Lets sits back and appreciate some (at least one) brilliant move in the microstock world.

So lets imagine I'm a stock agency ( its imagination only - and I'M NOT a stock agency) facing
stifling competition.   And then there's new stock agencies arriving in the market pushing rates
down - including at least one that's cash rich and offers lower rates for the same or very
similar content.  My business is pressured more and more.

The contributors are a mass-less, shapeless and generally dispensible commodity - of no account
really because for each one that leaves there's ten more arriving in queue - with same or very similar
content. 

I know that I can drop contributor share or overall rates and there's no significant long-term
repercussion from the Contributors side that I need bother about.

So then I make a brilliant move.

I give away a whole bunch of images for free distribution.

So what happens -

1. Contributors lose money (who cares!).  In fact I reduce their share further while the going is good.

2.  All exisiting stock agencies start to lose market share.  The stronger 3 or 4 will likely ride it out. But
the smaller/ weaker/ newer agencies who are on the threshhold of survival will likely go under or get further
marginalized.  Leaving the marketplace open again for the few bigger/ stronger players - like me.

3.  Then, when all the fallout has taken place two things have happened.  Contributor shares have been
further reduced.  The weaker agencies have become even less significant. Leaving the market open for
strong players like me.

Then I can take profit and rake it in - over months and years - till the marketplace changes again -
and I come up with some other new, smart strategy.

Applaud.

ah

I think the problem in that theory is that contributors aren't necessarily a faceless herd of cattle and they don't necessarily sit still and wait.

Yep. Hence Symbiostock.

the stock business is broken irreparably now, the games are over for most of the small agencies anyway.

Yes, our little beater car is broken. It was fun to learn to drive in. Happy memories. Now lets take out the Ferrari and own the road.

Quote from: Xanox on August 10, 2013, 15:49

what we will see is eventually the integration of mobile cr-ap but i can't see any radical change in the way they operate and in what they sell.

Wasn't that the concept behind something called "PocketStock" a year or so ago? Anybody know what happened to that effort? Did it ever go anywhere? Is it still alive?

Apparently not. I googled it, but the link went nowhere (timer just keeps turning).
Their blog also seems to be down.
There are recent postings on Facebook, if it's the same lot
https://www.facebook.com/Pocketstock

Hence Photoshelter 

Similar concept to Symbiostock...you can license images RF if you'd like. You can also license RM images based on whatever percentage of Fotoquote you want.  You can also do a "print on demand" through various labs.  Completely seamless....you can integrate a blog....you have SEO analytics and statistics.  Each image stands on its own via search browser listings.

This can supplement the agencies you contribute to, it can replace Fine Art America, etc.

If you submit via the FTP route to your agents, you can upload a gallery to your website, then you can FTP the images simultaneously to the agents...and your computer doesn't need to be turned on.  Start the upload feature, shut your computer down, go to bed, wake up the next morning and complete the uploading (if necessary) with your agents.

If you want, you could even set up a "novel use" license for personal use of images with a limited size (500 pixel long edge, 1500 pixel long edge, etc.)

Wasn't that the concept behind something called "PocketStock" a year or so ago? Anybody know what happened to that effort? Did it ever go anywhere? Is it still alive?

they all fail for the same reason anyone failed to make big money selling articles and user-generated-content :

- whatever digital product you do, it must be properly keyworded, edited, and being evaluated in a QC scenario.
- the e-commerce site must be rock solid and reliable
- most importantly, there must be a demand for what you're trying to sell at a specific price-range.


what we see instead is :

- nobody is willing to buy cr-appy articles written by bloggers so they're only monetized with ads and they still make a pittance.
- photo sharing sites like Flickr can barely stay afloat with advertising and some premium services.
- newspapers and magazines have a hard time too to sell any kind of premium access or PDF versions or whatever, pay walls seems to be fine only if you're the NYT.
- while designers are happy to buy micro images anyone else is not and sticks to piracy.
- music and ebooks and mobile apps are sold by the truckload for 0.99$ and there's still people complaining it's "too expensive", besides 80% of the top downloads are free apps and on android it's probably more than 90%.



i mean, this should give us a better perspective of the supposed wonders of selling on the internet.
too many are fooled by the huge number of potential buyers reachable with a few clicks but when it's time to pay the bills they quickly disappear.

if you've a site with a conversion-rate of 1-2% (best scenario, many have just 0.5% !) it means for each sale you need from 50 to 200 clicks on advertising banners that are going to cost you at least 0.05$ each .. that means 5-10$ to acquire a new customer .. doesnt look cheap to me unless you know what you're doing and the customers will remain loyal and it could easily backfire if your product costs just 0.99$ and is already sold anywhere else or there are similar products for free.

it's hard, very hard to sell nowadays, no matter if the product is priced as low as 0.99% !
it's the final result of an evil spiral to death which started in the '90s and now the game is over .. music .. photos .. videos .. movies .. books .. we're literally flooded by multimedia products that have never been as cheap as today but because of oversupply the value has been killed.

those thinking that killing distributors would have opened a new era without middlemen eating all the earnings failed big time .. now nobody is earning much apart Apple and Amazon.