Author Topic: PeopleImages.com - 3mth Considerations. (Read 38969 times)

StockBottom · « **Reply #25 on:** August 09, 2012, 10:54 »

Quote from: Joeboy on August 09, 2012, 09:10

You advertise on your site for retouchers at $4.63 per hour! You say you are running these bootcamps to pass on your knowledge on but really you want cheap pictures shot for your own personal gain, you've copied this idea from Simon Cowell and the X Factor and lets face it he's a very charitable guy that is just helping out new talent!
I have nothing against you making a good business, but please do not make out you are the new Mother Teresa.

no idea in South Africa but in most of the world 4.5$ per hour is a very good salary.

i'm surprised he hasn't outsourced to India or Cambodia actually.

Yuri_Arcurs · « **Reply #26 on:** August 09, 2012, 10:55 »

JoeBoy and others...Do you really think it would matter if I had a million more? Or even five or ten? Would my life change?
I truly enjoy teaching. I enjoy life with my students and the experiences we have and perhaps... in three years... I have ten great photographers. They can leave my company, but hopefully the stock market will be stable enough for me to hire them, which I certainly plan to.
I enjoy re-living photography basics, being amazed again. It's an inspirational thing to teach and to see people grow. I could have made many choices in my business life that would have given much more profit, but why? That's not happiness. More money?

cthoman · « **Reply #27 on:** August 09, 2012, 10:59 »

Quote from: StockBottom on August 09, 2012, 10:47

even facebook, youtube, yahoo, zynga, are losing money or struggling to stay afloat, no matter if they have zillions of free users, paying users, huge advertising deals, sponsors, and whatever in between.

i never hear anybody here talking about how much is the cost to acquire a customer for instance.
that would be a good start but no, only endless rants about greedy agencies.

what do you guys know exactly ? they can easily spend 10$ to acquire a client that buys 5$ in credits and later dumps them off to buy on cheaper agencies.

let me remind you if your images were so precious and unique they would sell like hotcaked on art galleries or at least on Getty and Corbis rather than for a pittance on micros.

SS might have its greedy plans but no one forces you to join them, it's up to you.
considering they're the only agency left who's really delivering i've nothing against them eating up 80% of a sale that me alone could never possibly make on my own without a substantial and risky investment.

Maybe, you should try it before you decide it is hopeless.

StockBottom · « **Reply #28 on:** August 09, 2012, 11:02 »

Quote from: Yuri_Arcurs on August 09, 2012, 07:58

What iStock is getting in supporting you is a person that gives little back to the community, shoots cheap because spending money on shoots would be less profitable, and takes the low hanging fruit because they are very accessible while making sure that he gets the biggest piece of the pie for himself.

and what you're getting from istock is being told to limit your uploads despite being their top sellers.

i think here both Sean and Yuri are right, they just their goals on different ways.

i've nothing against photo factories, and nothing against single photographers in their own studios cutting costs and producing as much as they can.

however, i can't understand this diatribe about charity and giving back.
istock is giving us NOTHING back, nor are the cheap as-s buyers who only choose micros to cut costs to the bone.

considering the rock bottom payout we get from agencies i can't see any space left for extra charity or volunteering projects, many photographers are lucky to stay afloat actually.

Yuri_Arcurs · « **Reply #29 on:** August 09, 2012, 11:04 »

Quote from: StockBottom on August 09, 2012, 10:47

Quote from: digitalexpression on August 09, 2012, 10:31
I refuse to believe you can't run a microstock agency profitably and still allow everyone to win. Shutterstock, like most of the others is simply trying to take the whole pie. Greed isn't a viable business plan.

even facebook, youtube, yahoo, zynga, are losing money or struggling to stay afloat, no matter if they have zillions of free users, paying users, huge advertising deals, sponsors, and whatever in between.

i never hear anybody here talking about how much is the cost to acquire a customer for instance.
that would be a good start but no, only endless rants about greedy agencies.

what do you guys know exactly ? they can easily spend 10$ to acquire a client that buys 5$ in credits and later dumps them off to buy on cheaper agencies.

let me remind you if your images were so precious and unique they would sell like hotcaked on art galleries or at least on Getty and Corbis rather than for a pittance on micros.

SS might have its greedy plans but no one forces you to join them, it's up to you.
considering they're the only agency left who's really delivering i've nothing against them eating up 80% of a sale that me alone could never possibly make on my own without a substantial and risky investment.

It's true. This kind of forum tend to get very one-sided and not consider the agency's point of view. Valid point

StockBottom · « **Reply #30 on:** August 09, 2012, 11:13 »

Quote from: cthoman on August 09, 2012, 10:59

Maybe, you should try it before you decide it is hopeless.

i don't say it's hopeless, i say it's very hard, risky, and takes a long time and lots of money and skills.

because of the internet now everyone thinks it's easy to sell stuff online while actually it's even harder
than with a brick and mortar store !

i'm personally trying to get my foot in the door of art galleries and it's a hard costly and sectarian business,
and even if you ever make a sale the gallery will keep 50% of it as that's the going rate, but for newbies
they could keep up to 80% of sale, take it or leave it, the demand is low, the buyers few, and you're not
famous, what do you do ?

in plus, nowadays any other 13 yrs old punk shooting junk with his iPhone and Instagram thinks to
be a fine art genius and you see people buying into this new trend along with stuff shot on Polaroid
and other conceptual rubbish.

i mean here you have the top selling micro photographer telling us his own agency is making profits
but he's not making a trillion $ out of it and he's got a whole marketing and sales team, if he can't why should we ?

StockBottom · « **Reply #32 on:** August 09, 2012, 11:30 »

Quote from: Yuri_Arcurs on August 09, 2012, 11:04

It's true. This kind of forum tend to get very one-sided and not consider the agency's point of view. Valid point

no, they're all just jealous of your success.

and indeed they never see the other side, if running an agency was such an easy and lucrative business
anyone would do it and any other photographer would at least set up his shop on Photoshelter.

well i know many people on Photoshelter and SmugMug and they can hardly pay the bills for the hosting.

i mean even Magnum Photos is in dire straits, even Murdoch is talking about selling part of his news empire,
we must accept nowadays selling photos is harder and harder, the whole publishing business is in turmoil
and nobody can see a way out or an exit strategy, and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they
were making with paper, as simple as that.

agencies are the ones making the market, chasing the buyers, selling them our photos, and sharing the profits.
too many here downplay the role of agencies as if photos could be easily sell like hotcakes alone once they're
online on a few web sites and once they're found on google images.

it's BS, and i would be surprised if SS or IS make a net profit above 20% actually.

so they make 20% ROI and we make 20% per sales, it's not as bad as it seems.

making comparison with Apple taking 30% off any sale on iTunes is like apples and oranges, Apple sales
are backed by their hardware (ipod, iphone, imac), stock agencies are not backed by canon or nikon and have
to grab customers by themselves including getty and corbis, it's a cut throat business !

cthoman · « **Reply #33 on:** August 09, 2012, 11:39 »

Quote from: StockBottom on August 09, 2012, 11:13

i don't say it's hopeless, i say it's very hard, risky, and takes a long time and lots of money and skills.

because of the internet now everyone thinks it's easy to sell stuff online while actually it's even harder
than with a brick and mortar store !

i'm personally trying to get my foot in the door of art galleries and it's a hard costly and sectarian business,
and even if you ever make a sale the gallery will keep 50% of it as that's the going rate, but for newbies
they could keep up to 80% of sale, take it or leave it, the demand is low, the buyers few, and you're not
famous, what do you do ?

in plus, nowadays any other 13 yrs old punk shooting junk with his iPhone and Instagram thinks to
be a fine art genius and you see people buying into this new trend along with stuff shot on Polaroid
and other conceptual rubbish.

i mean here you have the top selling micro photographer telling us his own agency is making profits
but he's not making a trillion $ out of it and he's got a whole marketing and sales team, if he can't why should we ?

I wouldn't say it is easy either, but the barrier to entry and path to a profit (I thought) was pretty low. A few months after I opened my store, I seriously wondered what these agencies were doing with their 80% of the share. They certainly didn't seem to be using it to bring in sales for me. My theory is that they waste it on staff that they probably don't need and ads that don't convert.

StockBottom · « **Reply #34 on:** August 09, 2012, 11:51 »

Quote from: cthoman on August 09, 2012, 11:39

Quote from: StockBottom on August 09, 2012, 11:13
i don't say it's hopeless, i say it's very hard, risky, and takes a long time and lots of money and skills.

because of the internet now everyone thinks it's easy to sell stuff online while actually it's even harder
than with a brick and mortar store !

i'm personally trying to get my foot in the door of art galleries and it's a hard costly and sectarian business,
and even if you ever make a sale the gallery will keep 50% of it as that's the going rate, but for newbies
they could keep up to 80% of sale, take it or leave it, the demand is low, the buyers few, and you're not
famous, what do you do ?

in plus, nowadays any other 13 yrs old punk shooting junk with his iPhone and Instagram thinks to
be a fine art genius and you see people buying into this new trend along with stuff shot on Polaroid
and other conceptual rubbish.

i mean here you have the top selling micro photographer telling us his own agency is making profits
but he's not making a trillion $ out of it and he's got a whole marketing and sales team, if he can't why should we ?

I wouldn't say it is easy either, but the barrier to entry and path to a profit (I thought) was pretty low. A few months after I opened my store, I seriously wondered what these agencies were doing with their 80% of the share. They certainly didn't seem to be using it to bring in sales for me. My theory is that they waste it on staff that they probably don't need and ads that don't convert.

first of all they pay taxes, a building with offices, clerks, security guards, parking lots, electricity, water, insurance, a data center or cloud provider to host the whole backend/frontend site etc etc

if you just run a small site you can get away with maybe 30-50$ a month, but once you scale your business it's quite another story, the costs are massive and that's exactly why facebook is losing millions, they run the biggest datacenter in the world and they get peanuts from their whole operation.

as for ads not converting that's also quite another complex story and it's also the biggest limit for micro agencies, they can't chase customers on the phone or signing big deals like RM agencies do, all they can do is advertising on web channels targeting the cheapest buyers, but as i said before this model is flawed in my opinion as the product is too cheap, they exploited a niche making it so big that now it's mainstream while killing RM sales and now discovering they can barely pay the bills with it ..

the moral of the story is dozens of respectable RM agencies had to go bankrupt to leave space for the micro agencies which are now scre-wing us in any way, talk about progress, "adapt or die", etc etc

gostwyck · « **Reply #35 on:** August 09, 2012, 12:27 »

Quote from: StockBottom on August 09, 2012, 11:30

... and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they were making with paper, as simple as that.

Er ... it's not actually as simple as you think. Ever heard of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James? Just happens to be the fastest selling and most profitable book of all time with the majority of sales in e-book format. Things change, businesses adapt.

Digital66 · « **Reply #36 on:** August 09, 2012, 12:36 »

Quote from: StockBottom on August 09, 2012, 10:54

Quote from: Joeboy on August 09, 2012, 09:10
You advertise on your site for retouchers at $4.63 per hour! You say you are running these bootcamps to pass on your knowledge on but really you want cheap pictures shot for your own personal gain, you've copied this idea from Simon Cowell and the X Factor and lets face it he's a very charitable guy that is just helping out new talent!
I have nothing against you making a good business, but please do not make out you are the new Mother Teresa.

no idea in South Africa but in most of the world 4.5$ per hour is a very good salary.

i'm surprised he hasn't outsourced to India or Cambodia actually.

$4.5/hour a very good salary in most of the world?

I guess you mean, a very good salary for people living in very poor countries.

luissantos84 · « **Reply #37 on:** August 09, 2012, 12:43 »

firstly you say you get 300% comission rate and then you say that money doesn´t make you happy.. seriously? what sense does that make? why don´t you say what we all think including you!

the more $ the better

why having the last ranking level in depositphotos when you haven´t reached it yet, actually you have it from the beginning, its incredible how you have accept that, ain´t that unfair?

have nothing against you but I hate cynicism really

luissantos84 · « **Reply #38 on:** August 09, 2012, 12:45 »

Quote from: gostwyck on August 09, 2012, 12:27

Quote from: StockBottom on August 09, 2012, 11:30
... and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they were making with paper, as simple as that.

Er ... it's not actually as simple as you think. Ever heard of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James? Just happens to be the fastest selling and most profitable book of all time with the majority of sales in e-book format. Things change, businesses adapt.

haven´t read it but its just nuts, I believe that was the only book beeing read on my latest vacation

cthoman · « **Reply #39 on:** August 09, 2012, 13:09 »

Quote from: StockBottom on August 09, 2012, 11:51

first of all they pay taxes, a building with offices, clerks, security guards, parking lots, electricity, water, insurance, a data center or cloud provider to host the whole backend/frontend site etc etc

Those costs are easily spread out over all the contributors. When I left iStock, I joked that the person's salary I was paying would have to find a new job. It was a joke, but the money they were receiving from my sales was literally enough to pay someone's salary for a year. And, I'm a nobody when it comes to sales. If you are going to pay somebody that much money to be your agent, they should probably... well, be your agent, represent your interests and drive sales to your portfolio. I'd probably be better off hiring a single employee to make cold calls all day.

luissantos84 · « **Reply #40 on:** August 09, 2012, 13:14 »

not saying I am happy having 38 cents sales but they are paying me from 27.8% to 132.4% royalties

Oleg · « **Reply #41 on:** August 09, 2012, 13:23 »

The problem of "fair" fees exist for a long time
I seriously wonder why some people advocate the big agency
Yuri works fine.

djpadavona · « **Reply #42 on:** August 09, 2012, 13:28 »

Quote from: StockBottom on August 09, 2012, 10:47

even facebook, youtube, yahoo, zynga, are losing money or struggling to stay afloat, no matter if they have zillions of free users, paying users, huge advertising deals, sponsors, and whatever in between.

Source?

Youtube is owned by Google, which earned $2.8 billion after taxes in the last 3 months. Yahoo netted well over $200 million. Fighting to stay afloat? Seriously?

sharpshot · « **Reply #43 on:** August 09, 2012, 13:48 »

Thanks for the info Yuri. I hope you open a site for the rest of us one day. I still think if alamy can pay 60% commission non-exclusive, microstock sites should find it easy to pay 50% and still make a healthy profit.

lisafx · « **Reply #44 on:** August 09, 2012, 14:15 »

Quote from: gostwyck on August 09, 2012, 12:27

Quote from: StockBottom on August 09, 2012, 11:30
... and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they were making with paper, as simple as that.

Er ... it's not actually as simple as you think. Ever heard of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James? Just happens to be the fastest selling and most profitable book of all time with the majority of sales in e-book format. Things change, businesses adapt.

But there are no pictures in that book. Wouldn't it be nice if there were

Pixart · « **Reply #45 on:** August 09, 2012, 14:59 »

Quote from: luissantos84 on August 09, 2012, 12:45

Quote from: gostwyck on August 09, 2012, 12:27
Quote from: StockBottom on August 09, 2012, 11:30
... and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they were making with paper, as simple as that.

Er ... it's not actually as simple as you think. Ever heard of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James? Just happens to be the fastest selling and most profitable book of all time with the majority of sales in e-book format. Things change, businesses adapt.

haven´t read it but its just nuts, I believe that was the only book beeing read on my latest vacation

ebooks are not compensating the traditional publishers is where the truth is... Trads pay authors roughly 1.75% per sold book and then authors must pay agents, managers, attorneys. Traditional pubishing is simply dying because the trads won't change. [I went to purchase the last Steven King book and it was $20, seriously!!!] Smart authors are going the indie route. An indie author receives 70% of the sale on Amazon (and elsewhere). That is $2.10 on a $2.99 book. A 9.99 paperback earns that author $1.75 - from that the author must give 10-30% away to agents etc. If it's not a best seller, a trad books go out of circulation very quickly. Ebooks are forever. Amanda Hawking was selling 9000 books a day for a while. Joe Konrath started off this 2012 earning 100,000 month - so happy that the trads had rejected so many of his titles that he owned to self publish. John Locke publishes his books at .99 (that's 70 cents profit) and was the first indie on Kindle to sell 1 million ebooks books (nice math for him!)

I have been watching this evolution in publishing thinking how the h*ll did photographers allow this (our treatment by agents) go so wrong? Do we need Amazon to start a photo agency? Amazon and Kindle have changed the entire publishing industry and I feel sorry for the trads, but they were too scared/greedy/stubborn to adapt.

cthoman · « **Reply #46 on:** August 09, 2012, 16:15 »

Quote from: Pixart on August 09, 2012, 14:59

I have been watching this evolution in publishing thinking how the h*ll did photographers allow this (our treatment by agents) go so wrong? Do we need Amazon to start a photo agency? Amazon and Kindle have changed the entire publishing industry and I feel sorry for the trads, but they were too scared/greedy/stubborn to adapt.

I wonder about that too. I think what the heck was I thinking when I started selling microstock? I guess hindsight is 20/20.

cobalt · « **Reply #47 on:** August 09, 2012, 16:23 »

Not to distract from this thread - but amazon to get in the stock business to sell photos, videos, sounds, templates....uhhhhh...Maybe we are lucky they are not doing this. Amazon would be instantly a huge dominating site.

Although - if they keep paying 70%...

Anyway, back to Yuris success...

ETA: why isn´t there a stock agency that sells via amazon? It is the biggest online market place in the world. Somebody must have tried to get into it??

loop · « **Reply #48 on:** August 09, 2012, 16:40 »

Several themes:

One:
I don't think 20 $for the last seven hundred or so pages SK book is expensive. Paying 8 or 10 dollars for a kg of decent salad tomates it is, in my opinion. On the other hand, after buying a Kindle I've discovered that I prefer reading books on paper. Some friends of mine agree with me, but they point out that with and e-book reader you can get the books for nothing on the file sharing pirate sites. They consider that a great advantage.

On the other hand: all crowdsourcing sites have their examples of "people making fast fortunes with them". That's a given. One of two examples of these kind are the greatest free publicity you can ever have. Of course, you alway can promote someone to guarantee his/her success. But go to the indie authors forums: 99% of them are getting almost nothing, nothing or losing money after paying for art in the covers, design, editing, proofreading, formatting, self promoting etc. And by the way: you can be an indie author and have an agent as well, not to talk of eventually needing a lawyer.

Two:

Anyway, if Amazon can pay 70% (lets say that sometimes they pay 35% too) for non-exclusive books, why couldn't microstock sites pay these kind of rates? Amazon also have staff, bandwith, storage and adds etc to pay. Probably more than MS sites. And they earn a lot of money.

Three:

I can't understand why disagreeing with Yuri is seen by some like a kind of personal attack. Forums are a tool to contrast opinions, aren't they? Contrasting opinions and learning in the process is a good thing, I'm sure. Not all can be woyaying and pating shoulders. Politely disagreeing with other posters opinions is not judged so harshly. About Sean, I'll just say that he has done a lote for many of us: he keeps the most informative page about stock that I know, he has personally written for free lots of apps for photographers and customers and he is, certainly, in his rigth to speak his mind.

Four:

Very surprising this information about SS paying less than 20%, although I don't understand what the source is.

Added in edit responding to Pixart: John Locke doen't get 70 c per book. If you sell at .99 you just get 35%, not 70

gostwyck · « **Reply #49 on:** August 09, 2012, 16:44 »

Quote from: lisafx on August 09, 2012, 14:15

Quote from: gostwyck on August 09, 2012, 12:27
Quote from: StockBottom on August 09, 2012, 11:30
... and ebook sales are not compensating for the profits they were making with paper, as simple as that.

Er ... it's not actually as simple as you think. Ever heard of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by EL James? Just happens to be the fastest selling and most profitable book of all time with the majority of sales in e-book format. Things change, businesses adapt.

But there are no pictures in that book. Wouldn't it be nice if there were

You may have just stumbled upon the next publishing phenomena __ an 'illustrated' version of said stories! I'm sure it must be ... erm ... technically possible.

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Author Topic: PeopleImages.com - 3mth Considerations. (Read 38969 times)

StockBottom

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