like they have missed the boat.

Wow.  Each to his or her own, but I really couldn't do that.  It would feel too exploitative to me.

FWIW, Fstop is an agency that represents a number of photographers.  There is wide variety on the site.  Some of what I saw was quite good and some of lower quality or niche stuff.

But I feel Derick & Fstop are being dragged into this fight with Istock unfairly.  Getty is simply one agency that carries the Fstop collection.  It's not his fault if Getty royally F*d up the way it was introduced to Istock.   

Quote from: Kone on September 17, 2010, 14:27

You are aiming too high

No I'm not. If anything I'm massively under-selling the concept. This is the internet age. Look what happened at Google; look how fast Facebook took off __ and a ton of other businesses too. You can go from virtually zero to total market dominance inside of 2-3 years.

I don't think most contributors are aware just how staggeringly profitable microstock really is. All the 4 main agencies were profitable enterprises when images cost a fraction of what they do now. Since then they've mostly reduced commissions (i.e. costs) whilst also enjoying economies of scale and put up prices several times.

You generally know what commissions are paid on your own sales so run the figures backwards and work out how much money your images actually sold for in any given month. In my own case I reckon my actual sales are roughly 4x what I actually receive. With our own agency I am positive that we could at least double our earnings whilst still leaving plenty left to cover all cost and re-investment in the business.

Would we offer subscriptions in our own agency? That would be an interesting one to discuss!

Quote from: sharply_done on September 17, 2010, 12:02

Why not create a new breed of agency that is totally transparent to its investors ...

I quite like the idea of a totally transparent agency even if it wasn't totally owned by the contributors. I'm sure lots of businessmen would be happy accepting a certain percentage of sales as their earnings for running it. The microstock market today is worth something like $500M annually and is still growing. If our theorectical agency could do what Istock has done and grab half of the market it would be serious money. Even 10% of $250M annual earnings would be pretty healthy payment for running it. Some of the profit would be re-invested in the business and the rest paid out to the owner-contributors as bonuses.

Maybe we need to talk to Peter of Stockfresh or one or two other guys already in the business? The main reason that most agencies fail or never get anywhere is simply lack of funding. They can't afford the marketing and they have to pay out a comparatively high percentage to contributors to make up for the few sales. It's kind of a vicious circle which means they never get to compete with the big boys.

Fotolia have demonstrated how quickly a well-funded outfit can grow in this game. It could be done again __ but this time by us. Once the formula was proven to work it could have a snowball effect as contributors flocked to join removing their ports elsewhere. Three to five years from now it could be the only game in town.

This isn't going anywhere if people are balking at a $1000 investment - in terms of generating startup capital that's chicken feed. And getting 1000 semi-pro people to pony up that amount: you're already seeing the odds are long, so good luck with that. Personally, I wouldn't go anywhere near it unless you were asking for a $10k minimum investment and had a board of directors selected who together had decades of experience in dot-com startups, internet marketing, and stock photography.

Quote from: Norebbo on September 14, 2010, 22:44

I've stopped all uploads to iStock - it's unlikely they will get anything more from me as long as they are paying such low royalties.

Same here.

Quote from: Phil on September 04, 2010, 18:25

oh crap!

I am sooo sorry Lisa!

I went to write "The last thing I would want is one of your photos in that book" meaning anyone in general, but then thought some people would like it and it might not be clear what I meant so I changed it to what I thought was "yes, the last thing I would want is one of my photos in that book, luckily for me I don't think it is likely" and obviously I stuffed it. My sincerest apologies I really didnt mean anything against you and I admire your work.

Phil

Looks like I'm at fault for completely misinterpreting your post.  So embarassing 

Probably a good sign I have been online too much lately and the gears in my brain are rusting up, LOL.

Thanks so much for explaining and please forgive me for being paranoid...

Hi,
I have got like 500 photos to upload after holidays. They are of various categories - some are tourist pics, some are isolations on white, what's more, portraits and strictly conceptual pictures and landscapes.
Do you think it's better to upload the series of the same category at once or totally mix these photos into let's say 5 baskets and send them in 5 turns - each batch consisting of mix of photos from various categories.   ?

What do you think ? I'm asking especially people who have had similar situation/s and have experience which strategy proves to be the most effective.

Thank you in advance,
Michal

I voted for B as I think, if both images were uploaded, that one would attract more sales.

However if image A were cropped, say 25% off the bottom and maybe 10% off the top, the subject would be much stronger.