Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on December 06, 2018, 16:48
Thanks for the heads up. I think it's clearly someone who doesn't understand - or doesn't care - that he can't sell products based on stock photos. He almost certainly didn't buy an extended license for all of those and the only way to check if he was buying a license for each new sale from whatever agency he obtained the files from would be to a copyright holder test him out to see if a new download shows up.

I didn't see anything of mine.

QuoteDoes Zazzle allow Pinterest images to be sold on products?

On Zazzle for putting up a product for sale you have to check that "I have the right to publish and sell this product without violating others' rights, and I agree to Zazzle's User Agreement". So, no, Pinterest images wouldn't qualify. But, yes, he could have been covered by an extended license since the image in question is one of my bestsellers everywhere. It seems, however, that he didn't care to buy such license. Otherwise he would have complained against the take-down for sure.
The images he uses are from all possible sources: SS, Flickr, National Geographic,... you name it.

QuoteThe fact that Zazzle doesn't close him, shows they don't really care.

Agree. At least they didn't hesitate to remove my image from his store. I was just hoping that more copyright violation complaints against him would eventually trigger a harsher action i.e. shutting down his store.

Quote from: drd on December 06, 2018, 08:36
Can you share how was this person selling your images? (postcard or electronic download?)

Products such as postcards, posters, mugs, etc. - I don't think there is electronic downloads available on zazzle.

Hello,
just a heads-up:
a few days ago I found one of my images on Zazzle in this guy's Zazzle store: https://www.zazzle.com/walterbjedyk
I reported this through a link "Report this product" somewhere close to the bottom of every product page.
And today all his zazzle products with my image are gone and I received this from Zazzle:

QuoteHello,
Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. Zazzle takes all claims of infringement very seriously and we hope to resolve this matter amicably.
We have reviewed your claim and, per your request, the unauthorized product as outlined in your email has been removed from Zazzle's marketplace. The designer has also been notified of the infringement claim.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions.
Best Regards,

Not bad at all. However, they didn't shut down his store, which is sad because I strongly suspect that a least a good part of this guy's 1000+ Zazzle products base on stolen images.
So, please go and have a look and report copyright violation when you find your image(s) in his store.

Thanks for reading.

It's good news that new owners are now trying to reanimate GL, especially if they continue being always fair to contributors as the old owners have been. Good luck!

For me this is good enough to start uploading again. My suggestion for a smoother upload workflow would be replacing the daily upload limit by a weekly or monthly limit as I tend to work with bigger batches of 100 to 200 images.

IMHO pricing tiers like dt or reverse dt don't make any sense at all if sales are not frequently enough. For my port on GL sales would have to increase at least 20-fold before I could even start telling good selling images from non-sellers. A long way to go...

Nevertheless, attracting high quality niche images could prove being a good strategy helping turn around GL. At least the more seasoned stockers know exactly which of their images fall into that high quality niche category. Just being able as a contributor to select a higher price point for a certain percentage of my images would be a good start in a good direction. If the higher priced images on GL would be additionally curated by GL staff it could be ensured that image buyers as well understand why certain images cost more than others.

Again, good luck to the new owners of GL. I cross my fingers for all of us.

Great response, Robin! +100

I think that - apart from trolling - some of the posts being negative about Symbiostock and Symzio are fueled by disappointed expectations about what a direct image sales site and networking with other similar minded people can achieve in a given period of time. Symbio has inspired high flying hopes, then produced very down to earth sales statistics and led to lots of drama in the fora. As a Symbiostocker from day one I've witnessed it all. It has been a rough ride and it has been very sad at times.

I am grateful for Robin to continue Symbiostock, leading the way and staying cool even here. We don't need more drama. Instead, we need to leave the turbulent past behind and work together steadily building our sites and the Symbiostock community. We need to be prepared for a long haul since there is no low hanging fruit left to pick in this industry. Realistically there won't be any instant success and $$$s pouring in from our Symbiostock sites. Not now and not in the near future. It takes more than just setting up a Wordpress site.

So does this make any business sense, then? Well, did Deactivation Day, deleting (part of) our portfolios, essentially erasing hours of our work spent, in protest against DPC, make any business sense? - No, definitely not in a conventional sense. But it did work, D-Day has been a success, at least in my eyes. Where is that spirit? We need it for Symbiostock as well. Does it really make more business sense to do all the work but earn only down to 15% of the profit? - This is how distorted and strange this industry has become. Let's stop expressing our frustrations and anger with agencies in countless MSG threads and divert that energy into building our Symbiostock sites and contributing to the community. We can make it work!

Quote from: Redneck on January 02, 2016, 17:33

Quote from: Shelma1 on January 02, 2016, 15:56

Quote from: Redneck on January 02, 2016, 13:50

Quote from: fotomine on January 01, 2016, 00:35
Would consider joining.  Any success stories from current users? Any regrets?

If you're a stock contributor anyway, and you're able and willing to set up your own Wordpress website, then it's a no-brainer really. It's like doing the work once but creating 2 sales channels, your own site with 100% revenue, and Symzio with at least 80%. And the community network tools of the Symzio system will even push your own website in a way you could never achieve on your own.

Putting together your own website is a huge amount of work, and for most people it simply won't be worth it. It wasn't for me.

We've discussed all issues the old Symbiostock had (mostly in the Facebook group). One issue was that it really was quirky, hard to handle and not easy to maintain.
These problems are gone. The new Symbiostock plugin is based on WooCommerce as selling platform. The new plugin is way easier to set up and to handle, is more performant and a lot more stable.

The second, even more important core issue was, that Leo as developer and driving force couldn't really gain anything from his efforts toward the project and eventually completely dropped the ball. This problem is gone now, too. Robin is not only a very capable developer but he's also entrepreneur enough to invest his time and work into an enterprise designed to make money at a later point.
I certainly don't agree on everything with Robin or Symzio, but at least there's a clear vision and a strong driving force. And it's one of the best stock selling options available. From a technical, sales, and revenue point of view.

Redneck is right, I agree 100%.

The chances to succeed with Symbiostock as a community push have never been better. Sure, it is betting a little money and some valuable time on something with no guaranties regarding the individual outcome and for the community as a whole. However, for me it is also a matter of self-respect: Am I willing to accept down to lousy 15% of what buyers pay from my agents without even trying to do it myself without any greedy agents? - My answer is a firm NO!!! - And currently Symbiostock/Symzio is simply the best way to act accordingly. 

I am glad to see that Symbiostock is on track again evolving and potentially changing the currently barren landscape of microstock (well, "barren" for contributors at least) into greener pastures.

In his Microstock Diaries blog Lee Torrens recently summarized the difficulties and pitfalls of selling direct (www.microstockdiaries.com/pricing-strategies-for-selling-direct.html). His conclusion: a direct sales website is not for everyone. Well, not for me. He got that right. I have no illusions.

So why am I still maintaining my (legacy) Symbiostock website and why have I started working on migrating to Robin's new Symbiostock WP plugin? The answer is that I see a third way to success in selling direct that Lee completely ignored: a community driven effort. Done right it could work, maybe not for everyone but for many of us. And many of us will be needed to make it work.

IMO old Symbiostock has been a big push in the right direction. However, it had its share of flaws and never reached critical mass to become worthwhile for most of us who tried, including myself. Since Robin picked it up this spring he has worked on ironing out the flaws. For instance, by combining Symbiostock with wooCommerce he created a licensing/payment/download environment that is on par with today's internet shopping standards. The quirks of old Symbio in this area are history.

Maybe even more important Robin tries a different approach on community building. Creating Symzio is IMO now at heart of the community building/networking aspect of Symbiostock. Without it Symbio will fail for most of us because Lee is right in his analysis. With old Symbiostock every Symbiostocker, while being part of the network, was on her/his own. IMO it didn't fly partly because it created too much of a chaos of different pricing schedules, licensing terms, login/register requirements etc to be trustworthy for most image buyers. Symzio clearly aims at resolving this issue. It greatly simplifies searching, selecting, and buying images with unified license terms from various participating Symbiostockers. At the same time it leaves every Symbiostocker the freedom to do with the same images checked-in into Symzio and/or other images on his/her site as pleased. While Symzio acts like an agent it is much more than that by linking in and out every single participating Symbio site creating the SEO juice the community will need to succeed. Robin can explain the details much better than I, but this is the bigger picture I see.

However, I understand that for Robin running Symzio like an agent comes at the price of added responsibilities and legal liabilities. He simply has to protect his back. As always with such "fine print" there are worries and valid concerns for him as well as us (potential) contributors. Not much different from all the other agents. I hope and trust for now that "contributor controlled" also means that nothing of this is written in stone but open to reason and discussion as Symzio/Symbiostock continues to grow and evolve.

As it stands now I want to be part of Symzio and I hope to meet you there all as fellow Symbiostockers. Let's prove Lee Torrens wrong!

@Ana: I am no vector guy and can't help, but I am sure you will get answers on the Symbiostock forum: http://www.symbiostock.org/forums/.

I own one, too, and use it mainly for aurora night shots as well. Worked well even down to -40 degrees Celsius. I use live view for focus as I don't trust focus being preset at daytime because of the sometimes extreme temperature differences I am used to work with. The lens has a weird distortion resulting in pretty ugly "wavy" horizons that can be tricky to correct manually. Fortunately, I found a (free) LR preset for this lens (with Canon) that solved the issue for me. I can't remember where, though. Google might find it for you. - At this price you got to love it...

Quote from: wds on July 22, 2015, 22:26
I am frustrated by the fact that on upload, Fotolia uses the Title field rather than the Description field if your file has IPTC data. Today I accidentally discovered that if the Title field in your file is blank, than Fotolia in fact uses the Description field from the file!

Now to figure out the least painful way to make use of this fact!

Thank you for telling us. I might give it shot. Now, does anyone know if Fotolia has a length/character limit on image titles? My image descriptions are usually fairly long...

Quote from: amabu on July 07, 2015, 06:22
Contributers get free credits for uploading and can use them to "buy" images. So if even if you "sell" something you don´t necessarily get any compensation for it...

This is correct and can be annoying. However, even if I count in these $0-downloads I get an RPD twice as high than on SS. So that's OK with me.

A bigger problem is decline of downloads/sales in general. 5 years ago my meager 25 (or so) images were doing much better than >300 images now. I find it hard to stay motivated enough to deal with their idiosyncratic submission process although it is only required for (the few) accepted images.

It will take a 300% increase to get where I have been with fotolia 2 years ago. I'd sure like to see that happen with the new adobe stock deal. However, somehow I don't feel like holding my breath...

Quote from: sweetgirll on June 16, 2015, 05:07
On Zazzle they can add their logo and text. just one problem...the Zazzle logo can't be removed...so there will be two logos.

If you don't want to have the POD logo, then the only option is a print shop, or  online printing sites, such as 48hourprint.com, which offer digital and offset printing for larger runs...

No, that isn't true. The Zazzle logo can be removed.  I don't remember exactly what I did but I was able to get rid of the Zazzle logo and replace it with some of my own. Just play with their system and you'll figure it out...

Check out Zazzle

Quote from: cdwheatley on June 13, 2015, 21:06
If you could get all the best material to be sold exclusively on a site like this it might work. Let's face it, many contributors that have been at this a while are feeling a little unmotivated and paranoid about the future, for good reason. A site that was run by contributors with a chance to have shares as well... sounds refreshing. Maybe it could remain nonexclusive up until a point where the money was there, wont happen overnight. At that time, everything goes exclusive and ports are pulled from the other sites. Newbies would have to cut their teeth at the regular micros until they are good enough and have a large enough port to join the site. That way the flow of images would be top notch and only available under one roof. Istock was heading in this direction once upon a time only to get squashed by greed. We the contributors collectively own all the product, it's simple, put it all in one place and have it run by a us= game over. Having the same material spread out everywhere is the problem.

Nothing more effective than an army of 20,000+ contributors promoting a product that they believe in.

Honestly, with the way things are going, how many people that make a living doing stock still think they will be able to do so 5 years from now? Maybe a few. Are the agencies going to help us, do they care to help us?

While I agree 100% I still wonder if GDI is the one we are waiting for. My gut feeling tells me this is either a non-starter or, worse, a scam.

Quote from: leaf on June 10, 2015, 06:14
The disagree button seems to be spreading more hate than it is help.  Perhaps that button should be done away while keeping the agree button.

-1, too

Maybe it's intentional incompetence... 

Quote from: dirkr on June 02, 2015, 08:10
I am not 100% sure, but if I remember correctly, opt out was per e-mail and not on the site.

Yes, that's what I remember as well. Note that they promised people (e.g. Sean) not to be included in partner deals, which proved to be wrong.
IMHO DP can't be trusted. For now, my port is still online there but I don't submit anything new since the 3%-royalty-partner-"deal"-discovery almost 2 years ago.

Same here  - Have sent e-mail to fotolia. Thank you for the heads up!

SS "reviewer" finally revealed 

Before I started self-hosting with my Symbio site I have been with Zenfolio for a year. Nice, easy and reliable. No complaints. Their SEO is non-existent, though. No sales.

As it stands right now I would go Photoshelter long before joining Robin's hosting.

Abandonware? - Not Symbiostock (the good old one) in my books. At one (maybe several) point(s) Leo quit developing the old theme when it became apparent that it was too much of a burden for him with too little return. He always promised that he would take care in case WP update would cause trouble and such. I think that never happened during more than a year because (the old) Symbiostock has proven to be so stable. This is true at least for my symbio site.
I am not in any hurry at all to switch to new symbio or grfx. There's is actually no reason. So far none of the new plugins provide any feature superior to the old theme, except, maybe, the VAT compliance that woo provides. Not good enough of a reason for me as a Canadian.
If I wanted to start self-hosting right now and couldn't wait a few months to see how this forum drama about new symbio and grfx pans out I'd go with Leo and grfx because of his good track record and reliability as opposed to Robin who chooses to be a mystery man.

Just my 2 cents.

Quote from: marthamarks on May 14, 2015, 18:00

Quote from: JoRodrigues on May 14, 2015, 16:32
What you sell on your own site, and with which plug in is your choice.

And there's the true gist of the current situation. I'm a photographer, but I'm probably going to migrate to grfx because I know Leo and trust him.

Same here. Fortunately, my old symbio site continues to work just fine. I hope I can just wait a few months until all dust has settled and decide then which route to go. I actually like choices and also notice already a hint of "competition is good for business". 

Very much appreciated, Grant. My contributor dashboard now shows a very convenient weekly upload limit. Thanks again.

Your keyword issues are more serious than this. When I search for "Northern Lights" on Veer (I happen to have lots of northern lights shots) I get results that more than 50% don't show something even closely related to the search term. Many of my northern lights images don't show at all.
That's no wonder, I know it now thanks to this forum thread, because the keyword "northern lights" has been stripped. I feel like having wasted a lot of time uploading to Veer.