One important thing mentioned by Bateleur: image quality inspection. This is very important but might be a source of conflicts...
Thanks for picking up and enlarging on that, Adelaide. In any venture of this sort it would be important to keep the quality high. Buyers don't want to wade through a load of rubbish. They'll go elsewhere, and they're spoiled for choice nowadays.
But, with a cooperative venture, who's going to be the judge of quality? It could indeed be a source of conflict. Maybe there would have to be some sort of voting system. But that could be horribly unwieldy with thousands of images ... oh boy!
Hi all,
I'm new to this site so maybe I'm not as qualified as some of you guys, but this is such an interesting subject....I couldnt resist to say my opinion.
Coming to the point, I believe Madelaide and Batelour are right. Inspection is by far one of the main concerns and in a way it could be really annoying for a photographer to see an image being refused by his own colleagues, whether its an association or a cooperative society.
So, my idea is to let the market judge instead of inspectors. Just think: how many of you guys have images in your portfolio that did very well on some agencies but havent been even accepted on some other sites?
Further, if you could have your own website, which photos would you publish and sell? your whole portfolio or just the cream?
I think that the key to attract buyers to a new place, which certainly shouldnt be a "clone" of some istock or shutterstock, is to offer them the highest standard of quality in the market.
How to do it? Well, in the very first stage, let contributors upload only their best selling images (i.e. images that had a number of sales in a certain period among one or more agencies).
This would help to fill the box with great contents. Customers would save time as they would not go through hundreds of snapshots. In the meanwhile, you wouldnt need inspectors as others have already done the dirty work for you.
In the next stage, i.e. when you got a decent market share and money comes, you can build up a well paid inspector team (not only made by photographers but designers too, which most of the times have a different approach and a very critical eye on what is worthy or not). This would definitely help you to fill the gap between you and traditional microstocks, as you can now deal with fresh ideas without first waiting to see how they do with your competitors.
Clearly, the bad side of this story is:
-Slower growth compared with other agencies (at least in the first stage, but who cares as long as quality is high?);
-Barriers to entry: not all photographers may qualify, or some of them may have just a little bunch of photographs to upload;
-Photographers should work with some other agencies as well (again, who cares? everybody here knows that exclusivity doesnt pay in the microstock system)
Then, the next step would be price structure...buyers shouldnt spend more money than they already do for an image and photographers should earn more. BUT HERE WE NEED A MIRACLE!!!
Hey, I wrote a lot!! maybe some of you felt sleeping in the meanwhile.oooops!
Best everything,
Diego
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