Steve made a post that I wanted to and add my voice to.
Yes, ClusterShot.com is a harebrained dot com idea but we did build it for a reason.
In the spring of 2005 I went to Peru. I travelled around and took some photos. Some were good… some were not. I put them on my personal gallery and went on with my life.
In November of 2006 I received an email from Bradt Travel Guides. They had found a photo of a condor in my gallery and wanted to use it for the cover of a new guidebook on Peruvian Wildlife. They offered a price, I countered, they offered the same price, I accepted. Now my photo is on a book. It’s on a real book in the real world. Cool.
After selling the photo I thought – hey, maybe I could sell other photos! The obvious place to do this was on stock photography websites. I tried out some of the leading ones. Most rejected the photos I submitted. One popular stock site actually called the photo that I had already sold as “unsellable”. That was funny.
So this, Steve’s story, and a few others around the office got us thinking. What gives the editors of stock photo sites the right to be policing the marketplace? Shouldn’t the buyers decide what suits their needs? Shouldn’t any photo a photographer wants to sell be able to be placed for sale? As we found out, the photo you least suspect could very well be the perfect photo for someone. This was the beginning of ClusterShot.
We’re hoping that ClusterShot will become a little bit like Ebay. Some will use it to run their serious photography business. Others, like me, will put all of their mediocre photos on it and maybe sell enough for a meal now and then.
Comments
Brad Touesnard - November 12, 2008 5:47 PM
Congratulations on launching the new site Dan. I had tried the stock photo sites before too (without any luck). This is a great idea. I'm looking forward to importing a few photos from Flickr.
One big problem that will soon arise is users posting all their photos instead of hand picking the good ones. The age old signal vs. noise dilemma. Any plans to deal with that pickle?
Dan James - November 12, 2008 6:08 PM
Brad,
The ol' signal vs noise pickle. Yeah we've thought about it and have some ideas on it. One of the biggest thoughts is what people consider noise is not actually noise but signal (to someone).
Seriously would you have ever guessed that someone would purchase this photo? I never would have but someone did.
That said we do have more concrete ideas than just "it's all signal baby!".
Powerful search tools. They're coming. They're awesome. Hot dang they are going to be sweet!
Come From Away referrals - The site is really designed so that you, a Flickr user, can place links on your flickr photos to buy them on ClusterShot. So people aren't using us as a place to search but rather Flickr. It's a checkout system really. With RSS feeds and soon to be released API it will work for any gallery.
Social Stuff - Photo ranking/tag ranking/yadayadayada. We'll get there eventually.
So that's how we're planning to deal with that pickle. Make sense? Any ideas?
Jane - November 13, 2008 2:54 AM
This is a really neat idea! I love how simple and user friendly it seems. Congratulations to all of you on developing and launching this - it is very cool.
Brad Touesnard - November 13, 2008 5:48 PM
Yea, that's a tough one. Someone else's trash is another's treasure. I think your point about placing buy links on Flickr is what really matters. There would be tremendous value in being able to simply provide your Flickr login credentials to ClusterShot and it would add buy links to all your Flickr photos. Kind of like a cluster shot of buy links.