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We tried at Photofeed, but decided to close it earlier this year. It's not easy to make ends meet in this market: the percentage of users that are willing to p

We tried at Photofeed, but decided to close it earlier this year. It's not easy to make ends meet in this market: the percentage of users that are willing to pay a monthly/yearly subscription fee is too low to make up for the cost of storing the photos. The big players provide online photo storage for free, so the user's position is understandable. But it doesn't make it any easier for a small business that wants to, well, make business.

icefox 12y ago
Where you able to find anything users were willing to pay for related to photos? Maybe more on the physical side with prints, photo books, posters, postcards, etc?
- espinchi 12y ago
  That's a good idea. We did some research on that and, still, the net revenue we would generate out of those wouldn't make up for the costs either. We started pushing some cool features like auto-magic clustering of photos into moments. Now Google and a few others do it too, so I know it doesn't sound all that impressive now.
  - icefox 12y ago
    Reading over all of the comments it sounds like trying to have a company that is simply providing a place to store photos is a losing proposition. The revenue would have to come somewhere else. * By default the photos can be re-sold and the user gets part of the profit. * Services such as photo restoration * Selling physical goods such as mugs, tshirts, postcards, posters, puzzles, Christmas cards, photo books, etc * Ads on top of a chat system based around photos ;) * A social network that uses the photos to get your friends to join the network * Now that you are backing up your photos for $ we could back up all your data * Daily advertising games such as 1 random users that uploads a photo today featuring Taco Bell gets $1000 (aka advertisers pay for everything). In fact any company that derives revenue secondary from having photos, but not from the users storing the photos is incentivized to let the users store the photos for as cheap as possible if not free (when possible). This is probably the number one problem with any company that is trying to sell storage for photos and will no doubt force them to pivot or close down eventually. Alternatively the other option is to only cater to users that are willing to pay and have no free option at all. You would want to interview those users and make sure the problem they have is being solved.

icefox 12y ago

Where you able to find anything users were willing to pay for related to photos? Maybe more on the physical side with prints, photo books, posters, postcards, etc?

espinchi 12y ago
That's a good idea. We did some research on that and, still, the net revenue we would generate out of those wouldn't make up for the costs either. We started pushing some cool features like auto-magic clustering of photos into moments. Now Google and a few others do it too, so I know it doesn't sound all that impressive now.
- icefox 12y ago
  Reading over all of the comments it sounds like trying to have a company that is simply providing a place to store photos is a losing proposition. The revenue would have to come somewhere else. * By default the photos can be re-sold and the user gets part of the profit. * Services such as photo restoration * Selling physical goods such as mugs, tshirts, postcards, posters, puzzles, Christmas cards, photo books, etc * Ads on top of a chat system based around photos ;) * A social network that uses the photos to get your friends to join the network * Now that you are backing up your photos for $ we could back up all your data * Daily advertising games such as 1 random users that uploads a photo today featuring Taco Bell gets $1000 (aka advertisers pay for everything). In fact any company that derives revenue secondary from having photos, but not from the users storing the photos is incentivized to let the users store the photos for as cheap as possible if not free (when possible). This is probably the number one problem with any company that is trying to sell storage for photos and will no doubt force them to pivot or close down eventually. Alternatively the other option is to only cater to users that are willing to pay and have no free option at all. You would want to interview those users and make sure the problem they have is being solved.