I think JPSDK just doesn't fully understand the concept and the huge potential of Symbiostock yet and I admit that I had similar thoughts when I approached it at the first time.
I so wanted to point you to mushroom blog post but it seems to be down right now: http://blog.melchersystem.com/2013/05/08/crowd-managed-photo-agency/
Hopefully it will show up later because it made things a lot clearer for me.

Symbiostock is a technical foundation. What you build on it is your own business. It can be anything from your closed little store to a giant network. But the foundation is there, someone set it for you already.

And seriously, it isn't easy to understand until you try it and see for yourself that you can choose your network partners, set your own file sizes and prices and change pretty much anything. Make it as centralized, cluttered, large or small as you want. Set up your own agency if you like.

But don't expect that others do the work for you while you sit back and only criticize. Do what you have in mind and stop bitching about things others have done.

Or at least do your homework, install a WP/SYS and check it out so you know what you're talking about.

Yep, looks great.  Wonderful job.  Kudos to Leo for all his work.

As for what's holding me back - well, being Exclusive still works for me.  Maybe next year...

I'm in now - dogfordstudios.com

What held me back initially is ignorance.  Too busy trying to take/upload as many images a month as I could with the big sites only to see dwindling commissions and sales.  I ignored any forum posts mentioning Symbiostock...

Then a few posts nailed it on the head. The sites that have gone public are constantly looking for short sighted deals to please their shareholders.  Making bundle deals that bring in some quick cash to make their quarterly numbers look good while shooting themselves (and us with them) in the foot in the long term.

Unlike signing up with a traditional agency, setting up a SS takes a bit of upfront hosting money and a few days of learning and reading to figure everything out.  But if you've set up a blog or simple website before its not too bad.

For me the big pluses for a Sys site are:

1.  100% commissions.  I only need a few large downloads a month to rival one of my agencies with all of the subscription sales.
2.  No reviewers.  Its your site. You are the review.  You can put up as many similars as you want.  You can put up images the sites rejected.  You can put up more artistic shots that the stock sites reject.
3  Artist to artist connection - The network among SS sites make it stronger than just creating your own stand alone website and designers are artist who can appreciate buying from fellow artists.

A Sys site is likely to attract the smaller volume buyers who just need the occasional stock image.  High volume buyers are probably still going to do most of their shopping at the subscription sites but if they can't find what they need there they have a new option to choose from.  No  doubt many images on the Sys network will be exclusive.

Before microstock, the stock world paid good commissions and the various stock agencies competed on quality and uniqueness.  They recruited quality artists and were proud to promote their talent pool.  Then the microstock sites came along and treated images as a commodity and competed on price - which is the race to 0.

The Sys network will be great if everyone keeps this history lesson in mind.  Compete on quality and offering unique images not on price. 

At this point my plan is to just work on SS site.  I've stopped uploading to the agencies at the moment.  As sales start to come in I may start pulling some of my images from the agencies to offer exclusively on my Sys site.

Anyway, its exciting to have your own stock site free from all of the daily turmoil at the agencies.  -- Ed

Just looking at http://www.dashphoto.eu/ as one example of a Symbiostock site, have to say it looks beautiful!

I think some priority features are needed, most important being SSO (Single Sign On) to all Symbiostock sites. Means only one user account needs to be created across all sites. There are open source frameworks for this already I believe.

   I  yhink  it's  too  hard  to  undestand.  Also  time  is  an  issue.  It  would  be  great  to  have  a  site  and  maybe  a  friend  of  mine  can  help.

It's Paypal, Jens, not credit card, not Western Union.

Keep the objections coming though, I'm definitely interested in what you're saying.

As an aside, we had a Photoshelter site from June 2012, we have had more sales on Sym than on Photoshelter in the first 3 months, when Sym is completely unknown. Numbers are small, for sure, but I'm optimistic.

I'm seeing this as a long term project. I don't expect it to compare with the big agencies in the first years.

I do think it's a good place to put those niche photos that sell only once a year on the likes of SS and IS, and I'm putting them exclusively on Sym.

Sorry to say.
Take this shop:

http://www.dashphoto.eu/

all very nice, nice layout, good quality of photos, everything is fine.

But ask yourself, would you as a customer, sign in at a site that you dont know anything about.
No legal entity, no telephone, no country, no contact person.

I wouldnt sign in. I wouldnt dare to pass my credit card info to such a place. And my boss would certainly not allow me, nor would the IT department.

and next problem... it wont take long before there are real nigerian scams among the shops in the symbiostock network. And then it all falls apart.

The flaw in your logic is that there are plenty of customers who do shop at unknown sites.  (Also, not all customers think like you, so speaking for them as a whole is a bit...odd?) Last year I made more per month on average at my (unknown) Ktools site than I did at any agency other than SS and Clipartof, and a couple of months it even matched or surpassed them.  To the point where I started eliminating micros right and left.  And that's with Ktools, I'm even more interested in Symbiostock based on SEO and traffic so far.

Facts from my experience (going on 4 years with independent sites):

1) Roughly 95% of my sales are coming from search traffic. The other 5% are returning customers.
2) I do not advertise. At all. Haven't spent a dime.
3) I have consistently made as much on my sites as I do monthly at the agencies. (100% royalties minus PP fees and hosting still adds up pretty quickly.)

As far as your Nigerian scam theory goes, PayPal has buyer protection mechanisms, and controlled dispute functions.  And before you ask, no...I've never had a customer buy an image and then dispute the purchase to get it for free.  In my opinion you can waste a lot of time being afraid of all the worst case scenarios and be leaving money on the table.

I completely understand hesitations for those who don't think it will work, but that's a bit different than coming in an unilaterally stating "IT WON'T WORK" without having ever tried or having anything to back up your statement. 

You raise some valid points about the organization aspect and yes we still have a ways to go but for an open source project this young, it's great to see how things have blossomed already.  It's so easy to sit on the sidelines and criticize rather than getting involved and educating yourself or better yet contributing.

It helps that it is paypal. But my boss would sill not allow me to buy there. He would say: Who are they? You cannot make deals with people you dont know who are, and are your sure the licence is valid when there is no name and adress on it.

And it might not be!!! Think about it.

And you have come a long way already, with getting the network up and running. Its all fine, the shops are fine.

But you need some framework on top and you need a committee or something.
But  I have already said that.

Your numbers are interesting Amanda,

95% from direct searches.
5% repeating

Im not sure if that is good or bad.
It would be disasterous for an agency.
it does mean that you are dependant on external searches.

I've had a very similar experience to Amanda. It's not going to work that way for everyone, but it's been a very positive experience for some of us.

Same here. Before Symbiostock, my site was run on a different platform and in my best months I could pull off just over $100 in sales. I was on a paid system (ejunkie) so I had $15 a month in fees plus about $8 in hosting, but even so, it's almost 80% profit.

People do register with unknown sites and make purchases. There's no reason not to. If you find what you need and you can make the transaction safely (which through PayPal is pretty easy to do), then why wouldn't someone make a purchase? I don't think the small nature of self-hosted sites is much of a deterrent.

I saw the phone number issue come up. If that turns out to be a problem (which I doubt it would) it's very inexpensive to set up a dedicated number you could use for a Symbiostock business. Google Voice is free (currently) and you can get a number that forwards on to any other number (if you don't want to give out your home number) and you can also set up a voicemail message on it so it sounds professional. I've used Skype numbers before, they run a few bucks a month.

I think all of these criticisms of self-hosted sites are just weak excuses for not trying it. They're not real deterrents to sales, or if it turns out that maybe they are, they are easily dealt with.

What about marketing? How does someone find your site?

SEO & search engines.

Edit: I balanced out the -1 as I think its a fair question.

As far as I'm concerned the contact info is one of the huge benefits of having my own sites. I have had 3 e-mails and 2 phone calls today (I do admit that isn't normal) about custom images or editing current ones. I think three of those contacts will probably turn into some sort of a sale. One custom or exclusive image sale would exceed the revenue I get from FT, and Istock combined. There are a lot of perks that aren't really associated with traditional sales and those benefits aren't being taken into consideration. As far as customer service goes I guarantee that mine is better than any of the big agencies because I do it myself. People like talking to the "guy" and it is almost never a burden. Finally, people do shop around. Three of those contacts came from seeing my image on one of the agencies. They wanted to talk to me so they went out and found my site. If they decide to buy they will probably buy direct from me now and I will collect somewhere between 3 and 35 times the commission I would have gotten from the agencies.

What about marketing? How does someone find your site?

My images are still being indexed, but search for burgundy tulips, my image on Semmick Photo is on row 9 of Google Images. Thats pretty impressive for a new flower image on the internet.