It's Official: Netflix (NFLX) Destroys BlockBuster (BBI)

from Silicon Alley Insider by Henry Blodget

For a few minutes, it seemed BlockBuster's Total Access plan might actually post a problem for Netflix: After all, the in-store pick-up and drop-off just seemed so convenient.  Well, the results are in, and the answer is "no."

As Peter Kafka reported yesterday, BlockBuster's Total Access subscription business got crushed in Q3, with subs declining by 500,000.  Netflix's subscriber base, meanwhile, resumed growth, climbing 286,000.  Analysts are now justifiably fretting about the growth of subscription business overall (it shrank for the first time), and Netflix's next challenge is to figure out how to thrive in a digital-delivery world. 

But in this latest example of how hard it is to transform a physical-world business model to compete with a focused online competitor, the word "BlockBuster" need never again come up on a Netflix conference call.  That fight is over.  (The final insult?  Netflix's market cap is 2X Blockbuster's)

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20+ Tools To Sell Your Photos and Templates Online

November 2, 2007 — 01:24 AM PDT — by Sean P. Aune — Share This

We've done a lot of toolboxes on how to design your sites and get yourself up and running. Well, have you found yourself with a lot of discarded work as you tried different things? Maybe some spare photos? A tossed aside template? Why not turn them in to money makers for you? We've gathered together 20+ sites for you to sell off your photography and templates, and you never know, it could become a whole new revenue stream for you!

Don't forget to check out our post where you can suggest future toolbox topics! (This list, for example, came from one of the suggestions.)

Photography

123RF.com - Offers two payment systems: 50% of individual high res photo sale, and $.36 per subscription download.

Alamy.com - With over 10 million images, you may get a little lost in the shuffle here, but if you can sell your work, you'll get 65%.

BigStockPhoto.com - Normal downloads will make you $.50 to $1.00. Special downloads (people who wish to produce products with your image) can make you $60.

CitizenImage.com - A mixture of selling news images and stock photos of daily life. They will also accept camera phone images for news images. Payout of 50% of the proceeds.

Dreamstime.com - You have to be approved by the quality of your images for inclusion, and the payout is a tiered system that is fairly complex, so it is best that you look at the chart they provide, but payouts can reach as high as 80%.

Fotolia.com - Offers sites for various countries, commissions for sale of your photos averages 52%, and goes as high as 80%.

iStockphoto.com - One of the best known stock image sites, has a pay out of 70%.

PhotoStockPlus.com - Provides you with your own ecommerce site to sell your photos as well as goods featuring your images. 85% of the sale goes to you.

ScoopLive.com - A marketplace for your news related images, sold in an auction format. Commissions can be up to 85%, but the system isn't clear.

Scoopt.com - An agency for selling your images to the media. Upload your photos and they will try to sell them exclusively for 12-months. If they can't use them, they will tell you so you won't be under contract, and at the end of the year, the exclusivity ends. Pays 40% of final sale.

ShutterPoint.com - Offers a lot of features for photographers including the chance to fulfill buyer requests. Has an 85% payout.

ShutterStock.com - Since it is a subscription based system, you are paid per the download. Currently the payout is $.25 per download. Also allows for uploading of stock video footage.

SpyMedia.com - Sell stock images for approximately a 60% commission after fees. Unique "bounty" system where people list what they want, what they'll pay, and you can fulfill it for extra work.

Stockxpert.com - Earn 50% ofthe sale, and with prices ranging $1 to $10, it could rack up quickly.

SuperStock.com - A stock image seller for over 20 years, seems pretty selective in the work they except, and no mention of prcentage.

Templates & Themes

CovantageTemplates.com - Allows you to sell all sorts of templates and themes, they keep 12% of each sale.

Customotion.com - Sell a full Flash page or just a menu. Customotion takes approxiametly 1/3 of the price charged to the customer.

Earner's Forum Marketplace - A message board for you to advertise your themes, templates, complete websites and more.

HooverWebDesign.com - Templates for just about everything from business sites, Power Point, and even parties. Pays an average of $10 a template.

JungleTango.com - A recently launched marketplace for WordPress themes. Not real clear on how much of the sale they keep. Does emphasize selling unique designs and not selling over and over.

SitePoint's Template Marketplace - List your templates for various systems here and connect directly with your buyers.

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Toshiba Rolls Out 22-Inch 3840x2400 Monitor [Monitors]

from Gizmodo by Wilson Rothman

Can you say WQUXGA? Toshiba can. According to a translated promo page, it built the 22" "super Kousei small LCD monitor" with a resolution of 3840x2400. That's 200 dots per inch! Toshiba admits, though, that the contrast ratio is 300:1, pretty bad even if you don't believe in contrast-ratio reporting. In Japan, MSRP for this sucker is 2,079,000 Yen (about $18,000). The XP-compatible PCI card required to run it will set you back another 312,900 Yen ($2,700). Oddly enough, in our search for an image, we found this reportedly WQUXGA monitor by ADTX, selling for the mysteriously low price of 198,000 Yen ($1,700)—wonder what the contrast ratio is on that. [ Toshiba via Akihabara News; Source image from Matrox]

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Why the Newspapers Still Don't Get It - re:Linking

from CenterNetworks - by Allen Stern

This morning I was pointed to an article on the Washington Post about travel. If you want to find it, you can go to the Washington Post site and look around. I am sure you will find it eventually. Maybe, maybe not. Click here, click there, search, and perhaps you will find the article called "Web Travel Resources, Part I". Wouldn't it be easier if I just linked to it?

Yet in the article, the authors names about 20 Web sites without one link. You as the reader are forced to copy and paste and hope that the site is name.com and not getname.com, haveaname.com or any other variant. Why wouldn't they want to link? This is the same issue with almost every newspaper Web site. Rarely a link within a story to the relevant sites. Bloggers are quoted everyday on the New York Times site but they won't link to the blog.

The newspaper sites still don't get how to join the conversation. It starts with something as simple as a link to the sites and blogs who provided the content. In this case, the links should be provided to the travel sites that are mentioned. To steal a word from Uncov, FAIL.

Yet, they are willing to slap a link on the word "Apple" to their stock page. Is it desperation to hold on to the visitor?

Of course many of the big bloggers seem to have adopted similar out-linking policies. More to come about that later. Check out our previous Washington Post coverage including a video review of their new social site.

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Zlio Readies New Version

from CenterNetworks - by Allen Stern

Online store creator Zlio is in the beginning stages of launching their Version 3 of their application. When we interviewed founder Jeremie Berrebi he described Zlio as, " Zlio helps you start your own online shop in 5 minutes! Even if you don't have anything to sell! Zlio offers you to choose from an exhaustive catalogue of thousands of products and arrange your own ZlioShop without programming anything!"

Check out the Zlio blog for more details on the upcoming release which appears to launch "soon". They are using the strategy of sharing bits and bits before the full launch. This can have positive and negative buzz effects. If they keep it to a short duration and deliver on the dates they promise, it's positive. If they miss dates, and/or keep the game going for a long period, their shopkeepers might become frustrated.

The first piece of the upgrade is the management interface split between store promotion and store management. Here is an example of the updated version:

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