Yesterday we have released v1.5 Beta for Mac OS X. Windows version has been released a few days ago and the feedback I receive is very complimentary meanwhile.

So far so good. It's the time to get more things done.
While we are collecting the feedback and fixing issues in v1.5 it is a good time to fill in another hole, starting the new project: explanations and documentation for v1.5.
As a beginning, I am thinking of making a few online "how-to" lessons that will be used later as a base for the online guide for PSM.

I believe that we have created a very powerful tool which can boost your revenues to another level while saving hours of your worktime working with multiple online stock agencies. However, all these is correct only if the photographer knows how to get the most out of our software.

I really want to show what you can do with PSM v1.5. In this blog the things will probably come in the "back" order, from the most complex stuff to the simplest things, just because I am very keen to show here the most interesting stuff first. We will put all the "how-to"-s in the right order on our web later on, taking the reader step-by-step from the simplest operations to the more complex stuff.

With the fantastic success of microstock agencies in the last few years Novel Use is a native Alamy's attempt to follow this trend and open an additional revenue stream from microstock. Just look around - virtually everyone sell microstock subscriptions, why Alamy should not?

Particularly knowing that the competition is tight and a major microstock site made $70 mln revenues last year, followed by others tens-of-mlns-dollars microstocks, does not it make a perfect sense for Alamy trying to follow their success?

Well, I am not sure. At least not with NU idea.

Let me state: we do not speak about content. This is my point: content does not matter here. Content is similar. I can hear your strong "NO!", but, - com'on, forget for a sec all these technical "TIFF+scale-up+keywording" content preparation tricks "for a really HQ content" and just look what micros sell. Would you agree now? - they sell the same, particularly from the buyers point of view. I know that content people will never agree to this statement, but buyers just made their votes with their bucks, so it is better to hear the market. You can find content at microstock prices for at least 90% of your industrial buyers' needs. Buyers can choose buying content through Alamy or through a microstock. And - surprise - buyers are already subscribed to 2-4 microstock agencies (more info: InfoTrends marketing research).

So where is the Alamy's difference on this saturated microstock market? Well, it's not about the content, it's about the community. It's Alamy's Pros vs microstock Amateurs. Can you sell your community to a buyer? Not sure. Can you sell quite similar content for non-micro prices? Sure you can not, Alamy already knows this answer and therefore NU came out.

However, NU does not takes in account the most important - psychological - factor: for many pros Alamy was an alternative to microstock. NU completely destroys this vision. The last shelter for a pro who keeps screaming "I am not going to sell my images for a buck or two! Never ever!", this last shelter fails with the NU introduction. Well, probably it should not be so dramatic, but the feeling of many pros as they express themselves in Alamy blog and in other places on the Internet is quite similar to that.

That's why Alamy community strongly disagree to license their images under NU. Their vision is an opposite to microstock amateurs who say "I can get 30 cents per download or nothing if my images will continue sitting on my HD. Obviously, I go microstock!"

In my understanding, NU, which attempts to sell existing "non-micro" content to "microstock-like" buyers is an unnecessarily hard try. Not because Alamy has to educate the market that Alamy sells microstock too, but mostly because Alamy has to educate its own community that Alamy went microstock. And such community education could be a long and not necessarily successful process.

A reasonable alternative to this community education process could be... getting another community that is willing to sell micro. Change the community, because for the micro- market you need a micro- community. And forget your existing content! Keep selling it with "macro-" prices. For the micro market, Alamy brand, the team and agency's market knowledge supported by the right selling community can make the difference, while NU, propagating similar content with pro-community behind, which is unwilling to support micro-sales can kill the initiative at the very beginning.