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Messages - Les

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51
Symbiostock - Hosting / Re: Installing ImageMagick
« on: August 27, 2013, 20:16 »
deleted


52
Quote
I don't really understand his investment in scoopshot or how it will make him a bigger return on his investment than if he had put all his energy into peopleimages.

I don't think, we've seen the last stage of scoopshot. With a 1.4 million investment, one can presume an expansion and  more development,  and quite likely branching into other markets. In addition,  there may be some synergy between Yuri's other companies and scoopshot that could bring other indirect benefits and improved economy scale for him.

53
Well, as they say:
there are some doers, many whiners and naysayers, and the rest of the crowd doesn't have a clue what's going on.

Yuri has accomplished a lot, made a few mistakes, and now with his latest adventure and investment, he must have more fun than most of the the people on this forum can dream or be envious of.  Enjoy the journey, Yuri!

However, the assumption that SSTK stock dropped because of Yuri's departure from Shutterstock or corresponding press release, is a little bit naive. What's happening  is simply a correction. The stock dropped, because it was ridiculously overvalued, and a sobering article named "Shutterstock Valuation Makes Me Shudder" was published on July 12th. SSTK has been steadily dropping since, but it still has a way to go before it stabilizes around $40 (coming down from lofty $60 peak). If the stock had more liquidity (actually, very thin trading volume since its IPO) and allowed short-selling, it would have never reached those heights.



 

54
Quote
the innovation in lenses in the last 10-20 yrs has been minimal.

suffice to say a Leica Noctilux F1.0 from the '70s is still producing sharper images than any canon or nikon lens sold today !

Maybe, because there is not too much else left in lens innovation. I use several 30 year old primes and am perfectly happy with them.
However, most of the disk drives they sell today are slower then some drives I used 15 years ago.


55
Symbiostock - General / Re: Is Symbiostock a con?
« on: July 21, 2013, 21:19 »

Are you a con? You sure read like  a poor attempt at one.

+1

And a very rude con to boot.
+1     I would add stupid

56
Symbiostock - General / Re: Are the big guns watching?
« on: July 21, 2013, 21:17 »
Do u think that the big guns eg SS, DT, FT or IS are watching and monitoring the development and growth of symbiostock?

Do you think they are concerned that if it gains momentum it could be a serious threat to them?
1. No. They are too busy thinking about how to take more from their contributors.

2. Not yet. I predict that the growth of Symbiostock will be exponential. Very steep - mark my words. Most observers think in linear terms.

57
Quote

The 2nd paragraph on my home page explains that "royalty free" does not mean "free for the taking" and that it's not okay to steal or "borrow" images. But many viewers will go directly to the photo pages and never see that paragraph or never click to the EULA page.( I also believe some people assume "royalty free" means "FREE!!", which of course it doesn't.)

Quote
by Steve
I would drop the statement off your home page as well. I'm sure it would annoy me if I was a real buyer (I don't think you see it on Shutterstock plastered all over the page) and I don't think it makes any difference to the non-buyer.

I agree with Steve, that it is best to drop the Royalty Free term. A compromise solution might be to mention RF rather than full wording.


 

58
I wouldn't call it trolling, just a different approach. Actually, I was going to write some of the reasons you mentioned, but then instead of lecturing I decided rather to inject some humour and let people think and come to their own conclusions. Though, the first paragraph was serious.

I spent over 30 years in the character-based computer world, and consequently, I was not brought up on the smilies and emoticons. Those thingies would make it too easy for the readers.

59
There is definitely something going on with the old data. You just have to put your mind at ease and think deeper about it, especially the part where I mentioned whiskey.

For example, now when I go on a hiking trip with the camera, I make sure I delete all old images from my memory cards.  Why to carry all extra weight?

60
I only sell my own images but i know quite a few people that have thousands of photos on their hard drives and some have asked me if i would like to buy them as they know i sell stock and this is something they are not interested in. I would probably buy the entire drive content and 'pot luck' if there is anything I could use. Is there a specific copyright purchase form anyone knows of  :-\
There is a very real chance that most of the old disk drive images wouldn't pass the latest agency inspection standards. Those images may have been OK for Flickr or Facebook uploads, and DIY photo book,  but nowadays even experienced shooters encounter often  rejections with their submitted images.

Must be related to length of time those images spent on disk drives. You lose a few bits here and there, and suddenly you realize that most old images are not quite up to par. It's not the same as with old whiskey.



61
I have no idea what you are trying to do, but I didnt say its the end of microstock. I NEVER have said anything like that ever. Also your new image, you are trying to pass a 5 month downwards trend as a dip? Keep trying.
It is a definite and irreversible trend. Come back and see in a few years.

Although stock image usage might increase in absolute terms, the increase in the demand won't even come close to the increase in supply. In addition, many graphics designers and image users who are on subscription plans are building up their own image libraries. 750 images per month add up to 9,000 images in a year, or 90,000 in 10 years. Once they have 10 handshake images, 10 girls with the phone, and 10 Pisa towers, they can get off the subscription, and live happily aver after with their accumulated loot.
   
.

62
automated translation is the biggest b***s**t.
The biggest strength of Fotolia is that they have many contributors that submit in their mother tongue therefore you find images in your mother tongue that you won't find on other sites because they use mainly automated translation and this doesn't really work, in particular for keywords.
I'm thinking more of local Symbio-networks there people put up sites completely in their mother tongue and connect with other Symbiostock-sites in the same area. The user-experience would be far ahead of any other rotten translated major site and could give a real edge in the competition.
Personally after finishing my English Symbiostock site I will put up a German Symbiostock site which only uses German including the URL of the site, I'm also thinking to make a Symbiostock Tutorial in German to encourage other people to make a Symbiostock-site. But this is all very early stage I will post this in a different thread than I have more to show.

I think this is a great idea and would make a good distinction from the volume-based stock sites. However, realistically, one can handle only so many languages, and I'm not sure what would be the best way to accommodate all original keywords and their translations into the keyword space.

63
How many uploads do you have until you got your first sale?

I have over 420 files, and still no sale.

It must be the quality of my uploads.

200 files here, no sale. Way to go  ;D. We need to be patient, keep our spirits up and ADVERTISE  :D

A few years ago, the magic number was around 300 files before you got your first sale (excluding SS). In the meantime, the number of available images on the major sites expanded at least 3 times, so on average, it might take now 1,000 files to get the first sale.
 

64
Symbiostock - General / Re: how to start?
« on: June 16, 2013, 23:36 »
It might be better if we are all NOT on bluehost.

If we have links, trackbacks etc all coming from a small number of IP addresses Google might not like it....

And what do you think about the performance issues re: connectivity between the individual Symbiostock sites (as I outlined in my previous post)? Would there be a difference in connection times if all sites are on one physical server vs spread-out over multiple providers?

65
Symbiostock - General / Re: how to start?
« on: June 16, 2013, 00:09 »
I am currently using another provider for my website  - ipower.
They also have wordpress and so far, I've been happy with them. Adding another website to the same account wouldn't cost me anything.

So, I'm wondering whether I should install symbiostock site on my existing ipower server or if Bluehost offers a better performance or some other advantages.

1. Has anybody compared ipower (or another provider) with Bluehost?

2. Since most symbiostock sites seem to reside on Bluehost, one would assume that the inter-site connections on the same physical server should be faster than if each site is on a different server. If they are not on the same physical server (one would assume that they use multiple servers), maybe in the future with the aim to improve the inter-connectivity and user experience, we could request re-allocation of all symbiostock sites to the same physical server.
Are these assumptions valid?

3.  Can you set-up multiple wordpress sites on Bluehost (i.e. symbiostock as a photo collection and a separate blogsite or ecommerce site) ? If so, would one wordpress installation handle all these entities, or would it better to have a separate wordpress installation for each site?

Thanks in advance,

Les


66
Hello there!
I just try to help and pass on some of the tricks I have learned.

I tried to be helpful, and then Im told its boring.

You may want to think about how fertile your comments are for the forum.

Fertile - that needs some elaboration

prolific OR saturated with manure?

67
Rejected for composition

No wonder, the number 5 is clearly not in the right spot.
You should reposition it exactly in two thirds on both axis.

68
"Down the road we will all be on tablets anyhow."

Does that mean that the reviewers will use tablets to review files? Yikes!
Based on the ever increasing number of rejections, it seems that many reviewers are already using tablets or even smartphones.

69
Shutterstock.com / Re: Recieved an email from Shutterstock.
« on: April 24, 2013, 18:20 »
Quote
I wonder why they didn't make a song and dance about it, as it's such a huge increase.
Even more irresponsible was not letting us know about the meteoric rise of their shares prices.  They should have announced it in one of the forums while the shares still lingered in the low twenties.

70
Shutterstock.com / Re: Offset invitation?
« on: April 24, 2013, 17:39 »
It's your fault. You should have sold all your cameras and bought instead SS shares when they bolted out from their IPO.

71
Shutterstock.com / Re: Recieved an email from Shutterstock.
« on: April 24, 2013, 17:35 »
There was no announcement. But for all practical purposes, it works out that way,

72
Shutterstock.com / Re: Recieved an email from Shutterstock.
« on: April 24, 2013, 09:55 »
Quote
You are making stuff up, do the calculation. Come on do it. You know you are going to find out you are wrong. The fact that a buyer doesnt use his full quota doesnt mean SS is paying me less per image.

Do the hard numbers, cost of an image and my royalty. Come on do it.

I'll do it, since you will never admit it.

199 dollar subscription package. 750 images. An image downloaded from me cost 0.265 cent, I get 0.33 cent. 124%


I haven't seen such naive comment since I read the last news from TASS agency.
With your aptitude for math, what do you think, how many buyers fulfill their full contingent of 750 images each month?
 

73
General Stock Discussion / Re: Travel photography Sales
« on: April 24, 2013, 08:23 »
TWAC has a lot of meanings.
Please translate.
Thank You.
You have to contextualise it: 'Traveller with a camera'.

I thought, it was "'Traveller With A Cause", since all travellers today have either a camera or a phone with camera. Or their kids have one.

74
I like the concept of Symbiostock, but not its abbreviation - SS.
Not only is this acronym synonymous with Shuttterstock, but also with SchutzStaffel, the elite military unit if Hitler's Nazi army.

I would imagine with all the creative potential on this site we should be able to come up with a different short form. Some acronyms might be SB, SBS, SYS, SYM. We could even vote on it.




75
Ay, that's the rub.
Uploading to all the different agencies with their individual quirks and odd requirements, then monitoring them to see how well they do or don't perform, deciding how long and how many images to give them as a trial, then keeping an eye on them as they send images off to partner sites, change terms and conditions, etc etc.
The whole business is a quagmire.  >:( ::)
Good point. It's totally unproductive.
And then still to worry, when to withdraw images from the non-performing agencies, and worse still, losing the accumulated earnings when they go belly up.

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