I quit my business january the first. I sold people. Actual people including kids, grandma's, six-pack's and what not as models for agency's and photographers. My company was different: You could select people like you can cars: Size, color, tattoos and a location. I sold people including all the royalties, like a Shutterstock for people with a fixed price (no matter how well known the client is). I had everything worked out: a simple signup process, legal protection for models (no nudity) and a legal framework for clients and my own company.
I upset the expensive agencies (boy were some mad at me), but ultimately failed because I underestimated how far people will go to get something for "free". People would rather spend 8 of their own hours finding friends, neighbors, relatives to use as a model, than select a perfect local model and pay him or her a few bucks. I work for a design agency for the biggest names you can think of but even those PR-people would rather throw away 8 of their own hours and work with shitty contracts if it could save them a few dimes.
Of course becoming blind didn't help. Thank God the doctors got my vision back, but if you're a one-person-company shit like that can certainly kill your company. But that's not why I failed. I failed because I thought I could use greed and let people save a lot of money. Turns out people were even more greedy (or dumber?) than I thought.
Yup, even the smallest price creates a huge barriere for most people. Personally I'd rather throw some money at problems than waste my precious time, but everyone is different.
Yup even though they would be spending some money in order to save a lot of time and money. Did great with finding models but not good enough with the agency's. OT: Just read your blog and like to know if you've got something up and running already?
Not yet! I haven't been able to work on my project lately because I'm too busy with my graduation and freelancing, but I stopped freelancing now to work on my project full-time. I hope to release it around March :-)
It will be a platform (non-SaaS) targeted at the US, and I've got Microsoft sponsoring my cloud hosting, doing my marketing, etc.
Oh, I did create a few Windows 8 apps in the meanwhile, that also stole quite some time from my main project. I created the first and only wordfeud solver for example: http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/scrabble-solver/... (I earned only €13 with it so it isn't a great business idea, but I was fun to build).
Good to see you're sharpening your skills and knowledge "in the real word" and you'e not just studying.
I can really identify with 2nd/3rd projects 'stealing' time from the main project. I'm like that as well. It's a bit of a trap but when you're always full of ideas it feels good to check them out as well. (And it's easy to become bored when you've worked on project for a long time).
I did a extensive personality test once and it showed I need the challenge. If I don't get it I will deliberately make projects more difficult by delaying work or trying to find new and exciting ways to accomplish something. Anything but boring, repetitive work!
Which markets were you focusing on? I would assume this would work well here in California, based on the need for stock photos and models in the LA & Bay Area. From what I gather in your writing, the choices were having a companies own PR-people waste hours of their billable time or have to go out to an expensive agency to get models, while you provided a service that catered to the middle market?
I upset the expensive agencies (boy were some mad at me), but ultimately failed because I underestimated how far people will go to get something for "free". People would rather spend 8 of their own hours finding friends, neighbors, relatives to use as a model, than select a perfect local model and pay him or her a few bucks. I work for a design agency for the biggest names you can think of but even those PR-people would rather throw away 8 of their own hours and work with shitty contracts if it could save them a few dimes.
Of course becoming blind didn't help. Thank God the doctors got my vision back, but if you're a one-person-company shit like that can certainly kill your company. But that's not why I failed. I failed because I thought I could use greed and let people save a lot of money. Turns out people were even more greedy (or dumber?) than I thought.
A few screenshots (as the site is offline): http://imgur.com/4JMDS http://i.imgur.com/63e4Z.png