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Microstock Photography Forum - General => Symbiostock => Symbiostock - General => Topic started by: Roberto on August 14, 2013, 13:23

Title: First sale?
Post by: Roberto on August 14, 2013, 13:23

How much time passed since the release of your site until the first sale?
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: chrisroll on August 14, 2013, 13:35
1 month for me  ;)
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: picture5469 on August 14, 2013, 13:36
I haven't had one yet. Partly i think its time of year with summer slump and also my port is mostly isolates and i think real backings sell better.
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: bunhill on August 14, 2013, 13:51
my port is mostly isolates and i think real backings sell better.


FYI: There might be a problem with your site ? Your front page has an enormous white space under the menus.

(http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12672675/random/screen)
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: Roberto on August 14, 2013, 14:13
there is no problem, you don't see the flash banner  ;D

my port is mostly isolates and i think real backings sell better.

FYI: There might be a problem with your site ? Your front page has an enormous white space under the menus.

Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: Pilens on August 14, 2013, 14:32
I am online since day 1. First sale happened a few days back.

However, for the first couple months I had just 10 test images up. Then I started to slowly upload in earnest (I have currently 560 photo online and about 3000 to go).

This is a long term project for me. It'll need time, lots of work and patience. First sale was just reaching an early milestone of something that can grow into a game changer for us. Just my 2 cents.
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: daveh900 on August 14, 2013, 15:59
First sale was back in April and have numerous sales since.

Sales were down a bit in July, but August is off to a great start with 11 sold images so far.

My suggestion... don't spend too much time customizing your site and homepage ---> just add great images.

Most of my traffic seems to be coming straight from Google image search. Most of my visitors never even see the home page.

When I create new content, I add it to my Symbiostock site first to allow Google time to index it. After a few days I will upload it to Shutterstock, 123RF... etc.  So far, it seems, that Google prefers to show my content on the image search results from my SY site because it was indexed on my SY site first.

I have also created numerous images that I have only uploaded to my SY site, and several of them have sold!

Thanks again to Leo for making all of this happen!

Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: marthamarks on August 14, 2013, 17:13

Thanks again to Leo for making all of this happen!

+ 1,000
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: jeancliclac on August 15, 2013, 13:37
First sale was back in April and have numerous sales since.

Sales were down a bit in July, but August is off to a great start with 11 sold images so far.
¨
Congratulation with those amazing results already!

I Wonder if I  must doing something wrong; I have almost 4000 Pictures; have been running since (almost) the beginning but have not a single sale so far. More disturbing to me is the very low number of views I have (only 1 today for example and not more than 5/& 6  a day those last weeks ....).

I havent yet done much for the SEO, have started optimizing with yoast but it will take quite a long time!

Thanks to Leo to have put this together; it is an exiting project, but discouraging as well sometimes....
Jean
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: easybuyphotos.com on August 15, 2013, 13:48
First sale was back in April and have numerous sales since.

Sales were down a bit in July, but August is off to a great start with 11 sold images so far.
¨
Congratulation with those amazing results already!

I Wonder if I  must doing something wrong; I have almost 4000 Pictures; have been running since (almost) the beginning but have not a single sale so far. More disturbing to me is the very low number of views I have (only 1 today for example and not more than 5/& 6  a day those last weeks ....).

I havent yet done much for the SEO, have started optimizing with yoast but it will take quite a long time!

Thanks to Leo to have put this together; it is an exiting project, but discouraging as well sometimes....
Jean

That is surprising as your photographs are great
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: Anita Potter on August 15, 2013, 13:49
Jean just keep working at it.  It takes time for Google to index.  Do you use Google Webmaster Tools?  I started with it last week then got Yoast started this week to make the sitemaps.  It's currently indexing my urls and checking google a few of my images are indexed but not findable when doing an image search unless I get really specific with it.

I haven't gotten a sale yet and I do hope doing all of this will make that become a reality.
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: jeancliclac on August 15, 2013, 14:07

[/quote]

That is surprising as your photographs are great
[/quote]

Thank you for your kind appreciation!
 
I must have missed something important that makes my site invisible.....
jean
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: jeancliclac on August 15, 2013, 14:11
Jean just keep working at it.  It takes time for Google to index.  Do you use Google Webmaster Tools?  I started with it last week then got Yoast started this week to make the sitemaps.  It's currently indexing my urls and checking google a few of my images are indexed but not findable when doing an image search unless I get really specific with it.

I haven't gotten a sale yet and I do hope doing all of this will make that become a reality.

Thank you Anita,
No I dont know Google webmaster. I feel a bit stupid, but I dont know how in practise I should do to get my Pictures indexed by Google; I'll read about it to check what I shall do.
Jean
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: Anita Potter on August 15, 2013, 14:27
No need to feel stupid.  You just didn't know about it that's all.

The sitemaps that Yoast generates will help with the indexing.  Webmaster tools will sort them by url in one column on a graph and by images in another column on the same graph.  Right now, for me, it's indexing the urls first then will probably go to the images column next.

You will probably have way more urls and images to index than I do and that will take some time to get them all indexed.  Right now I have over 3,500 urls of which under 1,500 have been indexed.  That's taken a few days to get to that point and I'm sure it'll probably be another week or so before it indexes them all.

I never really understood SEO but I'm getting a crash course in it.
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: daveh900 on August 15, 2013, 14:33

Thank you Anita,
No I dont know Google webmaster. I feel a bit stupid, but I dont know how in practise I should do to get my Pictures indexed by Google; I'll read about it to check what I shall do.
Jean


You seem to have a ton of images indexed at Google:
https://www.google.com/search?as_st=y&tbm=isch&as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&imgsz=&imgar=&imgc=&imgcolor=&imgtype=&cr=&as_sitesearch=stockabily.com&safe=images&as_filetype=&as_rights=&biw=1843&bih=924&sei=BisNUqBah_usAYfNgaAK (https://www.google.com/search?as_st=y&tbm=isch&as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&imgsz=&imgar=&imgc=&imgcolor=&imgtype=&cr=&as_sitesearch=stockabily.com&safe=images&as_filetype=&as_rights=&biw=1843&bih=924&sei=BisNUqBah_usAYfNgaAK)

However, if these images were indexed at an agency already, it is likely that your images won't appear in a normal image search on Google. Try searching for your images with your keywords in Google images and see if you rank high in the results. If you find your images, see if any of them are hosted at your site.



I think your keywording could use some work as well.

Example: http://stockabily.com/image/no-entry-forvehicular-traffic-3/ (http://stockabily.com/image/no-entry-forvehicular-traffic-3/)

The word "sign" should be in your title, description, and slug (url). I would also include the words "do not enter" as that is what that sign means to me (at least on this side of the pond). Personally, if I wanted to find an image like this, I would do a search for "do not enter sign".
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: cascoly on August 15, 2013, 14:43
First sale was back in April and have numerous sales since.

Sales were down a bit in July, but August is off to a great start with 11 sold images so far.
¨
Congratulation with those amazing results already!

I Wonder if I  must doing something wrong; I have almost 4000 Pictures; have been running since (almost) the beginning but have not a single sale so far. More disturbing to me is the very low number of views I have (only 1 today for example and not more than 5/& 6  a day those last weeks ....).

I havent yet done much for the SEO, have started optimizing with yoast but it will take quite a long time!

Thanks to Leo to have put this together; it is an exiting project, but discouraging as well sometimes....
Jean

you're also still on version 2.4.8 so should update to 2.5.6 since there are a number of minor bugs that were fixed
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: jeancliclac on August 15, 2013, 14:50
No need to feel stupid.  You just didn't know about it that's all.

The sitemaps that Yoast generates will help with the indexing.  Webmaster tools will sort them by url in one column on a graph and by images in another column on the same graph.  Right now, for me, it's indexing the urls first then will probably go to the images column next.

You will probably have way more urls and images to index than I do and that will take some time to get them all indexed.  Right now I have over 3,500 urls of which under 1,500 have been indexed.  That's taken a few days to get to that point and I'm sure it'll probably be another week or so before it indexes them all.

I never really understood SEO but I'm getting a crash course in it.

Thank you Anita, I see I have still a lot to learn!
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: jeancliclac on August 15, 2013, 14:55
Thank you Dave; I'll do that; I found few that are from my own site but most are from the Micro stock libraries...so I suppose I'll have to learn and index them in Google.
yes keywording is always perfectible, I use quite time to revise all my existing pictures, but I see it is far from being perfect!
jean


Thank you Anita,
No I dont know Google webmaster. I feel a bit stupid, but I dont know how in practise I should do to get my Pictures indexed by Google; I'll read about it to check what I shall do.
Jean


You seem to have a ton of images indexed at Google:
[url]https://www.google.com/search?as_st=y&tbm=isch&as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&imgsz=&imgar=&imgc=&imgcolor=&imgtype=&cr=&as_sitesearch=stockabily.com&safe=images&as_filetype=&as_rights=&biw=1843&bih=924&sei=BisNUqBah_usAYfNgaAK[/url] ([url]https://www.google.com/search?as_st=y&tbm=isch&as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&imgsz=&imgar=&imgc=&imgcolor=&imgtype=&cr=&as_sitesearch=stockabily.com&safe=images&as_filetype=&as_rights=&biw=1843&bih=924&sei=BisNUqBah_usAYfNgaAK[/url])

However, if these images were indexed at an agency already, it is likely that your images won't appear in a normal image search on Google. Try searching for your images with your keywords in Google images and see if you rank high in the results. If you find your images, see if any of them are hosted at your site.



I think your keywording could use some work as well.

Example: [url]http://stockabily.com/image/no-entry-forvehicular-traffic-3/[/url] ([url]http://stockabily.com/image/no-entry-forvehicular-traffic-3/[/url])

The word "sign" should be in your title, description, and slug (url). I would also include the words "do not enter" as that is what that sign means to me (at least on this side of the pond). Personally, if I wanted to find an image like this, I would do a search for "do not enter sign".
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: jeancliclac on August 15, 2013, 14:56
First sale was back in April and have numerous sales since.

Sales were down a bit in July, but August is off to a great start with 11 sold images so far.
¨
Congratulation with those amazing results already!

I Wonder if I  must doing something wrong; I have almost 4000 Pictures; have been running since (almost) the beginning but have not a single sale so far. More disturbing to me is the very low number of views I have (only 1 today for example and not more than 5/& 6  a day those last weeks ....).

I havent yet done much for the SEO, have started optimizing with yoast but it will take quite a long time!

Thanks to Leo to have put this together; it is an exiting project, but discouraging as well sometimes....
Jean

you're also still on version 2.4.8 so should update to 2.5.6 since there are a number of minor bugs that were fixed

OK thanks steve I'll do that!
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: cathyslife on August 15, 2013, 15:10
If you enter site:yoursiteurl.com in google search, you will see your images that have been indexed. If they are there, google has them. But lack of seo might move them farther down in the search.


I have been seo-ing since the beginning. I dont have nearly as many images as you, and have only had one sale. Not sure what conclusion you can draw from that, except, as everyone says, it apparently takes time.
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: jeancliclac on August 15, 2013, 15:21
If you enter site:yoursiteurl.com in google search, you will see your images that have been indexed. If they are there, google has them. But lack of seo might move them farther down in the search.


I have been seo-ing since the beginning. I dont have nearly as many images as you, and have only had one sale. Not sure what conclusion you can draw from that, except, as everyone says, it apparently takes time.
Thank you Cathy, very useful experience...I can only see 15 there on the 4000, I have to wake up soon......
Jean
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: cascoly on August 15, 2013, 15:27
If you enter site:yoursiteurl.com in google search, you will see your images that have been indexed. If they are there, google has them. But lack of seo might move them farther down in the search.


I have been seo-ing since the beginning. I dont have nearly as many images as you, and have only had one sale. Not sure what conclusion you can draw from that, except, as everyone says, it apparently takes time.

Thank you Cathy, very useful experience...I can only see 15 there on the 4000, I have to wake up soon......
Jean


I noticed also that you have a number of misspelled keywords  -- you can see an alphabetical list of all your keywords aT http://cascoly.com/symbio/list.asp?list=31 (http://cascoly.com/symbio/list.asp?list=31)

on that report yours is the site with 3664 images -- you're missing some fields in the symbiocard  such as symbiostock_my_network_name on the network page as 'site name'

just noticed your site is up to 2.5.5 now...
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: daveh900 on August 15, 2013, 15:58

Thank you Cathy, very useful experience...I can only see 15 there on the 4000, I have to wake up soon......
Jean


You have WAY more than 15 indexed.
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: cathyslife on August 15, 2013, 16:16

Thank you Cathy, very useful experience...I can only see 15 there on the 4000, I have to wake up soon......
Jean


You have WAY more than 15 indexed.

Yes. Attached is screenshot of partial of first page...and it goes on from there. did you enter site:stockabily.com   ?
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: ShazamImages on August 15, 2013, 16:59
...you can see an alphabetical list of all your keywords aT [url]http://cascoly.com/symbio/list.asp?list=31[/url] ([url]http://cascoly.com/symbio/list.asp?list=31[/url])


... or http://<your website>/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?taxonomy=image-tags&post_type=image (http://<your website>/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?taxonomy=image-tags&post_type=image)
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: easybuyphotos.com on August 15, 2013, 19:01
If you enter site:yoursiteurl.com in google search, you will see your images that have been indexed. If they are there, google has them. But lack of seo might move them farther down in the search.

Thanks for this information Cathy, I just searched doing this and only have 24 photos indexed plus my slider photos, so it's going to take sometime. Congrats on having a sale.

Norman
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: cathyslife on August 15, 2013, 19:06
If you enter site:yoursiteurl.com in google search, you will see your images that have been indexed. If they are there, google has them. But lack of seo might move them farther down in the search.

Thanks for this information Cathy, I just searched doing this and only have 24 photos indexed plus my slider photos, so it's going to take sometime. Congrats on having a sale.

Norman

Glad it helped, and thanks for the congrats. Wish more would come in!
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: stockphoto-images.com on August 15, 2013, 20:02
I Wonder if I  must doing something wrong; I have almost 4000 Pictures; have been running since (almost) the beginning but have not a single sale so far. More disturbing to me is the very low number of views I have (only 1 today for example and not more than 5/& 6  a day those last weeks ....).

I havent yet done much for the SEO, have started optimizing with yoast but it will take quite a long time!

Thanks to Leo to have put this together; it is an exiting project, but discouraging as well sometimes....
Jean

I'm in the same boat with you. Well I did have one sale with over 2200 images online and as far as I can see all of them have been indexed by Google and do show up in the image search.

I had SEO Ultimate installed which gave me pretty good SEO results but in order to produce better results I think Yoast is better which I'm working on right now.

I do have daily visitors from Google but no registrations (I did check if it works...) and no sales.

I'll just keep on Yoast-ing and see if something will come my way...  ::)
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: EmberMike on August 15, 2013, 20:17

This was my first week of significant activity. Not that I had a ton of sales (3 this week) but that I only had one sale prior to this week, a couple of weeks ago. So it does seem that things are starting to pick up a bit.
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: stockphoto-images.com on August 15, 2013, 20:32

This was my first week of significant activity. Not that I had a ton of sales (3 this week) but that I only had one sale prior to this week, a couple of weeks ago. So it does seem that things are starting to pick up a bit.
Would you mind sharing any stats? Like how many unique visitors do you get daily? What's your bounce rate? How many real signups do you register? Stuff like that.

It would be great to know what the "successful" Symbiostocker is experiencing  ;)
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: jeancliclac on August 15, 2013, 23:56

Thank you Cathy, very useful experience...I can only see 15 there on the 4000, I have to wake up soon......
Jean


You have WAY more than 15 indexed.




Yes. Attached is screenshot of partial of first page...and it goes on from there. did you enter site:stockabily.com   ?


Oh I see Cathy, I had my research on "www.stockabily.com" and not "stockabily.com"
So I have all those pictures indexed!
So there must be another explanation to the low view rate & lack of sales?
Jean
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: EmberMike on August 16, 2013, 08:21

This was my first week of significant activity. Not that I had a ton of sales (3 this week) but that I only had one sale prior to this week, a couple of weeks ago. So it does seem that things are starting to pick up a bit.
Would you mind sharing any stats? Like how many unique visitors do you get daily? What's your bounce rate? How many real signups do you register? Stuff like that.

It would be great to know what the "successful" Symbiostocker is experiencing  ;)

Sure. For this week, Monday through Thursday, I've had 293 visits, 281 uniques, 70% bounce rate, average visit duration 1:21, 92% new visits.

Over a 10-day period I'm seeing 625 uniques, and on a typical weekday it looks like around 65 is my average.
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: stockphoto-images.com on August 16, 2013, 08:38
Sure. For this week, Monday through Thursday, I've had 293 visits, 281 uniques, 70% bounce rate, average visit duration 1:21, 92% new visits.

Over a 10-day period I'm seeing 625 uniques, and on a typical weekday it looks like around 65 is my average.
Thanks. I'm on track to get these numbers soon, so hopefully the sales will pick up as well.
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: ShazamImages on August 16, 2013, 08:49

This was my first week of significant activity. Not that I had a ton of sales (3 this week) but that I only had one sale prior to this week, a couple of weeks ago. So it does seem that things are starting to pick up a bit.
Would you mind sharing any stats? Like how many unique visitors do you get daily? What's your bounce rate? How many real signups do you register? Stuff like that.

It would be great to know what the "successful" Symbiostocker is experiencing  ;)

For this week, Monday through Thursday, I've had 293 visits, 281 uniques, 70% bounce rate, average visit duration 1:21, 92% new visits.

Over a 10-day period I'm seeing 625 uniques, and on a typical weekday it looks like around 65 is my average.

What are you using to get these stats?
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: EmberMike on August 16, 2013, 09:15
What are you using to get these stats?

Google Analytics.
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: ShazamImages on August 16, 2013, 09:23
What are you using to get these stats?


Google Analytics.


Are you using one of the plugins?

If so, which one?

The one from YOAST? (http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/ (http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/))

Or another one?  (For example, http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-google-analytics/ (http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-google-analytics/))
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: EmberMike on August 16, 2013, 09:29
Are you using one of the plugins?

If so, which one?

The one from YOAST? ([url]http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/[/url] ([url]http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/[/url]))

Or another one?  (For example, [url]http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-google-analytics/[/url] ([url]http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-google-analytics/[/url]))


No plugins, I just stuck the code in the footer of my Symbiostock theme.
Title: Re: First sale?
Post by: ShazamImages on August 16, 2013, 09:31
Are you using one of the plugins?

If so, which one?

The one from YOAST? ([url]http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/[/url] ([url]http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/[/url]))

Or another one?  (For example, [url]http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-google-analytics/[/url] ([url]http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-google-analytics/[/url]))


No plugins, I just stuck the code in the footer of my Symbiostock theme.


Thanks.  That's a great idea.