I'd like to see One Agency that could represent us all on our own websites. Is there anyone working on something like this? Listed below is a great idea by: cidepix

Quoted in another Forum here!

"There won't be a wake up call for the agencies unless someone makes a site where all artists can submit "their sites" and integrate it in the search so it functions as a huge stock photo search engine that when you click on a photo, you are redirected to that artist's website..

This site would have to be free to be any different from the agencies.. In fact this site must be built by us, contributors and when popular enough it will destroy the middle man..

Everybody will earn as much as their own potential and there will be no fees... artists will only pay an annual amount so the website can survive.. nothing more.. the more artists there are, the less fee to be paid.. probably only as much as pennies and cents

Instead of a contributors union like we discussed many times in the past, this is the only long term solution I can see.."

Brilliant Idea... I'm all for it!!!

Yes I agree, about Photoshelter. I've contacted them and they aren't interested in providing such service as of now. I'd love someone to make an agency for Artist by Artist so we can retain all of our hard earned money. There's got to be a way to have all of our individual sites linked together via search engine, under one website.

Yes something like that!
I'd like to see a REVOLT with all of us standing up against the Agencies that take upwards to 80% of our money!!!
Really it's us that own our images, and it's up to us to take back control. So what I'm hoping for would be a big exit from all the agencies, into one collective, where we all share in the advertising expenses, and of running the site.

It can be done, if we all stand together. I know that's almost impossible, but why can't we?

It wouldn't really be a big deal.  Just come up with a standardized XML format for a dump of your database that gets picked up every night by the central engine site.

Hard part is the sort.  You're stuck with 'random' and 'newest'.  Maybe one based on smart click thrus.  You can only base the sort on the data the engine collects for itself.

Thank you for your post cr8tivguy! I was about to post something similar...

I hope soon someone comes up with a well thought Idea to provide a reliable solution to that.
It would really be earthshaking!

Services like Photoshelter have proven to not be a solution to that. More interesting would be to code a script like KTools, CMSaccount, a Wordpress mutation, etc. with an standardized API for a Metasite/Search engine/Crawler. IMHO this split would be a perfect balance of a commercial entity and power distribution. You own your files, you host your files, you agree to certain technical standards (API) and probably some legal standards (conformity of service) and the providing company makes money through selling the script, handling the payments for a small percentage of the transaction amount (10%?)....ahhhhh, how nice to play with the Idea

This is just what Leo was working on, I haven't been in touch for a couple of weeks as I've been really busy, but I'll drop him an email and let him know this threads here.
This is the initial discussion about it:

http://www.microstockgroup.com/selling-direct/new-project-need-feedback-or-ideas-please/msg272799/#msg272799

Isn't Picturengine (see discussion here) the same idea?

Anyway, with any of those ideas, the main issue will always be how to direct buyers to such a site. If you look at the expenses Shutterstock has for marketing and sales (publicly available since their IPO) you'll see that it will be hard to compete.

Isn't Picturengine (see discussion here) the same idea?

Anyway, with any of those ideas, the main issue will always be how to direct buyers to such a site. If you look at the expenses Shutterstock has for marketing and sales (publicly available since their IPO) you'll see that it will be hard to compete.

@ dirkr

No, it is not..

@ ClaridgeJ

No, it won't..

--------------------------

@ ClaridgeJ, dirkr

Yes, you will get nowhere with that attitude

I regularly get sales from my own sites and I spend 0 (zero) for advertising.. The idea of ONE BIG SEARCH ENGINE that cuts out the middle-men will advertise itself..

I like the id�a. BUT i dont want to make the sells myself and have a private correspondence with every costomer. The costomers wont put up with waiting on each contributor to answer his request to buy something. In your id�, each of us then have to have a fully operating selling service on our own website. We cant build and maintain that machinery at every endpoint(image), its now going to be reliable for us or the costumers.

Why dont just build an agency that takes out zero profit, because its build by us, so we can have a huge cut of the price? 85 % or something like that? Is that possible?

I handle my transactions and customer service on my own sites and there is nothing difficult with that apart from spending 5 minutes per customer.. If it gets too busy, I can always hire someone to do it for me.. (+ only about %5 of buyers need assistance in my experience)

- My idea is NOT for people who don't already have their own websites..
- My idea is NOT for people who can't even handle a customer correspondence themselves..
- Who else it is NOT for: For people who say "we can't do that", "we can't do this", "that's too expensive", "that won't work"..

We know that agency idea is not going to work.. For sure.. And we know people with the attitude I am talking about will not achieve anything..

We don't need their support.. It's helpful enough if they stay out of the project so all the negative energy stays out with them..

I know many people who have their own photostores on MSG..

to name a few: leaf, cthoman, lisafx, yuri, myself and many others mentioned in this thread and others.. Obviously this idea won't work for anyone without a website..

But if the project become a reality one day, it won't be long before the likes of Ktools and CMS account start working on easy integration with this network.. Then many people without sites will start getting their own sites..

Some technical input since I already work in this space... I've toyed with this idea in the past (still loosely am considering something similar for picWorkflow), and everytime I've tried to come up with a way to do it, I run into the following issues:

1) Technically, regularly pulling data from and maintaining changing data, across a wide variety of sites (hundreds at-least to be financially viable) is very VERY difficult. I have a couple of tools which pull complex data from just 13 microstock sites and simple data from 40+, and both are an absolute nightmare to maintain.

2) To perform step 1, costs money, as the OP suggested 'no fees', but then states a small annual fee for upkeep, presumably thinking of server-costs, would leave little-to-no development or marketing budget.

3) Storing images would be essential, as if any source site went down, the image-buyer would still need access to thumbnails, and not-caching those would be a big error because of any inconsistencies in the source data leading to unpresentable search results.

4) The site to be viable would probably work best if it took a cut of every sale (which other similar services have done), but then the participating artists would figure "hey, people are buying my images, why am I paying 20% to this middleman service now I have the customers", thus making the need for it to be an end-to-end, not just a referral service.

5) Maintaining relationships with that many artists and supporting both userbases (artists and buyers), and that many sites, would again be a total nightmare.

6) The issue of who handles payments is tricky, the buyers want a single-point service, but the OP suggests artists handling payments.
From my research 2 things buyers want above all else are:
a) A good search engine, with a useful relevance algorithm so they spend less time searching (hard to do).
b) A fast, simple and transparent payment structure with no hoop-jumping.

My solution:

1) Photoshelter already does a good job of providing a network of sites for selling your work, if you don't like microstock, sell from your own site and spend a few bucks (on Fiverr if you're cheap, on odesk/freelancer if you have a couple of hundred to spare) on content marketing people (pickup some link builders (white-hat only) and content writers/enrichers, and actually add some web-friendly content around your images).

2) Don't like agencies that keep 80% plus of the income? Easy... Don't sell through them. Plenty of people will, but vote with your feet and the agencies will listen if enough people do so.

Not a full-service solution, but just my 2c, gave me an idea for a blog post though too, thanks
Bob

All very good practical point.

About the biggest question: ok, not all buyers are from the EU, USA, Australia, Canada but probably most of them are (partly due to our ports being mostly western-oriented). At the cost of looking a bit selfish, if we can accept PayPal and Moneybookers, who cares about rest of the world? (at least in the beginning)?

Do we really need credits? Buyers can PAYG, and once they reach a certain cost it will automatically turn into a subscription. The way the Oyster card works in London.

But I'll add another question: how do we protect ourselves from possible retaliation from traditional stock agencies which may - legitimately - not want us as their contributors anymore? Once we'll be the largest site in the world this will be a non-issue, but in the meantime...

Isn't Picturengine (see discussion here) the same idea?

Anyway, with any of those ideas, the main issue will always be how to direct buyers to such a site. If you look at the expenses Shutterstock has for marketing and sales (publicly available since their IPO) you'll see that it will be hard to compete.

Yes, picture engine is about what I am looking for, but it seems to develop too slow, but I may be wrong since I do not follow them closely enough.

And if you wanted to pay, you would have all jumped all over PictureEngine (which, ironically showed up about a month and a half after I started on my idea).

I was interested in PictureEngine, but (like most of these things) they weren't currently working with illustrators.