SmugMug Still Loosing Money With Flickr

[Seven]

Flickr owner SmugMug emails subscribers with an urgent request: help us find more paying users – TechCrunch

Flickr still needs your help. It’s still losing money. You, and hundreds of thousands of loyal Flickr members stepped up and joined Flickr Pro, for which we are eternally grateful. It’s losing a lot less money than it was. But it’s not yet making enough.

Got a surprising email this morning. Apparently flickr is not doing too hot financially, even after cost cutting measures were taken.

It would be a such a shame if Flickr shut down. I personally can't imagine SL without Flickr, it always had such an active community of SL users. Taking and sharing pictures was one of the first things that got me hooked on SL.

 

[Shiloh Lyric]

Yeah, I received that same email. I would love to help, but quite honestly, I don't have a large circle of SL friends and no one in my RL to really give the 25% off "gift" to. And apparently they're raising their prices next year, too.

 

[OrinB]

The biggest thing they can do (as any pay per use service has to attend to) is to restrict the free services they offer. You really can’t offer free services without a balanced fee paying service or advertising. Appealing to those that already do contribute to the paid service they use is a bit off imo. It really shows they’re grasping. I’m going to make sure my payment details aren’t due to renew without notification, this looks like an imminent collapse.

 

[Han Held]

Yeah, I received that same email. I would love to help, but quite honestly, I don't have a large circle of SL friends and no one in my RL to really give the 25% off "gift" to. And apparently they're raising their prices next year, too.

Yeah, I suspect that I'm going to be downloading my things and then deleting my account. Better to do it myself than to get bitten on the ass when they finally go under in the next couple of years...

 

[Seven]

Yeah it's not looking good. I used to use it much more frequently but as I started to spend less time in SL my time on Flickr decreased too.

The price seems reasonable at the moment, and the annual perks look nice at first glance. They just don't appeal to me personally, I already have an Adobe Photography plan. The PHLEARN trial seems nice, but it's just a month. I feel like people who would want to subscribe are likely going to be creative types and already have an Adobe plan anyway.

Having a mobile presence is so important these days too. Their app seems to be rated well overall, but the recent reviews have a lot of one star scores. So they aren't looking great in that department.

 

[Ailsa Muliaina]

I didn't expect much when SmugMug acquired Flickr, they haven't impressed me yet lol. The attitude they displayed when trying to persuade free customers to upgrade was shameful. There are ways to move free customers onto a paid subscription without pissing everyone off and making even loyal Flickr users walk away. Instead they burnt as many bridges as they could and now they're asking customers to market subs for them. I suspect they'll either sell Flickr or drop it and attempt to herd pro users onto SmugMug. I feel bad for Flickr itself, I just hope the site finds a better owner soon.

I used to have a pro account and kept it for years when I was more active there. I dropped below 200 pics when I dropped old Flickr pro and I'm still not up to 300 images. I was just about to upload hundreds of new photos and go pro again when SmugMug bought Flickr. I had a look around and it was cheaper to extend my website hosting package than go pro. I'd rather take on the extra work and backup responsibility than relocate a large image collection when SmugMug mess up.

Plus side, DeviantArt core membership is on offer for Christmas

 

[Brenda Archer]

The content from the account I used the most has simply disappeared. So I don’t think they can get me to sign up.

So much of the history of SL is on Flickr. It’s going to be sad when it’s gone.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

The biggest thing they can do (as any pay per use service has to attend to) is to restrict the free services they offer. You really can’t offer free services without a balanced fee paying service or advertising. Appealing to those that already do contribute to the paid service they use is a bit off imo. It really shows they’re grasping. I’m going to make sure my payment details aren’t due to renew without notification, this looks like an imminent collapse.

They've already done that by limiting the amount of free pics per account to 1000. If you do have more and want to keep it, you've got to pay, otherwise it will be deleted.

When Flickr was under the umbrella of Yahoo! it was one service of many for the parent company, and it did not care too much about covering the costs. You had 1 TB of storage for free, which is massive.

But after the sale and people being the cheapskates that they are not enough decided to pay for premium. It would be not the first important service to fade away, anybody remember Geocities? The web just moves on.

 

[OrinB]

They've already done that by limiting the amount of free pics per account to 1000. If you do have more and want to keep it, you've got to pay, otherwise it will be deleted.

When Flickr was under the umbrella of Yahoo! it was one service of many for the parent company, and it did not care too much about covering the costs. You had 1 TB of storage for free, which is massive.

But after the sale and people being the cheapskates that they are not enough decided to pay for premium. It would be not the first important service to fade away, anybody remember Geocities? The web just moves on.

I know, I'm suggesting they need to do MORE! IMO they need to do more to make becoming pro a necessity rather than a luxury. 200 photos should be the limit for free and the group limits for free are pretty good. Also if you own a group, you can just opt out of the limits. Plus they need to monetise and add way more adverts. Before i became pro i hardly even noticed an ad (and most of them were to become pro). It wasn't really a problem. Plus i only have ±500 photos on the site, so Pro wasn't really a necessity. I did it becasue i ould afford, not becasue i needed the service.

 

[Noodles]

I was a paid Flicker member since like 2006, until last year. They removed my grandfathered $25/year rate and frankly, I feel like I could get a better photo backup/service for $50/year.

Even if I could get the $25/year back again I am not sure I would bother. I already purged out like 15,000 photos to get under the 1000 photo free user level. Reuploading and sorting all that just isn't worth the hassle.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Flickr increased its prices for the Pro service; now the Pro services does cost 60$/year, which is a 10$ increase.

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