Sehr interessant - ich habe dir mal eine Mail dazu geschickt.

I will be there as well.

I will also speak at the Photokina professional forum on Tuesday 2:15pm and Thursday 2:15pm. You are welcome to join (but please don't ask ugly questions haha).

You can find more details about the speech here:
http://www.photokina.de/de/photokina/diemesse/events_veranstaltungen/veranstaltungssuche_2/veranstaltungen.php?&fw_goto=veranstaltung/details&&vid=11716&values=%7B%22thema%22%3A%22461%22%2C%22datum%22%3A%222014-09-16%22%2C%22start%22%3A0%7D

We also do some video interviews on the Photokina so if you like to join you are very welcome.

Best,
Amos

I'm very proud to present you our inspiring infographic about the top stock photography trends 2014 based on our 50 trends article here (http://www.stockphotosecrets.com/buyers-guide/50-trends-photography-2014.html).

Please be so kind and share it with all your friends and colleagues. Just click on it to see it live on our website with more sharing options.

-> More infos here -> http://www.stockphotosecrets.com/buyers-guide/50-trends-photography-2014.html#infographic



Use this embed code to add this infographic to your blog->
http://www.stockphotosecrets.com/buyers-guide/50-trends-photography-2014.html#infographiccode
or jus use this code
<p><strong>Please include attribution to http://www.stockphotosecrets.com/ with this graphic.</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://www.stockphotosecrets.com/buyers-guide/50-trends-photography-2014.html"><img src=https://cdn.stockphotosecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/stockphotosecrets-photography-trends.jpg alt="50 Trends in Photography to Watch out for 2014! Photophotography Trends 2014 (Infographic)" width=�600px� border=0 /></a></p>
I have also attached some more graphics you can use in blog post, social media or so on.

I would like to hear your thoughts!

Regards
Amos

Thank You very much for that post Uncle Pete. Very true!

Many industries have been affected by the electronic age. Stock photos is only one of them. Used to be people sent catalogs or collections, maybe mailed letters or made phone calls. Contacts and agencies. Reputations were built and the system had limited sources. If you wanted some slides on approval, they shipped them to you and they were reviewed.

Now digital equipment. Instead of local markets or national markets, the whole world can click and look and see what people have for sale. Also the equipment to take photos has become available to masses of people, it's not specialized and technical. (but it still helps to be educated and know your trade)

Where a small group of people, made a living shooting stock photos, now the entire population can dive in. What some people in the business of Microstock miss is, there is still cream on the top and some people still stand out and make the best returns.

If you are copying best sellers and others styles, or last years trends... you're too late. That's one mistake that some people make. They think that a popular image, will always be popular. There are trends and styles and fads. What was good two years ago, cutting edge, has been shot to Swiss cheese and is old and over produced. (that's a hint for the list of how to succeed in Microstock)

On a base level. Photo agencies have two choices, same as stores, manufacturers, or anything that's produced and marketed. 1) Lower Price 2) Exclusive and better quality. Go ahead look at food, cars, art, toys, kitchen utensils, pickles, just about anything, and Stock Photos falls into that group.

So we have a commodity that's over supplied, many times more than needed, common, easily reproduced, copied and replicated and the market is flooded. I guess that eliminates number two, doesn't it?

Anyone who expects high pay for something that's abundant and mass produced, is self absorbed and can't see the reality in front of their face. That's someone who keeps shooting sliced vegetables, isolated on white, models with a headset, business handshake and the whole stock or pop Microstock, that's over produced.

I suppose with that it would be helpful and reasonable to offer an answer. Do I need to? (sheep can just keep grazing on the same old pastures and walking in circles, you will get nowhere)

Find a niche, a genre that's in demand right now, be different, explore, INNOVATION not duplication. There's you path and answer. But it takes change and observation and breaking away for the normal easy doing the same old things, or same as someone already did in 2010.

This is the same for any creative field, poetry, art, cinema, writing, music, and Photography.

Blaming the agency and the pay, is just ignoring the real issues. SS 41 million stock images. Alamy 50 million stock images. Do something different in your creative endeavors or do something different for your income. Don't expect high pay for something that doesn't stand out, that has a world of competition and a world market.

If you can do something different and creative and cutting edge, by all means, demand higher prices, don't take Microstock pay for it.

Quote from: gnirtS on September 01, 2014, 09:45

Quote

Contributors should band together to end subscription sales. It has killed the industry for suppliers and made agencies millions all the while completely devaluing the perceived value of images for stock usage.

But from a buyers and stock company point of view its great.  And there will ALWAYS be new contributors to pick up from the ones leaving.

They're here to stay.

@Cobalt: As far as i heard from EyeEm they do not plan to be another "feeder" for Getty - they will heavily market their "Market" as they told me. It also makes more sense to me.

Glad to hear @milemobile and @gigidread - looking forward to your picture 

Leaf, you HAVE to start selling those! My jealousy is out of control! 

BTW i might have one last mug available ;-)

Awesome - glad to see that so many arrived. 

Hello everybody. Glad to hear that the first arrived. Sorry about the delay.

It took us longer than expected to ship them all over Europe and even further. You should all get them within the next 7-10 days. We have also added some more "surprises" from the Microstock Expo into the package.

Best,
Amos

I'm coming... as host i should, right?

Thank you very much for your questions. I answer them below your questions in bold.

1) Where is the primary backup data stored and could I get at that independently (e.g. with my own account credentials) if for some reason your company stopped operating one day?

The primary backup is stored on our servers and on Amazon S3. We are not supporting your own account or credentials. You can download a copy either directly to your harddrive or to Dropbox anytime. If our service stops one day (which i never hope ;-)) you will still have your copy on harddrive as well as the live copy on your website/server.

2) I didn't see any details about how the backup is handled. I have shared hosting with Bluehost and it seems important that any process for backup is able to resume after the process is shut down by the server (for whatever reasons). Do the WordPress site owners have any configurable parameters for how the backup is done if for some reason their hosting provider is causing difficulties for blogVault?

Our backup works with any host and via a very slim backup. We do not store any backup (like other plugins and solutions) on your website. We move them directly onto our servers no matter how big they are. After the initial backup, we only do incremential backups.
Let's say Bluehost goes down (which just recently happened) you still have a full backup on our servers and can "restore" your site to any other host within minutes. I even "clone" websites with this function and move it to another host and even automaticaly change name of the website if i like.
If you want to restore, there is a very easy to understand restore process, just enter FTP credentials and we will recognize your WordPress credentials and restore your website within minutes (depending on the size of course). At any time you can create a test-restore on our servers and see if your site is completely backed up and running smoothly.

3) There don't appear to be any screen shots or demos of the dashboard interface to see what sort of controls the customer has or how things work. Do you have that somewhere (I know there's a free trial, but I don't want to spend time on that if a quick look at an interface, some documentation or a video would tell me that this product is for me or not)?

You are right, sorry about not having a lot of screenshots yet. There is a video about the migration here:

Migrate a Wordpress Site to a New Domain

and i have attached another screenshot from my dasboard. Feel free to ask for more help.

I just skimmed through all the backup problems here in this thread and want to recommend using blogVault as WordPress and Symbiostock backup solution.

blogVault not only backups all of your Wordpress, you can also request to backup another folder outsite of the WordPress installation.

Try it for yourself: http://blogvault.net?src=amosnet and please get back to me after the 7 day free trial to get your exclusive special offer!

I'm affiliated with blogVault because they backup all my websites as well and i run their german sales team. We at blogVault have discussed to give Symbiostock users a excluive discount and i strongly recommend that you try our backup solution for free.

We have backuped very large sites with gigbytes of data without any issues. I know that vaultpress is also an OK service but they have had several problems with my host, where slow and do not have a test-restore feature. This test-restore feature will let you test the backup blogVault has created and see if all your Symbiostock is fully and properly backed up.

Looking forward to your questions.

If you need to backup and move servers, why not try blogvault. I use them for years now for all my websites to backup and move/clone within minutes from one hoster to another. Sure, it's another 9/Month but think about a hack or any database issue with your Symbiostock WordPress Website.

• http://blogvault.net?src=amosnet *(affiliate link)
  

How do you do backup your website? How do you move your data from bluehost or any other "down" host to a new server? You can't if you haven't backup it to a third party service.

Anyhow - feel free to give blogvault a try, it's free for 7 days (even their backup and move service to another host). Their service and support is outstanding and very helpful.

And yes, i'm affiliated with them and yes i so proud of their service that i even run their german business.

Here is my affiliate link: http://blogvault.net?src=amosnet