Hi all, I hope this isn't inappropriate but I thought this might be of use to a few people. I work for a web design company that have created a new hosted stock library solution.
A few details you may find interesting...

� Extremely easy to use, both for you and your customers
� Sell original, medium & small image files
� Payments go direct to your PayPal account, we do not take a cut of the payments!
� You prices of course
� Sell in your preferred currency
� Batch upload with IPTC, XMP integration
� Your own branding, content, watermark, styling
� Fully hosted - managed using just your browser
� Use your own web address
� Use your own Google Analytics code
� No contract tie-ins!!

Free 100 image tier, check the site for more, up to date details.
http://www.avidimages.com/

Demo:
http://jerryspictures.avidimages.com/

Just out of curiosity is it related to Avid, the guys who make the (awesome) film editing software and also own Digidesign?

What does it cost? No pricing on the site.

they do now. "low monthly cost of only U$35", that's more than U$400 per year.

Quote from: FD-regular on July 14, 2010, 16:05

What does it cost? No pricing on the site.

they do now. "low monthly cost of only U$35", that's more than U$400 per year.

Hahahahahaha. The guy has a sense of humor. Low monthly cost.  
Still born. I expected him to pay 400$ to upload.

$30 a month ! no thanks

Thanks for your feedback guys,
we had a little update after that - check it out see what you think
www.avidimages.net

QR8Design: Please check this forum. There is a very similar alternative to yours, basically offering exactly the same functionality for the cost of USD 0,00 plus a small percentage of 12% of all sales!

That's more or less a fair bargain..  I'm sorry to say that yours is simply too expensive!

"for just $30 a month, your own stock library has never made so much sense"

No thanks. It's not a stock selling site at all. It's a paid hoster, like Photoshelter. Misleading post...

You are right, i have updated the original post - hopefully makes more sense now
Thanks!

The site design looks nice. The "info" page was a little light on details. Image formats available (tiffs, vectors, etc.), using your own url, IPTC friendly, and is there a size limit for those 5000 images were just a few questions I had.

Hi cthoman,
Thank you for your interest

Yes the info page is fresh off the press, it will be expanded and clarified more with time.
There are only raster formats currently supported in the most popular formats (jpeg, png, tiff and so on, everyone so far just uses jpegs), they are all converted to JPEGs on upload.
Yes you can use your own URL.
Yes our batch upload process fully supports IPTC meta-data
Biggest image you can upload is 4000x4000 pixels as per the popular SLR output, anything bigger is scaled to fit.

Any other questions please feel free to ask!

There are only raster formats currently supported in the most popular formats (jpeg, png, tiff and so on, everyone so far just uses jpegs)

Thanks for the quick response. I'm an Illustrator, so no vectors is a deal breaker for me. But, I bookmarked you for future reference.

It seems that you could run a botique agency out of this setup - would you say you are competing against the agency-in-a-box scripts?

Hosting of the script in a setup that gets significant traffic will cost $30 + a ton of headaches.

Are there traffic limits to this setup? Is it restricted to a "person" and not an "agency"?

Are there allowances to let other people, beyond the main user, upload?

Thanks...

Hi ppdd,
Yes you can run an agency although its not tailored for that specific use, there are no limits on traffic or anything else beyond image storage.
The system only has one user - the owner, but it would be very easy to extend this to accommodate other authors with an upload facility and even automate the monthly payments to your authors.
If there is enough interest in having this kind of system im sure we can accommodate.
Thank you for your interest!

Hi ppdd,
Yes you can run an agency although its not tailored for that specific use, there are no limits on traffic or anything else beyond image storage.
The system only has one user - the owner, but it would be very easy to extend this to accommodate other authors with an upload facility and even automate the monthly payments to your authors.
If there is enough interest in having this kind of system im sure we can accommodate.
Thank you for your interest!

I see potential with this as an option - being able to truly "white label" it would be a differentiator, and perhaps would be a motivator to let you introduce a slightly higher pricing tier. I think Photoshelter's version of this concept is $250/month, which puts it out of most ranges. But for boutique agency, etc, more like $50/monthly is easier to swing (vs. hosting yourself).

I would say you need SOME bandwidth limit, just because (as I've found out), there's always a limit. "Unlimited" means "until you crash our servers and we kick you off"  

Hello again,
We have been hard at work polishing and adding features to this system, i thought i would post it here as the discussion from this forum is great.

You now have a choice of plans starting from $15/month (please see website for prices).
Choice of hosting region: US, Asia, Europe - so your customres get the fastest possible load times.

And most importantly you can try it out FREE for 7 days and if you are not happy, just cancel it before the trial runs out - you wont spend any money.

Check http://www.avidimages.net/ for more details,
If you have any questions I would be more than happy to answer.
Val

...and I have to pay you to upload NO THANKS!...let me know when it changes the other way around...

Its not a stock library like iStock, you get your own store, you set the prices and you get paid 100% of the sales. You pay us for storage, bandwidth, processing power and maintaining the software. Sign up for a day, have a play around, see how you like it and then cancel it - there is nothing to lose.