waiting is the only logical choice at this point given robin's refusal to respond  to significant issues raised about the TOS which can destroy an independent's work; his arbitrary decision can kick someone off the symzio service based on undefined criteria; ...

I think you might be a little paranoid. Are you talking about the potential submission fee or the being kicked-out danger?
It has been explained already that the content of Symzio is almost entirely Symbiostock user controlled. Once you're approved as a contributor it's up to you what appears on Symzio because nobody will select your best work and reject the crappy stuff. So being a Symzio contributor comes with great responsibility, to deliver work that's up to the standards and that's not flooding the system with similars.
Of course there need to be some kind of rules to avoid possible misuse of the system. In other words, if you try to cheat the system, you might get kicked out or fined. That's it.
I can't speak for Robin but why in the world should he demand a fee when contributors deliver high quality content?

Keeping the content on Symzio on a high technical and creative level is in everybody's interest.

Everybody is entitled to his opinion.
However, waiting until many others have joined and pushed it, and have reported frequent sales is basically the laziest and most cowardly attitude anyone can have toward a new enterprise.
Well, that was my opinion.

Sorry, cowardly?! I was an early adopter of Symbiostock with over 5500 images on my site. Kept up with my site until a couple weeks ago when it stopped functioning. I didn't and still don't like the new Symbio's look (very amateurish) so I never converted. Plus I never saw merit in any of the new schemes. It looks like a business plan that is still trying to figure itself out. I wish you luck... but I'll sit this one out.

I didn't and still don't like the new Symbio's look (very amateurish) so I never converted.

Thanks for the good wishes.
Your Symbiostock site looks like you want it to look. You can choose your own theme or you can design a complete new one. Customize it as much as you want. There is no one Symbiostock look.

so how many images and contributors does the agency have

I just believe that the character of the owner is a strong indication of how the site will be managed. I'm out for that reason alone. Sounds like he works for FOTOLIA.

Not some, but all of the characterization of me has been derived from increasing aggression due to the fact that I don't interact with unprofessional or destructive individuals. I have a great deal of experience with public forums and can spot a troll a mile away. I have also learned that there is no specific way to deal with individuals looking to troll you except to ignore them.

For example - without exception, these destructive individuals have repeatedly attempted to coerce responses out of me while simultaneously attacking both the project and myself with incorrect claims - some are wound up in somewhat factual details, but most are fabricated or entirely misrepresented. The end result of me trying to correct such efforts would be for them to then reply with more incorrect characterizations of either myself or the project. This is called a 'black hole', and serves to digress any conversation away from the central purpose it plays. This is the central definition of 'trolling'.

Most importantly, the loudest, most seemingly offended individuals here, have not once constructively pursued attaining untainted information from me via PM or otherwise, while many others have. This denotes, with certainty, that they are here to entertain themselves - not assist other contributors in determining if Symbiostock is something that would benefit or harm them. Early on, I actually PMed one of them, asking for their assistance in examining the project, and they ignored my request, yet continue to critique the project publicly.

Therefore - if you are new to the forum, then you will probably gather that the hate posts have all the same upvotes because angry people generally upvote one another. You will also gather that throughout MSG, the hate posts for pretty much anything generally gather the most upvotes. This is an angry environment that has no one specific cause.

All that being said, I don't form specific opinions as to why these individuals choose to do what they do - obviously they are contributors and are looking to maximize their revenue. But for some reason or another that has taken a backseat to the social satisfaction they derive from lambasting whatever they can on MSG.

Our goal - mine and any contributor eager to see Symzio succeed - has nothing to do with personal vendetta. These individuals only become relevant when they interfere with our ability to progress towards independent success. Thus far, it hasn't posed an issue - however, if you, who I do not know, actually believe I have demonstrated anything but the utmost level of professionalism and consistency towards every single action I have taken and done with regards to Symbiostock since my involvement, you are welcome to privately critique me, and if you are correct, I will publicly clear that up.

Finally, I have a great deal of faith in the silent majority here - a great deal of contributors, with certainty, hesitate to interact on the forums but rather just meander around because they are generally avoiding these few loud, aggressive types. So, I do what I can do - post factual information, avoid the irrational, and answer what legitimate questions I can while sharing our intentions and plans with those interested.

MSG is just one avenue of promotion, and my dedication to the success of independent contributors is asserted by the fact that I continue to, and will continue to, use it as a means of informing professionals on the merits of our efforts irrespective of the attempts of these loud, angry, unwieldy individuals to coerce submission out of others for personal satisfaction.

And now, I can't speak further on the issue, because that would result in a 'black hole'. You are welcome to PM me for clarification.

-----

However, waiting until many others have joined and pushed it, and have reported frequent sales is basically the laziest and most cowardly attitude anyone can have toward a new enterprise.

I think I share similar sentiments to Pilens - I am actually pissed off, and being pissed off is what has amalgamated in all the work I have done to get this project going. I think what pushed me over the edge was a 4K sale - I got $50, which is a big payout. Then I realize that the agency kept $250. And the poor customer paid $300! I get $50 for my video, 100% my work, while the agency gets $250 - and all that extra money is being paid as a premium by the customer.

It then occurred to me that we could charge far less than agencies ($100), the customer would love it, and we would effectively make nearly twice the amount of money. Even now, when I think about the $250 I almost don't want more sales until Symzio takes off because it will piss me off even more.

All you have to ask yourself is - does that piss you off enough to want to step up to try to make a change? In the end, no one else can answer that for you. All I can do is create an infrastructure that makes it extremely easy for you to pursue that, and encourage you to consider it.

i had some genuine concerns and questions, maybe bluntly wrapped in cynicism,  but genuine.  robin also ignored jo anns comments,  positively shes not a destructive character. still no answer on how many images the agency has. not sure how that question can be perceived as destructive, anyway

Great response, Robin! +100

I think that - apart from trolling - some of the posts being negative about Symbiostock and Symzio are fueled by disappointed expectations about what a direct image sales site and networking with other similar minded people can achieve in a given period of time. Symbio has inspired high flying hopes, then produced very down to earth sales statistics and led to lots of drama in the fora. As a Symbiostocker from day one I've witnessed it all. It has been a rough ride and it has been very sad at times.

I am grateful for Robin to continue Symbiostock, leading the way and staying cool even here. We don't need more drama. Instead, we need to leave the turbulent past behind and work together steadily building our sites and the Symbiostock community. We need to be prepared for a long haul since there is no low hanging fruit left to pick in this industry. Realistically there won't be any instant success and $$$s pouring in from our Symbiostock sites. Not now and not in the near future. It takes more than just setting up a Wordpress site.

So does this make any business sense, then? Well, did Deactivation Day, deleting (part of) our portfolios, essentially erasing hours of our work spent, in protest against DPC, make any business sense? - No, definitely not in a conventional sense. But it did work, D-Day has been a success, at least in my eyes. Where is that spirit? We need it for Symbiostock as well. Does it really make more business sense to do all the work but earn only down to 15% of the profit? - This is how distorted and strange this industry has become. Let's stop expressing our frustrations and anger with agencies in countless MSG threads and divert that energy into building our Symbiostock sites and contributing to the community. We can make it work!

Well said Stephan !
I think I will give the new Symbiostock plugin and Symzio a try in the next few weeks with an entirely new site.

Quote from: Mantis on January 03, 2016, 18:04

I just believe that the character of the owner is a strong indication of how the site will be managed. I'm out for that reason alone. Sounds like he works for FOTOLIA.

Not some, but all of the characterization of me has been derived from increasing aggression due to the fact that I don't interact with unprofessional or destructive individuals. I have a great deal of experience with public forums and can spot a troll a mile away. I have also learned that there is no specific way to deal with individuals looking to troll you except to ignore them.

For example - without exception, these destructive individuals have repeatedly attempted to coerce responses out of me while simultaneously attacking both the project and myself with incorrect claims - some are wound up in somewhat factual details, but most are fabricated or entirely misrepresented. The end result of me trying to correct such efforts would be for them to then reply with more incorrect characterizations of either myself or the project. This is called a 'black hole', and serves to digress any conversation away from the central purpose it plays. This is the central definition of 'trolling'.

Most importantly, the loudest, most seemingly offended individuals here, have not once constructively pursued attaining untainted information from me via PM or otherwise, while many others have. This denotes, with certainty, that they are here to entertain themselves - not assist other contributors in determining if Symbiostock is something that would benefit or harm them. Early on, I actually PMed one of them, asking for their assistance in examining the project, and they ignored my request, yet continue to critique the project publicly.

Therefore - if you are new to the forum, then you will probably gather that the hate posts have all the same upvotes because angry people generally upvote one another. You will also gather that throughout MSG, the hate posts for pretty much anything generally gather the most upvotes. This is an angry environment that has no one specific cause.

All that being said, I don't form specific opinions as to why these individuals choose to do what they do - obviously they are contributors and are looking to maximize their revenue. But for some reason or another that has taken a backseat to the social satisfaction they derive from lambasting whatever they can on MSG.

Our goal - mine and any contributor eager to see Symzio succeed - has nothing to do with personal vendetta. These individuals only become relevant when they interfere with our ability to progress towards independent success. Thus far, it hasn't posed an issue - however, if you, who I do not know, actually believe I have demonstrated anything but the utmost level of professionalism and consistency towards every single action I have taken and done with regards to Symbiostock since my involvement, you are welcome to privately critique me, and if you are correct, I will publicly clear that up.

Finally, I have a great deal of faith in the silent majority here - a great deal of contributors, with certainty, hesitate to interact on the forums but rather just meander around because they are generally avoiding these few loud, aggressive types. So, I do what I can do - post factual information, avoid the irrational, and answer what legitimate questions I can while sharing our intentions and plans with those interested.

MSG is just one avenue of promotion, and my dedication to the success of independent contributors is asserted by the fact that I continue to, and will continue to, use it as a means of informing professionals on the merits of our efforts irrespective of the attempts of these loud, angry, unwieldy individuals to coerce submission out of others for personal satisfaction.

And now, I can't speak further on the issue, because that would result in a 'black hole'. You are welcome to PM me for clarification.

-----

Quote from: Redneck on January 03, 2016, 13:22

However, waiting until many others have joined and pushed it, and have reported frequent sales is basically the laziest and most cowardly attitude anyone can have toward a new enterprise.

I think I share similar sentiments to Pilens - I am actually pissed off, and being pissed off is what has amalgamated in all the work I have done to get this project going. I think what pushed me over the edge was a 4K sale - I got $50, which is a big payout. Then I realize that the agency kept $250. And the poor customer paid $300! I get $50 for my video, 100% my work, while the agency gets $250 - and all that extra money is being paid as a premium by the customer.

It then occurred to me that we could charge far less than agencies ($100), the customer would love it, and we would effectively make nearly twice the amount of money. Even now, when I think about the $250 I almost don't want more sales until Symzio takes off because it will piss me off even more.

All you have to ask yourself is - does that piss you off enough to want to step up to try to make a change? In the end, no one else can answer that for you. All I can do is create an infrastructure that makes it extremely easy for you to pursue that, and encourage you to consider it.

We don't need more drama. Instead, we need to leave the turbulent past behind and work together steadily building our sites and the Symbiostock community.

And yet, just as in the past, 12 paragraphs of ranting against the "aggressive, loud trolls" gets posted, instead of actual facts and answers to the questions that are legitimately asked. It shouldn't matter to the symbiostock cause whether those questions are asked by "aggressive trolls" or by people who are deemed to be prospective sales. The answers would provide relevant information for anyone and everyone who may be interested.

We all agree there is a problem with agencies...we have all known that for years. People are looking for an intelligent solution with good returns on their time and money. That needs to be proved. Spending another 40+ hours setting up a new (or yet another) personal website without any real hard data and only pep talk from the people who will make the most money from it seems yet another waste of time. Please, prove us naysayers wrong! For me personally, when I can see actual data showing overall increases in sales over the past 2+ years, I will give the idea serious consideration.

Is there a place on the symbiostock forum (FAQs?) that answers any and all of the questions posed by various people here on this forum? If yes, can a link to that information be posted instead of 12 paragraph retorts?

People are looking for an intelligent solution with good returns on their time and money. That needs to be proved.

Others need to build the nest for you and then prove that it's nice and comfy?
Nobody needs to prove anything to you. If you want success, stop whining and make it happen, or learn from failure. The chance is there. It's up to you to take it or not.

So I guess if you put tremendous effort into the original Sym, as 180+ people did, and you're not immediately jumping on the new effort, you're lazy, cowardly, aggressive, loud, a whiner, a troll...what else have you guys called us? I've lost count.

Down in flames.

I think we said earlier in the post that Symzio had just been launched and that some of the users of the Symbiostock plugin were adding their images to that site. I added mine in December. So of course it doesn't have 100s of thousands of images - it is just getting off the ground. This post was intended to announce that it was starting to see if any readers were interested in finding out more.

Steve

Case in point: Ana, who, since the inception of this thread decided to go independent, successfully launched her Symbiostock site and joined Symzio:

http://www.symzio.com/contributor-16320.html

And now her beautiful illustrations are already being promoted by every other Symzio member:

http://picturebreeze.com/stock/photos/image/young-woman-riding-boat/



The system has been designed to use every member's site as an extension of every other member's media. This way, we, in essence, all share in the cumulative traffic and media that the entire system is connected to. As soon as you join Symzio, your stuff is immediately seen by any customer that is looking for it on any other member's site.

Multiply this effect by a thousand, and you see what I mean when I say "cumulatively, our organic footprint would effectively dwarf the agencies".

Is this Ana that you mention also known as Alexander Yakovlev, because some of her illustrations look exactly like his photographs.  (There's more than this)