Hello talkmicro,

I am hesitant to post this here as I may get completely flamed, but please hear me out - I'm coming to the source (you) for feedback.

My name is Chance Agrella and I have a free stock photo site called freerangestock.com. People tend to lose their minds when you talk about giving away images - I really want to avoid that. And the images are generating income, we've just reversed the model.

We have recently integrated the Google Adsense API into the site structure - now when photographers sign up, we can sign them up for an Adsense account as well. Content pages that show their photos and profile will carry ads from their account only, and 80% of the revenue from those ads goes to the photographer.

This is a new model for stock photography and won't be right for all images (well, it could be!), but for some it should be an outlet for some extra income. Judging buy some site data, I know we can outperform some existing microstock sites on an income/image/month basis. If you have any feedback about this type of system, I'd love to hear it. The site is very primitive in almost every way compared to large sites, but it is growing and does get visits.

I'm sure everyone has images that are good, but just don't get the hits you think they should. Maybe your images have recently been purged by Fotolia! I hope you see the potential in this model, and the future viability a microstock payments shrink.

Oh, by the way the revenue-sharing details are at: freerangestock.com | Free Stock Photos - Totally Free Commercial Photography and Textures

Again, thanks for any input you have.
Chance Agrella
freerangestock.com

Have I got this right:

People give their images away.

They have ads on their profile page and if someone happens to click on an ad they get 0.0001 cents (or some similar amount) and you give them 80% of that.

I'll only have to give away a few thousand shots and hope that the freeloaders click on an advert and then maybe I'll get a dollar.

And the best part, we do all the hard work making the images and you get to profit from giving away our images.

WOW were do I sign up !!

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Richard

I guess there's potential, but really it seems limited and random. Sure some people use AdSense to generate hundreds, even thousands of dollars, but I think those are mostly bloggers who get tons of traffic. Can FreeRange get that kind of traffic? More to the point, can a single photographer get that kind of traffic on their pages, and do people click those ads as frequently as blog readers do?

And honestly man, I can't imagine the day when a system like this will beat out the regular microstock sites. Even if payments do plumet and people turn to alternative systems like yours, the influx of new users will dilute your system to the same low point the other sites would be experiencing.

Correct. I had a blog two years ago which was slashdotted and had peaks of 6,000 per day. The adsense income was about 50$ per month. Imagine you would have to share that with 1,000's of photogs.

This isn't exactly a new idea - I think it was Fotolia that was doing it when they first started their free section.

Personally, I will NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER give my work away...and as for the comment about "maybe your image has been deactivated by Fotolia" honestly, Fotolia is not the end all of stock photography. There are other markets where I can sell an image that has been deactivated by an agent that has decided not to represent that image anymore.

Have I mentioned I will never give my work away?

Good luck on your venture.

Oh, boy! Another stock site! I'll wait until I have to both pay a site to carry my work and pay the site a commission each time a buyer downloads.

I will give you an "A" for the concept plus an "A" for the balls to suggest I'd fall for it.

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TheNextMicroWannaBe

Hello - as I've said in initial post, I don't want this to become an arguent. I do appreciate the feedback.

RTimages
This post perfectly illustrated the more prominant misconceptions. Photographers have ads on all of their pages of photos and profiles, not just profile. The profiit from a click is not .0001 cents - and Adsense click is generally 5 - 50 cents, and you keep 80% of that, yes.

Clickthrough rates on Adsense sites are often in the 1% range, so for every person who VIEWs your photo 100 times (download or not), you would get a click.

As for you doing the hard work and me getting the profit - the entire site is run off Adsense, and we give away 80% of the revenue from pages that have an author.

I guess I didn't mention in my original post that I am a photographer, and I have been giving away many, many photos on the freerange site for a year plus, and the ongoing progress of that let me to open it up to others.

As I said originally, this may not be the best for every image, but for some underperforming images that never make anything, or for photographers who are less accomplished and having trouble getting noticed, it may be a good option.

Chance

I don't believe it this either!
As internet is maturing and people learn to use it (even the older people),people will know better where to look if they search something, and they don't click on every flashing banner that pops up on their screen.
So I don't believe that this AdSense thing will be a booming business in the future!
And don't forget that time is money. Most designers don't have a problem paying a little money if they have access to a huge database with high quality images, and almost all subjects covered.
SXC.hu is the worlds biggest free stockphoto site and they are shrinking, because all the talented photographers are deleting their images after they got accepted at the payed stock sites!
So I don't think a new free stocksite will have a huge succes.
Sorry

I'm just starting in the microstock business, and I have no preconceived opposition to such a business model. Either it works -- which is to say, I make money from my images -- or it doesn't. If it works, I'll do it, if it doesn't I won't.

I think I share others' skepticism about whether it works. If I understand the model, the only ones who even see the ads are those shopping for pictures -- which means mainly designers? This seems too small a pool of customers to matter much.

How can you persuade us it works? What case studies can you give us? Who made how much money how?

You are correct - it isn't best for every image. I'm not sure how much experience you have in stock (either micro or macro) but someone that has been doing this for a while will know instantly that the images that get a lot of "clicks" are going to be 1) nudes; or 2) near nudes. These aren't the best sellers at stock sites and quite frankly, if I wanted to be successful at your business model, I certainly wouldn't want people from every walk of life that doesn't understand licensing agreements and usage rights downloading the images of the models that have entrusted me with their likeness.

I'm also very curious as to how you can get away with "selling free images" of brand names and logos like Caterpillar or The Gap.

It's a lawsuit waiting to happen.