This is where I stand at present but only added the image sitemap on Aug 5.  Getting images indexed in drips and drabs.  I'm impatient right now because things are just getting started but I've got a lot more images to add so I'll just worry about that for the time being 

Quote from: Ron on August 24, 2013, 23:32

Quote from: ShazamImages on August 24, 2013, 23:29

Quote from: Ron on August 24, 2013, 23:21
Site maps are dynamic, they get updated on the sever. SYS sitemap is never outdated.

Yes, but you still need to submit them to the search engine websites.  And if you add more images or make changes after they are submitted, then you need to resubmit them.

Is that true? Doesnt seem to be the case for the SYS sitemap.

So far as I can tell that is true.  I've got the symbiostock image sitemap.  It updates everyday on its own but webmaster tools never seems to update the number of images submitted until I press the button to manualy re-submit the sitemap.  Then it goes and looks at the updated sitemap. I'd like confirmation of this too.  Is this how it's supposed to work?

No problems here either.

Quote from: ShazamImages on August 20, 2013, 22:32

Quote from: cthoman on August 20, 2013, 22:07
Since Wordpress is always updating, I assume someone actually has to man the ship (code) occasionally.

Just because WordPress upgrades doesn't mean that you would need to upgrade.  The website will continue to work without upgrading.

I'd be somewhat careful about that.  I've had a couple of wordpress sites in the past that I didn't keep up to date on the wordpress updates.  After missing a few wordpress updates both of my sites were hacked exploiting weaknesses that the more recent versions of wordpress would have already eliminated.

Quote from: dfikar on August 20, 2013, 16:31
Sounds like a great idea to add the Symbiostock.info card to our individual sites.  If fact, if you do this would there be a need to add individual site symbiocards since presumably just about everyone would be on the Symbiostock.info list and you would presumably already be networked with them?

I would continue to network with individuals in addition to adding symbiostock.info to your network. I just enabled the network a couple days ago and can already see the increased traffic from spiders and bots crawling my site that came from the people who have included me in their network so far. I imagine that anyone I've linked to is seeing the same activity coming from my site. Once we start seeing buyers in numbers this activity will be mirrored by actual paying customers.  Just like Leo envisioned, a bee moving from flower to flower within the networks.

My toolbar is showing a number for the images I have online but it's the wrong number.  It's shows about half the number I actually have. Maybe our images are going on and offline at SS?  I'll keep an eye on it today to see if it changes.

Just turned on the network functions yesterday and added symbiostock.info to my network this morning.

Quote from: Redneck on August 19, 2013, 13:53
I think it's very important not to forget to add symbiostock.info to your list of network partners inside your Symbiostock admin area. This way every SYS site will be searched for the right image.

Another good idea. Done!  I also added a link to the Firefox plugin that searches sybiostock.info from the browser https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/symbiostock/

MSG name: CrackerClips (Bryan)
website: http://crackerclips.com
your photo topics: destination and conceptual
what  you're looking for: as somewhat of a generalist I'm interested in other sites with a general mix of content especially concepts and travel destinations.

I've had my site up for awhile now but wanted to work out a few kinks before turning on the network feature.  Now that I've finally turned it on I wish I'd done it sooner.  Way cool!  Currently my sites a bit heavy on photo objects (that's pretty much what I've put up on the micros) but that will become a minor part as I continue to upload images and start putting my best work here.  Thank you to those that have networked with me already and thank you to anyone who would consider adding my site to their network!

Nikd90 nice site, I've added you to my network!

Quote from: marthamarks on August 18, 2013, 23:06

No reason why we can't all promote that global search engine on our individual sites, is there?

Good idea Martha, I will be adding a link.

Quote from: DonLand on August 18, 2013, 22:41
Well, I'm hoping, maybe a bit naively that Sym takes off at least a little. If we can sell enough images a month from say $6 for a blog to say $50 for a large then it would not take many to replace selling hundreds for .25¢. At that point I could see people going Sym exclusive as they would be undercutting themselves by offering their images all over the place. For that to happen we need clients to use a centralized Sym search. This would be a snowball effect. As more photographers come on board Sym gets larger. As more photographers make their images Sym exclusive the the less places the images are available the more clients will come. Granted this may never happen or it may take years but if it starts working and other photographers come on board you basically have a large stock photo site owned by each individual photographer without having to pay any commissions.

Always nice to dream....

That's what I'm talking about!  Nicely put.

Quote from: Ron on August 18, 2013, 18:10
I have a hard time believing statements of 500 dollar for an image licence on regular bases, because on the Alamy forum, the die hard RM shooters keep saying they hardly get those sales these days.

I haven't had a license anywhere near $500 on Alamy in many years.  It doesn't mean it doesn't happen elsewhere tho


Edited to add the word "elsewhere"

Quote from: cascoly on August 18, 2013, 06:09
these comments are not addressed to/at anyone here... but I've often noted that there are many photographers who haven't kept pace with the modern world -- many pictures that sold for $100 or $1000 30 years ago, or even 10 years ago did not sell because of their intrinsic value, but because of the market.

That is very true.  The market for stock pictures has changed dramatically over the last 10 years.  Years ago I was often surprised by how much a simple, non-unique image could command.  Having said that, I'm still surprised to see on my macro agency sales reports good license fees for the type of images that are much more cheaply available via microstock.   I still regularly receive sales reports with both RF and RM fees of $500 or more for a single license.  The problem, of course, is that the volume of sales is no longer there.  I also receive many (way too many) macro fees for images that are the same or actually worse than micro fees.  Buyers of course are happy to pay as little as possible but price in my experience is not the most important factor. 

Agencies are figuring out ways to to profit by selling images by the pound.  Unfortunately, photographers are not benefiting from this model.  I admit that initially it seems like common sense for us to sell directly for cheaper than the micro agencies where we have work BUT we do not have (and probably won't have anytime soon, if ever) the volume of licenses that the agencies have. So for me, anyway, that is a losing proposition.  In addition, the symbiostock default pricing has just been dramatically undercut (independent pricing) by a certain well known micro agency.  Should the symbio default pricing be lowered now?  As an individual, I can't compete with that and provide a sustainable living for me and my family.  I don't feel compelled to try and compete with the micros. 

Stock industry pricing is all over the board these days.  I've got images at different outlets selling at a wide spectrum of prices.  The cheapest priced outlets have never been my biggest earners.  Buyers buy at different places and different price points for many reasons.  I don't think we can control that to any great degree with our individual pricing.  I'm simply looking to provide a place (my symbio site) for a segment of the market that is happy shopping there because it meets their overall needs.  If that segment of the market is big enough, I will prosper and will continue to be able to make images that meet their needs in the future.

I've been giving a great deal of thought to this issue as well. I'm getting to the point in our site development that I will want to be turning on the network soon and I have some of the same concerns as Redneck. First let me say, to each their own.  Symbiostock is giving everyone the opportunity to run their business in whatever manner works best for them. I fully support that and this is from my viewpoint only.

I come from a traditional stills background and know from experience that a single license can be worth many thousands of dollars.  It doesn't happen these days as much as I'd like but it does still happen.  My experience in the micro arena, outside of footage, comes from  a few hundred images placed with the micro outlets over the last few years.  I've learned from this experience that I can still make hundreds or even well over a thousand dollars from some micro images due to the increased volume of sales over time.  So I wanted to approach our symbiosite with both ends of the market in mind.

Although I've priced some of our more basic images (photo objects & backgrounds) with current micro pricing, the bulk of the images we'll be adding to our site will be our "premium" collection.  With these images I'm striving for two distinct pricing bands.  The two smallest sizes (bloggee and small) are priced with volume sales in mind.  The images are sized for web usage and are affordable for graphic designers, small businesses, really anyone who needs an image for the web and is willing to pay for it. 

In the second band are the two larger sizes (medium and large). They are sized for more custom tailored usage such as print.  I'm capping the medium size at 2300 pixels on the long side giving approx a 5x7 print at 300dpi.  It is still relatively affordable at $25.  My thinking here is that for 25 bucks a small business can get an image for a smaller print use (such as a direct mail piece) for a fraction of the cost involved in designing, printing and delivering that mailer. 

For the large I've more than doubled the size from the medium (up to 5600 pixies long side) and have doubled the price to $50.  This size is for a significant use (full page, magazine cover, on up to billboard size).  For anyone who needs an image for this type of usage, 50 bucks is more than reasonable.

In addition, when the functionality becomes available I plan to be offering extended licenses for resale products and print runs over 100,000 copies.  The premium pricing will be for single use with discounts available for multiple use requests.  The term length for the premium images will be for the life of the product.  In other words, if you license an image for a website you can use it on that website for as long as you like.  The license will expire when you remove the image from that site.  If licensed for a direct mail piece it can be used for the life of THAT design up until the print limit is reached.

My goal is for the end user to pay a price that is reflective of the benefit they are getting from the image.  A small local business using an image on their website should be able to get an image for an inexpensive price while a large company putting print adds in multiple magazines should pay a reasonable price that coincides with the benefit they are receiving from that image.

It may not be a perfectly designed licensing model and there WILL be things that come up that I haven't even thought of but I'm comfortable with the overall idea and believe it will meet both my needs and my customers needs for a sustainable future.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking at present.  Comments are welcome.

Quote from: marthamarks on August 17, 2013, 14:18

Cracker Clips, I just took your advice and installed SysInfo. I've got the PHP Info for my site open but don't know where to look to find out if imagemagick is installed or not. I'm guessing it must be all the way at the bottom, in the the PHP Variables section. But I don't see it there.

Can you tell me which section and/or line that info would be found in?

Thanks!!

I've attached a couple of screenshots that show what my PHP info looks like.  You'll see a reference to imagick at the end of the "Configure Command" area in the first shot. ( I blurred the system box as I wasn't sure whether it contained any info I may not want others to have).

The second shows an entire area of info showing the details of the Imagemagick PHP module. If you don't have a section like it then that means that the imagemagick module is not installed. So in my case, imagemagick WAS installed on my server BUT the imagemagick module was not.  Shazam showing me this info is when it all started to come together for me.  Hope it helps you as well!

I found a plugin that does the same thing as ShazamImages is talking about without having to upload anything to your server.  It's called SysInfo.  Once installed you can find it in the wordpress admin "Tools" area. Once you're on it click the "PHP Info" button at the top and it will show you all of your PHP info and whether or not the imagemagick module is installed or not.

Quote from: Anita Potter on August 13, 2013, 21:26
I was looking around on the Go Daddy site and it's available on their Linux Hosting.  Course I no absolutely nothing about Linux does that mean (and bear with me cause I'm going to feel like an idiot asking) that their hosting is Linux based (it can be selected during signup not sure if it would be changeable afterward) and will I have problems working on my site with a Windows OS?

I have a Linux hosting account on Godaddy and after banging my head against a wall for a couple months I realized that simply upgrading to the latest version of PHP made imagemagick instantly available to my symbiostock site. As I converted an existing website into a symbiostock site, my site had an older version of PHP. If you are setting up a new hosting account with godaddy it should already have the latest version of PHP. I'm not sure about your Linux/Windows question. Give godaddy customer service a call. I've always had a positive experience with them.

Quote from: cascoly on August 13, 2013, 00:32

does webmaster tools show any errors or warnings?  I've been getting a lot of warnings lately saying it's taking a long time to access my site (on justhost)

Just one warning (slow responding URL) but it is on my yoast sitemap. The image generator sitemap is clear of warnings.

I installed Leo's image sitemap generator a week or so ago but it has only updated once and that was when I manually updated it ( I pushed the button to generate the sitemap again).  Originally, I generated the image sitemap and submitted the url to webmaster tools.  The sitemap itself isn't showing the new images I'm adding daily and webmaster tools is indicating that only 7 images have been indexed.  Is there something else I need to do to make the sitemap auto update?

Quote from: djpadavona on August 11, 2013, 15:19
Mine is -

http://dpstockphotos.com/155-2/photography-and-design-blog/

I warn you ahead of time that until the SY Page of Posts bug gets fixed, your blog is going to be a bit of a mess. I have nearly 60 posts and they are all on the same page. SY doesn't recognize the 6 posts per page limit. I know Leo is working on it, and I don't want to keep bringing it up, but I'm not sure it's worth a lot of effort blogging until the bug gets tracked down.

Thanks, I hadn't heard about this bug before.  I've been racking my brain trying to figure out why all of my posts show up on the same page even though I'd set it in settings to only show max 3 posts.  At this point my previous blog posts were all video related and each had two or three videos embedded.  Imagine how long it takes to load a page containing 15 or more blog posts with a total of 30+ videos.  At least this saves me the time of trying to look for a fix. 

Great tool, use it everyday! I'm like a Pavlovian dog when I hear the "ding" of a sale.  Unfortunately, overtime the tool is slowly breaking down.  I've got at least 3 agencies set up that are no longer working properly.  I'd actually like to be adding more agencies.

Quote from: Microstock Man on June 20, 2013, 07:11

Just go to the Yoast Plugin, Titles & Meta tab, then under Post Types find "Symbiostock Images". In the meta description template part put "%%excerpt%%" (without the "") and it will auto generate it for you. Just be aware, it doesnt visually show up in the meta description box on the image edit page, it just applies it in the background. You may need to tick "Excerpts" to be shown on the Screen Options dropdown on the image edits page.

Hope that helps.

I'm a little bit confused about this. Hoping someone can clarify.  If I add %%excerpt%% to the meta description in Symbiostock Images (Yoast Seo templates) I can see that the there is a meta description being added (by looking at the number of characters) but if I then add any additional information to the content, it is no longer dynamically added to the snippet as it was before adding %%excerpt%%. Whatever title and caption the image has in it's metadata when I upload it becomes the snippet and meta description even if I change the title or caption later.

Edit: Moved to new thread.

Hey Leo,

Question.  Will you be able to assign a license image by image?  As in some images are RF and some are RM?

Thanks!

Hi plrang, I just installed your plugin a couple of days ago. Really like it!  Love the enlarged image previews.  I see in this latest version (which I haven't updated to yet) that the enlarged image previews contain new exclusivity and copyright information.  Is there an option to include this info or is it automatic?  I personally feel for me, that there is enough covering the photo already. Between my watermark and the max resolution of the image showing (which I like by the way) I don't feel the need to add more copyright info.  Before I update I want to know if I have a choice on what appears?  Great plugin, thank you!