rgbstock
2. crisderaud8 February 2010, 14:13 GMT +01:00
Fotolia is a well organized site with exceptional quality photos.
http://us.fotolia.com/
5. krayker5 March 2010, 6:04 GMT +01:00
dreamstime is good too. Just picked up good number of images there for a client. But for great value for money, SXP was the king of the hill. I had bought a ton of stuff there for my clients, and have asked quite a lot of clients to pick stuff there too.
vector and high res images were the cheapest, and the photographers too got good money. win-win situation for both.
6. weirdvis5 March 2010, 7:53 GMT +01:00
Ya know, I have this suspicion that SXP might well go phoenix like we did...
I'll be one of the first to upload there when it does.
7. krayker5 March 2010, 8:28 GMT +01:00
@ 6. Peter must be furiously working on the new one. i think there needs to be an option at all levels. people are comfortable paying an X amount of money, but not beyond. so, if there's an option at their comfort level, they will not pirate, and buy images instead. those who cannot pay, will opt for free image banks like RGB or go for Creative Commons images.
India might be perceived as a pirate heaven, which is not the truth. I or my clients (whom I designed for) have bought stock images from various image banks worth thousands of dollars easily. I know many of my friends who are designers too, and have bought from image banks like SXP. India and many other asian countries are price sensitive market.
The basic point is to have an option at all levels of the market.
8. ciscopa5 March 2010, 8:36 GMT +01:00
Not only asian countries. Little companies with little clients need than kind of image banks too. In most cases they can't pay 400-500 euros for an image being used one time.
9. xymonau5 March 2010, 9:08 GMT +01:00
Ultimately all the image sites will be owned by one conglomerate anyway.
I don't have a big enough camera to satisfy pay sites re image size. I also am rather rough around the edges with my stuff. One day I might try. I did upload one image to Fotolia, and after a couple of years got one sale! ROFL I tried uploading more, and they said "Beautiful, but too small". That was an abstract. If I try to work at larger than about 2200 by 2200 megapixels, my image editor gets so slow and takes ages to render anything. Yesterday I did something, went off to have a shower, cooked food, did a few other things, and it was still going after an hour and five minutes! That was a particular filter, but it's frustrating.
10. krayker6 March 2010, 4:40 GMT +01:00
"Ultimately all the image sites will be owned by one conglomerate anyway."
we are in an era of "too large to fail" :)
but, seriously, competition is good for a healthy market, especially, microstock is like bread and butter for the creatives, some prefer the crème de la crème, others have no choice but to go for the nearest baker. bad analogy, I know :P
11. Zela8 March 2010, 16:26 GMT +01:00
Peter Hamza is working on the last final things of his new pay-stock project that has every potential of becoming just as successful as his previous one.
It will also be one of the most respectful environments for submitters because of the highest pay-out rates in the industry and it has a beautiful design.
Just a little more patience.... it won't take long.
Perhaps this list of available other micro-stock sites is handy?
http://microstockinsider.com/site_reviews
12. krayker8 March 2010, 16:42 GMT +01:00
good news indeed, especially, considering photographers are the heart and soul of every photo image bank company.
13. gabriel778 April 2010, 15:18 GMT +02:00
Question,
I'm looking for a site (like SXP) were i can sell my pictures, buy pictures at low
rates (like SXP) and also download my own pictures (like SXP)
Shit i miss SXP!
Im also on shutterstock but its not possible to download your own pictures for free
I think thats a big advantage to have your own stock available all over the globe!
14. lennie8 April 2010, 17:44 GMT +02:00
I guess we could always start our own.
But it looks like Peter (of SXP fame) is working on a successor to SXP, so maybe that would not be necessary.
15. krayker8 April 2010, 18:30 GMT +02:00
I trust Peter will come up with a good one. the idea behind SXc was certainly worthwhile - the photographers/ artists AND the customers won. win-win situation I must say!
18. xymonau10 April 2010, 10:48 GMT +02:00
I see no reason why our site developers couldn't do something like that in time. They are cutting their teeth on RGB, and it will remain and grow, but it would be great if they could also do a commercial site at some time. Peter's site will be most welcome, but a good alternative that rewards the image owners would be popular, whoever created it. I say we need to start all sorts of sites as the conglomerates are pigs.
19. lennie10 April 2010, 12:54 GMT +02:00
As Obama said: Yes we can !
Dez, on one hand, we would love to, on the other hand, how big is this market ? Do we really want to split this market ? I think it's a bit of a choice, one or the other, partner with Peter or build our own.
Because people buying will only buy ones and the more people buying from the same site, the more photographers will be inclined to put their work up on that site. You also need a critical mass of stock material on the site. Splitting that won't be very helpfull I'm afraid.
Then again, if it would happend. I'm sure we won't ask photographers to sign an exclusive contract, like I hear Getty does.
Adding an extra moneyflow to be sure to keep this site running would be helpfull.
I would love to have a dayjob maintaining a (couple of) site(s) and adding features. Jay feels the same way. But we definitely haven't reached that point yet, not by a long shot.
20. xymonau11 April 2010, 1:00 GMT +02:00
I realise it's not on the near horizon. But it is something that is feasible once you have experience here. Obviously there is a whole other side - the marketing and money and taxes and whatever else. And you may never do it. But Peter started from nothing. And there is no reason you guys couldn't do something similar. Split the market? I'm not sure exactly what you mean. But there is always room for another supermarket on the planet. Also, print media accounts for a lot, but electronic media demands for images is increasing. Offering a section of much smaller images for even less might be another thing to look at.
21. lennie11 April 2010, 14:01 GMT +02:00
Depends, if you, the community, want it to be, we could do it.
With split the market I mean, if their are more sites, photographers are less likely to add their photos to all those sites. Also, the populairity of a site has a network-effect. If their isn't enough content and/or visitors the site won't flourish.
