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You can sell editorial stuff as RF, can’t you?
As far as I know NO, you can’t.
You can’t grant basically unlimited rights of an image if you don’t have any rights to it.I don’t agree but it won’t be a deal breaker for me.
Offering RF only will exclude many images (and contributors), not only the ones that are listed RM at other agencies but also a huge amount of editorial stuff. Think about the majority of Alamy shooters who don’t even bother to get a model or property release.At the end I think buyers don’t even care about licenses. The buy an image and they use it as much as they like. So calling a license One-Time-Use, Extended or RF won’t make much of a difference for the customer. It’s actually only to cover OUR bases.
Actually, I thought of an issue in making the full size image an RF license. I upload my editorial shots only to the macrostock sites as RM. On my Symbio site I am able to include them because I made all my licenses one use only – a type of RM.
If Symzio was to offer those images as RF, I would have to remove all my editorial RM shots from the new agency. Of course I could do that, but would prefer not to.
So I’m adding my vote to Redneck’s to make the larger file size a one-time use license if possible. Of course we still have no way of checking if people will really use it like that, but it avoids any potential issues with other sites especially when Symzio becomes a big successful agency!
Steve
Now that you mention it, that applies to me as well. I offer one-time-use only on my website because I have many images that are listed RM at other traditional agencies and their contracts actually forbid me to offer those anywhere else under RF.
I think it’s a good and very feasible way to go.
Personally I would have liked to offer one-time-use licenses only but that’s not a deal breaker for me. It somehow makes sense to offer one-time-uses for a very low fee and the multiple uses in full size for a fee that the contributor sets.
Nice compromise and good solution. Transparent and understandable.So how about we stick with #1 and decide on the pricing we want for the average contributor to be happy. Once that is settled and we are moving forward, we then decide how to implement a higher tiered system. Even I may have media that I don’t want to sell at average prices, and would like that option myself.
I don’t think #1 will work because you’ll still make many contributors unhappy. Simply because of different backgrounds they’re coming from. While some hobby shooter from Indonesia might be happy with a $1 sale, I would rather keep the image and not sell it for that price. I don’t think you’ll find a consensus which will keep 99% of the contributors under the same roof.
Why not …
– either pull their own prices from their website when you pull the images OR
– dictate price levels, like Level 1: $1 – $5 – $20, Level 2: $3 – $10 – $50 or so which a contributor has to subscribe toWow – you are bringing me round – I never got those sort of sales in the old theme – in fact I didn’t get many at my lower prices (which topped out at $20). Were your sold images also available on SS, Dreamstime, Fotolia etc. or unique to your own site?
However in the new system, I have had pretty much zero success to date. So my cheap price isn’t bringing them in – it must be my lousy SEO or my lousy images. I’ll go with the former for now!
No, I’m a traditional stock contributor, I don’t do micro stock. I’m working with AGE, Alamy, Corbis, Getty, Westend, Gallery Stock, Offset etc, but I don’t think that’s the reason why images sell for higher or lower prices because I think people found my images because they were searching on Google. The old Symbiostock had excellent link traction between the networking contributors. Well up to the point when Google decided to change the algorithm.
But I still think that many individual sites with good images and backlinks to the global agency/SE is the way to go to create SEO momentum.The first image license I sold on my own Symbiostock site (with the old theme) went for US$199. The following months I always had sales ranging from $29 to $99, most of the time for $49 when I adjusted pricing to be not too far away from the majority of contributors.
An image is being bought because a client thinks it’ll help him to reach a specific goal. The price of that image is NOT the reason why he wants to buy it.What I’m trying to say is that there’s a market for all kinds of buyers and all kinds of contributors. Limiting yourself to “cheap – cheaper – the cheapest” is not a good idea because you’ll not only exclude contributors who won’t go that route with you but also potential buyers who are willing to spend good money.
At the end it’ll come down to get as many contributors (with their high quality images) on board as possible. That’s the only way to become successful, IMO.Getting Symzio off the ground without the massive investment that Picfair has had is going to be really tough. Contributors may come along, but unless those images are only available on this site (very unlikely), the attraction to buyers will be the price. We can wish it was different but we have no bargaining power to change current realities.
Steve
I truly believe you are wrong about that. I think contributors are waiting for a way to get their stuff out while still being treated fair.
And again, trying to enter the market over lowest possible pricing is NOT the solution. It’s the problem and it will be the downfall sooner or later.
It’ll only be a question of time when the next one comes up offering even lower prices for the same stuff. The key is keeping contributors happy and let the market regulate the sales.Redneck – I believe you when you say you would promote Symzio, but can you explain why Picfair has not succeeded? Why didn’t contributors link to their portfolios on that site? What would make Symzio different to the average contributor? Would it be the communal push towards it? Or are the licenses and revenue share in and of itself sufficient drive to make the average contributor feel very positive towards it?
Honestly, I didn’t even know Picfair until just recently. That’s why I can’t really say what they’re doing right or wrong.
I can only say what I used to love about Symbiostock.
1. I have my own website with total control, not only showcasing but also selling images. Which as a side effect can additionally work as a simple online backup of my stock images.
2. I can potentially include my images without hassle into one global image search engine (or agency or whatever you want to call it) and still keep the majority of the profits.
3. I’m among other contributors that are in the same boat as I am, being fed up by prices and commissions getting lower and lower. That alone is some worth supporting and promoting.I think that marketing a site with pricing that varies by image and with no obvious reason to the buyer is very confusing. You come along, see the images that match your keyword and click on the one you are first interested in. You see that it is $25, say. That could cause you to leave immediately, but lets say you go to your second choice and see it is $5.99. You now think – why is this one cheaper? Is my third choice cheaper still? How do I find out – do I have to click on each one or can I sort them by price and buy the cheapest one that “sort of” meets my needs?
That’s only a technicality. You could place a visible price tag (or from 1 to 3 stars or coins) into one corner of the image when listing them. Or sort images by pricing etc. I think that’s very doable.
Happy contributors are very important, and our ultimate goal. Contributors will be happy when they get sales. They will also be happy, as you suggested, if they are able to have more control over pricing.
Realistically – what percentage of contributors do you feel would go out of their way to promote Symzio if we integrated more control over pricing?
And secondly, do you believe that positive effect would result in more sales for contributors versus the marketing hook we have with low cost, one time use licenses?
After considering and answering those questions, also consider this – we are a very small team with limited resources and will continue to be this way based on the very small amount of revenue we will be netting out of Symzio sales. If we don’t have competitive pricing, we will basically be nearly completely reliant on the community to assist in promoting Symzio.
Do you think that this would be a safe reliance? Are contributors ready to embrace something new and invest passion towards its success?
What would you do different if Symzio integrated variable pricing?
I actually believe EVERY (or nearly 100%) Symzio contributor would promote Symzio if they have control over pricing and receive an 80% commission. Stock photographers promote their portfolios on Fotolia, Shutterstock, Alamy or in my case Corbis, AGE, … all the time.
When they all of a sudden have chance to get 80% instead of 25 or whatever, why wouldn’t you want to promote this more than any other agency cooperation?As for developing sales, in my opinion sales will only come if you have a huge variety of images (hundreds of thousands or even millions) and a broad network of supporters delivering the SEO juice you’ll need.
What would I do? I’d join Symzio and then promote it. I’d list it at all online profiles, mention it at all social media channels, link my websites to it etc etc.
I have my images on all sort of sites from the subscription microstock to Corbis and find that people pay widely different amounts for the same image. However, I’m sure that is because they are corporate buyers and have an account that they “must use”. What we are looking for initially is the opportunistic buyer who doesn’t have an account with a different agency, has found our site and is almost deciding between buying one “legally” and maybe just finding a free one they can use. The vector people could well be different and I have little feel for pricing of illustrations (and perhaps you have a different pricing structure), but for photos there are so many alternatives out there that you will not get people paying very much through a “pay as you go” site.
I’m happy with the suggested pricing – simplicity is important, affordable pricing that people don’t think twice about is important and I also think consistency is important. I understand the desire to price a certain image higher for scarcity value (I have some Equatorial Guinea images that are pretty scarce, but I should really remove those from Symzio, price them at some higher price and have the only competing agencies be the macro ones).
Steve
I have to disagree for 2 reasons.
1. If the main goal is to please only the customer (by offering lowest pricing) then why not give the images away for free? You won’t find a lot of serious contributors to join this model.
2. I’m not so much talking about individual Symbiostock websites. I agree that people who find these rather small sites are rather opportunistic buyers that stumbled upon an image they might need. The main focus however should remain on Symzio.com which could be a cooperative agency of thousands of contributors offering Millions of images. This site COULD attract bloggers, web designers, small companies, corporate buyer – basically anybody with image needs. However to get this momentum it will need lots of contributors and lots of images. But you won’t get them if you keep up with the microstock agency model every contributor keeps complaining about.I might have said it before but here I go again. I do think trying to compete with microstock agencies on pricing is the wrong way to grow the network. It’s not going to happen because contributors are fed up with micro pricing and often with the microstock system in general. I also think the fact that different images have different prices will not contribute to confusion of potential customers. Everybody understands these days that an image is not just an amount of pixels with price 0.00000xxx per pixel. Nobody expects to buy a painting prized by its size only.
What this network needs to go through the roof are happy contributors. Creatives that have an interest to promote the network.
How do you get them on board? With a fair commission and the freedom to price their own stuff.Let’s face it, you have created just another micro stock agency with bottom pricing. The initial idea behind Symbiostock was giving contributors the freedom to decide how they want to price their work. Symzio seems to be no better than any other micro stock agency. The prices are lower, the earnings might be a little higher. Other than that, not much difference.
Contributors wanted to get out of this rat race, not deeper in.Lowering prices more and more devalues the work of every contributor. Why should anybody join? To make temporarily 0.80 instead of 0.25? Even IF Symzio gets successful and widely accepted, what do you think happens next? The big agencies might consider under cutting Symzio when they notice that somebody’s trying to get a share of their market. There’s really no point in going into a price war.
Keep pricing in the hands of the individual contributors. Not only to be different than all the agencies, but also to keep it fair to the contributor. That’s the only way to keep contributors happy in the long run.
If you think we can charge significantly more than agencies and still get lots of volume, let us know how and we can discuss it to see if it is viable.
Right now I think undermining even the cheapest micro stock agencies is not the way to help photographers or the stock industry. It’s basically contra productive. If you think you can only be competitive over pricing, then you might actually be part of the problem the industry suffers from.