Duplicated.

It's not the first time this is happening. I don't know how they keep "breaking" this all the time and surely having no new content showing up for days is not good for them (looks bad for customers who get the same images when looking at fresh content for days and think no new content is being added, is bad for contributors, because once the images finally get added they will be days old and be burried on later pages from the start), but I've exeperienced this problem about every 3-4 montsh ever since I joined Shutterstock. I am sure you can even find many older threads about it. It's a repeating pattern and usually, once the issue is fixed, nothing changes, so I would not interpret too much into this.

My .02 is that the reason stock is so cheap to buy now is because there's a lot of garbage/ redundancy and everything is cost averaged down. Also, a lot of buyers aren't looking for "creative" or beautiful content they are looking for a picture of a caucasian mom in a kitchen, or a dime next to an egg. And there are thousands of each.

I think you'd have to do something radically different. You'd have to make the interface more intuitive for the client in a way that I don't think I've seen yet in the world. They need to be able to "see" more images at once.

If you can make their search faster and more efficient, ie not wading through 24,000 pictures of happy faces to find what they are looking for, they will pay more money for what they want.

But like others have said, you can have the best ideas in the world... what you need are clients.

My other thought is you could take a boutique approach to this. Get say 100 of the top photographers in the world together and form a collaborative where they can produce work on spec or a client can draw from archives. Client base would be high end and discriminating.

Years ago while working at a photolab in downtown Chicago while going to school the owner told me something. He said the client wants 3 things but they can only ever have two.

Price, quality, speed.

So you can give them prints at a good price and great quality... but it's going to take some time. If they need it fast and want great quality... it's going to to cost them. Want it cheap and fast?... ok but don't complain if the color is a little off.

I mention this because you have one of these three factors that you either don't want to change or you want to increase... price. So you either have to make the process more efficient for clients (speed. Mcdonalds increased revenue by simplifying the menu and getting people in and out faster). Or you have to give them better quality at a higher price and find the market for that, people that will pay a premium for less but higher quality content.

I've only been doing this for a few months. I know, great timing right? But for me AS is the only one worth while. I won't even mention that IS/ Getty is like 2 months behind on data so I wouldn't know.

I know a guy who is very, very talented... had a great idea for a creative business, had a perfect plan, a fantastic workspace, access to resources, even had cash.

One thing he didn't have though... Clients.

I don't want to discourage you but it seems to me you'd have to do this in a new way. The platform you are talking about sounds great for photographers (if you can find clients) but why would a client choose this over the other options?