Author Topic: How to gracefully close a personal stock site (Read 20404 times)

steheap · « **on:** August 04, 2019, 09:04 »

I spent a lot of time building my own personal stock site with the Symbiostock plugin for wordpress, but it is time to close it down. So few sales although it does rank well for individual images on Google. But I don't want all those incoming visitors to see a 403 page missing notice. How have those of you who have taken down your personal websites done it and what did you replace it with?

Steve

marthamarks · « **Reply #1 on:** August 04, 2019, 09:21 »

Quote from: steheap on August 04, 2019, 09:04

I spent a lot of time building my own personal stock site with the Symbiostock plugin for wordpress, but it is time to close it down. So few sales although it does rank well for individual images on Google. But I don't want all those incoming visitors to see a 403 page missing notice. How have those of you who have taken down your personal websites done it and what did you replace it with?

Steve

I was one who who got excited about Symbiostock, took out a new URL, and spent a ton of time building my own "Martha Marks' Best Nature Stock" site, only to shut it down a year later when it got corrupted. Had a grand total of *one* sale during that year.

But I've kept that URL for use on my business card. It offers a sample of my images, provides links to my stock sites, and includes a bio section that also tells visitors about my fiction and sends them to my books if they're interested.

You can see it here: https://bestnaturestock.com/

This site only has two pages (home and contact) and I rarely change the images. Could do a lot more with it but I haven't bothered. It's just an informative landing page that sends visitors to important other sites.

steheap · « **Reply #2 on:** August 04, 2019, 09:30 »

Thanks, Martha! I did wonder if that was the best thing to do. I think there is a plugin that redirects all the old URLs for the deleted pages back to the home which might help.

Did you try to work out which was the best agency for a casual buyer to buy your image in case they wanted to - I guess the question is - which agency is the best for someone who doesn't want a subscription plan or a complex account to just buy one image?

Steve

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #3 on:** August 04, 2019, 10:07 »

Not sure if this is the plugin you were thinking of (search for SeedProd)

https://www.sumydesigns.com/take-down-website/

My site is still up and functional - very occasional sales these days. The first time I can't upgrade WordPress or anything requiring work and it's gone, but so far, things keep on going

marthamarks · « **Reply #4 on:** August 04, 2019, 10:11 »

Quote from: steheap on August 04, 2019, 09:30

Did you try to work out which was the best agency for a casual buyer to buy your image in case they wanted to - I guess the question is - which agency is the best for someone who doesn't want a subscription plan or a complex account to just buy one image?

No, I didn't think about that. Just provided my three main portfolios (but not Dreamstime).

Is there one that you think works best for the casual buyer?

marthamarks · « **Reply #5 on:** August 04, 2019, 10:14 »

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on August 04, 2019, 10:07

Not sure if this is the plugin you were thinking of (search for SeedProd)

https://www.sumydesigns.com/take-down-website/

My site is still up and functional - very occasional sales these days. The first time I can't upgrade WordPress or anything requiring work and it's gone, but so far, things keep on going

Jo Ann, thanks for pointing out that plugin. I didn't know about it, but will save the reference because it could prove useful in the future.

steheap · « **Reply #6 on:** August 04, 2019, 10:23 »

Yes, what prompted this thinking was that yesterday I got a lot of messages from my hosting company that SQL was down and there were errors in my various wordpress databases (on associated sites) and the performance of those sites was pretty bad. I found out that there were many, many attempts to download various pages and files from my symbiostock site. It seemed like Russia and China were the sources of the attempts. The CPU was through the roof. I blocked some IP ranges and I could see they were then just getting 503 rejections and my other sites started working properly again. As far as I know there are no database corruptions - it was probably insufficient CPU to read them and they timed out.

Luckily all the downloads were of the watermarked files (new Symbiostock doesn't store the master files in the normal wordpress file structure) and I doubt if any damage was done, but it did make me think about the pros and cons of having all those files online.

But things seem back to normal again (and I guess some regions of China can't buy my images any longer!)

Steve

cascoly · « **Reply #7 on:** August 04, 2019, 15:44 »

I get 10-20 'new users' on my symbio site every day - almost all junk of some sort

there may be a different problem --wordpress doesnt do a good job of cleaning up after itself, and the post table can explode -- I've seen it go over 500,000 records. this can cause performance problems. you can fix it (on Justhost) by running cpane/phpMyAdmin on your site, load the db, click structure then do repair & optimization. I do this about every 6-8 months

i've left my symbio site running, mostly to link back to my cascoly.com site where i hvae links by subject to my SS portfolio

georgep7 · « **Reply #8 on:** August 05, 2019, 06:40 »

Quote from: marthamarks on August 04, 2019, 10:14

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on August 04, 2019, 10:07
Not sure if this is the plugin you were thinking of (search for SeedProd)

https://www.sumydesigns.com/take-down-website/

My site is still up and functional - very occasional sales these days. The first time I can't upgrade WordPress or anything requiring work and it's gone, but so far, things keep on going

Jo Ann, thanks for pointing out that plugin. I didn't know about it, but will save the reference because it could prove useful in the future.

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kuriouskat · « **Reply #9 on:** August 05, 2019, 12:53 »

I also invested time in the SYmbiostock project and eventually went my own way and built a Wordpress site. It was a fun task and I learned loads, but ultimately it wasn't worth it.

The hosting came up for renewal recently, and I let it go, kept my domain and joined SmugMug. Plans start from about $50 a year with unlimited photo storage. It was a no brainer for me, as it's a cheap offsite backup.

If anyone is interested in taking a look, I'm more than happy for you to use my referral link

https://secure.smugmug.com/signup?Coupon=F6WLnZ

Shelma1 · « **Reply #10 on:** August 05, 2019, 14:14 »

You could leave a page up that directs people to whichever stock site gives you the biggest royalties per sale, and maybe an email address if you are available for custom shoots. I shut my symbio site down after losing a decent amount of time and money on it, and I doubt anyone ever noticed.

cathyslife · « **Reply #11 on:** August 05, 2019, 14:55 »

Quote from: Shelma1 on August 05, 2019, 14:14

You could leave a page up that directs people to whichever stock site gives you the biggest royalties per sale, and maybe an email address if you are available for custom shoots. I shut my symbio site down after losing a decent amount of time and money on it, and I doubt anyone ever noticed.

Ditto.

Uncle Pete · « **Reply #12 on:** August 11, 2019, 12:41 »

Quote from: steheap on August 04, 2019, 09:04

I spent a lot of time building my own personal stock site with the Symbiostock plugin for wordpress, but it is time to close it down. So few sales although it does rank well for individual images on Google. But I don't want all those incoming visitors to see a 403 page missing notice. How have those of you who have taken down your personal websites done it and what did you replace it with?

Steve

Redirect them to one of your agencies: http://www.web-source.net/html_redirect.htm#.XVBSg0FOnIU

Place the following HTML redirect code between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags of your HTML code.

<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html">

The above HTML redirect code will redirect your visitors to another web page instantly. The content="0; may be changed to the number of seconds you want the browser to wait before redirecting.

Or leave a silly site up that lists links to many of your agency collections. http://crapstock.com/

DallasP · « **Reply #13 on:** January 11, 2020, 15:05 »

Since it's WP ... just modify your 404.php to say that you're no longer offering images.

Jeffrey · « **Reply #14 on:** January 28, 2020, 18:04 »

I get occasional earnings about 10 to 20$ a month when I used to use Symbiostock without much marketing, but when I shifted to CMSaccount, I only got one sign up and I used Google Ads and Facebook Ads to market.

markmagedotcom · « **Reply #15 on:** June 15, 2020, 10:46 »

Quote from: marthamarks on August 04, 2019, 09:21

Quote from: steheap on August 04, 2019, 09:04
down a year later when it got corrupted. Had a grand total of *one* sale during that year.
(...)
Could do a lot more with it but I haven't bothered. It's just an informative landing page that sends visitors to important other sites.

sorry to hear that. But, yeah you could do more with it if it's got visitors (which luckily it seems to). It's like some real estate (on the internet) that you at least could put a sign for yourself on...

IMO better than just telling you don't offer images on that site anymore.

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Author Topic: How to gracefully close a personal stock site (Read 20404 times)

steheap

marthamarks

steheap

Jo Ann Snover

marthamarks

marthamarks

steheap

cascoly

georgep7

kuriouskat

Shelma1

cathyslife

Uncle Pete

DallasP

Jeffrey

markmagedotcom

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