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Comment by willyg123 | Hacker News Reader

There is a startup yet to be founded to sell inexpensive, high-quality original photos for exclusive use.

Unique photos, i.e. photos not considered "duplicate content", are critical if you want to rank organically on Google [0]

Getty will eventually be disrupted.

[0] https://www.rebootonline.com/blog/long-term-duplicate-image-...

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There are a ton of two-sided marketplaces out there that try to do this. It's a messy challenge involving rights management (no good photographer will agree to the contracts these companies offer), production workflows (all companies do it differently) and assignment complexities (by 'high-quality' you mean 'high-quality and custom to the project' because a nice but generic picture is mostly useless).

But you're right in that free photos like the ones from Unsplash are super expensive in the long run because of the search ranking penalty (you get grouped with all the spammers who are using those same free photos).

1. Let photographers license their photos from a list of standard licenses

2. Let photographers set their own prices

3. Let buyers search by budget and by license

4. Startup charges a X% platform fee

The market will take care of the rest.

I like it. What happens if ownership of an image is disputed, or it turns out the photog uploaded a photo that she had copied off the web?

Send extortion letter

> What happens if ownership of an image is disputed, or it turns out the photog uploaded a photo that she had copied off the web?

Presumably the purchaser sues the photographer.

One thing that marketplace could do is to require a bond from any photographers that would be used to help pay for any judgements.

A long time ago I was Chief Data Scientist at 500px following the acquisition of a company I cofounded and this was exactly what I was advocating for. Professional photographers are cash poor, but with the right interface and contracts we could have done it. I wasn't able to get the CEO to see things my way and other problems with the company led to my departure, but I still think this is a viable business. The key here is what is meant by "inexpensive" because $500 is inexpensive to BMW but expensive to a startup.

I've sold photos on and off for 20 years (on a direct basis, companies contact me via my portfolio), and I've generally gone for a rough "$5 per employee that the company has" rate. A 10 person startup wants one of my photos? I'm happy to give it to them for $50. 200 person company with a marketing employee calling me? $1000 sounds about right. Microsoft wants exclusive use of a photo? $700k will do just nicely thanks ;)

You can't always accurately assess this of course, so it's mostly done by gut feel after learning a bit about the company, but it's done me well so far and I've never had a company turn down my price, nor have I ever felt like I've been taken advantage of.

This sounds kind of like Wonderful Machine -- connecting clients to high-quality photographers.

How are you going to get "high-quality original photos" if you won't pay pro photographers as you'd like to be "inexpensive"? By outsourcing it to Papua?

I've been kicking around the idea of digital escrow for that sort of thing. I put this file in the digital locker, you pay me money, and when you download the image the locker is cleared out. The purchase price includes the exclusive rights to that digital file and the creator gives up all rights as soon as the locker is opened.

File that into "side projects that I'll likely never get around to".

That sounds like a perfect case for generative DL network photos. Especially the faces, which are also eye-catching.

Getty is already disrupted

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