Users

Once I'm in production, anyone from AI can get an account. I have photography students on standby to create accounts and upload images when I'm ready for that. Users who would be downloading the images would have to go through the subscription page, and pay, however since this is a student project I'm going to allow them to sign up for a base subscription, which will allow for 5 downloads a week. I want to have users be able to batch download (which no other stock photo website I found would let me do), and (of course), download on the fly.

Designs

One design done, trying to make it more bright than dark, considering I chose a bit of a dark palette that's a challenge, but it's a fun challenge! I'm also trying to have it be it's own unique website (obviously), but taking elements from previous classes that worked well. I want to have 2 tabs at the top that will slide in (jquery) to either log the user in or register them to use the website. I'll have to make a more complicated registration page for submissions, but this should work for now.

Process Book

Sorry! It's been a crazy week!


Process Book

Marketing

Since the users are generating my content, I need ways to attract them. The first thing I plan on doing is emailing all my photography friends, and have them sign up and upload some images. If this were a real website, I would be researching what magazine's I should be putting ads in to attract users for content, and to attract users to purchase images. I'm guessing the main users who would be purchasing content are web designers, graphic designers, and journalists.

I do have options for expansion (stock vector images and stock content, written by freelance journalists), but there's always more to add!

Information Architecture

It doesn't seem like I have that many pages, just a lot of behind the scenes action taking place. The main pages are home, photos, register, pricing, and submission. I'd like users to be able to batch download, but I'm still researching that aspect (how I can bundle their images into a zip file). I need to make a list of all the php I'll be using on the site, and make sure they don't interact with each other (an issue I've had for past projects). I would like photography students to be able to customize their profile pages, but that will only happen if all my code is working... too much to do, too little time!

Content

One of the aspects I really like about this project is that it's user driven content. I don't have to generate something to sell, I just have to figure out good ways to market the site. Once it's in production it'll only be usable by AI students (need the .stu.aii.edu email address to register), but it would've been nice to have some sort of verification service... If only there were time!

Payment

I've been doing research into the paying aspect. Part of my marketing is going to be about having low prices, but paying photographers well. It'll have to be a nice balance. Most websites seem to pay photographers around $.33/image downloaded, which was equating to around 20%. Then users purchasing the images were paying anywhere from $4.10-$10/image. I think I'll be "charging" $2.00/image, and paying photographers $.40/image. Subscriptions will be offered at a rate of $20/15 images, and $50/50 images.

A SSL for one website is $400/year (or $33/month), hosting with payment processing will cost around $110/month (via Amazon, which is based on usage, that quote would be for a website just starting out). This means I'd have to sell 90 individual images (at $2.00/image) per month to break even.