Hi
I'm John and I run MicroStockPhoto. First of all, thanks for registering with us and thanks for your uploads so far. I thought I'd take this opportunity to give you a bit of background answer a couple of your questions. First of all we strive to be open and honest about everything, including telling you about problems and limitations as we encounter them. All sites have problems but not all talk openly about them I guess.
We started in November with a fairly basic set up that has evolved quite quickly over the 3 month period since then. At first we had only a single upload facility and implemented the multi upload as quickly as we could. Some people are uploading multiple files quite easily and others are having problems which is unfortunate but it is something being looked at.
The temporary answer is that if your total MB is less than 15MB it works OK but when the combined total of all files exceeds that, some people are experienceing difficulties but we will get this sorted as soon as possible. In the meantime I can only apologise and suggest keeping the total MB to 15MB or less for now.
Payment is via PayPal for those that have PayPal accounts but we will also pay by cheque to anyone that doesn't have a PayPal account or doesn't want one. The only downside is that you may be liable to your local currency conversions and local bank charges for cashing foreign cheques if you live outside of the UK. So yes, payment by cheque is no problem if that's what you want.
As far as sales go, they aren't what you'd expect from the bigger comapnies like SS, IS etc. however, we've had a fair amount and some photographers have sold more at MSP than they have at many of the other newer microstock sites including FL, GS, CS which is encouraging as we are only 3 months old.
Now some might say we launched too early and it's a valid point but by the same token, leaving it too late could be disastrous. As it is, we launched anyway and are managing well.
We are still early days and in the process of building a decent sized collection so sales are also limited by choice however, there is plenty of traffic to the site and that has grown each month.
So it's early days and I understand that many photographers are reluctant to join 'yet another' small p_layer_ and that's understandable. It just takes time to become established so that's a bit of a catch 22 situation. But the library is growing and therefore the choice of images is growing too and with choice, we should see an increase in sales.
We do have a very fast review time though and we offer several advantages we feel. First of all, model release forms are required but only on request. You declare when you sign up that a model release is available for all images that have recognisable people in them. It's good enough for Alamy
.
Secondly, although a little squiffy at the minute, the upload process is very straightforward and simple. If your images have IPTC data _embed_ded then then all you need do is categorise from a simple drop down menu and in fact, you don't even need to do that if you don't want to. I categorise all images that haven't been categorised and I'm even considering taking away the need to categorise at all for contributors. That can be done by the reviewer which makes life easier for photographers.
There are some innvations in the pipeline too.
To attract buyers that only want to buy a single image, we place no lower limit on purchases. i.e. if you want only one image, then that's all you have to buy. No sun_script_ions and no need to buy $10.00 worth of credits before you can buy.
Commission is 35% but I'm also looking at increasing that for portfolios above a certain number. So 40% for 500 or more images and 45% for 1,000 or more images.
Again to attract sales there is also an offer for anyone that buys 10 or more images in a single purchase, they are in with a chance of getting their money back. One buyer a month gets a total refund on a 10 or more image purchase if they are drawn at random.
So the site is young but I'm optimistic and enthusiastic about the site and its future. I guess that as it grows it will reach a point of critical mass if you like where it takes off but in the meantime it's a process of waiting and growing, hopefully that won't take too long but many many thanks to all those who have registered and contributed their images so far.
I can't do this without the faith of others that are willing to spend some time uploading now for a future payoff and it's much appreciated.
Kind Regards
John
, though I've opened an account with moneybookers, I would rather not use it.
Great work - nice to be able to do that. I'm finding 3 at a time works pretty well.