Quote from: cidepix on August 22, 2013, 18:38

should've added a poll

It really depends if the premium version wil be free or not..

It could be anything from 200k to 500k or a million depending on how the project evolves..

The premium version is ready. I haven't released it because I only get to make this decision once:

FREE or NOT.

In the end, I still need a way to profit.

That being said I'm working completely with free software now:

Eclipse, Ubuntu, Linux, Blender 3d... best of the best.  Free. And people still profit somewhere.

I'll get back to you. I just need to perfect my own profit model and Premium will be available.

In the end, I still need a way to profit.

• If a buyer from one symbiosite moves to another through the network search, that could be trackable by having each site append links to other symbiosites with a URL referral parameter unique to each site (ex. ?ref=leo).  This ref URL parm could also be passed as a chain (ex. ?ref=leo&bob&mary) which gets appended through each hop.  Probably should also be stored in a 30-day cookie by each site to allow for a window of opportunity.

• When a buyer purchases an image license on a symbiosite, a message is sent to a central server with the referral parms, image ids, license types and quantities.

• The central server keeps a running tally of intersite referrals.  Participating site owners have their Paypal email stored there.

• On a monthly basis, site owners are encouraged to voluntarily and optionally pay a percentage commission on their previous month's sales to any network search referrers based on volume with possibly an additional "tip" to a general Symbio fund (either Leo's personal account or some company if a dev. corp is founded).

• If participating site outgoing referral payments are also tracked by managing these payments through the central server, then a hall of fame/shame could be established on the central server to show who's sharing the love and who's not.  Also, as the network grows there really does need to be some way to prioritize the network search results, so sales and referral crosspayments could be used a weight for this.

You should monetize your effort Leo. Maybe you can offer to the old members that run a symbiostock website from the early days and helped you to test how it work, a good discount or for free some plugin. Other like me can buy with no worries the needed plugins; in wordpress we must pay for a lot of good plugin and it's fine I think.

The premium upgrade is actually a plugin. I haven't gone a different route technically.

Actually the only way to benefit from the premium upgrade is to already be a professional seller. Other than that it would be a useless perk. In the meantime I'll continue to refine it and think about things.

To get back on topic. We are growing with a rate of 15,000 images per month. Give or take a few. If we are at 100 now, I'd say we'd be around 150,000 come the new year.

and once the system gets going, site owners aren't going to want to keep track of payments to dozens of different paypal accounts;  also, while there are global search engines for symbio, it's never been the intent for these to police the network

...stock became fun again...