To Mika:

World is tending to have a better resource distribution system. Suppose an US citizen need to pay $10 for some rice, and a Thai farmer want to sell the same rice at $7. If we can cut down the logistics & transaction cost within $3, then it’s a good deal for both side. Unfortunately life is not so good in this way.

Traditional stock photography companies like Getty Images and Corbis have been selling ultra-expensive images for a long time, and still alive now. Of course they hire the best photographers and keep the highest cost in this industry. But higher cost doesn’t mean a better thing. Only high-end buyers can afford $2000 for one image.

Since 1999, microstock photography companies like istockphoto and fotolia emerged quickly. (Curses! I wish I was born earlier) They focus on hundreds of thousands of amateur photographers all over the world, and share profit with them if their work are sold to low-end long tail buyers, such as web designers, small studios, small magazines. With this model, the cost is really really low and sales is scaling really fast. fotolia is one of my favorite site, which only has 15 works, most of which are part-time, tagging photos for a better search result.

Damn I love ths business model! Tucia is gonna be a microstock design leader. Low-cost, high efficiency, easy accessibility.

潮流总是朝着资源配置更加公平合理的方向前进的。美国人买大米要$10，而泰国人愿意以$7出售同样的大米，如果能把物流和交易成本降低到$3之内，就是一个资源合理配置的方向，双方都获益。可惜现实生活中太多资源被不合理地配置了。

以图片交易为例，最初的Getty Images和盖茨私人打造的Corbis，雇佣了全世界最顶尖的摄影师，当然也是最昂贵的摄影师，其图片质量当然是无可挑剔，而单张上千美金的价格绝对不是一般人可以承受的。这两家巨头也很乐意固守成规，只满足大公司、大杂志、大广告公司等高端用户的需求即可，人家不care钱。

结果1999年开始，出现了以istockphoto和fotolia为代表的小型图片公司，采用freelancer模式，所有摄影师都是通过网络招募来的兼职，上传图片之后，如果有人买，摄影师和图片公司大致五五分成。虽然说图片质量可能不如上述两家巨头那么专业（其实也不一定），但是要知道，大部分买家，比如业余的网页设计师、小型工作室、小型杂志媒体等，根本不需要100%最好的图片，80%就够用了。这些Microstock图片公司，让图片成本大大降低，自然价格也大跳水，现在一美金就可以买到高质量的图片。现在有名可查的Microstock图片公司至少超过20家，大部分都生意火爆。我自己最喜欢用的是fotolia，这家公司每年从几十万的摄影师手上获取几百万张的图片，年收入超过千万美金，却只有15个员工，大部分还是兼职的，主要工作是给每个图打标签，便于搜索。

这样的商业模式是我最喜欢的。 吐司的商业也是这个方向：微利设计 | Micrstock Design。和jingchang商量把这个模式取了个代号：快餐化设计，很直接。后来跟vicky电话，觉得“便利店式的设计”更好一些，简单说就是把设计从高高在上、流程繁琐的广告公司和设计公司里拉下来，彻底平民化，低价化，高效化。这的使命只有利用互联网才可以完成。

This entry was posted on May 26th, 2008 and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.