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Thoughts on Stock Images

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@yintercept
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Last year I took some pictures of the street signs for Leo Way in Holladay, Ut thinking that I might be able to sell them as stock photography.

Stock cannot contain trademarked logo; So, I removed the logos from the circles.

Taking the picture made me start thinking about all of the things that one would need to sell and track photos on Hive.

The first thing I thought about was the image serve. The stock photography tracking system should integrate with the image server.

I was making web sites in the early days of the Internet. Diskspace was expensive. I would code sites so that I could reuse the images. I wrote the mark down for the next images so that it draws from my web site (protophoto.com) . If I earned money selling photos, I would be happy to host the files. I am not sure if the mark down code will work.

There is just a little bit of the Holladay "H" showing in the picture above. If I am hosting the image, then I could go in and remove that defect. Of course, this highlights the danger of using external image servers. I could also replace the image with something nasty.

It really is best to use Hive's image servers for all images.

The reverse question now arises. If I use Hive's image server for the stock images in the Hive Eco-system; why not use the Hive Image server for my photo web site.

This next image shows the Leo Way sign framed by Utah's Mt. Olympus. I am uploading the image to HIVE using Peak D. After I publish the post I will try to hotlink to HIVE hosted image from my personal site.

I don't know if my hot link experiment will work.

Hotlinking is a super-controversial subject: A person who uses hot links is using the resources from a third party for personal gain.

Web sites often permit hotlinking when the hotlinked image contains a weblink to the site.

Hotlinks can save both diskspace and bandwidth when they are used for a selection of linked articles. When I reference two files on by HIVE blog and my web site, the user has to download the same image twice. Using hotlinks on one of the sites allows the browser to download the image once.

Pricing Microstock

I think that the best way to pay for stock images is for users to set the photographer as a beneficiary of the account. Personally, I think that the photographer should get at least 5% of the sale. I have seen some people ask 3% and others ask for 1%.

Some people prefer fixed pricing. I would not mind selling images for use outside of HIVE (where I cannot be named as a beneficiary).

I thought about trying to price images in HIVE, STEEM, HBD or SBD. Unfortunately the price of these coins fluctuate widely with time. The USD is in a steady state of deflation. It is really hard to collect USD for micropayments.

Last year I created The OMA Coin so that I could experiment with using alt-coins as an interface with web sites.

The OMA coin is not a "stable coin"; However, I pretend that it is worth about a eighth of a dollar. (In olden times, people cut silver coins into eight bits. So, a bit was an eighth of a dollar).

When I started writing this post, CoinGecko said HIVE traded at 0.428. 125/428 = 0.292.

So, I placed a buy at 0.29 and a sell at 0.30.

The way I will price my stock photos is to ask users to do one of the following:

  • Make me a 3% beneficiary of the post.
  • Give me coins valued at $0.20
  • or buy an OMA (which I sell for $0.125) and give me the OMA in payment for the stock image.

New users don't have any coins. New users would be smart to go the beneficiary route.

I will sell 8 OMA through paypal for $1.00 . Here is a paypal.me link . Paypal charges a $0.33 transaction fee. This offer is only for new users or people who really want to experiment with buying stock images.

What Is the Best Size for Images on HIVE?

I've asked this question before and received no answer. What is the preferred image size for HIVE? I usually reduce the images to 720px width for HIVE with a link to a 1280 version on the image on my site.

I really wish HIVE gave publishers better guidance.

Anyway, I keep thinking about making a program to track stock photos. I keep coming back to the conclusion that it would be best in incorporate such a program into image servers and interfaces for the platform.

However, since we are trying to create a decentralized platform, there is a strong argument that there should be numerous mechanisms for selling Stock.

I decided to conclude with a Leo Way sign framed by a school sign and stop sign.

Anyway, I have thought long and hard about creating an stock image tracker for HIVE, Leo, SteemIt and Blurt.

Would anyone in the #hivestockimages community be interested in an external program which tracked and promoted the use of HIVE based stock? What would you want in such a program?

I am offering the Leo Way images as stock as they might be of interest on LeoFinance.