I think we're witnessing a new era of computing : in many fields the software has reached full maturity, all the important features have been developed and there's little left to add to convince buyers to buy upgrades.

This is true for PS but also many others.

So now they're switching to pay-per-use but this makes no sense for users as they can see by themselves they will just receive some bug fixes and very small new features at best.

From a technology perspective, these products are complete, their mission is finished, they're like an old successful car that is still sold over and over and get some minor makeover from time to time but if we talk about productivity where's the big difference between CS4/5 and CS7 ?

Users will be forced to upgrade as CS4 can't run on Win8 but now they've a good reason to look for alternatives.
There are even free Raw converters that do a good job, see RawTherapee and similar lightroom "clones" that look promising.

Nothig will replace PS but i can certainly do 80-90% of my workflow with a free clone of LR if i want, i never spent time on the cheaper alternatives before but now i could and i can see RawTherapee being more advanced than LR in many ways.

Or i could stick to pirated warez like anyone else here in Asia, up to you Adobe !

You do realize that there is more to the suite than just those 2 programs (not to mention storage and partner deals). I think the cloud is a great direction for them to pursue. It offers an endless supply of new products and services that they can test and implement while still maintaining and improving existing ones.

Maybe a designer wants to offer several possiblities, and doesn't want to pay for all the different images he'd need, so he "borrows" them.

I thought that was what subs were for? Why would you need comps?

Quote from: cthoman on September 17, 2013, 16:03

Quote from: JPSDK on September 17, 2013, 15:54

Im not talking about your site, Ron, im talking about the network of sites being customer unfriendly.

Now, I'm confused. What is the network of sites? I thought people just linked to people they wanted link with and there was some experimental search database. I haven't really been keeping up with it all though.

I think what he means is that if a buyer comes to my site and finds an image, they must purchase on my site. But if they are looking for 3 images, and I only have one, they might find one on a network members site. But they can't put all 3 images from different network members in one cart and pay for them all at once. If they find 3 images on 3 different sites, they must pay 3 different times.

But I think people keep thinking of SY as an agency...it's not. It's individual sites. As a buyer, sometimes I couldnt find what I wanted on one site, so I might have to go to another site to find it. That means paying separately.

It is inconvenient now because the network is only at 100,000 images, but I think buyers will find 2 or 3 sites that will accommodate a good portion of their needs, and the issue of paying separately will dwindle down to a non issue.

As soon as you start talking about common carts, common sales, dividing up payments, and the like, you are right back to talking about an agency.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. I'd think the real danger would be top sellers abandoning the network to join together rather than poor images clogging it up. I guess that was always the sticking point with the coop too. At what point are you giving more than you are getting back?

Here's a story for you. I got a call from a customer who wanted one of my images but didn't understand the licensing. I spoke with her for about 5 minutes on the phone and answered her questions. During the course of the conversation she told me she originally found my image on a FREE site. Yes, she could have had the image for free but chose to find my site a couple of images down in the search because she wanted to pay for it (good karma I guess). She also went to the agencies but couldn't get her questions about the license answered. She bought the image from me instead of using the free site or one of the agencies because I was there to answer her questions.

This is just one example of why you should have your own site. I won't even go into custom requests and other non-stock ways to make money off of your site.

People definitely do find these smaller sites. My first customer sent me an email telling me my site was still in Sandbox mode, but he wanted to buy some images. I flipped the switch, then the sales started.

I don't talk about my monthly totals in $$ in forums, but I don't like being told I can't

LOL. I was thinking the same thing. I was very tempted to just post my numbers from last month. I'm definitely not going anonymous either. I suppose they'll probably just have to kick me out. 

I think someone had raised the issue of enforceability earlier. It is unlikely they are going to police the whole community, but they can terminate you for cause by citing the confidentiality clause, especially in a situation when one contributor causes some real discomfort like Sean did at IS.

It is dangerous.

They could do that anyway at any time. Why start talking about it unless they have some plan involved?

Great news!

Out of curiosity if it continues to drop, where do you go from here?

How 'bout? 

#14 Business model
You chose a business with low entry barrier, reducing commission structure, excessive market competition, like products available for FREE, and having little voice in the overall business conduct.

When I went to art school, we used to practice saying, "Would you like fries with that?".

I really feel for all the people that see a decline in sales, and I certainly dont understand why some portfolios, with a lot, and I mean a lot, of high quality, highly commercial images, fail to get sales.

Honestly, I feel guilty for having good sales, with my mediocre portfolio, when their portfolios should outperform mine by factor 10. Its like my portfolio is being favored in the search. I dont know, but I truly do not understand why I can have 40 sales, when others have 0. Its not the quality of my work. It just isnt.

It truly baffles me, and what I find most frustrating is that there are tons of threads and comments pointing this problem out, but no one from SS wants to chip in with a truthful explanation as to why that is happening. They know what its happening with those HCV portfolios, they should spill the beans.

I always assumed (maybe incorrectly) that SS just switches back and forth from favoring new files to favoring old files. If you have a mix of both, then you may not notice. If you have more of one, then your sales may take a hit for a few months.

Quote from: cthoman on September 12, 2013, 13:58

Quote from: tickstock on September 12, 2013, 13:05

The website was never the main issue, it's cheap prices at the competitors.

But, the main collection prices really weren't an issue. Those were fairly competitive already. It was all the specialty collections that were jammed at the front of searches that were expensive.

I'm not sure that's true.  I've posted some of the competitors pricing and the range was from around $2.50-$12 for many full sized images (much much less if you count subs, SS says they charge less than $3 average when all file types are counted) but Istock was charging $27 for that same exact content.  10x more than canstock, 3x more than Shutterstock and now guess what they lowered the prices to be the same as Shutterstock.  I think it's clear why they did it. 
You can look at Thinkstock too and see how their pricing and royalties mirrored Shutterstock, they paid exclusives the tiniest bit more than what Shutterstock's top level is (coincidence?) and the plans are very similar in terms and pricing.
The other collections pushed to the front were a separate issue and I think they changed that a while before lowering the prices.

It depends on who you compare. SS charges around $20 for single sale images. DT charges up to around $30. There are cheap sites too like FT and Envato, but IS always seemed to be within the same range ($1-$30) for their main collection.

I stopped shopping at IS several years ago when I couldn't find anything to spend my expiring credits on. Even with the price sliders, it was just too difficult to shop there.

Until/unless I was convinced there would be significant rewards, setting up a symbiostock site has to remain low on my priority list.

This was the conclusion I came too. I'm not convinced it would outperform what I have now, so it didn't seem like the best investment of time, energy, money, etc. I'm keeping an eye on it though.

This will be a HUGE hurdle for Symbiostock to overcome if it wants the big players on board.  Most of the big players remain anonymous because they don't want to tip their hands to everyone else and see their work copied. 

Symbiostock would have to promise an ENORMOUS payday to make it worth the risk.  So far, there appears to be close to 0% of that happening, so those of us who wish to remain behind the scenes and keep the spotlight off our ideas and techniques won't be inclined to join.

I'm not sure I understand this. Does anybody really hide in the shadows on the micro sites?

Maybe I'm a "big player"... I dunno... from various numbers I've seen, I think I'm in the top one hundred or so.

I am still waiting to see evidence that people are getting regular sales.  For me to be worth it, I would need to see at least 5 to 10 sales a day, and based on what I've seen so far, the early adopter Sy sites just haven't built momentum yet.

Still watching and waiting...

That's a pretty lofty goal. I'd make $2400-$4800 (at least) a month if I sold that many images.