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Off Topic / What to do with site www.microstock.top ?
« on: April 03, 2017, 04:32 »
Hello, world! Hello, Photostockers!
Many of you, for sure, know the site www.microstock.top. And many, probably, interesting, who publishes information, where does it come from, and how reliable is it? This information is not from Shutterstock, not insider's, not hacker's. It was collected from available sources - pages of author's portfolio.
The site started on February 28, 2016, and it exists as my personal hobby. I'm a photographer and a bit of a photo-stocker, but I'm not a programmer. Therefore, for its creation and launch it was necessary to resort to the services of one my friend programmer. He wrote a script for a couple of days, which does what is called "parsing of pages" and gave it to me.
There are, probably, photographers-programmers and programmers-photographers. But personally I have to spend a lot of time to even just slightly change the code of that script or html-page of the site. Or spend money, referring to the services of a programmer.
Yes, the script is far from perfect. He somehow does not catch everyone who has a portfolio of more than 1000. The script easily "forgets" those who have a portfolio suddenly becomes zero, even if it is for a while. This happens even when the first page of the author is sometimes empty (yes, there are such glitches on the Shutter' pages). All this can be corrected. Few codes to be programmed and corrected. But I'm not going to study programming deeply, it's not mine, because I'm just a photographer, but I'm earning a good income, and not on microstocks. And my expenses (time and money) on this site should not eat all my resources (time and money).
But in the last three months I spent so much energy, time and money on this site that he began to remind me strongly of my children's hobby with postal stamps. They became more and more, new albums appeared and filled. There was not much money spent, but very often and regularly. And no practical use. Well, we looked at my postal stamps with friends, and they, basically, are exactly the same, even there's nothing to exchange. I, like those of my friends, did not become a true Philatelist. And in that child's head I had no idea how to get any benefit out of all this. Some losses, which almost completely fell on the shoulders of my parents. When I was 10-11 years old I got carried away by another hobby - photography. At first, mostly, purely out of curiosity, helped my father print photos. This was my hobby to withdraw even more money, but how much happiness I had when I took the camera in my hand, how much happiness I had when I showed the film and printed photos. How much happiness is left in these black and white photographs! Postal stamps are forgotten, they do not store any emotions, they can not be sold even for pennies, there are no any rarities there. Now they are covered by dust very far away, in my mother's house, though she did not throw them away, but she does not show any interest in these albums with postal stamps. She looks at albums with photos. Happiness is there! Emotions in every piece of paper. The computer and the Internet can not store emotions, they are also fast and fleeting, like gigahertz and Instagram, it was - and nothing. Photos should be printed on paper. On paper, emotions last longer.
But enough lyrics. A year has passed since the launch of the site, and you can sum up some results.
Visitors. When the number of unique visitors to the site reached 5000 per month, it stopped growing. In early 2017 due to changes on the site, the number of visitors has grown to 8000 (it's about 25000-30000 page views) per month and also does not grow any more. According to the statistics of Google Analytics, the main number of visitors is mainly from Russia, Ukraine and Thailand. Further with a large margin are Malaysia, Belarus, Serbia, USA, Germany, Czechia and others.
I address to you, dear photostockers. Share your thoughts. Whether it is necessary to continue, whether it is necessary for you? Do you really need this site? What else can and should be done? How to attract more visitors? How to earn money, at least to pay the programmer?
Yes, we can make tables not only by Shutter, but also by other photostocks. We can do search by name. Or make still any statistics of type M-Rank, or make any even simple things, like www.microstock.top/sssearchbyid.html. We can make one more Keywording Tool. We can do Russian and other languages. And many more things. But the fact is that my friend programmer or some other spherical-in-a-vacuum programmer can not give time to something that is uninteresting to him or that is not paid for. All that is now on this site, everything is done not of the enthusiasm of the heap of programmers, but only of my curiosity, for which I paid, although not so much.
So what to do with the site? I appeal to you for advice, because I again have too many "postal stamps", and I do and want to be engaged in photography. Now the site is as it is. But it can become another, more necessary.
If we need something more complicated, we can hire a more serious encoder and more expensive. But I did not need it so far. We can use more than one computer and more experienced programmers. But only if someone needs it, except me. Just try to understand that a year ago, starting to make a website, I did not promise anything to anyone, did not take money from anyone to develop, but just spent my money. The site has no debts and promises. That is, today I can calmly close it. Maybe it can be forgotten, like old postal stamps? More often, as unnecessary, they are simply left to collect dust on the shelf.
But we can look at this matter from a different angle, and take it with renewed force. Just need to add some money. And I'll spend it on paying the programmer. Moreover, if with your help the ideas, wishlist and tasks will be clear and clearly set. I await your comments, ladies and gentlemen!
Sincerely yours, microstock.top
Many of you, for sure, know the site www.microstock.top. And many, probably, interesting, who publishes information, where does it come from, and how reliable is it? This information is not from Shutterstock, not insider's, not hacker's. It was collected from available sources - pages of author's portfolio.
The site started on February 28, 2016, and it exists as my personal hobby. I'm a photographer and a bit of a photo-stocker, but I'm not a programmer. Therefore, for its creation and launch it was necessary to resort to the services of one my friend programmer. He wrote a script for a couple of days, which does what is called "parsing of pages" and gave it to me.
There are, probably, photographers-programmers and programmers-photographers. But personally I have to spend a lot of time to even just slightly change the code of that script or html-page of the site. Or spend money, referring to the services of a programmer.
Yes, the script is far from perfect. He somehow does not catch everyone who has a portfolio of more than 1000. The script easily "forgets" those who have a portfolio suddenly becomes zero, even if it is for a while. This happens even when the first page of the author is sometimes empty (yes, there are such glitches on the Shutter' pages). All this can be corrected. Few codes to be programmed and corrected. But I'm not going to study programming deeply, it's not mine, because I'm just a photographer, but I'm earning a good income, and not on microstocks. And my expenses (time and money) on this site should not eat all my resources (time and money).
But in the last three months I spent so much energy, time and money on this site that he began to remind me strongly of my children's hobby with postal stamps. They became more and more, new albums appeared and filled. There was not much money spent, but very often and regularly. And no practical use. Well, we looked at my postal stamps with friends, and they, basically, are exactly the same, even there's nothing to exchange. I, like those of my friends, did not become a true Philatelist. And in that child's head I had no idea how to get any benefit out of all this. Some losses, which almost completely fell on the shoulders of my parents. When I was 10-11 years old I got carried away by another hobby - photography. At first, mostly, purely out of curiosity, helped my father print photos. This was my hobby to withdraw even more money, but how much happiness I had when I took the camera in my hand, how much happiness I had when I showed the film and printed photos. How much happiness is left in these black and white photographs! Postal stamps are forgotten, they do not store any emotions, they can not be sold even for pennies, there are no any rarities there. Now they are covered by dust very far away, in my mother's house, though she did not throw them away, but she does not show any interest in these albums with postal stamps. She looks at albums with photos. Happiness is there! Emotions in every piece of paper. The computer and the Internet can not store emotions, they are also fast and fleeting, like gigahertz and Instagram, it was - and nothing. Photos should be printed on paper. On paper, emotions last longer.
But enough lyrics. A year has passed since the launch of the site, and you can sum up some results.
Visitors. When the number of unique visitors to the site reached 5000 per month, it stopped growing. In early 2017 due to changes on the site, the number of visitors has grown to 8000 (it's about 25000-30000 page views) per month and also does not grow any more. According to the statistics of Google Analytics, the main number of visitors is mainly from Russia, Ukraine and Thailand. Further with a large margin are Malaysia, Belarus, Serbia, USA, Germany, Czechia and others.
I address to you, dear photostockers. Share your thoughts. Whether it is necessary to continue, whether it is necessary for you? Do you really need this site? What else can and should be done? How to attract more visitors? How to earn money, at least to pay the programmer?
Yes, we can make tables not only by Shutter, but also by other photostocks. We can do search by name. Or make still any statistics of type M-Rank, or make any even simple things, like www.microstock.top/sssearchbyid.html. We can make one more Keywording Tool. We can do Russian and other languages. And many more things. But the fact is that my friend programmer or some other spherical-in-a-vacuum programmer can not give time to something that is uninteresting to him or that is not paid for. All that is now on this site, everything is done not of the enthusiasm of the heap of programmers, but only of my curiosity, for which I paid, although not so much.
So what to do with the site? I appeal to you for advice, because I again have too many "postal stamps", and I do and want to be engaged in photography. Now the site is as it is. But it can become another, more necessary.
If we need something more complicated, we can hire a more serious encoder and more expensive. But I did not need it so far. We can use more than one computer and more experienced programmers. But only if someone needs it, except me. Just try to understand that a year ago, starting to make a website, I did not promise anything to anyone, did not take money from anyone to develop, but just spent my money. The site has no debts and promises. That is, today I can calmly close it. Maybe it can be forgotten, like old postal stamps? More often, as unnecessary, they are simply left to collect dust on the shelf.
But we can look at this matter from a different angle, and take it with renewed force. Just need to add some money. And I'll spend it on paying the programmer. Moreover, if with your help the ideas, wishlist and tasks will be clear and clearly set. I await your comments, ladies and gentlemen!
Sincerely yours, microstock.top
