New Astrophotography website on its way

[Gvarouha (George)]

Hi all,

I've been working on an idea of late to help promote the hobby and make it a little more accessible, and would love some feedback.

I am building a website based around a marketplace where members can buy and sell their data. As part of the membership I will provide 2 sets of data per month for free, and they can be used however you wish, once you process the data you own the image. Based on those 2 sets of data there will also be monthly processing competitions, where you could win Astrophotography gear.

The whole point is to promote the hobby to people who struggle with the hefty costs, but also to increase what we can image ie, if you have a wide field setup, you can purchase data from someone who has a long focal length. DSLR and One shot colour imagers can use someone's HA data to boost detail.

The web page is www.stacklebag.com and I'm currently running a kickstarter campaign to try and get the webpage off the ground.

Any feedback would be great.

Cheers
George

[Dealy (Kev)]

Great idea George

[codemonkey (Lee)]

I posted a thread a while back with the same basic idea. I'm still working on it, but I'm taking it more slowly than I originally planned. You may well beat me to it ;-) Good luck!

[Gvarouha (George)]

Thanks Kev...Sorry Lee, I don't intended to hijack anyone's ideas.

[glend (Glen)]

It's worth noting that Astrobin already offers member TIFF file sharing via its website, along with its posting, storage and gallery functions, image of the day, awards, and now forums as well. Astrobin was free up to 1 January and is now a mix of a basic free service and a premium subscriber service ($36 USD) per annum. Large RAW files take up alot of space and require alot of bandwidth to get in and out so make sure you consider these factors before you build. Consider how you are going to manage the sale of data files and integrate a payment system, and resolve the eventual conflicts that develop, copyright being one. If your running it as a market place, and are 'introducing' buyers and sellers via your site, what is your liability in the transaction, and will they buy and sell via your site or push them off to Paypal. There will be Paypal fees of course. Astrobin allows members to download the TIFF files that other members post on the public shared file facility - for free (other than the membership fee).

Consider as well the emerging market for remote telescope facilties, which give people access on a casual basis to state of the art scopes, cameras, filters, etc in great locations around the world - for a fee of course. Files provided by remote imaging facilities are owned by the buyer as a data stream. Processing services is an area where copyright might be an issue. Astrobin has a page that inserts a copyright on all images uploaded to the public area.

This is an emerging service business area and does have potential if it is done right and the potential user community sees it as fair - and not just some money grab. It might be a good idea to survey potential users to see what they might be willing to pay for the service. Startup research is time well spent - don't assume that if you build it they will come.

Good luck with your venture.

[codemonkey (Lee)]

Originally Posted by Gvarouha

Thanks Kev...Sorry Lee, I don't intended to hijack anyone's ideas.

No worries at all mate, I certainly don't have a monopoly on the idea and we've got slightly different takes on it as well. Seriously, good luck, it's a big undertaking!

Originally Posted by glend

not just some money grab.

Sorry Glen, I'm going to pounce on this one, don't take it personally. An undertaking like the one George is talking about requires serious investment in terms of time, money and skill. I'm forever seeing this mentality that creating a (paid) service is a "money grab", like people have a right to all of this for free.

Everyone hates ads, but they have no idea of the cost involved in making a serious web application like this. So they hate ads (hey, so do I), but then expect all of this to be given to them for free, and if anyone tries to offer a paid service it's a "money grab."

I'm a professional web application developer, and to do what I do well takes years of experience, in addition to the 10s of thousands of dollars many of us spent to get that university degree.

I've been working on my own variant of this theme in my limited spare time. I've been working on it for months, and I expect if I ever "finish" it, it'll be years of effort, not to mention real costs. Why should I, or George, or Salvator, do all of this for free? I wouldn't expect Bintel to sell me equipment at cost price, why should we expect all of this for nothing?

Again, this isn't really targeted at you specifically Glen, just the general mentality that we deserve to have these things for free, and that the months and months of hard work and financial risk people expose themselves to is not worthy of a return, it's a selfish "money grab."

/ rant

[glend (Glen)]

I have no issue with charging a fee for a service and getting remuneration for effort. The issue is in the perception of the buyers that what is being offered is value for money. Your darn right that people might not see the years of work that went into getting you into the position of putting it into production, but that is true of any profession. Doctors are not entitled to bill patients a fee for the cost of their education, it is recovered (or not) over a life time of work in the field. The cost of developing your skills are a sunk cost of getting into the business. It is the cost of entry.

Now yes, you are entitled to recover the cost of your time on that or any project (if you had a commercial customer who wanted to pay you for it). That recovery is also subject to the competition available to do the job, ie you can't price yourself out of work. But this is not a client driven piece of work, you are the client and the developer.

So charge what you like, but be able to explain the 'value propostion' to potential customers - some of whom might see a money grab until the value proposition is explained.

[Gvarouha (George)]

I agree with both points of view. I have run my own business for the past 15 years and no, customers don't care what goes on behind the scenes, "perception is everything".

I also agree that while there will always be a free version of everything, once people can charge reasonable rates , they can afford to put more time towards it which inturn produces a product or service that is of a higher quality.

This was my thinking behind offering a marketplace "similar to how stock photos work". If the author made for example $5 (yes with a small commission for the service provider) every time their data is downloaded, and it was downloaded x number of times, they would in turn be able to justify buying that nicer OTA or spend those extra couple of hours on a target which inturn pushes everyone's abilities and grows the hobby.

[codemonkey (Lee)]

Fully agree, Glen. Sorry, bit of a touchy subject for me, I get a bit passionate about it ;-) And my apologies for derailing your thread, George. Once again, good luck with your site.

[Gvarouha (George)]

Lee best of luck mate, I hope some of that passion come through in your project.

Glen, clearly you put some thought into those suggestions mate and I really appreciate the time... Huge profits and easy money aren't the goal here just offering value is no1 priority, and I think most people understand that it doesn't come completely free.

In saying that I should put a little more thought into getting that idea across a little clearer, I can see how it may look like a money grab.

Cheers for the input guys