[jlarocco]

There are millions (billions?) of stock photos in the world, and your plan is to replace all of them with 10 pictures of a MacBook Air?

Even with more pictures it's unlikely you'll beat a Creative Commons search on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=&l=cc&ss=0&ct=0&...

[Mc_Big_G]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't all of the various the creative commons licenses require author attribution if the author requires it? If so, that makes cc images much more difficult to use and find. I've had this issue recently where I could not determine if I had to add attribution or not and, if so, I would have to edit the image or place some text next to it which is a pain in the ass for dynamic images because now you have to store that information somewhere. This page: http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ doesn't show any option where attribution is not required, although this page: http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/ which is linked in the OP page, seems to say you don't need attribution. If I use the wizard on http://creativecommons.org/choose/ I don't see a path that gets me to a license that doesn't require attribution. It's easier to just buy photos for a reasonable price than to deal with the uncertainty. Maybe someone can explain to me how it's supposed to work.

For example, here is an image from the link in the parent

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamestemple/312325101/sizes/o/

and here is the license

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

which says: "Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). "

Ok, someone tell me what manner is specified by the author.

[paulwithap]

Why does he need to beat Flickr? Should I not open an e-commerce shop because Amazon exists?

I think this is a great idea. Why go through the hassle of selling your photos and worrying about people stealing them when you can make money on ad revenue instead?

[obviouslygreen]

Why go through the hassle of selling your photos and worrying about people stealing them when you can make money on ad revenue instead?

Well, for a lot of reasons... if photography is what you're good at and what you enjoy, the make-money-on-ads model makes no sense unless you're also very good at generating traffic.

It also at least partially removes your income from the quality and quantity of your output. Of course the latter will be one important factor in building and maintaining traffic, but the reality of your business then becomes driving traffic, with photography as an ancillary requirement.

Plus you're now dependent not only on your ability to take good pictures and drive large amounts of traffic, you're also at the mercy of changing revenue. Great, you're making a living wage... but now suddenly your ad service isn't paying as much as it used to, so the same volume of traffic brings you less money. Oops.

There are tradeoffs, but I would not say this is a viable alternative at all unless you're also doing other things and driving traffic is as much your primary skill as photography.

[hnriot]

"Should I not open an e-commerce shop because Amazon exists?" - probably not, and definitely not if you're going to only sell 10 things.

[Groxx]

I'm sure the many thousands (millions?) of small-business online stores could have benefitted from this advice. Obviously they were mistaken in believing they could make a profit.

[gozmike]

You're missing the point. They're not trying to beat Flickr. This is great content marketing by ooomf, a startup that's all about helping designers/developers connect with great short term projects.

Anyone who's built side projects that could use a little pizzazz would be well served by this. It's really useful to the community.

[d23]

Perhaps his plan is to ultimately add an option for a paid model once he builds up a user base? I've found it to be challenging to find professional-quality stock-like photos on Flickr amidst the millions of pictures of vacations.

[slantyyz]

>> I've found it to be challenging to find professional-quality stock-like photos on Flickr amidst the millions of pictures of vacations.

If you need professional quality stuff, you should be paying for it from one of the many stock agencies around. The agencies have lots of rules and safeguards that are designed to save you the headache of worrying about whether model releases were signed, etc.

[ChrisNorstrom]

I've spend hundreds of hours searching through Creative Commons photos on Flickr for a wall mural business and know how much flickr search results suck. No matter what I search for I always end up eventually getting asian children at a temple in my results or other nonsense.

Also, photographers with GOOD images don't sell them for $0.05 on Fotolia, Dreamstime, etc... Getty Images sucks because of it's restrictions and $3,000 / price tag and prehistoric policies. If you check the stock photo site's payout rates you'll realize why they have so many generic images and so little amazing photography. The good photographers keep their stuff off those stock sites.

[genwin]

Going on 3 hours at the top of HN, soon to be the #1 stock photo site. Nothing but MacBook Air pictures.