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maybe closing the forum was a result of his poll wanting us to pay him 10 bucks a month for updates?
what was the "gist" of his bye message for those of us that missed it?
...I'm happy to see you've found a place to put the microstock community at lesser expense ...
Hey guys, a small update. I'm departing from Microstock for a while by necessity. I'm happy to see you've found a place to put the microstock community at lesser expense where you can also play farmville. If that is not a good sign, I don't know what is!I've simply removed a few dead-weights until I can afford the hobby again. Besides that I'm fairly certain nobody liked the .com address, and when I finally felt comfortable to remove the .org, it had not been used in 5 days (other than responding to something I posted).I'm a creative person, and I can see a very good opportunity here for the group. This really is a time to make this thing truly invincible. Part of making this indestructible was by minimizing dependencies. Even its dependency on me is not as strong as it seems. As mentioned, I still have to update my own site, so I'll be turning out updates as they are needed as I have with Christos (two years before I started this Symbio-thing). If you guys are happy to set up camp at facebook, I'll update the theme links to lead there for the community. Github is the place to get the latest as always.Personally I see this as a wonderful, magnificent move forward. I'll open things up again after I recover here on my end. Believe me, there is a lot to recover from on this end. Think of working almost exclusively on Symbiostock for 2 years with 6k profit (thats not much for almost two years) and making no uploads or investments in other areas. Believe me, its only the tip of the iceburg you guys are seeing. On my end its a red alert emergency. Think of "supporters" publicly flogging you 1 year into it (for lack of sales), and watching everything sink into limbo, and network growth go from exponential to accidental. There has to be a saying for photographers and illustrators: "If you can survive in Microstock, you can survive anywhere!"Also I'm moving the collective to a place where it can survive on its own, and someone else will be watching over it. I've also enjoyed the friendships made through this project. Here's to hoping I can return to it eventually. I have a few symbio-projects almost done which I can release when I've recovered our situation.Leo
I'm getting out of microstock.
Tror and R2D2, I can appreciate what both of you are saying. I haven't told this community the whole issue, so people must be stuck with overly simplistic assumptions.Reasonably you have to give this thing some credit. Before I took some initiative, people would deal with their microstock problems by writing 20 page forum threads. After, people will revert back to that. I love how intelligent people sound in these forums. This place never lacks an audience. If anyone does pick up where Symbio left off, they will have learned from my mistakes. Sort of like how social networks learned from MySpace. I coded up some good systems for the Microstock Initiative...it took. But also profitless. I'm handing it over to chromaco who has the time and resources to keep it running. As an illustrator this is a slowly dying business. As a developer, all the more so. If we are talking about "business decisions" I believe at this point the best business decision would have been to never make Symbiostock. If others thought it was a great business decision, I would have had qualified developers or financiers clawing their way in, but everyone knew what a profitless burden it is. This is only the stuff you guys know about. This doesn't count the badly timed issues in our own lives here which caused me to have to give my 2nd and 3rd best to this project. This is Microstockgroup. Not exactly the land of understanding. This is where people come to get out aggression. This is where Symbiostock started. I'm not saying it couldn't have worked. It just so happens one of the few guys that had the ability and the initiative just got tired.Here is a prediction from a guy you don't respect: Micrsotock is going to continually slip away with greater exploits against you, and you are going to complain and be frustrated while you claw like rats to get into this digital sweat shop. People who willfully submit to agencies which are * you dry simply cannot talk about my business sense. Its a marvel this project even lasted past a year after it was ripped apart in this community. My first reply in this thread reflects business sense you'd do well to consider: I'm getting out of microstock.
As an illustrator this is a slowly dying business. As a developer, all the more so. If we are talking about "business decisions" I believe at this point the best business decision would have been to never make Symbiostock. If others thought it was a great business decision, I would have had qualified developers or financiers clawing their way in, but everyone knew what a profitless burden it is.
Quote from: Magnetic on July 05, 2014, 13:28As an illustrator this is a slowly dying business. As a developer, all the more so. If we are talking about "business decisions" I believe at this point the best business decision would have been to never make Symbiostock. If others thought it was a great business decision, I would have had qualified developers or financiers clawing their way in, but everyone knew what a profitless burden it is.I'm not sure. I was disappointed when some of the affiliate marketing suggestions got shot down by the community. I thought that was a great area to expand profits and let marketers mix with artists. There are still a lot of ideas floating around the ether, so I'm still hopeful one will strike gold for at least a few of us hungry micro monkeys.
The collective isn't dead just moving. I have a new domain and Leo is going to transfer it for me. Ill keep you all in the loop. Hopefully it will be up and kicking in about a week. Thanks for your patience.
If it were paying for something that led to sales, $120 a year wouldn't be an issue. But that wasn't the requestThe request was for money for new (and different) software - not for fixes to what we already had. There was no way to tie the expenditure to even one additional saleAs far as sales, I have made about $115 since last September with no signs that things are ramping upI'd pay for marketing; I'd pay for fixes and improvements to what I have (which I worked very hard on); I have already paid for the premium plugin, CleanTheme and SYxtraIt's just not true or fair to say that the community screamed in outrage over a proposed fee. There was no discussion allowed and after 11 votes - 11 out of 180 sites - Leo closed up and shut things downThis isn't the first time there has been a blow up. Each one has made it harder for people to have confidence in the longer term prospects. I expect that factored in to site owners' thinking tooIt should be noted that Sean Locke has a much viewed blog and a well known brand name. His sales do not surprise me but most of us are not in that situationBottom line is that yet another new software direction with no marketing didn't look like a good bet to me. The $120 didn't help but it wasn't the main sticking point (for me)
Multiple times in the last six months I have proposed various ideas to help make this program viable for Leo. Many of them were very reasonable and nearly all of them wound up killing the thread. The ones that didn't turned into "what about me" comments.
Symbiostock has run it's course and no one/everyone is to blame. Hopefully people have been paying attention and have learned from the mistakes. If so the next idea will be better and we will all benefit.
Quote from: chromaco on July 06, 2014, 07:53Symbiostock has run it's course and no one/everyone is to blame. Hopefully people have been paying attention and have learned from the mistakes. If so the next idea will be better and we will all benefit.Call me crazy, I take ownership of that, but I don't think it has even begun to run it's course. It's had it's rug jerked from under it. SymbioStock is NOT a failure. It is just not yet matured. It may never now because of decisions taken that affect all of us, but that we are powerless to change.The mistake was in thinking that SymbioStock was going to compete with iAnySite. It could not ever do so. It could, however, give you your own power back. I finally got my own site. I haven't made money, but I have my wish fulfilled. In the future, when I have the time to spare, I am going back to grow my site that has been dormant for a while now.Jo
one problem has been solved -- i'll be hosting the forums once I work with leo to get everything transferred. so we'll have all the tutorials and faqs that many have contributed to over the last year.
a major problem is still getting the right people to the sites -- we mostly rely on google et al to be found -- but that means many people will find us when they search for 'elephants' -- but they are interested in info about elephants, not in buying images of elephants. image buyers are still more likely to find the agencies first.
In my view the buyer wants an "agency feeling" with a large selection not many sites in a network. The things have to be simple for buyers...
Quote from: cascoly on July 06, 2014, 13:05one problem has been solved -- i'll be hosting the forums once I work with leo to get everything transferred. so we'll have all the tutorials and faqs that many have contributed to over the last year.Oh, and I know you don't hear it very often, thanks for your contribution to SymbioStock.Jo
Well said! Leo's work made me move forward with a web site that has been a cost factor to me for years buut now I can make sales from there if a client so wishes. I am forever grateful. I dont think symbio is dead .... I just think it is moving into its next evolutionary process.Thank you so much Leo for your work and Steve for taking up the baton!
I was just reading on another forum about a buyer who is annoyed to have to sign in to the site at all. They don't want an account anywhere, not even at an agency site where they do most of their buying. They just want to pay and go. I personally think that's sort of silly (having an account saves time, helps track purchases, etc), but I think it speaks loudly to some buyer sentiment. If having one single account is a hassle to some buyers, having an account at every Symbiostock site they want to buy from is a non-starter. They won't do it. Symbiostock never stood a chance unless the lack of a single point of entry to the network was resolved somehow.
Stocksy launched about the same time as the Symbiostock software. Look at the difference.
Quote from: R2D2 on July 06, 2014, 15:04In my view the buyer wants an "agency feeling" with a large selection not many sites in a network. The things have to be simple for buyers........If having one single account is a hassle to some buyers, having an account at every Symbiostock site they want to buy from is a non-starter. They won't do it. Symbiostock never stood a chance unless the lack of a single point of entry to the network was resolved somehow.
Quote from: EmberMike on July 06, 2014, 17:42Quote from: R2D2 on July 06, 2014, 15:04In my view the buyer wants an "agency feeling" with a large selection not many sites in a network. The things have to be simple for buyers........If having one single account is a hassle to some buyers, having an account at every Symbiostock site they want to buy from is a non-starter. They won't do it. Symbiostock never stood a chance unless the lack of a single point of entry to the network was resolved somehow.there are a coupla approaches that might work:1. when a new user registers give them a chance to register with the other sites at the same time (or to choose which sites to register with)2. have an option that would automatically add the person as a new user to all the other sites3. create a central depository were people just sign in once, then on the login screen have an option to use that instead of the individual site loginother considerations: privacy issues, security of passwords, different treatment of 'spam' on individual sites, etc
Quote from: cascoly on July 07, 2014, 18:44Quote from: EmberMike on July 06, 2014, 17:42Quote from: R2D2 on July 06, 2014, 15:04In my view the buyer wants an "agency feeling" with a large selection not many sites in a network. The things have to be simple for buyers........If having one single account is a hassle to some buyers, having an account at every Symbiostock site they want to buy from is a non-starter. They won't do it. Symbiostock never stood a chance unless the lack of a single point of entry to the network was resolved somehow.there are a coupla approaches that might work:1. when a new user registers give them a chance to register with the other sites at the same time (or to choose which sites to register with)2. have an option that would automatically add the person as a new user to all the other sites3. create a central depository were people just sign in once, then on the login screen have an option to use that instead of the individual site loginother considerations: privacy issues, security of passwords, different treatment of 'spam' on individual sites, etcThis was discussed briefly on the Symbiostock forums, and the issue with blanket logins or registrations (other than security issues) is marketing your individual site. Having my own site allows me to finally see who's buying my images and to contact them directly, so hopefully over time I'll build a mailing list and a stable of customers. If there's one registration for all 180 sites, who gets to see who that customer is? You can't let everyone see, because then that buyer might be swamped with emails, etc. from 180 people. And if you let nobody see, then we've lost that ability to build a customer base individually.I agree registration should be easier...I'm just not sure what the solution is, honestly. But I do think one thing that would help is not having to use PayPal, just direct credit card purchases. Not sure how to solve that either.
You know who buys your images, you get a PayPal notification email with the buyer details, email and billing address. So you can build your customer database in the 'one login' scenario as well.
I have my site set up that buyers can use any one of five social media/blog ID's to log in as well. They can click on the icons for Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Wordpress or Blogger and log in with that instead of creating a new registration. When setting them up I tried to minimize as much as possible the information the app reads in hopes that it doesn't turn someone away.
That's great! Would you mind telling which plugin you're using?