With all this Bait being tossed. ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS.

Hi oscarcwilliams, thanks for your reply!

Not sure if I understand, could you please explain what you mean?

Hi everybody!

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Alexandre Rotenberg (Brasilnut) who directed me to this forum. He suggested I should ask for your feedback, so here goes:

Currently there isn�t an online visual dictionary that is very good, so I aim to (maybe foolishly) change that. I assume that (most of) you are familiar with the concept of a visual dictionary, but in short it allows you to find the name of things you only know what they look like, or vice versa it allows you to find the image of things you only know what they are called.

The initial target audience is schools/students, parents with young children and refugees/immigrants. But basically it�s anyone who wants or needs to learn a language, or just curious people, like myself, that want to know what stuff is called.

One of the key aspects of a visual dictionary, you guessed it, is images. Without images the whole concept is silly. So in order to make this platform a reality I need a few thousand of them. Any respectable paper visual dictionary has at least 6000 images, so that is sort of my reference. I started searching for images on free stock sites, and while there is a lot of content available, I found there�s also a lot I can�t find. For what I could not find on free stock sites I turned to Google images. But just grabbing images from Google is a can of worms and could potentially be harmful in terms of copyrighted content. The last thing I want is to get sued for unauthorized usage of copyrighted material, so that is not an option. There are currently images on the platform that I will need to, and going to replace before I run into any legal problems.

I could try to shoot the images I need myself, but that is undoable if I want to launch anything remotely useful this century. Also I would essentially be reinventing the wheel because the image I�m looking for already exists. That leaves only one realistic option, and that is using paid stock images. Within this option, I see 2 possible scenarios:

1) Buy images from a stock site
I looked into several plans offered by different stock sites, but nothing really covers my specific use case. Furthermore, the cost for any customized plan would be crazy high and would not be an option for a website that does not generate any income whatsoever (yet). There would be however a huge pool of material and I think I could cover every term/expression with this material.

2) Buy images directly from stock photographers
This sounds the most appealing because this would eliminate the stock site middleman. Also, I gathered that royalties from these sites are not that great, and I *may* be able to give a better price per used image. There is however a huge �but�. Photographers may not want to deal with any hassle of the whole administration process. I haven�t figured out yet how to create a process that is smooth and easy, and I�m pretty sure I can tackle that, but I think that may be a big hurdle.


So what I would to get your honest feedback on:

1) Would you be willing to participate in this platform?

2) What would you consider a fair royalty per used image?

3) What type of licensing would you prefer? I can think of 3 options:
    1: single fee at the start of license
    2: yearly renewal
    3: fee per x amount of views

Ultimately I would like to find a pricing/licensing structure that photographers are comfortable with, and make this platform a reality. I have already started working on it and you can find it at https://pixxionary.com/nl (I'm directing to the Dutch version because it's a bit more complete, but you can switch to English on top of the page).

Looking forward to feedback!

Hi Gavin, thanks for trying to work directly with the artist, it's much appreciated.

I license directly to the buyer from my site: https://www.microstockman.com/thpstock-direct/ for as little as $3 per image. PM me if you want to buy bulk and I can supply a discount code to help out.

https://www.microstockman.com/stock-photos/

Explain more about payment. You said �- payment follows�

Does payment follow immediately after download, or months later? Payment should actually happen when the image is downloaded, like on the agencies.

Hi cathyslife,

Yes, ideally payment would follow instantly. However, you are talking about agencies, which I am not one of. To build instant payment functionality similar to the agencies, that have invested a lot of money and manpower in their application, is way more difficult and time consuming for a one man operation. I'm sure there's ready made solutions available, but still you have to build all the functionality into the platform, and that is not my focus right now.

Of course I have thought about how to do payments, but to be completely transparent, the idea of buying content directly from the photographers just came to me 2 days ago and I have not had any time to think everything through or iron out every possible issue. I'm ironing as we go ;-)

I need to get back to you on that.

Quote from: Clair Voyant on June 12, 2019, 09:26

OP... you can count me out. Unforunately I do this for a living and need to turn a profit. Use creative commons if you want free. Seriously, the royalties we already get are pathetic enough, let alone running around sourcing and researching for you for a few pennies. Not to be a joykill or anything, but photos cost money to produce.

Hi Clair, thank you for your reply!

I fail to see where I said anything about 'running around sourcing and researching for me'. The way I see it, is that you guys all have content portfolios that may or may not contain material that can be used on the site. Participating does not mean anything more than letting me know where to find your material so I can look through it to see if there's content that I can use, and if so I would like to pay you a fair fee for it. What a fair fee is, is something I'm trying to find out by asking you all what you consider a fair fee.

I don't want anyone to 'work for me' for peanuts and I'm certainly not asking for that. But if that's how my post is being perceived I may need to formulate it differently then.

Let's presume I send you a link to my portfolio... then you find 10 images you want for lets say $2.50. Now i have to go and find those images on approximately 10 external hard drives and search (sourcing and researching) for those images from thousands of images = time, lots of time. I am very organized with my content, but it's simply not worth my time to search for $25.00. You can easily get paid images for as low as 0.27 per image on a subscription plan which you don't even want to pay for. 

Go creative commons if you want free, otherwise you are asking a lot from photographers.

Quote from: gavin on June 12, 2019, 09:40

Quote from: Clair Voyant on June 12, 2019, 09:26

OP... you can count me out. Unforunately I do this for a living and need to turn a profit. Use creative commons if you want free. Seriously, the royalties we already get are pathetic enough, let alone running around sourcing and researching for you for a few pennies. Not to be a joykill or anything, but photos cost money to produce.

Hi Clair, thank you for your reply!

I fail to see where I said anything about 'running around sourcing and researching for me'. The way I see it, is that you guys all have content portfolios that may or may not contain material that can be used on the site. Participating does not mean anything more than letting me know where to find your material so I can look through it to see if there's content that I can use, and if so I would like to pay you a fair fee for it. What a fair fee is, is something I'm trying to find out by asking you all what you consider a fair fee.

I don't want anyone to 'work for me' for peanuts and I'm certainly not asking for that. But if that's how my post is being perceived I may need to formulate it differently then.

Let's presume I send you a link to my portfolio... then you find 10 images you want for lets say $2.50. Now i have to go and find those images on approximately 10 external hard drives and search (sourcing and researching) for those images from thousands of images = time, lots of time. I am very organized with my content, but it's simply not worth my time to search for $25.00. You can easily get paid images for as low as 0.27 per image on a subscription plan which you don't even want to pay for. 

Go creative commons if you want free, otherwise you are asking a lot from photographers.

"You can easily get paid images for as low as 0.27 per image on a subscription plan which you don't even want to pay for."
If it was a one time fee I would gladly pay up. But this is per month!

"Go creative commons if you want free, otherwise you are asking a lot from photographers."
I never asked for free stuff and I'm not asking for anything else from photographers than their feedback. I'm trying to learn and gain insight into your world. If feedback tells me the plan I have is not feasible, and I need to let it go, I will. But for that I need info, that's all.

"You can easily get paid images for as low as 0.27 per image on a subscription plan which you don't even want to pay for."
If it was a one time fee I would gladly pay up. But this is per month!

No, it's not.
With each of the big agencies (e.g. Shutterstock or Adobe Stock) subscription plans you pay monthly for your subscription as long as the plan runs.
You can buy only one month, so only one payment. Or you can buy a yearly plan, so 12 monthly payments.
With each of these plans you can download a given number of images per month. Those images come with an RF license, so you can use them permanently without further payments.
What Shutterstock shows me right now on their homepage (here in Germany, prices may differ for different locations) is e.g. a yearly plan for 750 images per month for �159 per month.
You get 9000 images for less then �2000.

Quote from: dirkr on June 12, 2019, 14:29

Quote from: gavin on June 12, 2019, 11:28

"You can easily get paid images for as low as 0.27 per image on a subscription plan which you don't even want to pay for."
If it was a one time fee I would gladly pay up. But this is per month!

No, it's not.
With each of the big agencies (e.g. Shutterstock or Adobe Stock) subscription plans you pay monthly for your subscription as long as the plan runs.
You can buy only one month, so only one payment. Or you can buy a yearly plan, so 12 monthly payments.
With each of these plans you can download a given number of images per month. Those images come with an RF license, so you can use them permanently without further payments.
What Shutterstock shows me right now on their homepage (here in Germany, prices may differ for different locations) is e.g. a yearly plan for 750 images per month for �159 per month.
You get 9000 images for less then �2000.

Ok, I'll probably sound very dumb but I find their pricing scheme confusing. So if I understand correctly it means that if I for instance decide to sign up for a 750 images monthly plan and only subscribe for 1 month, I can download 750 images and I can keep using them after that? To be honest I thought it meant that you have access to those 750 images for $159, but to keep access you need to pay the fee each month 

You can keep on using them. You only pay as long as you want to keep on downloading (new) images.
Yes, it's true. We as photographers get some cents for an RF license that entitles the buyer to use the image forever. That's what the market today is.

SS would actually be losing money on that deal since they'd have to pay between 187.50$ (0.25$ per image) and 292.50$ (0.39$ per image) to contributors for each of these 750 images.

Quote from: gavin on June 12, 2019, 15:04

Quote from: dirkr on June 12, 2019, 14:29

Quote from: gavin on June 12, 2019, 11:28

"You can easily get paid images for as low as 0.27 per image on a subscription plan which you don't even want to pay for."
If it was a one time fee I would gladly pay up. But this is per month!

No, it's not.
With each of the big agencies (e.g. Shutterstock or Adobe Stock) subscription plans you pay monthly for your subscription as long as the plan runs.
You can buy only one month, so only one payment. Or you can buy a yearly plan, so 12 monthly payments.
With each of these plans you can download a given number of images per month. Those images come with an RF license, so you can use them permanently without further payments.
What Shutterstock shows me right now on their homepage (here in Germany, prices may differ for different locations) is e.g. a yearly plan for 750 images per month for �159 per month.
You get 9000 images for less then �2000.

Ok, I'll probably sound very dumb but I find their pricing scheme confusing. So if I understand correctly it means that if I for instance decide to sign up for a 750 images monthly plan and only subscribe for 1 month, I can download 750 images and I can keep using them after that? To be honest I thought it meant that you have access to those 750 images for $159, but to keep access you need to pay the fee each month 

You can keep on using them. You only pay as long as you want to keep on downloading (new) images.
Yes, it's true. We as photographers get some cents for an RF license that entitles the buyer to use the image forever. That's what the market today is.

Dirkr, thank you for making me look really stupid!

I was under the impression that if I needed 6000 images I would need a monthly subscription of 8 x $159 (or 1 x $1272), and that I would need to renew the subscription each month to keep access to the images. Now that I write it down like this, this doesn't sound logical, at all. But that's how I interpreted it. I also must admit that apparently I did not fully understand what 'royalty free' exactly means. I do now.

Part of the confusion came from that I somehow found it hard to believe that buying images could be that cheap. The last time I needed a stock image (a really long time ago) I believe we paid something like $350 or similar, now it's only $0,27!! I think you guys deserve way more than that

I also must admit that apparently I did not fully understand what 'royalty free' exactly means. I do now.

You're definitely not the only one who gets confused over that. Some people interpret it as: "no need to pay for anything you want if you find it online."

Part of the confusion came from that I somehow found it hard to believe that buying images could be that cheap.

A whole lot of us find that hard to believe too. 

Quote from: mindstorm on June 12, 2019, 15:40

This is why I have not piped in before now. You can get them SO CHEAP from the agencies that I figured you were trying to game the system and really get from us free.

Same here.

Gavin, maybe this new-to-you information will help you understand why so many folks here appear (and are!) a bit hostile to the "great new ideas" that both stock agencies and individuals routinely offer us. Once burned, twice or thrice wary.

Yes, I do understand it better now. But really, I was genuinely trying to find a structure that everyone would feel comfortable with.

Quote from: marthamarks on June 12, 2019, 15:49

Quote from: mindstorm on June 12, 2019, 15:40

This is why I have not piped in before now. You can get them SO CHEAP from the agencies that I figured you were trying to game the system and really get from us free.

Same here.

Gavin, maybe this new-to-you information will help you understand why so many folks here appear (and are!) a bit hostile to the "great new ideas" that both stock agencies and individuals routinely offer us. Once burned, twice or thrice wary.

Yes, I do understand it better now. But really, I was genuinely trying to find a structure that everyone would feel comfortable with.

You understand it better now, I bet you do.  You understand how the agencies can exploit us so much, because we had a buyer on the hook, started at $5 per image, dropped it to $1 and ended up recommending an agency, which will give us $0.38 at the most.  Good luck with your project and don't forget to get the discount most agencies offer to new customers.

I'm thinking that what I can do to somehow give back to the community is to make sure that the images I'm going to use have a link back to the photographer's website or portfolio. Idea?

For sure, nobody would object to that!

If you're able to obtain your images through SS, that would be the easiest route for me and everyone else here. Fishing out the images isn't a problem for me, but knowing I'd be securely paid by you might be. Going through SS erases that concern for everyone here.