Author Topic: Introducing the Crestock WordPress Plugin (Read 31509 times)

etienjones · « **on:** September 30, 2009, 07:24 »

Now tell me, is the age of FREE IMAGES finally arrived?

From Crestock:

Introducing the Crestock WordPress Plugin
Hi Steven,

We're incredibly excited to let you know that we're only one week away from launching our biggest, most powerful marketing initiative to date, and this is a special invite for you to join and to receive an additional 5% commission on all credits purchases.

If you've been around at Crestock for a while, you know that we've been running some hugely popular Photoshop design contests every year around summer time. The idea has been to provide one of the most dominant demographics among potential buyers, the designers, a chance to get to know Crestock – and to actually try the products.

These contests have been shaped as viral campaigns and have, without failure, spread like wildfire in the design community; through blogs and forums, through social media and have even been featured on the Apple and MTVs websites.

Throughout the years, these contests have generated incredible exposure, millions of visitors and tens of thousands of paying customers. However, though viral and social marketing is one of the things we're exceptionally good at (we've actually won awards for them), we've realized that all these successful campaigns, by nature of a contest, had one big flaw – they all had an end date.

In our opinion, the Ultimate Campaign has the following treats:

No end date
Virtually unlimited scalability
Massive distribution to users
Massive exposure of individual portfolios
Massive direct and indirect sales
So what's in it for you?
The brilliance of the new WordPress plugin is that it will just keep rolling and getting more and more users as time goes by, and the whole point of the WordPress plugin is to promote each individual portfolio on a scale never seen before in the business of microstock.

I know some of you will scream bloody murder in a minute, but please stay with me on this one, because it's exceptionally important that you appreciate the enormous reach and impact of this campaign; After all, there's a reason why big names such as Yuri Arcurs, Ron Chapple (iofoto), Kirsty Pargeter, Lev Dolgachov and Andres Rodriguez (only to name a few) has already signed up for it.

This WordPress plugin will allow bloggers access to search for, and add, any Crestock image to their blog - free of charge.

There – I said it. The "F" word. Free.

But we're not going to just give away your art for free. That would be a spectacularly bad business plan doomed to fail.

For Crestock as a corporation, selling your images is what's making us the money. Incidentally this also ties in with your bottom line, so to be brutally honest, we both have at least one common interest, and that is to make you as much money as possible.

But some times you have to give some in order to get a lot in return, so please stay with me for a bit longer, and it'll all become clear:

The Freemium Business Model
The freemium business model was articulated by venture capitalist Fred Wilson (co-founder of Union Square Ventures, with investments in Web 2.0 companies such as Twitter, del.icio.us and FeedBurner) on 23 March 2006:

"Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc., then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base."

What we'll give away are images with a maximum resolution of 400px width – perfect for blogs, but totally useless for anything else.

Here's how it works, and here's how you'll make money:
For starters, WordPress is the most popular blog platform on the planet, with over 3 million downloads of their latest release alone, and over 3.1 million active blogs on their own site.

Secondly, the Top 10 Plugins on WordPress has been downloaded a total of 4.42 million times – that's an average of 740,000 times for each plugin in the Top 6.

When a blogger use your images, the WordPress plugin will insert a clearly watermarked image as well as a caption with links embedded pointing to the corresponding image page on Crestock.

This is extremely important.

At this point, the different search engines accounts for roughly 40% of the total traffic on Crestock. It's so high because we've been very focused on what's called Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), which is the process of improving web sites so that it ranks higher in search engines for targeted keywords.

Incoming links to a web site is one of the most important ranking criteria in any search algorithm, and simply put, you can think of a link as a vote for another website, with the link text as a description of the website you're linking to.

If you link to Crestock with the link text "Crestock stock photos" , you're telling the search engines you vote for this site, and the site is about stock photos. This will make us rank better for that phrase.

The WordPress plugin solves one of our biggest challenges SEO wise: building deep links with highly relevant link text to each of your images: The deep links to each of your images will give them a great boost in the search engine rankings, and it will naturally also drive traffic directly into the page with your image on it - Where people can buy it.

So let's summarize:
Massive distribution to millions of bloggers
Plugin will actively promote paid, high resolution versions of your images
Images will be clearly watermarked with your name and copyright sign - ©

The automatically embedded image caption will contain a link to the image page:
Links will rank your images higher in Google
Links will drive click-though visitors directly to your images
But Wait – There's More!
(And it's not just rubbish being thrown at you)

Aside from the incredible boost in highly converting search engine traffic and referral traffic the links will provide you, we're also using the actual plugin interface to offer the bloggers to upgrade to a paid service. This is the Premium content.

Since we have control of the content we deliver in the plugin search interface, we'll use tracking software to monitor and calculate which offers and which approaches generates the highest possible revenue in order to exploit the potential that lies in the WordPress plugin to the fullest.

Finally, we're offering an additional 5% commission on every single credit sale you make when you join the WordPress project.

To put the awesome power of the WordPress plugin to work for you, simply activate below:

dunsmore · « **Reply #1 on:** September 30, 2009, 07:36 »

Until Crestock actually pay contributors for what they have sold on time, I’m not interested in anything they have to say.

massman · « **Reply #2 on:** September 30, 2009, 07:40 »

What we'll give away are images with a maximum resolution of 400px width – perfect for blogs, but totally useless for anything else.

Is this a typo?

etienjones · « **Reply #3 on:** September 30, 2009, 08:22 »

But
IS sells 480x321 px for 1 credit
DT sells 424x283px for 1 credit
StockXpert sells 400x300px for 1 credit
etc, etc. . . . . .

Adeptris · « **Reply #4 on:** September 30, 2009, 08:36 »

Quote from: etienjones on September 30, 2009, 08:22

But
IS sells 480x321 px for 1 credit
DT sells 424x283px for 1 credit
StockXpert sells 400x300px for 1 credit
etc, etc. . . . . .

To paying Customers and the artist gets commission, what is free in that?

The problem with providing images for blogs is not that bloggers are so tight and will not pay-per-download, the problem is the credit packages, subscriptions and delivery method.

Modify the plug-in with, 'non site registration', PayPal IPN, limited use licence, and browser downloads without visiting the website, and you will get good paying customers $1-$4 a pop, and all the other SEO benefits.

Quote

From my Blog post here
As a blogger what do I want?
I want some easy tools that allow me to write a blog and post this to the internet, I use the program Windows Live Writer for my content, I not only use this software for blogs but most of my other website content is updated using Windows Live Writer, with all content delivered direct from my desktop, if I have an image that I own on my hard drive, I can insert this into my post and Live Writer will send this to the website for me when I publish.

But I do not use images much simply because of the hassle in getting the right asset, I could stop what I am doing, go to Istock search for an appropriate image and download it, but that is all time consuming, and if my credits have run out I just pay for another ten credits, so often where an image would add value to my content I do not bother to use one.

I would like to be able to insert a licensed asset into my posts without advertising or having to leave the application I am using, I also do not want to pay for ten credits if I need just two to complete a post, I do not want to download a large size that is far to big for my content needs, and I only want to purchase a licence to use the asset once, as I am not likely to use it again.

David

leaf · « **Reply #5 on:** September 30, 2009, 08:42 »

I agree, I don't know why some sites don't create something like this for seemless purchase of images through wordpress. I think bloggers would be happy to spend a few $$ for easy grabbing on images.

massman · « **Reply #6 on:** September 30, 2009, 08:51 »

Quote from: Adeptris on September 30, 2009, 08:36

To paying Customers and the artist gets commission, what is free in that?

The problem with providing images for blogs is not that bloggers are so tight and will not pay-per-download, the problem is the credit packages, subscriptions and delivery method.

Modify the plug-in with, 'non site registration', PayPal IPN, limited use licence, and browser downloads without visiting the website, and you will get good paying customers $1-$4 a pop, and all the other SEO benefits.

Your are right, micropayment agencies seem to have forgotten about micropayment.

Adeptris · « **Reply #7 on:** September 30, 2009, 08:58 »

Quote

There's a reason why big names such as Yuri Arcurs, Ron Chapple (iofoto), Kirsty Pargeter, Lev Dolgachov and Andres Rodriguez (only to name a few) has already signed up for it.

Drum roll and here is the reason!!

Quote

Finally, we're offering an additional 5% commission on every single credit sale you make when you join the WordPress project.

An additional 5% will make a difference to these guys, but not someone else that has a small portfolio!

David

corepics · « **Reply #8 on:** September 30, 2009, 09:05 »

The way I see it, is that Crestock is asking permission to turn the blog of people who are using this plugin into a free advertising portal for them. As the difference between $0,25 per download and nothing, squat, zilch is physically not that big (but mathematically, infinite) I might as well have my site scream "CRESTOCK", let every other blog use my images for free, allowing their site to scream the same message, and get a handful of $0,25 sub-sales a month more due to the "boost in traffic", If I'm lucky.

Hmmm. Think I'll pass. As Crestock seems incapable of paying within a reasonable time, I don't hold my breath waiting to see if anything good comes out of this.

Can only agree with the above suggestions, I see such a tool working.

etienjones · « **Reply #9 on:** September 30, 2009, 09:08 »

Right Dave,

whats 5% of 25 cents when you only have a few hundred images online.

rmarinello · « **Reply #10 on:** September 30, 2009, 09:09 »

"When a blogger use your images, the WordPress plugin will insert a clearly watermarked image as well as a caption with links embedded pointing to the corresponding image page on Crestock."
I am also a blogger and I don't like the idea of using a watermarked image... It's different but I prefer to use something similar to Microstock Photo Plugin for Wordpress http://www.mystockphoto.org/microstock-fotolia-photo-wordpress-plugin/ : I can buy a blog size photo and use it where I want on the blog and without watermark (with caption with credit to the photographer).
Cheers,
roberto

cardmaverick · « **Reply #11 on:** September 30, 2009, 11:15 »

Guys, PLEASE wake up and realize that free can't self sustain for any business without either ads or a mother business subsidizing the losses. This is clearly a bait and hook marketing operation - nothing wrong with that as it's the big reason why iStock now makes so many millions in sales. I always laugh at these threads, everyone is so quick to forget iStocks "give it all away for free" origins, and then it became a pay site - low and behold, people stayed and paid! Ever been to Pandora.com? It's a great site, I listed for free for around 1 year, and guess what - now I have to pay after 40 hours of use - just $1 to finish out the month, or $36 for 1 year unlimited if I remember right. Not bad at all really, if I were a big music addict, I'd buy the yearly package. They also have integrated Ads into free listening, so if you pay, no more ads when you switch stations, etc...

On the internet....

Free = Pay Later

sharpshot · « **Reply #12 on:** September 30, 2009, 11:36 »

If I have understood this correctly, the free images have a watermark. If that is correct, I might be interested but crestock need to do more to get me uploading there again. The 5% increase is for credit sales, I don't get enough of them, I would prefer to see the subs commission raised from 25 cents. Until they do that, I would prefer buyers go to the sites that pay me more.

melastmohican · « **Reply #13 on:** September 30, 2009, 12:08 »

I just wrote about it on my blog. I got two questions:
1. Why I as a blogger need high quality commercial photos for my blog? I am not making any money on my blog so why would I want to pay for images? I can get whatever I want for free under Creative Commons license.
2. How do know that this plug-in exists? Where is a press release? How do I install it? Why do I care about it? What are benefits for blogger? I would rather want a paid banner from Crestock on my site than ability to display watermarked images.

http://melastmohican.net/wordpress/2009/09/30/crestock-wordpress-plug-in/

click_click · « **Reply #14 on:** September 30, 2009, 12:50 »

Enlightenment is on its way:

1. Images are watermarked - the same way like all of our images are watermarked at every agency we sell our images.
These watermarked images are free to anyone anyways. What's the big fuzz?

2. Copyright references are attached to the image and are linked to Crestock making it easy to the buyer to get a high-res version. BTW the blogger of course might not want a high-res version of your image but the point is to address READERS of the blog who might have a need for the posted images...

3. I've never heard that a commission increase is a problem. In any given job people would be happy to get a raise.

4. This is a new marketing strategy which COULD reach a lot of potential buyers. If you never try, you'll never know.

5. If you complain that 5% increase is only worth for the big guys (although they still "only" get 5% more which is the same %5 like you would get...) then work your shutter finger and become a "big guy" so you can profit from this as well...

I don't work for Crestock. I'm not making a killing at Crestock. I do sell some images there on a regular basis and I think that since this is a new strategy it should be tried out. If this had been already tested out by others and failed I would understand the widespread rejection of that idea but hey not everyone has to like it.

corepics · « **Reply #15 on:** September 30, 2009, 13:56 »

A small word of warning:

If you're not sure if you want to sign up for Crestock's WordPress deal, DO NOT click on the link underneath the email!

There is no confirmation button on that page, as soon as you log in, you're automatically signed up, and I haven't been able to find an opt-out, yet, so be careful.

sharpshot · « **Reply #16 on:** September 30, 2009, 15:09 »

Quote from: click_click on September 30, 2009, 12:50

Enlightenment is on its way:

1. Images are watermarked - the same way like all of our images are watermarked at every agency we sell our images.
These watermarked images are free to anyone anyways. What's the big fuzz?

2. Copyright references are attached to the image and are linked to Crestock making it easy to the buyer to get a high-res version. BTW the blogger of course might not want a high-res version of your image but the point is to address READERS of the blog who might have a need for the posted images...

3. I've never heard that a commission increase is a problem. In any given job people would be happy to get a raise.

4. This is a new marketing strategy which COULD reach a lot of potential buyers. If you never try, you'll never know.

5. If you complain that 5% increase is only worth for the big guys (although they still "only" get 5% more which is the same %5 like you would get...) then work your shutter finger and become a "big guy" so you can profit from this as well...

I don't work for Crestock. I'm not making a killing at Crestock. I do sell some images there on a regular basis and I think that since this is a new strategy it should be tried out. If this had been already tested out by others and failed I would understand the widespread rejection of that idea but hey not everyone has to like it.

I just don't understand why people are happy with 25 cents for subs. This is holding back the other subs sites, why should they raise our commissions if we put up with just 25 cents from crestock? Istock reduced photos.com commissions for non-exclusives from 30 cents to 25 cents and I wont opt in to that either. PPD prices have gone up a lot and cheap subs will hold them back too. More buyers will switch to subs if the difference in price increases. Crestock are raising our commission on PPD sales but most of my sales there will still make me just 25 cents. Sorry, that doesn't interest me at all.

madelaide · « **Reply #17 on:** September 30, 2009, 16:36 »

Quote from: click_click on September 30, 2009, 12:50

These watermarked images are free to anyone anyways. What's the big fuzz?

Not really, they are for comp use only, you can not use watermarked images just because you can download them from the internet. edit: actually you can, but you may not.

As I understand it, it's a way to use blogs for free advertisement. I wouldn't expect bloggers to buy images in order to get rid of the watermark. Yes, one and another might, most would not.

The good news is that Crestock is not dead (yet), so I may eventually reach my payout.

Amos Struck · « **Reply #18 on:** October 01, 2009, 13:56 »

Quote from: leaf on September 30, 2009, 08:42

I agree, I don't know why some sites don't create something like this for seemless purchase of images through wordpress. I think bloggers would be happy to spend a few $$ for easy grabbing on images.

Hello Leaf,

its already here, http://www.microstockplugin.com.
Seamless search and purchase of images through Wordpress, add copyright notice automaticaly, enable the Affiliate program and get automatic backlinks with your Affiliate ID on every purchased pictures, automatic SEO optimization with your own keywords, available in 4 languages and many many more.

You can view a short in-use video here http://www.screencast.com/t/xFOE4yAM0

PS: No watermarks of course!

click_click · « **Reply #19 on:** October 01, 2009, 19:19 »

Quote from: Amosnet on October 01, 2009, 13:56

Quote from: leaf on September 30, 2009, 08:42
I agree, I don't know why some sites don't create something like this for seemless purchase of images through wordpress. I think bloggers would be happy to spend a few $$ for easy grabbing on images.

Hello Leaf,

its already here, http://www.microstockplugin.com.
Seamless search and purchase of images through Wordpress, add copyright notice automaticaly, enable the Affiliate program and get automatic backlinks with your Affiliate ID on every purchased pictures, automatic SEO optimization with your own keywords, available in 4 languages and many many more.

You can view a short in-use video here http://www.screencast.com/t/xFOE4yAM0

PS: No watermarks of course!

Photos provided by FOTOLIA

I'm confused.

Adeptris · « **Reply #20 on:** October 02, 2009, 00:31 »

Quote from: Amosnet on October 01, 2009, 13:56

Hello Leaf,

its already here, http://www.microstockplugin.com.
Seamless search and purchase of images through Wordpress, add copyright notice automaticaly, enable the Affiliate program and get automatic backlinks with your Affiliate ID on every purchased pictures, automatic SEO optimization with your own keywords, available in 4 languages and many many more.

You can view a short in-use video here http://www.screencast.com/t/xFOE4yAM0

PS: No watermarks of course!

Points you are missing:
I do not want to pay for ten credits if I need just two Images to complete a post, 'non site registration' and if I go to a microstock website spend 1 credit I purchased for $1 or £1 I can use it in my blog without the link back to artist or the website I purchased it from if I am promoting a service I want special rates, I blog and would not use it as it needs to plug in to blog editing tools like Live Writer and Microsoft Word where I compose and publist to my blogs, I never blog via the website.

David

Amos Struck · « **Reply #21 on:** October 02, 2009, 03:14 »

Quote from: Adeptris on October 02, 2009, 00:31

Points you are missing:
I do not want to pay for ten credits if I need just two Images to complete a post, 'non site registration' and if I go to a microstock website spend 1 credit I purchased for $1 or £1 I can use it in my blog without the link back to artist or the website I purchased it from if I am promoting a service I want special rates, I blog and would not use it as it needs to plug in to blog editing tools like Live Writer and Microsoft Word where I compose and publist to my blogs, I never blog via the website.

David

Hey David, back again ;-) i love your good suggestions and it seems like you are really ahead of your time ;-).

I will try to answer your ideas and request list:

1.) 'non site registration' pay-as-you-go would be a nice option - also for us. But i think Fotolia will not add this functionality in next few months - maybe there is another agency which wanna join us.

2.) The Backlink shown in the video is just demoing the affiliate program. Just leave the affiliate program aside if you don't want any links back to the agency detail page. But you will not participate from 15% commission on every sale of your referrer, its your choice.

3.) If you are promoting a service you need to get special rates, absolutely true and we will come up with a solution for that shortly.

@click_click: Photos are provided by Fotolia because we use their Database through an direct connection to search and buy the pictures. After you have bought the picture, it will get downloaded to your server directly.

madelaide · « **Reply #22 on:** October 02, 2009, 05:50 »

On another thread, I read we can not opt out of this WP deal, is it true?

corepics · « **Reply #23 on:** October 02, 2009, 06:04 »

Quote from: madelaide on October 02, 2009, 05:50

On another thread, I read we can not opt out of this WP deal, is it true?

See:

Quote from: taglist on September 30, 2009, 13:56

A small word of warning:

If you're not sure if you want to sign up for Crestock's WordPress deal, DO NOT click on the link underneath the email!

There is no confirmation button on that page, and as soon as you log in, you're automatically signed up, and I haven't been able to find an opt-out, yet, so be careful.

I've sent Crestock an email, but no reaction, yet. Sorry for the confusion.

travelstock · « **Reply #24 on:** October 02, 2009, 08:29 »

Quote from: etienjones on September 30, 2009, 08:22

But
IS sells 480x321 px for 1 credit
DT sells 424x283px for 1 credit
StockXpert sells 400x300px for 1 credit
etc, etc. . . . . .

I agree - how is this not just using our images for FREE to improve its SEO and traffic?

The 5% boost in commission would be handy, but I suspect for most its 5% of nothing. 5% boost on IStock and I'd sign up now.

Obviously the big contributors listed have had an opportunity to discuss this arrangement in advance, or their name wouldn't appear on the press release - this doesn't mean what's good for them is good for smaller contributors, or that they're even getting the same deal as us. Maybe someone at Crestock can clarify?

Re the other plugin: I don't use wordpress so can't really comment on how useful it will be to those that do, but it looks like a way of making it easier to use images that we get paid for. Can't argue with that!

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Author Topic: Introducing the Crestock WordPress Plugin (Read 31509 times)

etienjones

dunsmore

massman

etienjones

Adeptris

leaf

massman

Adeptris

corepics

etienjones

rmarinello

cardmaverick

sharpshot

melastmohican

click_click

corepics

sharpshot

madelaide

Amos Struck

click_click

Adeptris

Amos Struck

madelaide

corepics

travelstock

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