Hello everyone,

I'm Dan, a photographer and "entepreneur" from Eastern Europe.

I have in plan opening a new microstock site and i'm here to listen and talk to the people that make this business work, the stock photographers.

If you want that a site would represent your wishes now it's the time to do it.

Now we don't talk about how much sales or how much money because i can't talk about this before the start of the business.

What do you want from a stock site to represent you most? What features? What make life easier for you on a microstock site?

I would start of by asking how you intend to differentiate (sp?) yourself from the 200+ agencies out there already? Many people (including myself actually) have tried to start microstock agencies and failed.

You state that you can't talk financials but that you want to know what people want out of a microstock. For most, however, that is exactly what they want. More money (either by higher margins or by more buyers). That is why it is so hard to "start up" and agency.

While many of us hate iStock because of their antics, we still go there because they bring in the buyer like no other agency has yet....

Although this may sound very ciritical I hope to encourage you try, but be ready for a lot of hard work with little payoff.

I know money is the big issue here, because if it wasn't for the money, nobody was doing this business in the first place, right?

200+ microstock sites? Hmm, if you count the sites that have 500 photos maybe

Let's say i will diferentiate by a new marketplace and some microstock background.

Now i;m in the place where i put all the pieces together, i hope they will make a huge puzzle and work out.

What i want to know from you guys it's what features make your life easier?

FTP uploads?
Paypal?
What others?

What do you think, for example, if you take your money from bank transfer? IBAN/SWIFT tranfer?

Hi...

Biggest problem for all new stock agencies is how to involve good photographers? We have hundreds photos and it isn't easy to upload them. So you need good strategy for this because many of us will upload only 100-200 photos and then wait to see is it payable to upload more. I have couple friends with more then 1000 unique photos and all of them doing the same thing with new agencies.
Also it won't be nice if you don't have buyers for our images. You need buyers and they won't be your members if you don't have at least 500k images in your database...

Best regards
mangia

While some people have gone on about the microstock and regular stock market being saturated and no room to work into, I feel they are overlooking a few issues.

Firstly, a lot of the other agencies, are only there to make money off other folks blood, sweat and tears. Im not saying as a general rule all the agencies are heartless money hungry business suits, bu there is a lot of them.

iStock got lucky, and there is nothing more to it. They had a way to get great search engine optimisation, possibly through connections with google, then Getty Purchased them. Their marketing attitude isnt the greatest, but it is effective.

Their antics and condecending attitute towards the mentality of their members is pretty appauling.

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Nothing beats the good ol' word of mouth technique though. As considering Ive been working on my project now for over 16 months (over 24 months if you include the research) I consider myself smart enough to jump in "pretty soon". Not trying to patronise anyone, but there are a few avenues that the bigshots have missed out upon.

Needless to say, for the moment I can't give anymore information on that. But I am getting enquieries from all over the UK seeing as I was a high end am' photographer I had contacts with a respectable number of people. Of which the Q & A's help me a lot. Without the face to face feedback I would not be in the position that I am now.

I might be considered an optomistic person in this line of industry, but when looking back I have put so much into my project, it wouldnt be worth pulling out now. I have lost a lot, but I'm gaining more as i progress.

If it all goes wrong, then I have missed out on something to prevent that. But it wont be the end of the world for me. If it all goes well, then great I'll still work on progressing it further.

Scott

I think this is why albumo is offering cash for uploading photos in the early days. This is what fotolia did and they quickly had a very large portofolio. Snapvillage is relying on its name (well corbis name) and I think they are being a bit arrogant in not offering incentives of any kind, not even a referal system, but I think they will get a large viable portfolio as soon as they get their site sorted out.