Symbiostock Vendors Is Now Available!

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Product Launch: Symbiostock Vendors

Transform your website into a multi-vendor platform.

Symbiostock Vendors is finally here! This much awaited professional plugin allows you to transform your store into a multi-vendor platform. Perfect for businesses that are comprised of multiple artists who want to work together as one entity.

How Symbiostock Vendors Works

Symbiostock Vendors allows you to set up a single Symbiostock website with multiple sub ‘Symbiostock Contributor’ accounts. There is one central administrative account (basically like the parent account) that is responsible for the overall operation of the site. And just like a normal Symbiostock website, this admin account controls Symbiostock Settings, the website’s appearance, plugins, Woocommerce settings, etc. It is from this administrative account that sub Symbiostock Contributors are created. Whilst simple to use, the system is advanced and scalable so contributor accounts can be added or removed as required.

Tools Accessible to your Symbiostock Contributors

Each of your Symbiostock Contributors has access to their own WP dashboard and their own Symbiostock FTP folder, from which they upload and manage their individual media products. Contributors cannot see the products that belong to other individuals and are unable to access the main website’s admin settings. Contributors can only upload their digital media via FTP and once uploaded and processed, contributors can edit metadata, publish and manage their products as one normally would when using Symbiostock Pro. Published products all show up in the one central website’s shop listings.

Technical insight into how to use Symbiostock Vendors can found in this user guide.

Compatible with Symbiostock Premium Plugins

Premium Symbiostock plugins including Symbiostock Video and Symbiostock Submitter are compatible with Symbiostock Vendors and these can be added through the administrative account. So if you’re using Symbiostock Video, for example, your contributors will be able to add video media to your store. And with Symbiostock Submitter,  the administrative account can submit media to third party agencies.

Symzio Integration

Symbiostock Vendors is compatible with Symzio. To have your media files included in Symzio, just like a normal Symbiostock powered website, all you need to do is meet the eligibility criteria and apply. The integration process is exactly the same as it is for regular Symbiostock sites. Once connected, your website integrates into Symzio as one business. This means the combined pool of published media is piped through only one single Symzio account.

A Unique Business Opportunity

Symbiostock Vendors is designed for business professionals or entrepreneurs who want to unite, connect and grow a unique online marketplace with other individuals as a collective. With the ability to have unlimited contributors uploading their digital media onto one central store, you have the opportunity establish a hub very much like a mini microstock agency. There is so much room for implementing inspired ideas with Symbiostock Vendors, for instance:

  • Teaming up with photographers who focus on similar niches, or radically varied subject matter, to establish a large online portfolio.
  • For digital illustrators, establishing a vector art business collaboratively.
  • Creating a collective of photographers, vector artists and videographers specializing in one theme.

Symbiostock Vendors is a commercial grade plugin that provides a new way of diversifying your revenue prospects. The cost of the plugin is $199 and as with all of our premium plugins, Symbiostock Vendors comes with lifetime updates. If you have any queries about about Symbiostock Vendors please post your questions in this forum thread.

Purchase Symbiostock Vendors >>

50% Off Symbiostock Hosting Packages

Offer available until the end of August 2017.

A reminder to anyone interested in getting on board with Symbiostock Hosting – grab a massive discount by signing up before the end of August. This special offer is only available to new users and provides 50% off the first term of hosting. This means that if you sign up for a monthly plan, your first month will be 50% off. But if you sign up on an annual plan, which is where this offer is ridiculously good, you will receive 50% off the entire first year of hosting. So for example, if you sign up annually on our ‘Economy’ plan, normally $143.99, with this offer you can get it for only $72 for the whole first year!

We made this offer to celebrate the launch of Symbiostock.org’s new look, which occurred late late month. In order to claim this special discount, please use the coupon code ‘NEWSYMBIO’.

View all Symbiostock Hosting packages here >>

This offer is only available for people who have not signed up with Symbiostock Hosting before.

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An Exciting New Look!

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Welcome to our new site!

Symbiostock.org, home of the Symbiostock project, has had a makeover!

Over the past few months the Symbiostock team has been quietly and carefully re-designing Symbiostock.org in an effort to create a more effective, flowing and user friendly website. One of the main goals with the re-design was to make information about Symbiostock and our software more readily available and easier to understand, especially for new users. Previously we had found that it was hard for newcomers to quickly and easily access details about what Symbiostock provides and what our community is about. We are confident that the new layout presents information about the project in a more user friendly and inviting manner.

We invite you to check out our new site and we hope you love it as much as we do!

50% Symbiostock Hosting Offer

To celebrate the launch of the new Symbiostock.org, we have a special Symbiostock Hosting offer for new users. Till the end of August, new users who sign up with Symbiostock Hosting can get 50% off their first term of hosting. This is an awesome deal that offers massive savings if you sign up on an annual plan. Our most popular plan, the ‘Super’ package, which provides 50 GB of storage and 500 GB of bandwidth is usually $405.99 on an annual plan, can be purchased for only $202.99! If you sign up annually for our most budget ‘Economy’ plan, normally $143.99, with this offer you can get it for cheap as chips: only $72 for an entire year!

View all Symbiostock Hosting packages here >>

In order to receive the discount, please use the coupon code ‘NEWSYMBIO’.

This offer is only available for people who have not signed up with Symbiostock Hosting before.

Symzio Artist Directory Replaces Symbiostock Artist Network

When it comes to making improvements, it can be like changing seasons and sometimes we need to remove certain things in order to make room for new growth. The Symbiostock Artists Network was introduced when the new Symbiostock was born and whilst the goals and intentions behind it were noble and promising, over the course of time as the Symbiostock project has grown and evolved, the Artist Network hit somewhat of a standstill. And with the introduction of the Symzio Link Exchange Widget late last year, the artist network became quite redundant. As a result, we have retired the original Symbiostock Artist Network and replaced it with a new Symzio Artist Directory.

The Symzio Artist Directory runs dynamically off the Symzio Link Exchange Widget. The directory contains information and links to independent websites and portfolios of artists who proactively contribute towards raising awareness about Symzio and their fellow Symzio artists. In order to have your website and details appear on the Symzio Artist Directory, you need to be a Symzio contributor and you must endorse Symzio by one of two ways (or both!):

  1. By using the Link Exchange Widget on your Symbiostock website
  2. By using the Symzio Widget on your Symbiostock website

Seeing as the Symzio Artist Network page is created using the Symzio Link Exchange Widget, the directory auto-updates and only shows contributors who are using Symzio widgets. Therefore if someone stops displaying Symzio widgets, their site will be automatically removed from the directory. This keeps things fair so that those individuals who believe in our project enough to mention us and their fellow independent contributors on their own websites are the people who benefit from receive some extra exposure via the Symzio Artist Directory. Every page on our website links to the Symzio Artist Directory, so naturally anyone who is listed will benefit from extra organic traffic and possibly receive additional ‘link juice’ from search engines. So if you’re not already using the widget, get on board to benefit from this bonus incentive!

Learn more about the Symzio Link Exchange Widget and how to use it here.

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Now Available: Symbiostock Maps & Symzio Link Exchange Widget

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Just released: Symbiostock Maps & Symzio Link Exchange Widget

Our two new exciting tools are now available for our Symbiostock community to make use of. Symbiostock Maps will add a significant expansion to both the aesthetics and media advertising potential of your websites. And the Symzio Link Exchange Widget is a fantastic SEO opportunity to connect with other contributor sites and exchange ‘link juice’. Let’s go over each tool and what they provide in a more detail:

Symbiostock Maps

Symbiostock Maps is an impressive, optional plugin for Symbiostock Pro. Symbiostock Maps reads GPS information from your product pages and uses the Google Maps API to create an interactive, clickable map which showcases the locations of your media products. Perfect for those of you who have portfolios with travel locations, images of architecture and buildings from around the world, or collections highlighting natural wonders.

Symbiostock Maps is highly customizable, as we previously demonstrated with very differently set live demos:

Symbiostock Maps Demo 1 – In this demo we have images displayed all over a global map. This demo shows the default ‘terrain’ map type.

Symbiostock Maps Demo 2 – Here the map location has been set to Sydney and we’ve chosen the number of images to be displayed to only 4. As a result, Symbiostock Maps identifies which four images are closest to Sydney and only displays those thumbnails in a zoomed in view. If there were only three images geotagged nearby Sydney and the next closest image was geotagged to Melbourne, the map would automatically be more zoomed out to include that forth image’s location. The map type here is set to ‘hybrid’ and we’ve added a cyan-blue colored hue.

Symbiostock Maps Demo 3 – In this example, instead of showing image thumbnails, we’re using geotag markers. Geotag markers are clickable and just like the thumbnails they open up a larger image preview. The map type used here is ‘roadmap’.

As you can see, multiple maps can be created and inserted into different pages of your website and each individual map can be customized to focus on a specific region of the world. Customizable elements include map size, color, brightness, thumbnail size, popup preview size, popup text size and you can also add an optional title and associate a custom class to each map. With so many aesthetically geared settings you have complete freedom to play around and integrate Symbiostock Maps into the design of your unique website.

There are two ways of adding Symbiostock Maps to your Symbiostock site – as a widget or shortcode. The widget method is easier, but is dependent on your theme’s implementation of widget areas. Shortcodes can require a bit more if you want it customized, but are more dynamic and can be placed in any post and on any page. Our Symbiostock Maps Help Guide explains how to set shortcode parameters and contains useful tips using Symbiostock Maps .

Symbiostock Maps can be purchased from our store for $49. As with all our software and premium plugins, this includes lifetime updates.

Symzio Link Exchange Widget

Link Exchange Widget

The Symzio Link Exchange Widget is a fully automated link exchange system that is bundled with the the latest version of Symbiostock Pro – simply update your Symbiostock Pro install to the newly released version to access to widget.

Establishing link exchange partnerships with targeted, related websites is a long established way of giving your website’s SEO a boost. By working together and setting up a link exchange network with fellow Symzio contributors, we can essentially increase our marketing efforts and online presence by letting search engines know that although we are independent entities, we’re are also a collective – and if there’s anything to be learned from advent of social media, it is that modern search engines appreciate sites that are interconnected and communal. Link exchange partnerships also provide a good means of exchanging direct traffic.

The Symzio Link Exchange Widget is an intelligent tool which removes the regular burdens that come with link exchange partnerships. You don’t need to check for dead links, or worry about partnered sites maintaining reciprocal links. Any sites that stop working, or stop using the widget are automatically removed from the link list.

FEATURES INCLUDE:

  • Auto checking contributor sites to make sure they are online. Sites that go offline are automatically excluded so that there are no ‘dead’ links.
  • Only includes sites that also display the widget.
  • Dynamically altering the rank order in which sites are displayed sites based on how much each individual site contributes to the link exchange program. The widget uses advanced mechanisms to calculate how much each site is promoting the Symzio Link Exchange Widget – sites providing greater support are listed higher on the page and this is automatically updated.
  • The widget does not output Javascript; it outputs HTML which can be indexed by search engines and contains hard coded links to encourage SEO.
  • Will only display contributors who have been with Symzio for at least 1 month.
  • Ability to set how many contributors you want to list (minimum of 5 required).
  • Can be added to your WordPress site as a widget or shortcode.
  • Automatically uses styles that are defined in your websites theme. You can also add a custom css class to the widget and apply stylizes using your theme’s custom css area.
  • Ability to add a custom title to your link exchange area.

Information for each contributor listing is sourced directly from their Symzio public profile, including:

  • The contributor’s business name
  • Link to their independent website
  • Link to their Symzio contributor profile
  • Links to Facebook & Twitter pages
  • Description: Displaying contributor descriptions is optional. You can set the widget to display no descriptions to show short/full descriptions.
  • Thumbnail: A thumbnail is shown if the contributor has uploaded an image for their Symzio profile page. Displaying thumbnails is optional.

The more information you supply about yourself through your Symzio contributor profile, the more information can be displayed through the link widget. So it’s a good idea to fill in your Symzio profile as much as you can, including links to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Below is a screen shot of how the Symzio Link Exchange Widget outputs data and you can see that some listings contain more details than others:

symzio-link-exchange-widget-sample

The widget is extremely easy to set up and can be accessed by navigating to WP Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets. It will appear in the list of available widgets as Symzio Link Exchange. You can then add this to any widget area. Once added, you can open it to access all the settings. For details on how to implement the widget using shortcodes, see this Help Guide.

The widget is released today with the Symbiostock Pro update. We encourage all Symzio contributors to get on board and implement the Link Exchange Widget on your independent sites. And if you haven’t already joined Symzio, take this opportunity to do so. By working together and supporting each other in this growing community, we continue to feed our movement towards empowering ourselves as independent artists. So let’s make the most of this opportunity and keep our momentum flowing!

Join Symzio

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Coming Soon: Symbiostock Maps & Symzio Link Exchange Widget

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Announcing the coming of two powerful new tools to get you excited towards the end of the year:

Symbiostock Maps

Coming soon is a powerful new addon called Symbiostock Maps. Symbiostock Maps will allow you to display multiple photos and media on an interactive world map. This optional addon for Symbiostock Pro uses the Google Maps API to insert a customizable map anywhere on your website. If your media is geotagged (i.e. assigned with a geographical location), Symbiostock Maps will use that information to present the location of the image on a Google map.

Multiple maps can be created to focus on different regions of the world. You can choose how many images you want shown; whether the images show up as thumbnails or location markers; customize colors; thumbnail proportions and more. When a thumbnail/location marker is clicked, a popup opens up showing a larger preview of the image – which if clicked takes the customer to the actual product page.

Take a look at a live example of Symbiostock Maps in action:

Symbiostock Maps Demo 1

To illustrate how customizable this addon is, here is another example which displays the map in ‘Hybrid’ mode and with completely different visual settings:

Symbiostock Maps Demo 2

Symbiostock Maps is perfect for artists who capture travel locations, architectural marvels and natural wonders, whether it be via photography, video or illustrations.

Further details on how to make the most of Symbiostock Maps will become available with the release of this exciting new addon.

Symzio Link Exchange Widget

Symbiostock Maps

In the recent months Symbiostock Forums have been buzzing with independent artists trying to collaborate and brainstorm ways of supporting each other through mutually beneficial link exchange agreements. Creating niche specific link exchange partnerships can be a valuable way of attracting visitors to sites, both through direct traffic exchange and by triggering search engines.

However, creating a link exchange system isn’t always easy to keep track of and requires ongoing monitoring and maintenance. Tasks such as checking your partnered sites to ensure that your links are still there, or checking whether the sites you’re linking to are still online and implementing updates are ongoing aspects of link exchanges that are time consuming and not much fun to do – because most of us would rather spend that energy working on our creative projects.

And so we decided to create the Symzio Link Exchange Widget – a fully automated link exchange system that effortlessly sets up a link exchange area on any page, or section, of your website. Some of the advanced features of the widget include:

  • Auto checking contributor sites to make sure they are online. Sites that go offline are automatically excluded so that there are no ‘dead’ links.
  • Only includes sites that also display the widget.
  • Dynamically altering the rank order in which sites are displayed sites based on how much each individual site contributes to the link exchange program. The widget uses advanced mechanisms to calculate how much each site is promoting the Symzio Link Exchange Widget – sites providing greater support are listed higher on the page and this is automatically updated.
  • The widget does not output Javascript; it outputs HTML which can be indexed by search engines and contains hard coded links to encourage SEO.
  • Will only display contributors who have been with Symzio for at least 1 month.

Each contributor’s listing will source information directly from their Symzio public profile, including:

  • The contributor’s business name
  • Description with their profile image
  • Link to their independent website
  • Link to their Symzio contributor profile
  • Links to Facebook & Twitter pages

Although there will be a default minimum number of listings displayed, you will be able to set how many contributors you want to list on your link exchange area.

The Symzio Link Exchange Widget will become available soon and will be bundled with the base Symbiostock Pro plugin.

As we continue to band together as a proactive community of independent artists, the greater our opportunity for success becomes. And with innovative tools such as this new widget we can easily keep up our momentum up and further growth of our movement!

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Symzio Launch!

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www.symzio.com

Symzio spawned from a deep desire to stimulate some balance within the microstock agency, in the favor of contributors. As microstock contributors ourselves, we are all too well aware of how unrewarding it feels to generate $0.25 from an image that took so much more than twenty-five cents in time value to create. Yet day-in-day-out such earnings make up the majority of monthly royalty earnings for most stock contributors.

But contributors are not the only ones hurting. Consumers are also unhappy with the lack of choices available and are funneled into spending more than they’d like with costly subscription packages.

Which is why we created Symzio. The first completely contributor controlled agency that charges customers less and pays contributors more. With a heavy focus on One Time Use licenses to attract customers who are looking for exactly that – unique one off stock media for that one blog article, or one advert, or one website banner, or one brochure. Individuals who don’t need subscriptions or RF licenses but who end up having no other choice. And the benefits for contributors are just as great – your images don’t get filed into royalty free storage folders for a mere twenty-five cents to your pocket.

Symzio is radical with a massive potential for progress and we want you, our fellow contributors, to be a part of it.

Some key aspects of Symzio include:

– No approval process for stock media. Symzio contributors simply upload media to Symbiostock & manually select what you want to include or auto-include to Symzio (Symbiostock 2.1+ required).
– Contributors retain 70% of their sales earnings.
– Symzio Affiliate Program provides affiliates 10% of every sale referred to us by them.
– Bonus opportunity for contributors to retain 90% sales earnings if a customer purchases the contributor’s own image through their own referral.
– The minimum a Symzio contributor will earn on a single sale is $1.40 (for a medium One Time Use JPG).
– Consumer pricing schedule that heavily targets One Time Use customers, whilst at the same time offering a fair compensation royalty-free option

We encourage you to peruse the new Symzio site, read the info pages and TOS to become familiar with how Symzio operates. We are currently taking contributor applications and details on how to apply can be found here.

Additionally, as Symzio is launched as a Beta, we will be utilizing this phase as a period for tweaking aspects that we may find need improvements as we move forward.

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Symzio Network Widget Preview

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As you may be aware, Symzio has been quietly under development. Symzio is a means for Symbiostock users to gain greater exposure for their images and to promote the growing network of independent Symbiostock artists. The first component of Symzio, the Symzio Network Widget, is to be released with the forthcoming Symbiostock 2.0 update. The Network Widget will alter the landscape of Symbiostock sites, enabling contributors to syndicate each others images through their own sites seamlessly.

A key feature of the Symzio Network Widget is its versatility and ease of use. You can control how and where the widget appears on your website. You can insert the widget into your site’s theme just as you would any other WP widget, or use shortcodes to embed it into sections of your site. The idea behind this is to ensure you maintain control over the appearance of your site.

Not only this, but the Symzio Network Widget is intelligent. It will provide images that relate to whatever it sees on your page, whether it be a post, product or a search query. It will provide your visitors relevant images from across the network, creating a rich browsing experience.

The good news is that if you are already a Symbiostock user, you can sign up for the Symzio network now so that when it is launched your images will be some of the first to be syndicated across the network. This is just the first step towards a prosperous independent community of media contributors.

 

Symzio-widget-preview

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