What's holding me back?

I don't understand what it is. Can someone explain it in very simple terms?

It's a self hosted site? But it links sites together for search so if you don't have images, someone else's in the network are show? Is there a consistent look and feel so customers from one Sym site are immediately comfortable with another site?

What's holding me back?

I don't understand what it is. Can someone explain it in very simple terms?

It's a self hosted site? But it links sites together for search so if you don't have images, someone else's in the network are show? Is there a consistent look and feel so customers from one Sym site are immediately comfortable with another site?

I'm probably not the best person to give you a thorough explanation so I just won't even try.

My suggestion to you is go to www.symbiostock.info which is a meta search engine crawling the Symbiostock network, meaning that the search results are being compiled from all Symbiostock members.

Once you have a list of search results, click on different images and you will be redirected to the respective photographer and his/her individual Symbiostock web site.

Then you will see the "similarity" or "feel" of the Symbiostock sites in general.

If you are a hard core CSS and PHP programmer you can make your own Symbiostock site look any way you want, the sky is the limit.

Many new developments and plugins are being developed on an ongoing basis so there will be a solution for mostly any issue that might come up.

the pimping is so sad Jens, no need really

Quote from: cclapper on July 15, 2013, 19:35

Yes, customers have to register at every site, but they have to do that if they want to buy from different agencies, so nothing different there.

I doubt many customers will register at every site in our network. Content on the current websites is already very different and will continue to diversify as the network grows. Customers will find a few sites with content interesting or useful to them, and they'll probably be happy to sign up with those few.

Good point.

I would love to set up my own site, and fully intend to do so at some point. #1 issue is time.

ja ja, thats all true, but look at it from the customers side.

The problem is, we don't know who the customer is ( or will be).

Will it be a big design firm who has a contract with iGetShuttertime?  I doubt it.  The bean counters won't like using paypal. 

Will it be small design shops?  Maybe.

Will it be people who just need a couple of images now and then?  I think this might be the market... and just think about how big this market might be.

But who knows.... the only way to find out is to build it and see what happens. I think it could be a very interesting ride.

Quote from: JPSDK on July 15, 2013, 19:53

ja ja, thats all true, but look at it from the customers side.

The problem is, we don't know who the customer is ( or will be).

Will it be people who just need a couple of images now and then?  I think this might be the market... and just think about how big this market might be.

There is stock photo business analysis that seems to indicate this may be the case.

There are successful independent stock licensing sites with a large number of monthly visitors that claim only a few of their image license buyers even know about the existence of  "stock photo agencies".

http://www.danheller.com/blog/posts/do-buyers-use-search-engines-more-than.html

I followed it only from time to time besides shooting, post processing, distributing my images across agencies, keeping up with other industry news, starting at new agencies.

It looks very interesting and maybe it's about time to join it. But it's hard to just cut out an unknown amount of time from my schedule, hoping it will return at least the amount of money it takes to host it plus the time I need to invest. And I don't believe in "customers randomly appearing", so I need a clearer picture about a marketing plan going along with starting a site.

I am definitely interested, but I would have to do a bunch of up front work plus the image uploading and I definitely can't do that until I have a consistent reasonably fast internet connection and a few weeks to use it. Maybe this fall when a bunch of other things wind down? I also wonder if my portfolio is big and good enough to compensate the up front and recurring costs.

Yesterday I thought I would join, and thought symbiostock had matured to a reasonable degree wghere it was worth while. So I investigated.

But I was disappointed and I even got upset, now I have slept on it, and now Im just sad.

Im sad because the symbiopstock concept could have been a powerful competitor to the greedy agencies. A new concept that had the power to gain market shares and show the way for other artists.
It could have been a place that flourised with innovation and synergy and set a new "fair trade" standard.

But the potential of the concept is now � wasted, as all the trafic is directed into nice little personal shops, that are by and large only of interest to their owner.

Symbiostock is now a gathering of photographers in a kindergarden, a sandbox as someone says, with very little economic potential.
It is not a serious attempt to do business.

If you want to do serious business, you must think about the customers.
Then someone said: But we dont know who the customers are.
You should, after having been in the trade for a while now, havent you found your pictures out there?

I can tell you a few things about customers. And yes, I sometimes buy pictures.



They want to easily and quickly find exactly what they need, even without searching, so they need trendy pics up front to click on and buy in 10 seconds.
When they search they want a choice of relevant pictures to show up in the first attempt, and they expect to be able to evaluate the content and quality in the thumbnail. They dont care if the pictures come from different artists.
Customers do not care about photographers, actually the opposite, they might stop shopping because they find out, they are at a certain photographers shop, and they do not like his name or something. The artist background and his whole shop arrangement should only be visible for customers who activily seek that information. Its irellevant for the customer.
The buying process must be smooth and feel secure.
The login proces must be smooth and secure.



And then something about what customers are not:
Customers are not interested in pictures, they are interested in buying pictures, thats not the same.
Customers are not patient, if you waste their time they go away.
Customers are not forgiving, it does not take many irellevant or low quality pictures to loose their interest.
Customers are carefull about security, therefore the registration and payment should be in one country with a rule of law. Not spread out everwhere with all kinds of strange individuals.
Customers are not stupid, they can compare prices.
Customers are not philantropists, they want a piece of the cake. And since there is no middleman, they know the pictures should be cheaper.
Customers do not have a good memory, the little memory they have, mostly remembers general bad things. This means that they might have been happy with a fine photo from photographer XX but annoyed with having to check out from multiple photographers, and a month later, they only remember the nuisance, and they wont come back.

As it is now symbiostock is not
customer friendly
secure enough
branded enough

worst however, is that the features contradict the concept.

You guys need to kick yourself in the a*ss, and redesign things, the sooner the better. Else you will only get sales from friends and family.

Yesterday I thought I would join, and thought symbiostock had matured to a reasonable degree wghere it was worth while. So I investigated.

But I was disappointed and I even got upset, now I have slept on it, and now Im just sad.

Im sad because the symbiopstock concept could have been a powerful competitor to the greedy agencies. A new concept that had the power to gain market shares and show the way for other artists.
It could have been a place that flourised with innovation and synergy and set a new "fair trade" standard.

But the potential of the concept is now � wasted, as all the trafic is directed into nice little personal shops, that are by and large only of interest to their owner.

Symbiostock is now a gathering of photographers in a kindergarden, a sandbox as someone says, with very little economic potential.
It is not a serious attempt to do business.

If you want to do serious business, you must think about the customers.
Then someone said: But we dont know who the customers are.
You should, after having been in the trade for a while now, havent you found your pictures out there?

I can tell you a few things about customers. And yes, I sometimes buy pictures.



They want to easily and quickly find exactly what they need, even without searching, so they need trendy pics up front to click on and buy in 10 seconds.
When they search they want a choice of relevant pictures to show up in the first attempt, and they expect to be able to evaluate the content and quality in the thumbnail. They dont care if the pictures come from different artists.
Customers do not care about photographers, actually the opposite, they might stop shopping because they find out, they are at a certain photographers shop, and they do not like his name or something. The artist background and his whole shop arrangement should only be visible for customers who activily seek that information. Its irellevant for the customer.
The buying process must be smooth and feel secure.
The login proces must be smooth and secure.



And then something about what customers are not:
Customers are not interested in pictures, they are interested in buying pictures, thats not the same.
Customers are not patient, if you waste their time they go away.
Customers are not forgiving, it does not take many irellevant or low quality pictures to loose their interest.
Customers are carefull about security, therefore the registration and payment should be in one country with a rule of law. Not spread out everwhere with all kinds of strange individuals.
Customers are not stupid, they can compare prices.
Customers are not philantropists, they want a piece of the cake. And since there is no middleman, they know the pictures should be cheaper.
Customers do not have a good memory, the little memory they have, mostly remembers general bad things. This means that they might have been happy with a fine photo from photographer XX but annoyed with having to check out from multiple photographers, and a month later, they only remember the nuisance, and they wont come back.

As it is now symbiostock is not
customer friendly
secure enough
branded enough

worst however, is that the features contradict the concept.

You guys need to kick yourself in the a*ss, and redesign things, the sooner the better. Else you will only get sales from friends and family.

Just wanted to quote/capture this before it changes.

I do not have a clue who jpsdk is but admits they are a sad individual by their own admission

It is so easy to attack and belittle a concept, especially something that is so new.  It is much harder to actually put some effort in and make it work as many of us are doing.


Edit.  corrected spelling error

Quote from: JPSDK on July 16, 2013, 03:16

As it is now symbiostock is not
customer friendly
secure enough
branded enough

Obviously this is in it's infancy, but wouldn't this global search concept be the way to go .......

http://www.symbiostock.info

one key point of entry to brand and market

www.symbiostock.info is one of the best things to happen to this project.

http://www.symbiostock.com/symbiostock-api-for-developers-and-marketing/

Most of the network integrating features are still untapped, but they are there and waiting to be used.