I have been spending a small fortune on Photoshelter during three years. After just six month traffic (and sales) on my SYS site is already 10 times of what it was last on Photoshelter (and I have only 1/3 of my port up, yet).



@Pilens,

Why is this? What make SYS have better traffic than Photoshelter? Is it something different that just having a large collection of images?


My social network + marketplace idea, would show up much higher than SYS in google, I'm sure, if that's the only basis.

Tom,

it is build-in SEO and the design of the SYS network that provides "backlinking". When I look-up google analytics for my site I find more than 100,000 (!) backlinks.

I doubt your social network + marketplace idea would show better results for every single image online. And that is what SYS excells in, that's where the traffic comes from. Yet, as I said, it still far from clear if that's good enough to be worthwhile.

In any case, I'd love to see whatever contributor friendly solution that beats SYS and at least the middle tier agencies. Did you see BTW where "self-hosted" is placed in the list on the right? A good deal of "self-hosted" actually means "Symbiostock". So here you go, take your pick: either compete with SYS (and all of the agencies) if you're sure you can develop something much better or join the community effort that SYS actually is. 

I don't really understand SymbioStock.

Well, are you sure then that you can do something like it in a week?

In any case, even if you're only half as good technically as you claim Symbiostock needs you. Leo has done an amazing job. However there is a hell of a bunch of loose ends and unsolved questions, such as the current tedious registration process.
Chip in discussions on symbiostock.org to learn what Symbiostock is all about and where your technical expertise can fill the gaps and/or add amazing new features. You're definitely welcome!

You can't compare Stocksy and Symbiostock beyond that they are both this year's news. Stocksy is backed by Bruce (founder of iStock), good ideas addressing both buyers and contributors, his in-depth industry knowledge and excellent contacts and assumingly quite a pile of money as well.
Symbiostock on the other hand is nothing more than a clever wordpress theme that is open source and free for us. Currently, 123 artists have live SYS sites with a total of 150000 images online (see symbiostock.info). All these sites are interconnected (linked) by the network and along with some build-in SEO this results in a lot of images showing up on first google page. That's how we hope our SYS sites will pay off.

I have been spending a small fortune on Photoshelter during three years. After just six month traffic (and sales) on my SYS site is already 10 times of what it was last on Photoshelter (and I have only 1/3 of my port up, yet).

While that is promising, nobody still knows if this will be sufficient in the end to justify hosting cost and much more so time spent working on our sites, uploading, SEO etc. We are going to find out (the hard way, as there is no other way).

Also, I think even Leo struggles monetizing the tremendous work he put into this project.

Time will tell.

So, if you are serious about this, learn Symbiostock, talk to us Symbiotes and then discuss with Leo how you can be best part of this effort. That's lot of work and won't be a get-rich-quick-scheme. I can guarantee you that much.

Good luck!

I regularly use it for keywording and I really like it. Uploading/distributing to the agencies, however, never worked for me reliable enough. Far too often meta data got randomly lost in space creating a time consuming mess. But I haven't tried again for almost a year. So maybe this bug is fixed now. I use my bluehost (symbiostock) account to distribute stuff to the micros via SSH script, which is a nice extra benefit I get out of self-hosting.

Newb to symbiostock here... I am trying to purchase the Clean Theme, but cant seem to find a working link, anyone can help? Thx!

If you are just starting out then you are probably on SYS version 2.7.x. The clean theme doesn't work with the newer version anymore. Be patient for a few days, I hear on symbiostock.org that it's being overhauled for the 2.7.x right now. I think a link will be posted there as soon as this is done.

Well done, Stocksy! Congrats! 

I wish I was part of this success, but my photos suck 

Well, SYS isn't perfect (yet  ). For me, however, it is absolutely stunning to see how far Leo and the SYS community have pushed this wordpress theme in just half a year. It is working for most people even without previous experience in wordpress and/or web hosting and/or knowledge of php css etc. Development and bug fixing still goes on at rapid pace. There is an active bunch of helpful people over at http://www.symbiostock.org/ that bend over backwards to assist you when things get rough. IMHO there's nothing left to ask for. Remember: The SYS theme is free!.

IMHO SYS is the best personal image sales platform on the market (I've tried Photoshelter, Zenfolio and CMSaccount), it's generating traffic and sales through its SEO and networking features, which are superior to all other available options and on top of it its free.

That being said, it is still a tough personal decision if the amount of time required to set up your own site is worth it (saleswise or otherwise).

My 2 cents

...

Congratulations to all who made this happen. Great achievement, be proud.

+1

And what a jump! I didn't expect to see Self-Hosted on 5 right away. Great! ...and we are not that far from Top Tier, actually 

Done! - But I have no September sale to report 

I don't really understand your concerns. If your SYS site is doing so good that SS sales are getting hurt you'll be smiling all over and jumping up and down shouting "Yahoo!"  - Just make sure your SYS licenses cost similar $ amounts like SODs on SS. Also, I think it might help to have some images exclusively on your SYS site giving buyers an excuse reason for looking there.

From what I hear it's currently mostly vector artist that are getting regular sales on their SYS sites. So give it a go, there won't be any looking back, I am sure...

There's no winter on the micros for me either. BUT as RPD is sliding winter might settle in sooner rather than later.

A small dose of d. and definitely e. are my options of choice.

Long live Symbiostock! 

I use it regularly for keywording, titles and descriptions. I find it quite helpful to learn what their keyworders see in my images.
Uploading doesn't work for me. Too often images and/or metadata go missing. But I didn't try again for a while so things may have improved.

Great news! Congrats, Ron 

I stopped uploading ages ago. IS is a waste of nerves and time. Which is sad because IS backed by Getty has/had the potential to a least be/stay on par with SS. Sometimes, however, I get the feeling they are deliberately sinking their ship. I mean can bad management really be that bad by accident?