I was wondering on your opinions on if a microstock site can be continually sucessful?


I mean there must be a point where the ammount of users reachs it's maximum, in terms of buyers and people are still submitting images. So sales will drop?

I guess this is another good reason not to have all your eggs in one basket!

Would love to know your thoughts on this

Doug

I think the only time a site will "die" is when they stop marketting or miss treat their designers and photographers. On SS there is more than 20 000 photographers BUT they are not all active. There might be 2000 plus that is very active that work on the sites every day. The rest have small portfolio's. Nothing wrong in diversify your portfolio. :lol:

Just my lost 2 cents.

I think you will start to see consolidation in the industry, SS has already purchased a competitor, ultimately I think there will be 2 major players (probably IS and SS), a few big sites and that's about it. Anyone getting into it now is going to find it hard to find a market. Microstock is here to stay.

That is so true! The industry is already a Multi Billion $ industry. Its has grown very fast. I think you are right that there will be a few buy outs.. How i wish i was one of the owners :lol:

I think John at SS started out with 5,000 of his own images so if you have enough variety and enough images you could have a go.

We actualy started one in South Africa called. www.qpic.co.za
The only problem is our legaslation. We can not take any photographers from overseas as we can not pay them yet. Still need to sort it out. We have done the test fases and it works well. We are moving the servicers so we can start uploading for our local market. Designers will be able to buy there from accross the world as SA allow money to come in very easly.

I think it will be a couple of months then we will be sorted with the payment of offshore accounts. In SA you are limited to R750 000 offshore allowance. That is not a lot. We are trying to find a way to make it workable. We only have about 400 images on for the test fase. We have already over 10 000 in storage. Just waiting for the IT guys to get their buts into gear. :wink:

We have some photographers from overseas that have subscribed and awaiting our uploader. Maybe they plan a nice long holiday in sunny South Africa! :lol: