Poll / Survey - FF Store

This is a proposal for a poll or a survey regarding the idea of "selling your top-notch filters to other FF users in an online Filter Forge store."

The purpose of such a poll/survey is to get hard facts on the FF user population in order to determine who will gain or lose (both money and utility) from the idea and by how much.

This is NOT the poll/survey, just a suggestion to FF Inc., which I hope will consider this proposal. Please try not to argue about the actual "FF store" idea here, only about the poll/survey itself.

Hey Indigo Maybe the poll should be framed...."If FF was to charge extra for access to Pro Filters, what do you think the price point should be for the base program and Pro Filters???".....

I think it's a given that customers want unrestricted access to filters.....while authors would like to make money off of their filter work. I think the question is how could FF do it without negatively affecting program sales and getting into a resource-draining nightmare....

Quote

Sign Guy wrote: While bundling them has some advantages, there are also some drawbacks. The more talented authors would, presumably, get the same royalty as less talented authors. The more prolific the author, the better the percentage ... not necessarily the quality or the commercial appeal. In addition, for FF to manage it would be almost an irrevocable decision. If it didn't go well, they still would have to run it. Whereas, if an independent site offered the filters, FF could, if they chose to do so, support it with links for those who would be willing to buy and the idea would succeed or fail on its own merits.

I agree with all that.... I take back what I said about comparing FF to Adobe....maybe sales of themed filter series/bundles that meet a certain criteria might work instead of selling idividual filters....

I can see something like this being in direct conflict with FF submissions....authors opting to sell rather than submit to FF for program rewards as a better return on "time is money".... I can also see people going crazy creating quick variants of library filters to sell....and the whole thing becomes a junk pile that ends up reflecting negatively upon FF....

If FF or someone else set this up, It would definitely have to have some serious quality control and standards in order to fly....

frankly, i dont want FF 'running' the filter storefronts (assuming that they'd even be willing to do something like that). i'd prefer FF, inc. sponsored author e-stores that exist on FF's site. FF gets a royalty/commission and the authors make money. everything FF related is all on one site and everyone wins.

authors could choose to sell whatever they want, art, filters, texture packs, single textures, filter packs and yes, even stand-alone filters (good old .8bf, stand-alone filters). we know FF can make these stand-alones, so why not let authors make and sell those also. i know the arguement, that FF, inc. would not be able to sell as many programs, but i'm not sure that would be the case. i think it would enhance program sales simply because there are over 7000 filters there already and folks are still going to buy volume, plus others are still going to contribute to that, regardless. and, if program sales did fall off, surely that and more could be made back by individual filter and texture sales. and, FF, inc. could offer their own filters and textures, plus the commissions from author's sales.

authors would essentially take care of their own selections of what they offer for sale. we could even offer art, particularly done using FF. FF, inc. would be in charge of collections of money and payments to authors, but do it like cafepress and other commison sales sites do, you only get a check if you have made X number of dollars. i think cafepress set this at $25. if you hadnt made that much yet you simply did earn a check yet. if you made more than that the first day of the month you didnt get paid till the end of that month. i think this would work very well.

Quote
StevieJ wrote: Just thinking that bundles with a "theme" might be more viable and better for customers getting what they want....instead of buying grab-bags of miscillaneous filters.....most of which they won't use....

My experience with both my own site and at Fotosearch is that themed bundle purchases as compared to individual purchases will represent between 5% to 10% of total sales even though the price difference is 10 to 25 times greater for individual images. Most buyers seem to prefer buying only that for which they have an immediate need.

Where one sees a greater buyer acceptance of price cutting to achieve a greater single sale is with subscription plans. Shutterstock, for example, has a very popular plan where the subscriber gets 25 downloads a day for a $249 a month fee ($249 / 750 downloads = 33¢ each). Buyers are also offered a five image deal for $50 that they can download as they want them for one year. Comparing those two marketing plans, the subscription downloads for me are typically 20 to 40 times greater than are the individual image downloads. What's fascinating about it is that the royalty I have been receiving from subscription downloads is identical to the selling price of the subscription divided by the total allowed downloads. Shutterstock's profit is, therefore, the unused downloads.

At sites like Photos.com or Clipart.com, the only way you can access their images is to subscribe. Other sites that offer both individual purchases and subscription plans seem to be more evenly split in how customers prefer to buy. Themed bundles don't seem to be widely used, at least at micro-stock sites. I would suspect because buyers would be concerned about images being included that they may already have downloaded under some other plan.