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

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.

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."

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.

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.

Look at Moo. They are A) profitable, B) run off Flickr, C) in a replicable space (e.g. not hard to copy), and D) still winning.

They win because they were first, and because they are cooler than the others.

That said, being first is a small advantage, particularly in a new space, but not a great one. The real benefit of being first is making it possible for you to build a bigger one (like mindshare,) but there's a lot more luck involved than if you had just started out on a project where you had an incredibly larger advantage. You don't see the failed versions of Moo, now do you?

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

You don't do this?

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..."

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