This is inevitable for agencies that concentrate on designing site and on closing contributor accounts rather than on attracting buyers. No regret .

Best of luck to everyone !


-Mark
http://markwpayne.wordpress.com
 

@ Keith, Good luck for the future to all that were at Zym, and with any other ventures.

@ FD, put your generic images on microstock, treat your travel shots as 'niche', self promote and put them with macro agencies like Alamy, if they are not there at $0.25 the publishers will have to find them and pay the rate for the right image.

The main problem with microstock is the artists not understanding the market and the value of each asset, and uploading everything everywhere, the question each artist needs to ask is "what is the availability of images with this content and where best to place it", handshakes and headsets to microstock, the local interest images that a travel magazine or local company  would use, send them to a specialist or macrostock agency and self promote.

The microstock market was and is still dominated by the established big agencies, any new websites cannot compete with them on price and attract enough buyers to make it pay, contributing artists should avoid these new sites unless they have a specialist market or an existing customer base, in the future look only to the big sites for global generic micro content images, using the better paying microstock, niche and specialist sites for other travel and more artistic content that is not on the big sites.

This is inevitable for agencies that concentrate on designing site and on closing contributor accounts rather than on attracting buyers. No regret .

i think you have a point there.
the recurring problem with the site and the cumbersome keywording format . i know some ppl here complain about IS being cumbersome to upload. well, actually, i find IS very simple and easy, compared to Zymm.
i think it's the inconsistencies and erratic nature of the site that just worked against Keith and his sincere vision to give us a site that pays something the contributors so deserve, instead of peanuts.

all in all, the writings on the wall. settle for less or settle with nothing at all.

On the other hand, I saw the writing on this wall about a year ago and emailed to close my account. I got an email back that from October 08 to November 08 Zymm had:

- increased pageviews x35% and traffic by x320% in last month alone

Just a little extra info for anyone who is monitoring a certain agency that claims some pretty big increases in the last month and year.  I'm not saying .... I'm just saying....

'm not saying .... I'm just saying....

Sometimes you shouldn't say. I consider Keith as a great guy and I will miss him here a lot. As far as possible in cyber life, I even consider him as a friend. I saw the handwriting too and I'm known for my bad mouth but not as a backstabber.

Thanks Hugo I consider you a friend as well, even though we annoyed . out of you as a programmer yourself with all the bugs, you recognized the underlying intention and energy behind the project. Maybe next time I will get it right. 

You have a PM. It's only over when the fat lady sings 

Again, no disrespect to Zym - sorry about that - it's about sites that will fail going forward and how we may be able to spot it before we spend hours uploading.

Fair enough. They are easy to spot. It's just useless to make enemies. You can make an anonymous poll though. 

Sorry - my intent isn't to bash Zym - I had no issue with their site or program or anything. My message was about looking forward to other agencies and seeing what they saying and doing to get ahead overall.  No disrespect to Zym but if 300% traffic increases don't help a site get sales enough to stay afloat we have to be cautious with ANY new/flailing site.

Again, no disrespect to Zym - sorry about that - it's about sites that will fail going forward and how we may be able to spot it before we spend hours uploading.

No worries Matt - i'm sure whatever stats were quoted back then were true, but in terms of how it really matters it is indeed debatable.  In fact, in our final 3 months of operation traffic nearly tripled across our country domains - in reality however for an image agency, traffic can have little bearing on sales. Especially if you add "free" stuff or get indexed heavily in Google for random keyword searches, and you'll get a lot of non-converting traffic.  

It's more than just the economy, there's always different choices that could have been made.. but have a look at this (click the green "play" button on the map) to an almost perfect chronological representation of the stress level experienced in work vs. return with Zymm:  http://www.slate.com/id/2216238/ - whether Artists liked our submissions page or debated our editorial policies, has very very little to do with the reality of doing business in these times, especially when trying to start an "upmarket" brand.

Yes that is true. Payout limits were an administrative overhead construct, if there's nothing to administrate then it's your money. If you believe you were missed on the payout, please send an email to info (at ) zymmetrical.com from your registered account email.

I'm quite late to this thread, my computer has been dying for the last month or so and I've finally migrated to the laptop while the other is out for repair.

I'd like to tell you all that working with Keith at Zym was one of the best experiences I've ever had. He's one of THE nicest people I've known, has a killer sense of humor, and a drive to succeed that is matched by his drive to be fair in business. He also has a great deal of patience, and often put up with me when he should have told me to go chase myself. Who else gets to holler at their boss and have him be nice in return? Not many of us. In the couple of years we worked together not once did I ever hear Keith rant about anything unless it was well-deserved, and even then he still kept his patience for most of it.

I hope I get the chance to work with him again in the future, in some way. We're keeping in touch, but I still miss our IM chats even when they were mostly about work.

You won't find a nicer guy than Keith, not only to work with and for, but just to pal around with.

Kate

(PS: Hugo, I'm really going to miss seeing your images at full size -- that was one of my favorite things about working at Zym I love your stuff!)