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


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www.mangiaphoto.com - my place