Quote from: jsnover on June 05, 2010, 14:15

If you submit a series of images and two get rejected (perhaps the noise was a little high or the lighting a little less good or the focus a tad soft - sites are getting very persnickety about things). Do you really want to compete with yourself by having the free ones that were not quite good enough out there? How could that possibly be good for your business?

This is exactly what I was thinking.

I'd really like to see the performance data behind this free model. I get the idea but I question the benefits vs damage. Like how many freebie hunters get converted into paying buyers? How many images do they download for free versus pay for?

I feel for every image somebody gets for free that's one less image that gets paid for. One of us just lost a sale. The more "good enough" free images that exist for buyers the less they will buy. If there weren't any free images buyers would be forced to pay, take pictures themselves, or do without the image. If it's worth using it's worth paying something for. And again, isn't microstock cheap enough already?

Whenever you can get something for free that's "good enough" how often do pay for the upgraded version? Rarely?

A couple of people invited made the point it may be because they have a low acceptance rate. I'm about 85% acceptance on SS and 9 out of 10 rejections I get make sense once I have checked the image over - without having drunk too much wine the night before.

As for giving these rejections away for free? If an image is seen as not up to snuff I'm not sure I want my name attached to it any longer.....and If I think it is and SS got it wrong, I'll sell it elsewhere.

Come on guys, "free" doesn't really mean free.  It just means no commissions have to be paid.   The idea is to accumulate and ever-growing collection of images for which no commission has to be paid - and then, SS is free to find ways to "monetize" that collection.  One obvious way is advertising - buyers will have to look at ads to get their free images. Another way would be through a subscription plan that is extremely low-cost and only gives access to the commission-free images.   The plan would be called something else, of course, to maintain the "free" fiction. It might be a "search application", or a membership, but whatever it's called, it means the agency gets income without paying comissions. We get fame and recognition, of course.

Quote from: stockastic on June 06, 2010, 11:18

Come on guys, "free" doesn't really mean free.  It just means no commissions have to be paid.   The idea is to accumulate and ever-growing collection of images for which no commission has to be paid - and then, SS is free to find ways to "monetize" that collection.  One obvious way is advertising - buyers will have to look at ads to get their free images. Another way would be through a subscription plan that is extremely low-cost and only gives access to the commission-free images.   The plan would be called something else, of course, to maintain the "free" fiction. It might be a "search application", or a membership, but whatever it's called, it means the agency gets income without paying comissions. We get fame and recognition, of course.

That's another good point.

There are probably thousands of rejected contributors and millions of rejected images. Why not make freebie hunters stare at advertisements while they spend a ton of time looking for that gem among the junk. Buyer gets a free image, stock site gets ad revenue, contributor gets nothing.

The more I think about this the less benefit I see coming from it for all of us. Prices, commissions, and sales volume need to go up. This accomplishes none of those.