offer/Plee

[Artemis]

Hmm... that is true. Maybe there's some way we can set this up without making it officially a business. And I'm wondering what the legal differences are between US and UK (and any other country for that matter) in terms of this. Maybe it's better to officially register it in one place rather than the other. It would be useful to find out exactly what the definitions are for a business. Maybe if we do it right we can make the site without registering it as a business.

My thoughts exactly my friend...which is why I believe it is best to use Ebay! We may be able to get a little catagory in ebay...if were lucky...dunno if its possible or not...

 

[Meysha]

Sounds like a good idea for you guys, but just some things I've picked up on reading this thread. BTW I don't have much knowledge on running a business but these are just feelings I get.

1. If you each run your own little page isn't that like your each running your own business so you'd all need to be registered?

2. Maybe one person (the registered person) could act as a sort of agent for the other artists.

3. Do people really buy Pictures off the net? Maybe the other websites who do this offer really crappy commissions because they hardly ever sell. I know, personally, I would never buy a Photo/Painting off the net. I prefer to see it in the flesh - in the gallery.

4. If people do buy Pictures off the net - who are they? Who are you aiming your product at? Teenagers, Photography Students, Retired Millionaires. Why are they buying it? Is it a present for someone or for their own Lounge Room wall? This is going to affect how you design your website as well as how and where you advertise.

And finally, I'd have a look around the net to see what the normal going rate is for what you're going to sell.

I don't mean to sound all pesimistic but I just don't want to see you all spend a lot of effort and then end up with nothing. Research is the key. Even if you don't want to make much/any money from this - you don't want to completely waste your time and it'll get your names out there if nothing else.

Good luck and keep us posted on how it's going.

 

[Unimaxium]

After doing a little bit of googling for research, my feeling is that as long as we do not make this for our own profit (which I think was the original plan anyway) then we do not have to register as a business. Thus, I think the safest route to go is with eBay. Although it is probably the most inconvenient route as well. We could make our site so that we have sellers submit links to eBay auctions on our TPF site, so that it will really be the sellers who handle everything themselves rather than us. What would be really cool is if we could set it up through PHP that sellers just set up the auction on our site and the eBay auction is automatically created (but I wouldn't be surprised if they disallow / prevent this kind of automated auction making). However, an issue I see with eBay will be inconsistent pricing (since it's an auction service), which could be inconvenient for some sellers.

Another option would be to replace eBay with some kind of "pro" photo selling service like photobox.co.uk, deviantart.com, smugmug.com, and others. These kinds of sites let sellers set their own prices, rather than charging like 30¢/p a photo like those stock services. Most of them also print the photos for you, which can have the advantage of convenience but the disadvantage of limited control. However a problem with these sites is that, afaik, all charge something to be able to sell with their service (whether it be a set-up fee, a monthly fee, or a fee per sale). Also, doing it this way I think would kind of take some of the fun out of setting up our own site for selling photos.

Although there is still the possibility of not using any external service. Assuming we (as the hosts / creators of the site) make no profit from others' sales, then I think it might even be possible to build the site all ourselves, without eBay or other services. The key issue I think is that we make sure we handle as little ourselves as possible, and we leave as much as we can up to the individual buyers and sellers. So basically we would let the sellers determine their own prices and print their own photos. In terms of handling money, the sellers would have to have a way for the buyer to pay them directly. The easiest way for this I think would be to have each seller have their own paypal account. This way, we are only acting as a website to show previews of the photos and list their prices, but we are not actually transacting any business with anybody since we are not handling the money. And if the sellers do not make a huge amount of money from selling their photos, then I don't think they will have to register as businesses / corporations either (after all, not every seller on eBay has to be registered as a business, so I don't think every seller on our site would have to do so either, as long as they are selling a reasonably sized amount of their own work). So from what I've read, it doesn't look like we'll have to register for a business license for this project, even if we do it ourselves.

Here are some links with information:
http://business-law.freeadvice.com/starting_a_business/ -- Some FAQs on businesses. The first link, "WHAT IS A BUSINESS?", starts off by saying "a business is an activity performed for profit."
http://bermangraphics.com/press/ebay.htm -- An interesting page about selling original photography on eBay. Basically they say that it is possible and profitable to sell your photos on eBay. They also give details on how to get the most out of it.
http://www.deviantart.com seems to be a really popular site for people to sell photographs and similar things.

So to sum up, we might be able to set up to sell through eBay or another service to eliminate any questions of liability, but these will also be inconvenient for the way we want to set this site up. As long as we don't handle money ourselves, and make sure that buyers and sellers understand that they are not actually doing their business through us, I believe that we can safely build the site ourselves without an external service.

OK wow this post turned out really long

 

[triggerhappy]

Sounds like a great idea dan!


FWIW, I set up a small computing business after I finished my A-Levels, and had many of the same concerns that you now seem to have. It was a really great experience, but pretty hard work.

I'm sure there will be no shortage of photographers willing to put their photos on your site. However, I agree with Meysha that the single biggest challenge you will have is to find buyers. If you can get that cracked, then the site will be a huge success.

Just off the top of my head, some thoughts:
- In the UK you do not need to register a buisness unless you want to. Registering a limited liability company costs someing like £150 and will give you protection against being sued etc. If you are serious about this project I would suggest that you get legal advice on it. The citizens advice beauro (sp!!!) will do this for free.

- You do not need to be 18 to run a business.

- Do you want to have some form of quality control, so that you ensure only the best photos are available for sale? It would be more work, but could help the site develop a reputation for high quality work. Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be to have a list of 'approved' artists.

In terms of the buisness model:
- Keep it simple. I would suggest that you act as a host and agent, but don't get involved with the actual selling. That way the contract is between the photographer and the client and so any disputes are not your problem.
- Pehaps consider charging a comission on each sale, or charging each photographer a monthly fee to host their pictures.

Good luck (and you can count me in if you want any help).

 

[Artemis]

Sounds like a great idea dan!


FWIW, I set up a small computing business after I finished my A-Levels, and had many of the same concerns that you now seem to have. It was a really great experience, but pretty hard work.

I'm sure there will be no shortage of photographers willing to put their photos on your site. However, I agree with Meysha that the single biggest challenge you will have is to find buyers. If you can get that cracked, then the site will be a huge success.

Just off the top of my head, some thoughts:
- In the UK you do not need to register a buisness unless you want to. Registering a limited liability company costs someing like £150 and will give you protection against being sued etc. If you are serious about this project I would suggest that you get legal advice on it. The citizens advice beauro (sp!!!) will do this for free.

- You do not need to be 18 to run a business.

- Do you want to have some form of quality control, so that you ensure only the best photos are available for sale? It would be more work, but could help the site develop a reputation for high quality work. Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be to have a list of 'approved' artists.

In terms of the buisness model:
- Keep it simple. I would suggest that you act as a host and agent, but don't get involved with the actual selling. That way the contract is between the photographer and the client and so any disputes are not your problem.
- Pehaps consider charging a comission on each sale, or charging each photographer a monthly fee to host their pictures.

Good luck (and you can count me in if you want any help).

Im so glad you posted that last bit at the bottom, I was gonna ask if you can help.

Id also appreciate it if Unimaxim could help, and I bet preludex will like to when he comes back completely, thanks guys again, and Unimaxim, add me to your msn, ill pm you the address!

 

[Unimaxium]

I'm definitely willing to help with this.

If you use AIM often, that will be the easiest way for me to communicate since that's what I use to chat 99.9% of the time. But I also have an MSN messenger account if that's all you use. Just PM me the screenname for either or both and we can keep in touch

 

[willg133]

this sounds like an amazing idea...but i think that there should definitely be a cap on each users alloted bandwidth and storage space because that could get expensive

 

[Bimmie]

Good idea artemis.

I'll help you out with graphical stuff that needs to be designed for the site but I don't know anything about site building...so count me in

 

[Artemis]

Thanks Bimmie would be great help...now all we need is webspace to host it

 

[Artemis]

Ok...sorry this took ages to get around to...youve all been added to a secret forum for this project, and itll appear at the bottom of the forum for the members added shortly...if youd also like to help but don't see the forum, leave a message here

 

[Unimaxium]

I'm not seeing the forum.

 

[triggerhappy]

Me neither

 

[Artemis]

Itll be there....CHASE!!

 

[omalley]

Right ill try to answer these...but remember I dont know exactly what we have planned at the moment.

1)upload our own shots to the server or 2)link them from our own servs?

Well you will be able to upload the shots to our server through a form on the page, like most sites use...it will be simple and there will be info on the website to help you do this.

1) do you have so big serv. for LOADS of shots?

I believe we will...but at the moment Chase MAY be hosting it...so that really depends...however I will try to get some spare space.
This is a good issue and it will need to be resolved...
I may have to restrict how much is uploaded...or perhaps have graded accounts...and so people may have to pay to get a higher grade account.

2) remember that not everyone have the own account or serv

I knew this would be a problem, so thats why you wont need your own server to use this site system

Then... would you be able to solve the questions of hacks? coz you know that's not a problem to hack a site, what then? who will be responsible for all damages?

This would be a severe problem...but as all the people working on this will do it for free, I think we will have to say we wont be responsible..but we will do all we can to keep people from hacking/stealing images...and infact the php coder has developed a way of where its very difficult to download the image.

how would you like to host the page? only through the net? or maybe we will be able to spam mails?

Through the net was my thinking

how would we share the costs of all advertising and hosting and serv?

The server cost I am unsure about, but I will try to cover it if needed...as for all other costs and perhaps server costs, there will be a donate button that will go to the person who will code the site, and then I guess we will buy all things from him (as he has his own server and such)

I'm in

Glad tah have yah aboard!

As far as copyright theft/ image theft is concerned, there's a little trick you should know about. I use it on my site. It's a javascript which disables the right-click feature. What happens is, when someone tries to right-click on a photo so they can save it on their hard drive, a message box pops up. You can make this box contain whatever text you want. Mine says simply "copyright protected". I have seen other sites where it says "sorry, right-clicking not allowed". You should do this. I'll send you the code if you like.

 

[Artemis]

My coder does that, also he has prevented the xp download cause if you hover over an image xp allows you, but hes made it just download an invisible .gif file