Meowgli opened this issue on Feb 28, 2009 ยท 19 posts
Meowgli posted Wed, 15 April 2009 at 7:27 PM
fair point, always nice to make 100% of the commission eh? ;)
but that middleman is however pretty essential in reaching a worldwide audience and I think most people who participate in stock are content to pay for the ability to reach a far greater potential market.... I don't quite understand what you mean by selling stock 'direct'.. I am guessing you mean putting all your (maybe thousands) of photos on your own site and letting people contact you if they want it... would you then sent it to them or have a file available for download? it could potentially clog up the space available on the website which is something you wouldn't have to worry about hosting your pics on a large stock site. also, hosting them on your own site would rely on generating business from the traffic arriving there, which is in most cases much smaller than the largest stock agencies' traffic. if you had a large number of images a search function would be necessary too and people have become used to the keyword system... you would also have to offer a range of prices and licenses which were competitive with the existing stock sites... seems an awful headache just to keep a higher % from fewer views when you could be reaching a much larger audience, making more sales etc... sure a lower % with micro sites but still potential for large payouts with the 'macro' sites...
sorry to splurge thoughts, I guess a few just came to mind and I'm interested in this discussion as I get more involved in this pursuit. if you can tolerate another question, could you also clarify 'you get just what you want'..? is this from a buyer or sellers point of view?
cheers