Ask HN: Does this idea exist and who wants it?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=427249

by andrewljohnson • 18 years ago

39 37 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've been in the middle of working on a start-up for the past 8 months or so, and during that time I've only had one idea that I thought to myself "That idea is worth a lot more money than the one you are working on right now, and it would be easier to engineer."

I wonder if this app already exists. If it doesn't, feel free to run with it if you see the same potential I did.

The app is this - a button to turn a Flickr account into an online store, where people can order prints or pay for the rights to use photos. Everything starts off at a dollar, but it's fully customizable.

Having tinkered with the Flickr API, I don't think this would be hard to engineer. And I think there is an easy revenue model (a cut of sales), a low barrier to entry for users, and a large long tail to make money off of.

So anyways, that's it. I know ideas are worthless, but if you want this one, it's yours.

EDIT: I'm working o n a website for hikers - www.trailbehind.com. Probably less money in it, but it's something I'm passionate about.

rjprins• 18 years ago

Ideas are not worthless! Good ideas can have potential, but as long as they're untested they're not worth money; they are worthy of pursuit.

gsiener• 18 years ago

Sounds good until Yahoo! integrates it into their site...

jam• 18 years ago

...by buying your company. ^_^

meep• 18 years ago

You think to yourself in the third person?

randallsquared2• 18 years ago

I assume you meant "second" person. Surely everyone does this. "You don't really want X." "Dammit, Randall, that was a stupid idea."

You don't do this?

jules• 18 years ago

I don't.

abstractbill• 18 years ago

I think to myself in the first person sometimes, in the second person at others, and even as a group occasionally.

For example my thoughts look like, "I should work from home today", or "Bill, you're a genius", or sometimes like "Why don't we just go see if there's any ice cream left..."

IsaacSchlueter• 18 years ago

Sure. Who doesn't?

Isaac is always saying to himself, "You should really use the first person singular," but he knows how much we hate that.

skalpelis• 18 years ago

No, we don't.

brandnewlow2• 18 years ago

It's a great idea.

One reason why:

Blogs and news services are pulling more and more photos from Flickr. If you can give the photogs on there an easy way to just let people come and get their pictures, without having to track down permission from them, you'd make life easier for the blog editors.

brk• 18 years ago

Blogs and news services are pulling more and more photos from Flickr.

Because they don't want to pay for them on sites like iStockphoto that already exist to give photographers a way to market/sell their products?

brandnewlow2• 18 years ago

Nope.

Because istockphoto doesn't have anything resembling "news" photos. Whereas Flickr's got lots of photos with real people in them.

I've used istockphoto extensively. it's all models, references, icons etc.

If I need a decent picture of the Mayor of Chicago at a recent festival, there might be 10 on Flickr.

There won't be any on istockphoto.

NonEUCitizen• 18 years ago

Better if default price is a quarter rather than a dollar.

andrewljohnson5• 18 years ago

A good and easy thing to A/B test.

rokhayakebe• 18 years ago

This is a good idea. Last month I was creating a simple website and I needed a stock photo. I went to Flickr and looked for a few minutes because I knew something would be available there. Had I found one I would definitely pay for it.

ryanmahoski2• 18 years ago

For prints, it would be especially nice if customers also got a frame. Without a frame wall art looks cheap. It's no fun buying a beautiful poster and not being able to display it. If someone knows how to economically ship a frame, selling it together with the customer's choice of flickr art would be interesting.

orib• 18 years ago

As four bars wrapped in a poster, with pins (or glue) to put it together, perhaps?

ryanmahoski2• 18 years ago

That sounds good expense-wise. Maybe also include a rectangular sheet of clear, flexible plastic to serve in place of the front glass. And one for the matting.

itsandrew• 18 years ago

We did this with Yaperture (http://yaperture.com), sort of. The costs associated with the buying and shipping of frames was way too high for the average consumer. So, we compromised and sold the photos with thick museum-quality matting.

webwright• 18 years ago

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/19/imagekind-scores-partne...

Sold to Cafe Press recently ($20m I believe).

andrewljohnson5• 18 years ago

This is interesting. I wonder if they do a one-click conversion of Flickr account to online store. And do they sell stock photo rights?

Clearly, there is a lot of money to be made in the photo space. It's universal - everyone has a camera and a hankering to be an artist - me included.

bigbang• 18 years ago

Doesnt Flickr already have this? http://www.flickr.com/do/more/

lux• 18 years ago

Good idea. I'd like to see something like this become more integral on Flickr. I've been doing some searching for ideas for album artwork, and I found something on Flickr I'd strongly consider using, but I'll still have to contact and negotiate and it would be nice to have a bit of a framework for doing so, so that the photographer isn't potentially put off or things the email isn't legit. This sounds a lot like what youlicense.com does for music, btw.

cschneid• 18 years ago

I really like the idea, at least the stock rights part of it. The printing part feels over saturated, but the stock photography part feels like it could be done.

Email me, I'd like to talk more about this.

bootload• 18 years ago

"... Having tinkered with the Flickr API, I don't think this would be hard to engineer. And I think there is an easy revenue model (a cut of sales), a low barrier to entry for users, and a large long tail to make money off of. ..."

Why just flickr? Why not all the available images sites?

andrewljohnson5• 18 years ago

Starting with the big one seems prudent.

rs• 18 years ago

I remember reading somewhere that Facebook has more pictures than Flickr, though its mostly pictures of friends, but might be worth looking into that as well

espadagroup• 18 years ago

It's a great idea, though I think ImageKind covers most of this.

gfodor3• 18 years ago

It's a bad idea. The reason it's a bad idea is because there is no sustainable competitive advantage and you're putting yourself in a position where Flickr could wake up one day and marginalize your entire business. (At which point it would be a race to the bottom margin-wise, until you go under and they have a monopoly on the service.)

It's funny how the people here on HN seem to equate "thing that would be fun to build and use" with "good idea for a profitable business."

andrewljohnson5• 18 years ago

If you have the easiest to use site, that makes people money off their Flickr purchases, then that's sustainable.

It's not like there is any "sustainable advantage" to Google search - they weren't first to market in the space, and they can be beat - but right now, no one can beat them.

It may be true - this app or Google might not last in "the long run." But what's the long run?

I'd say if you made this Flickr converter and made a few million bucks in a year or two, you'd be happy, even if Yahoo smashed you later.

Throwing around business buzz words like "sustainable competitive advantage" and "race to the bottom," and insulting the community to boot, is no way to argue. Take it from a guy who can program and who has a prestigious business degree - you are talking out of the wrong orifice.

gfodor3• 18 years ago

Uh, those aren't buzzwords. If you have to choose a project to work on for a startup, one of the first things you should be asking yourself is "what can I do to maintain a slight advantage over my competitors for some reasonable period of time?" This should be one of the first questions you ask, it's a pre-condition.

It might be an exclusive partnership, a difficult to replicate technology, a patent, an incredibly novel or non-obvious idea, something you have domain knowledge that's relatively exclusive, etc. This particular idea has none of these, and would be marginalized overnight if it showed any indications of being a profitable venture.

Also, when setting out on starting a project that's going to take more than a few weeks, you want to pick a really good idea. You only get a few shots at this, particularly if you're going to quit your day job. You'd best prune away ideas that, best case scenario, you expect to "make a million bucks in a year or two and get smashed." Instead, you want to focus on the few ideas you have that you think could become the next Google. Of course, it generally doesn't turn out this way, but you should at least feel that it's within the realm of possibility.

I wasn't insulting the community beyond the posters here who are saying this is a great idea without actually critiquing the business side of things. If I see bad advice, I'll point it out. (Although I'll admit it was a bit snarky, I was just a little taken back by all the "Great Idea!" posts.)

BTW, insulting the poster isn't the best way to argue, either.

SingAlong• 18 years ago

So if you are going to make profit out of a site built on top of the Flickr API, then you'll have to use the commercial API. So the factors to consider would include the cost of the commercial API too. Besides, you'll also have to use some merchant account/Paypl to process payments which again eats off a bit of the money you get out of your commission you get out of letting people sell the pics.

This idea would automatically turn a amateur photographer's or artist's flickr account into something the person can make a profit by selling his best stuff. That would atleast fund upgrading his cameras or buy new colors. You could start by targeting amateur photographers and artists. But make sure you find an extra stream of revenue apart from sales commission.

But idea is sweet.

Ask HN: Does this idea exist and who wants it?

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