Hi gang, I just wanted to report that I have had my first sale at Zymmetrical:  selling price $21, royalty paid to me was $14.70 (I may be a few cents off).   I have very few photos on their site, perhaps 4 dozen.  I really like the way they are doing things - and am willing to invest in this new site.  (Had already intended to update my port before such a nice sale).   

P.S.  It's my last time at a computer till next week if there's any comments to this post.

Congrats on the sale.  I have 186 there and no downloads.  I have had 2 downloads with cutcaster when I had less images uploaded and for less time.  Looks like cutcaster will get my portfolio before zymmetrical.  I would be more motivated to upload there if I had a few sales.

I still can only change the price on one image at a time and have to wait 8 days to do the next one.  I am not uploading any more until that is changed.

Wow, a week later and another sale on Zymmetrical this morning.  Normally I wouldn't be so excited about 2 sales on a new site; but, these are pretty significant sales when you compare them to what the micros are paying.  Sales of $56 have earned me $39.20. 

Sidenote:  If that was Istock, and they sold $56 I would have received $11.20. 

This leads my next connundrum.  Pricing.  I preferred it when Zymmetrical applied the price, but now we set our own and I am not always confident what it should be.   I guess I'll stick with the 15-35 range are as it doesn't seem to deter the buyers.

I really like the way this site is progressing (even without the sales, but that makes me like it more!).  And they are still in beta.  Who are their buyers? 

Hehe - I thought of that too... but they can use our photos as they like in promos can't they, why would they pay?  The only one I thought I was ever paid for promos from was LO.

  So for once it has paid for me to be a blababoosh. Keep giving me sells, I'll keep blabbin!     

Kidding aside, the payout is $10 so I'll even be able to cash out this month.   This will be the next test!

Moori, yes actually I wanted to point that out because Pixart seemed to misinterpret it - you (at this point least) only have to have the minimum 10 tags for it to accept the submission onto a Pending status.     Category and Price are optional.    If you don't pick them, our Reviewers will.

Lorraine, here is perhaps a clue: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=buy+stock+photos&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz2. Of course we can't elaborate on what we do to get buyers on this board in particular.            

Thanks for your fast reply Keith!  Time to push a couple more pictures through then =)

Hi Lorraine,

Sorry we do know it's not so slick with the Paypal payout request method currently. I will leave it at: we have something much, much better being inked at this moment. As for the taxation, all I know is we pay Victoria our dues and further than that I would not want to advise, not knowing the specifics of the rules outside BC with great clarity. Your accountant should be able to advise best.

Splash page placements are not compensated directly, other than that they get 10 gazillion times more views then sub-pages thus (as it seems) result in some impulse buys. This time around we let each of the reviewers pick their single favorite for the homepage slideshow, so it should be a hot selection from the people who 'see it all' and know what buyers want.

btw. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22buy+stock+photos%22&btnG=Search & http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22sell+stock+photos%22&btnG=Search
.. a little progress.

Keith if you are out there, I noticed $ in my account yesterday, but the sales manager button leads to or sticks on my account page and in the past it led to a list of recent sales.  (Hopefully it's a real sale and a broken sales manager )

I've had some problems recently and this morning with searches.  Many critical errors or 0 results.  Now I tried again 10 minutes later and it worked perfectly so that tells me it is only intermittent.  I just report this because it's enough to turn me off and come back later - except I will always come back and a new buyer may not.  I use Explorer if that helps.

Many (not all) of my photos have just script and x boxes when I click through.  I noticed that a couple weeks ago when the canola photo was first featured on the splash page - but  I checked again and today it is still just script.  I could swear there was a post here on MSG about this subject but I can't find the answer, maybe I'm supposed to send a ticket with file #s?: 

Thanks!

They are still in Beta my friend.  I don't support many new sites, but I'll be sticking with them.

Hi Lorraine,

Thanks for pointing that out. I know the precise reason why that page output problem was occurring and it should be fixed now. It was a little tweak designed to decrease the pageload time, but the pages were clearly getting ahead of themselves. We are working hard on an entirely new photo page design with and that type of rendering problem will not be an issue in the system, due next week.

For the intermittent problem you experienced, we are adding and changing things daily so once in a while there will be hiccups. They all get logged and prioritized in our bug tracker, and then fixed - but thanks for pointing this out. It may better if you report incidents like this in our own Site Suggestions forum on Zymm, where it is centralized and read by everyone in the firm.

thanks

Keith if you are out there, I noticed $ in my account yesterday, but the sales manager button leads to or sticks on my account page and in the past it led to a list of recent sales.  (Hopefully it's a real sale and a broken sales manager )

I've had some problems recently and this morning with searches.  Many critical errors or 0 results.  Now I tried again 10 minutes later and it worked perfectly so that tells me it is only intermittent.  I just report this because it's enough to turn me off and come back later - except I will always come back and a new buyer may not.  I use Explorer if that helps.

Many (not all) of my photos have just script and x boxes when I click through.  I noticed that a couple weeks ago when the canola photo was first featured on the splash page - but  I checked again and today it is still just script.  I could swear there was a post here on MSG about this subject but I can't find the answer, maybe I'm supposed to send a ticket with file #s?: 

Thanks!

Ah yes sorry - we had a pesky bug that would go through and remove the "-" dashes from the URLs of some page names, whenever some routine updates were made.   The URL in the top part of the page has "sales-manager" whereas the current URL is http://www.zymmetrical.com/account/salesmanager/. If you hit that link you should be in.

p.s. The forum has been spiffed up this week: http://www.zymmetrical.com/info.  Lots of improvements, including the way notifications are handled - which would I guess why you're questions there may have been missed.

It is good to see some sales happening, I hope it continues.  One day a new site is going to make it big and kill off all those posts about avoiding new sites

Hi,

The Reviewers would normally not override the price selected by you, unless they have some specific knowledge that a photo could move better at a different price. Can you tell me what the original price you set was and what the set price was?

Aside from a deliberate price change, there is also the possibility that you or the Reviewers applied the price accidentally with the new batch interface: it is definitely easy to select some files and leave some options checkmarked unintentionally, everyone can do this from time to time.

For the Art Manager, it is getting an upgrade like the Submissions page within the coming weeks: batch pricing options, along with live statistics to help you make choices about price and keyword changes. For now if it is giving you grief, I would simply avoid using it (Doctors favorite advice).
 

Ok we would definitely not have priced down - the idea is to get away from Microstock pricing and not closer.    As my previous guess was, I think it must have been either our team or you accidentally leaving a checkbox on when not intended.  If you shoot a PM with the file ID's I could price them up in the meantime.

Ok thanks to Zymm I will have a big for x-mas 

damnit Well I had a $ 20 sale then so that's good, just hit my first payout on Zym
Thanks for the update Keith

Should be fixed now. 

ha ha 

I think I got the first sale there today, but I'm not sure since the sales manager web page is under construction.

congratulation to your first sale at zym.
I like them...  especially for the easy upload process.
and for me the sales are better then at bigstock.

the only annoying thing is that I had some problems with the "Methode A - Batch Photo Upload" during the last days....

Good stuff guys..  just to let you know we've turned off uploading till Dec. 15 (FTP and the web methods) for a couple reasons:

- Like you pointed out, it's not perfectly smooth with either FTP or the Flash uploader. We need to do some stress testing to find the weak links in the chain and fix 'em.. unfortunately it's become impractical to have 100% realistic test environment with that area of things (anyone who licenses expensive software knows this pain), so the only answer is to take the live uploading offline for a bit so we can rough it up and make it spill the beans as to why it's giving people grief sometimes.     

- Although our Reviewers have been doing an amazing job thus far, and we have been getting better at training and getting additional Reviewers in when needed, there has been a backlog in particular in the Graphics dept.  We need to focus on neglected files that have been waiting too long and get this spare tire around the queue's waist into shape.         

..  Dec. 15 is an absolute latest date for this, i'm sure we will accomplish our goals sooner.   Thanks for your patience as we take this needed breather to give it a post-launch tuneup.

hey nata_rass,

may be its a question of pricing your images. may I ask which price do you select on zym for your images?

I usualy select the lowest possible price (3$) in order to compete with other images... but I am not sure whether this is the right strategy.

gunnar

It is unfortunate that you have no sales, may ask I,

- have you contacted us in this one year period to ask what can be done to improve visibility of your existing portfolio
- have you linked to Zymmetrical to help bring new buyers
- have you asked us or members who do have sales what themes are indeed selling
- have you uploaded fresh content in small batches to help with visibility
- have you had a disproportionate number of rejected photos, which can negatively affect your ranking

Now I am aware there is pretty popular feeling that people do not want to 'find out what this or that new agency wants', because they haven't earned you money yet.  I get the feeling some people would be more inclined to play the gambling machines in Vegas than to take methodical, coordinated look at how to build an earnings base in the 'midstock' arena.  Presenting a checklist of actions to take is probably the last thing you want to see.

The carpet-bomb upload strategy that seems to apply with subscription agencies, will not work as well in midstock. If a buyer is going to shell out $60 for a photo, to get the photo they want directly on target, you need laser-guided intelligence, and that comes from having your team on the ground guiding that sale in.  If you consider that there are many members, with a similar portfolio size as you, that are making regular sales in the price range of $10 - $70, then the question needs to be asked, what is different about their portfolios than yours.

I am not aware of any major DSLR with an agency-specific mode dial setting- if you are reading this forum, you are a probably already a great photographer, you have the ability to technically and conceptually shoot most anything. From everything I know, the vast, vast majority of Microstockers have to actually perform a great deal of hustling to get their monthly payouts, and not very many are ready to cash out for that summer home in the south of France or a new boat.  If you are ready to work with us to increase sales, we are always here.

zymmetrical, WOW 
I will contact support soon. Thank you very much!

If you could outline the major preferences of Zymm-buyers in this topic, it would be very usefull for all of us. Probably, the content I submit is not really needed 

We are working on a guide/wiki-type system for helping our sellers know what we are looking for technically and conceptually - it will tie in nicely with the new statistics system that is near completion. We want to be as transparent as possible and not have uploading content be like dealing with the Wizard of Oz, the last thing I want to see is people get frustrated and go because we are ambiguous about content requirements. 

There is no simple answer for clarity on this, it is a multi-level approach through personal communication (like this), documentation, and live statistics - all of which we are improving daily.    It's a bit of a change in gears when you are selling files direct, at 'midstock' prices rather than by bulk subscription or at micro-prices, the stakes are much higher but on the flipside, you know the buyers really mean it when they buy. So, stay tuned we should have something put together that puts the Artists into the loop more.

zymmetrical, WOW 
I will contact support soon. Thank you very much!

If you could outline the major preferences of Zymm-buyers in this topic, it would be very usefull for all of us. Probably, the content I submit is not really needed 

Well, after all this raving I tried to register but it didn't work. I tried 2 times but as the site is sooo slow I guess my registration is lost in space everytime.
What is the problem?

@ Zymmettrical: After attempt three it worked but maybe you can tell me something about the reviewing system. I upload with ftp a bunch of about 25 images. But when I log in I can't find them. Is this normal? How will I know if they have arrived at zymmetrical and just are waiting for review or if they have never arrived at all? And I also didn't see any images in my queu. (when looking at statistics.)
Thanks in advance

Hi Keith,
I wanted to contact you via the site but the site will not open. It takes minutes and minutes and than still nothing. Early this morning I was able to log in but I couldn't send my images up for reviewing. Is there something wrong?

Oh Keith, it seems you sleep as me, some 5-6 hours a day! You wrote me a message some 6 hours ago, and you are already awake and active in the forum

Oh, upi live in Germany so we are in the same or almost the same time zone. That explains a lot