Design and Photography Highlights

Excuse me for the radio silence over the last two days. I am getting ready for a pitch today I am giving to potential investors and entrepreneurs, which I am delivering after Alan Meckler, CEO of Jupitermedia. He is the keynote speaker of this event put on by StartupAlpha.com. Pretty funny. Not sure how relevant he is to starting a new business but when I heard he was speaking I was very interested in going and hearing him nonetheless.

If anyone is in Midtown Manhattan today at 5:30 and wants to go, let me know. The event is at Midtown Pub.

First beer or soda is on me.

Wish me luck

John

UPDATE:

The pitch went great last night and thanks for the well wishes. It was short and sweet but I nailed it and was happy to get a chance to practice it and meet some new people.

In addition, I got to meet and had a good conversation with Alan Meckler, who I met right when I got there. I started off by telling him about Cutcaster and how we were getting ready to take over Jupiter. HA. Kidding but we spoke for a while about the future of online video, what Cutcaster was doing, the different web properties that Jupiter owned and how they use them in coordination and also a bit about each others background. Was nice to meet him and put a name to a face now. Someone mentioned that he looked a bit like the dad from Everybody loves Raymond, a sitcom here in the States, which I thought was pretty good.

After I met him, Alan gave a talk on his professional background to the audience and how he got to where he was at Jupiter. He spoke more about his investing background, working with VC’s/banks, raising money for different investment funds and which businesses he has invested in to become a billionaire (lasted just 4 months and was only on paper he said), then he did about the image business. He also spoke about building a “vertical” on the Internet and where he saw the Internet going in the future. I can’t say I completely agreed with him on everything but it was an interesting story nonetheless and a pleasure to meet him.

Cutcaster is a dynamic marketplace to license digital photos, vector illustrations and video online. The platform helps people who have taken a really good photo or captured some amazing video footage to monetize their content through licensing it to someone working in advertising, publishing, filmmaking or graphic design. Most people wouldn’t know how to price their content when approached by an interested buyer and even the most experienced ones have always let the agency dictate the price. In order to help these people determine the price they could charge, Cutcaster helps them learn how to price their content or has an algorithm that helps find the correct and highest market price based on a number of important variables. If the creator is an old pro, they have the option to set their prices as high as they want based on their past experience selling content.

The twist Cutcaster has introduced to licensing is buyers can now license content on demand or they can bid for it by submitting a price to the seller seamlessly over the site, which the seller can accept, decline or resubmit a new offer back to the buyer. In addition, if a publisher from a magazine came to you, they could also bid on extended rights for content like exclusivity in certain markets or over certain periods of time. This bidding platform helps buyers find content within their budget, provides incentives for them to license content at Cutcaster because they can create better deals for themselves than they would find at other sites and highlights for sellers where the demand is at different pricing levels and how to price their content so they don’t lose sales because their content isn’t priced correctly.

From a buyer:

need images of the following flags

Argentina
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Mexico
Peru
Venezuela

If you have images of maps of South America please send those as well.

MORE INFORMATION

The flags need to be the entire image. Most likely the images should all come from the same photographer probably so they all look similar.

The buyer needs them by Friday at the latest. They are going in a banner like the arrangement below।

Thanks a ton guys.

What a start to the weekend for Jupiter and way to recruit new members.

First, we have been reading about the troubling news brewing at Jupiter’s Stockxpert and Photos.com with regards to their planned move of photos on Stockxpert to Photos.com site and potential new site terms that they will announce on Monday but are mum about the details beforehand. There was a serious uproar over the first take on the site terms Jupiter was forcing Stockxpert users to accept. I guess Jupiter was very adamant about keeping the 30 cent Extended Licenses which in our opinion is highway robbery and something that is a slippery slope down and will complete the race to the bottom for photographers who want to sell their images for next to nothing. I hope they will not accept this and make their voices heard as it is a scary trend to start. Cutcaster has been trying to head off this “race to the bottom” by allowing users to set their own price or use an algorithm to find the correct market price or buyers can buy content or bid on it directly with a seller. Here is the coverage over at Microstockgroup and some more done by Lee Torrens of Microstockdiaries.

UPDATE:
We read this over at Stockphototalk and thought we would share.

“SXP sent out some e-mail today to contributors about their new deal with images being sold via Photos.com. Buried in the 3rd paragraph was this:
“As we move forward with more of these programs, we need to deliver the highest quality and most consistent product to customers and business partners. This means that as of July 30 we will no longer offer opt-in/out, and as of August 4 all SXP images will be included in our PPD, partner and licensing, extended licensing, and subscription efforts.”
I had opted out of subscriptions at SXP a while back. Now I have to exit altogether or put up with subscriptions. Nothing in the text says they´re planning to limit the sizes sold via subscription [...].
The terms for contributors seem to be trending unfavorably – perhaps sites are feeling the economic pinch and trying to squeeze out all the revenue they can.”
Jo Ann Snover/Yahoo MP group.

It’s impressive to see the strength of community and photographers at SXP how they are banding together to get change and making their voices heard. Let’s see how this plays out but bravo for not stepping down to 30c downloads for your hard work.