Microstock Photography Forum - General > Symbiostock - SEO & Marketing

Illustrator speaks on his Symbiostock site's success. Daily sales.

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Leo Blanchette:
I wanted to thank Chromaco for explaining Symbiostock success. Its very much appreciated.

http://www.symbiostock.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=1076

I think quite a few people had big expectations for Symbiostock, but they haven't been realized as quickly, or even in the same way people imagined. Its perfectly possible for it to use a blend of talent and strategy to continue finding a market.

For that to happen on a group level, it should be achieved on an individual level too. Symbiostock will most likely never be an agency, or even something revolutionary.

I'd like to propose a sort of "Daily Routine" or "Weekly Routine" for Symbiostockers, which will contribute to their own success as well as the groups. Think of it as an ant colony (my biggest inspiration :D). Little ways we can contribute to our sites as well as the community.

A routine that consists of uploading, site refinements, trips to support the community in the forum (you know, just a little something to encourage others), some "likes" on the Facebook page... Its hard to start a fire with damp wood, but its not impossible. Set up your automated twitter image queue. Its a lite load, but with many people carrying it, it will have much success.

We are not blasting to success quickly, but, amazingly, this thing is still here and growing. That alone is success, if you think of the challenge of this business.

Thank you Chromaco for giving me back some encouragement! No doubt many will feel this same.  This was very much needed.

Since I'm here, and for once making a big announcement in MSG, I also wanted to say Symbiostock's source websites are undergoing an image overhaul, and the community site is much better as well. The theme, too, is becoming more stable than ever.

 

cathyslife:
You chastise people for posting here, Leo, and yet here you are inundating the board with lots of new threads.  ::)


In my travels while upgrading my SY theme, i ran across many backlinks to a few peoples sites. It explains why a few people are and have been making good sales all along. Because those backlinks, multiplied many times over by each person who has a site and each new person that creates an SY site, ensures that those few people continue to make good sales. Meanwhile, the promise that the networking of SY will bring sales to everyone goes largely unfulfilled.


One only has to look at the massive amount of links the top few people have to your site in Webmaster Tools to see what is going on.


Some people are ecstatic that they have sold a couple of images in months. As growth of new sites takes place, there should be some increase accordingly in individuals sales. That isnt happening. 1 sale in 8 months isnt good enough for me, especially since about 200 new sites have been added since that one sale. If networking were working for me, i should have seen what, maybe one more sale? Or maybe way more, i think?


I have no doubt SY will be successful for a few people. For the most of the people who build, photography is their profession and its about selling photos, not about blogging, social media, and building additional websites with massive amounts of cross-linking.


As far as the basic SY theme goes, there are basic things that photographers need to have included. Some of those things still dont work correctly. After dozens of updates or upgrades, they still dont work correctly.


There is lots of proposing of how all SYers can push SY. Each one of those pushes adds lots of juice to the few who are doing well, but does hardly anything for the people doing the pushing.


It sounds an awful lot like just another internet scheme...get a whole bunch of people to do your selling for you so you can live off their backs. That isnt why i built an SY site. I built it so you could live off my back and i could live off yours. You can see that half of the equation is missing.


When i say "you", i mean anyone who has benefitted in a big way from this. You know who you are.


For these reasons, i am calling SY an epic fail for me and i am out.

Ron:
If thats true,  then I might as well go solo as well.

cthoman:
I'm not sure about the whole conspiracy theory thing, but I was wondering about why there is a cap on 10 links. I wouldn't mind having a larger link exchange page. It seems like something that would be advantageous, but maybe there was a reason for having only ten that I was missing.

Jo Ann Snover:
Cathy has already switched her site to another WordPress template - i.e. isn't using Symbiostock any more.

I don't know what the notion is of conspiracy but I don't have any links to Leo's site - I'm not an illustrator so it didn't seem appropriate - and I've made sales anyway. Not a ton, but then the site and the network is new and I'm expecting it to take time to build. I don't jump in and out of agency sites and I don't plan to assess Symbiostock week by week either.

It's fair enough to decide about having/keeping a Symbiostock site, but I can't see any reason for making claims about something "going on" as if there was anything underhanded about the setup.

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