Nobody has really refused anything from what I've read.
I can't and don't want to speak for Robin but I've already explained that Symzio is different than other agencies. The quality of content depends on what Symbiostock users feed to it. This is way more freedom than you can have with any other agency out there. But with freedom comes responsibility. And of course there need to be some rules to make sure this system doesn't get abused by individuals who don't work actively to keep up the standard (too many similars, keyword spam, low quality images etc).
In my personal opinion nobody who's honest and professional, and delivers content that's up or above the quality level of Symzio, needs to be afraid of getting punished. There's simply no reason for that.
But even if someone would get kicked from Symzio, this person would still have his/her own Symbiostock site.

Quote from: Redneck on January 03, 2016, 13:22

Everybody is entitled to his opinion.
However, waiting until many others have joined and pushed it, and have reported frequent sales is basically the laziest and most cowardly attitude anyone can have toward a new enterprise.
Well, that was my opinion.

You're right, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. My opinion is that I deeply resent your characterization of those who aren't ready to participate in this venture as having "...the laziest and most cowardly attitude anyone can have toward a new enterprise"

I won't repeat my list of concerns, but so far I've heard only peppy marketing talk and insults to address those concerns.

There's an old expression that you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If you're trying to draw people to the new endeavor, I don't think this is a good way to go about it.

Sorry, I apologize for my snappy remarks.

waiting is the only logical choice at this point given robin's refusal to respond  to significant issues raised about the TOS which can destroy an independent's work; his arbitrary decision can kick someone off the symzio service based on undefined criteria; ...

I think you might be a little paranoid. Are you talking about the potential submission fee or the being kicked-out danger?
It has been explained already that the content of Symzio is almost entirely Symbiostock user controlled. Once you're approved as a contributor it's up to you what appears on Symzio because nobody will select your best work and reject the crappy stuff. So being a Symzio contributor comes with great responsibility, to deliver work that's up to the standards and that's not flooding the system with similars.
Of course there need to be some kind of rules to avoid possible misuse of the system. In other words, if you try to cheat the system, you might get kicked out or fined. That's it.
I can't speak for Robin but why in the world should he demand a fee when contributors deliver high quality content?

Keeping the content on Symzio on a high technical and creative level is in everybody's interest.

The trick is getting eyeballs to the sites, and I don't see anything here that's any different than old Symbiostock, other than asking people to do more marketing work while giving you a cut.

Very important facts are different now.
1. Symzio is acting as a central hub agency fed by individual Symbiostock sites. It's a completely different solution than anything we had before. It's not just a search engine that lists images from/to individual sites. It's a complete agency without the pain of traditional agencies (subscriptions, credits, registrations etc).
2. The Symzio widget which any Symbiostocker may use creates highly relevant outgoing text and image links to Symzio which in return will link back to your site from any contributors profile page. Relevancy is the key here.  Example: http://picturebreeze.com/stock/photos/image/baby-dog-christmas-tree/ . Look at the links automatically and dynamically created by the Symzio plugin at the bottom. It doesn't get much more relevant. That's what search engines dig. And you even earn affiliate money if the customer finds one of the Symzio widget images more suitable for his project.

Quote from: Redneck on January 02, 2016, 08:50

Quote from: fotomine on December 31, 2015, 19:35

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.

ALL you contributors will be sorry in 12 months time!!!!

I can guarantee you that you're wrong about that. Even if Symzio as central hub agency fails, contributors will still have their own website presenting their best work available for licensing.

I didn't get any kind of newsletter either, just noticed yesterday that the SYS forum was "down for maintenance." It's still down, and if Ron hadn't posted those quotations, I wouldn't have thought anything about it.

Ron, is there a date on those quotations? The name of a sender attached? Did they come from Leo? If so, when? It would help to know that.

We all greatly appreciate Leo's talent and what he's done for our little community. But the near-constant up-down-up-down instability is disconcerting, to say the least.

If you want to give me your email address by PM, I can forward the newsletter to you.

http://picturebreeze.com/stock/photos/how-to-move-your-wordpress-site-to-a-different-webspace-host/

$50 sale today.

In my experience prices and returns generated by Corbis are surprisingly low. 10% of low doesn't sound very promising to me.

Make sure the free plan offers PHP 5 and a MySQL database.

I don't think we need a zoom feature..

symbiostock previews are already "largest" in the industry.. there are so many more crucial features that need to be implemented before this luxury..

I mentioned it before.. at these early stages, sales are not that great, and the lack of sales make people look for reasons like: "oh, is it the zoom" or "is it the registration process"

NO, no it's not the zoom and it's not the registration process.. previews are HUGE already and people do buy when they need an image.. and they do register in order to buy an image..

customers don't just go like: "oh, there is no zoom, I am not buying here" or "oh, I have to register, so I will go to another website"   at the end of the day, you pretty much have to register on almost all the sites and that's not a problem when you are getting a service from that site..

you would be TOTALLY right if we had a 400px preview image, but we don't, we have a 590px preview image and zoom is a luxury in my opinion.. at least for the moment it is.. once all the other issues are sorted, we can think of fancy stuff..

I think if you want to reach out to serious or even semiprofessional buyers (and charge accordingly), then you'll need a 100% preview of some kind. Whoever is willing to spend more than peanuts on an image will probably want to make sure not to buy sub standard quality.