Quote from: cascoly on July 07, 2014, 18:44

Quote from: EmberMike on July 06, 2014, 17:42

Quote from: R2D2 on July 06, 2014, 15:04

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...

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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 sites

3. 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 login

other considerations: privacy issues, security of passwords, different treatment of 'spam' on individual sites, etc

This 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.

That's always going to be the question with sharing. Is it equal? Are you the person bringing in tons of buyers or are you the other person just piggy backing off other people's success. I liked the Picture Engine concept of you pay for access to their buyers/network. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to actually have any of that stuff they said, but the concept seems sound. If you can find someone to fill that role, then I think more people will line up to pay for that service.

One Universal login and sites only see who buys, after the fact, to prevent what has been discussed and also security, would be a fantastic option. Note = OPTION. Some people might want to have their site independent and private, others might want the benefit of the coop shared buyer verification.

Since I don't write this and Leo or Steve do, I don't know if that's a valid choice? Remote buyer verification of accounts. Starts to get complicated in my mind. Take someone to site A, then verify at site S, return them to site A. If they visit B then off to the main hub server again, back to the site...

It would be nice. I'm not sure if it would be able to be done, without some complex issues?

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.

Sounds like a reasonable answer without someone making a special change to SyS.

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.

Thanks...I'll check it out!