The ftp location no longer matches after I upgraded. How do I solve this.
Thanks

The upload location changed after 2.5.5 I think. It's now wp-content/plupload/uploads

I deleted the Symbiostock theme and then tried again to install the zip file for the upgrade (ss-professional.zip). I got the same error about the missing style.css file

It sounds as if you're trying to install ss-professional.zip as a theme, but it's a plugin for the standard 2.6.0 theme

We are having our BME on Symbiostock. Our micro income is on target for WMY.
If that doesn't persuade you, I don't know what will

I often wonder how anybody can bear to look at a photo site using IE; I have IE10, and everything looks as if it has the saturation set at +300, but then I only use it for checking websites. I normally use Firefox, and on that any image tagged as sRGB or AdobeRGB looks exactly the way it does in Photoshop.

Sold one for $250 last month, but that doesn't happen every month.

Quote from: Travelling-light on August 18, 2013, 19:36

I wish I could say the same.
Last month was almost a BME, but this month is very slow, and new files hardly sell.
I ask myself, if new files aren't going to sell, why upload?
And if new files don't sell on IS or SS, why bother producing for the micros?

I'm surprised you say that. New files do sell on SS as far as I can see. Perhaps not as well as they once did ... but back then there wasn't 28M other images for the buyers to choose from.

Of the last 100 images that I've uploaded fairly steadily over the last 3 months, 74 of them have sold at least once and 26 have no sales (obviously mainly the newest). Between them they have generated 320+ sales and a little over $200. I think that's quite a reasonable start for cheap-to-produce images that I hope will continue to generate income for 5+ years.

I notice that you have uploaded almost exactly the same number of images as I have (which look to be excellent stock to me) over the same period. So how many sales have yours generated?

I find that sales on SS nowadays are more concentrated on a few images that sell really well and the others that disappear down the sort-order before they get noticed.

116 sales and $70.28, so quite a difference.
 
Looking at the SS earnings chart, if I'm reading it right, over the last 6 months, only 7.6% of our earnings have come from content uploaded during that 6 months.
When you think that we've only been uploading to SS for about 15 months, it doesn't look good for new uploads.

Going back further, over the last 12 months, only 19% of our earnings have come from content uploaded during that 12 months.
That means that 81% of our earnings has come from what we uploaded in June and July 2012, plus the old stuff we had on line from the old days, and I can tell you that doesn't sell much.

I'm pleased to hear that you are doing well, but for us there doesn't seem to be a lot we can do to increase our micro earnings. We will have to do something else.

Quote from: lisafx on August 18, 2013, 12:59

FWIW, my sales are showing about average for a Saturday and Sunday so far. 

If there's some glitch I haven't seen it.

Same here. Very steady growth projected for the month. I just wish other agencies had SS's supposed 'glitch'.

I wish I could say the same.
Last month was almost a BME, but this month is very slow, and new files hardly sell.
I ask myself, if new files aren't going to sell, why upload?
And if new files don't sell on IS or SS, why bother producing for the micros?

Quote from: EmberMike on August 17, 2013, 14:11

Quote from: Redneck on August 16, 2013, 20:11

...They don't need to be priced at lowest microstock level, IMO. Print campaigns have a budget. Why make one of the most efficient parts of the campaign the cheapest one? There's no practical reason for it, IMO...

Remember that even at standard microstock prices, Symbiostock site owners are still making out better than with the microstock agencies by not having to give up 50-80% of the cost of the image.

For me, the sweet spot for my vectors seems to be around $10-12. Sure that's pretty standard microstock fare, but in keeping 100% of each sale I'm doing far better than anywhere else while still keeping things within a reasonable range as compared to microstock.

Let's face it, people are well aware of microstock these days. I don't think we're going to attract a lot of buyers if we're pricing our stuff at double or more of what it goes for elsewhere.

I actually think an image will be purchased because the buyer likes/needs it. The price is not the main criteria.
And you can't really compare images since every one is unique. I also believe starting to price products aggressively will create a race to the bottom. We should instead price our products the way that both parties, artist and customer, get something with a certain value. With full sized images at 20 bucks or less the customer will probably pay more for the shipping of his products than for the image that has been printed a thousand times. How can he value what he purchased from you?

I think it's sometimes true that an image will be purchased because the buyer likes/needs it, but I also think there are many buyers who would rather have something cheap and good enough, than something better but more expensive. With so many photos available, you are limiting your sales by only having more expensive images.

We have two price levels on our site, and so far we have only sold the images at the lower price levels. In other words, we have earned far more from images that are cheap but good enough, than from ones we think are good However we are keeping some of our files at higher prices because we think those particular files won't sell often enough to be worthwhile at lower prices, and those files won't be going on the micros. (Unless one of the micros brings in a good deal, which seems unlikely).

Hi all, when using Sys on my android phone Galaxy SIII mini the site is resizing but the search field is locked on the left side and the first 10 characters are not showing.

Known bug? Fixable? What can we do about this?

http://semmickphoto.com/

It may not have been mentioned because a lot of people have dropped the Image/Blog dropdown and that fiits a phone screen OK. To get rid of it add

#symbiostock_main_search #select_type {
display: none;
}

to CSS.

Otherwise, you might have to dig into the search box sizing and make it scale with a width in %

Have you looked at adding the mobile menu widget? It saves a lot of screen space at phone size.

Quote from: marthamarks on August 15, 2013, 19:12

I tried to register on your site via  Twitter but was turned off by this warning:

����
Authorize cathyslifestockphotos to use your account?

This application will be able to:

    Read Tweets from your timeline.
    See who you follow, and follow new people.
    Update your profile.
    Post Tweets for you.

����

Haven't tried FB or PP or any other. But I must say: I can't imagine anybody signing in w/Twitter knowing they're letting you update their profile and post tweets for them.

Am I understanding this wrong? If not, that whole thing seems nuts!

I did not have them all set up so they all should work now. I have hesitated about doing this until now, because I understood it the same way as you are. But I am not a big social media fan. But there are a bazillion people out there who think this is the way to go, so I'm just giving it a whirl.

As far as tweeting on someone elses account... I don't even have time to do my own.

But the only way they can use their account is by giving up the info and allowing access. They don't have to if they don't want to. I'm just providing the choices.

Your setup must be different from ours on Twitter. See the difference between your authorisation screen and ours:

Well... I just Googled to learn something about Image Magick. This is what Wikipedia says:

"ImageMagick is an open source[1] software suite for displaying, converting, and editing raster image files. It can read and write over 200 image file formats. ImageMagick is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license."

So does that mean it's not for photography? Doesn't sound like it is.

Somebody knowledgeable, please advise on this. I'd really like not to have to tinker any more with my images. Thanks!

Your photos are raster images as opposed to vector images; ImageMagick is the industry standard for server-side photo processing, so nothing to worry about there!

This whole internet thing is a mystery to me so please use small words

I am contemplating setting up a Symbiostock site and I want to get started correctly.

I have a domain: www.zigzagmtart.com which is currently forwarded to http://john-trax.artistwebsites.com there is no actual hosting I guess, I just set that up to point to FAA.  Now if I want to run a Symbiostock site do I use the existing domain name or start new?  Can I keep pointing to FAA somehow as well?  Ideally I would like to have a visitor go between the Symbiostock site for image licenses and the FAA site for prints.

Can someone point me in the right direction?  Thanks

http://www.symbioguides.com/getting-started/ is a good place to start, with Amanda's step by step guide for beginners.

What you want to do is easy enough. For example, our PictureMojo site - link in signature - has FAA and Zazzle shopfronts embedded, so you can use your main domain that way. Alternatively, you can leave that redirection and put your Symbiostock site on a subdomain, say stock.zigzagmtart.com. Either will work.

As you already have the domain and some hosting capacity, all it costs you to test the water is some time and effort. Give it a go!

Just out of curiosity, what would YOU do to turn around IStock if you had the chance to steer the ship?

It is rather presumptuous to assume anything without knowledge of what the books truly look like. But my goal would be to restore contributor confidence and make IS the #1 destination for future uploads. Why? Because
  1) I want the best images available
  2) Happy Contributors upload more, and recommend that customers purchase from my agency
  3) People who are treated well tend to be more productive and take more pride in their future work than those who feel unappreciated.

I would begin by immediately pushing up contributor commissions and completely eliminating the RC/crown system. Set non-exclusives at a 30% commission rate, probably similar to or higher than SS and just below DT. That would be a huge message that things have drastically changed in favor of artists. Commission rates would be even higher than they were during the Bruce era. Push exclusives into the 35% to 40% range, and try to come up with added incentives to keep them around.

Secondly I would hire a team to completely revamp the uploading procedure. Even if I feel a need to keep categories, I need to decide if the merits of my own keywording system are not enough to overcome the snag in the upload process. My goal is get the upload procedure at least as efficient as DT, and hopefully SS.

Third, I would swallow my idiotic pride and humbly ask Sean to return with his full portfolio. I would acknowledge that he, and many others, were treated unfairly when they fought against the Google fiasco. Regardless of how much they rocked the boat, their position had strong merit.

Fourth, I would make a decision about the forum. The current forum is a mess, and buyers see it. If the forum is going to remain a Gestapo run cesspool, then it is going to give us a bad image. Why continue wasting company resources on it? Either clean up the forum and its administrators, or simply eliminate it. Where is there a rule that says a stock agency has to have a forum?

I may be a Pollyanna and I don't know what their books look like. But I think that if they shocked contributors with this type of goodwill, they would see a stampede of people returning to them. The goodwill would likely slowly spread back to the buying community, just as all of the bad will in recent years soured it.

I'd get rid of the exclusive contract in it's present form, and offer the option for exclusive images or maybe exclusive shoots (this to prevent people putting similars elsewhere).

I'd abandon all the scams, and put some effort into demonstrating that IS is a company that can be trusted.