Picture: “Altered” headstone at the Ferndale cemetary, Humboldt County, California
Many folks will obviously recall this reference to the Freddy Fender song; the new theme song for The Photoshelter Collection (PSC); the stock agency collective wing of Photoshelter. An email just arrived announcing the closure of the collection. Frankly, I’m upset, but not surprised. With over 1000 images up over the last year, and no sales, and from my own Photo Researcher / Editor side, I could tell this wasn’t a buyers site. PSC was just never seemed to be as well marketed as it’s direct competitor, Digital Railroad’s Marketplace & Research Network.
Let’s face it, PSC is more about “Community” – what with all the cheering about “Yay, I got my first sale…” hoopla. That was never the atmosphere with DRR. I always felt that the bar was set much higher at DRR. I feel this was due in main part to the high annual participation fees at DRR weeding out many less serious photographers that opted to vest their efforts at PSC. I stared with DRR, and only later decided to give the PSC collection a shot. DRR made an aggresive industry move at building a higher caliber stable of photographers, and then shifted toward a much more prominent campaign aimed at bringing in buyers.
End result after a year: DDR has made me numerous sales for several thousand dollars. All I got from PSC is “wasted days and wasted nights”. RIP PSC.
That sucks for you especially Gary considering your time investment. I only submitted about 300 images because I had my doubts as well. Reason is that when I asked around the art directors I knew, no one had heard of Photoshelter. Yet all the photographers seem to have known about Photoshelter.
Btw, I stopped by the Ferndale Cemetery also. I wasn’t sure if it was private or not so I didn’t go inside the gate. An interesting place…
Btw, I was under the impression that DRR is run by people that had worked in the industry for years so therefore already had a built-in client base? I think I have more images on the Marketplace than at PSC.
I was more surprised that they didn’t give it more time. I expected they would run into problems though. To be honest I’ve not made many sales through DRR, but I do agree they set the bar higher as far as talent. Personally I think that PSC success was good for DRR as it pushed them to enhance their product. I’m a bit concerned now that there might be a slower pace of development at DRR now that they lack a direct competitor.
As to the level of effort you put in to PSC… I’m impressed and now sorry for you. I had a couple hundred photos in the queue at PSC, but never pushed most live. Keywording was a pain in the ass and a huge time suck. One thing I have to give DRR kudos on is the speed at which you can port images into their marketplace. Lets hope the squeeze from the economy and languishing stock industry doesn’t pull DRR down as well.
Jim:
Yeah, the energy & time difference between uploading and making images live to DRR vs PSC was insane – with the edge by about 10 country miles to DRR. I also made a comment to that exact effect on the now dead PSC forum, namely that I was prepared to give PSC 2 -3 years before deciding if they were a successful sales vehicle. Sadly ironic I was willing to give them more time than they gave themselves.
Cheers.
Richard:
You’re very right about the people at the top of the DRR food chain.