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Posts
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Michele, please count me among those who would really regret to see you go. I think cidepix is right, symbiostock will be a marathon or perhaps even a series of marathons. So I think it’s the right idea to take a break from time to time and recover.
It’s sad to hear anyone is thinking of dropping out, but especially when someone has contributed so much., so I hoe you’ll reconsider…
I’ve been slowly adding to my site, but mostly working on alternative ways to draw people to the site –
== cross- and back-linking from other relevant sites
== displaying complementary thumbnail images on high content pages
http://cascoly.com/trav/us/civilwar-manassas.asp
== developing games and apps like chronos timeline that can use images
== writing descriptive pages about symbiostock & promoting it
http://cascoly.com/promote.asp now has a pagerank of 4
== developing a way to promote symbiostock sites thru ebay auctions (tough since ebay doesn’t allow digital products but I think I’ve found a way to do it — more on this if it works out)@leo wrote:
3 To everything there is a season, and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven:
2 A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted,
3 A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up,
4 A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 A time to get and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away,
7 A time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak,
8 A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
9 What profit remains for the worker from his toil?
.
sadly appropriate on the news of the death of Pete Seeger who used this in “turn, Turn, Turn”
Then we need to be honest about what makes a site successful.
Look at all the things you’re doing—your built-in buying audience, backlinking to multiple sites, thumbnails on other pages, games, eBay auctions, etc. Look at the long list of things Leo did to get his site noticed.
This is all a huge amount of work, and it really does need to be done by each person for his or her own site in order for this network to be successful. But most people here can’t even be bothered moving their mouse to click a “like” button on FB or post news about themselves to the Twitter feed Leo set up a couple days ago. I posted twice and realized I was crazy for continuing to do that stuff for everyone else.
Linking to 10 sites and getting a yellow Yoast light is not enough. Symbiostock is not set it and forget it. Those of you who are successful have done much, much more than that.
Hi Michele
Leaving at this time wouldn’t be good idea. Effort you put on symbiostock facebook page is really commendable , its we who are not regular to page , from now on i will regularly visit symbio page and will be part of some activity , right now running under heavy tight budget hence couldnt donate some $s for marketing . near future will surely will do, michele your illustration are awesome and i am really fan of your work , i have 0 sale since i launched , but i am being patient in way some day some good news will arrive , u had few sales and future i wish you may get lot more …
@shelma1 wrote:
Thanks all, and especially to Leo, Jo Ann and Martha for all the work and support. And thanks to the people who helped out with info and donations for the Facebook page. But if only three or four of us like and comment, it’s fruitless. Facebook reduces the number of people who see the posts without community involvement.
Instead of growing, the page is shrinking. And I’m spending a lot of time and effort reaching Martha, Jo Ann and myself. 🙂
I figured most contributors would be sharing the posts on Facebook… Of course it will be fruitless without everyone trying to spread the word. I did spam my entire friends list to “like” the symbio page last week though. lol
I am going to suggest something rather controversial, and that is that the network effect of Symbiostock may have hurt many sites. It has been theorized within the SEO community for years that if a list of sites suddenly pop up, all pointing to each other, but few people outside the network is pointing at them, Google devalues the links and considers them a poor quality network.
That’s not to say that linking together is a bad thing in the long run, or that my theory is the least bit correct. However I noticed with my site, and heard from several others, that search volume faded with time rather than grew despite the network.
I think it is important to get your name out there beyond the confines of the network, and (hopefully) generate some organic links back to you. If Google perceives that the only people who care about the network are people within the network, we aren’t going to rank. I’d be interested in any thoughts on this.
Interesting point. Thanks for sharing.
@Imago Borealis wrote:
I am into Symbiostock for the looong haul. We can’t change this game in a few month. If we can at all it will be a marathon. So better save some breath and strength for later.
I am in it for the long haul, but I diversified my income stream. First off, my networked site is a disaster. Organic search has all but died, and I don’t even get referrals from other sites anymore (which tells me that they aren’t doing well either). I signed a 3 year deal with Bluehost. If I hadn’t I would certainly let the site die after Year 1.
So I stated a second site and decided to not network it, just for comparison purposes. I am following the same pattern – blog, promote, upload. Interestingly, this second site gets considerably more organic search volume than the (first) networked site.
I utilize Google Adsense on my blog pages. It won’t take too much more volume until the advertising from the blog literally pays for the hosting costs. Any image sales would then become icing on the cake. If I can get to that point, then I’ll keep the site indefinitely. The networked site isn’t worth saving, in my opinion.
Setting up a site is not enough!
But setting up a site and take a break and let Google slowly index your site is totally okay!
If it comes to self-hosting and Symbiostock I always thought in years not months. I did self-hosting before Symbiostock because of that I probably had realistic expectations right from the start. Hosting is so cheap just let your site ripe for a while and if your interested come back with fresh and new marketing ideas everything is ready to go.
I love Symbiostock regardless of sales and will ever do!@dp69_2001 wrote:
@shelma1 wrote:
Thanks all, and especially to Leo, Jo Ann and Martha for all the work and support. And thanks to the people who helped out with info and donations for the Facebook page. But if only three or four of us like and comment, it’s fruitless. Facebook reduces the number of people who see the posts without community involvement.
Instead of growing, the page is shrinking. And I’m spending a lot of time and effort reaching Martha, Jo Ann and myself. 🙂
I figured most contributors would be sharing the posts on Facebook… Of course it will be fruitless without everyone trying to spread the word. I did spam my entire friends list to “like” the symbio page last week though. lol
ah…so that explains why the page suddenly got several likes. Thanks for that.
@djpadavona wrote:
…if a list of sites suddenly pop up, all pointing to each other, but few people outside the network is pointing at them, Google devalues the links and considers them a poor quality network.
How would Google determine if a site is in a “network” or not?
@shazamimages wrote:
@djpadavona wrote:
…if a list of sites suddenly pop up, all pointing to each other, but few people outside the network is pointing at them, Google devalues the links and considers them a poor quality network.
How would Google determine if a site is in a “network” or not?
It’s pretty simple. You have 100 or so new sites pop up, and they all link to each other. That’s red flag #1. New sites shouldn’t have so many incoming links in most circumstances, and why are they all linking to each other?
But almost nobody outside of this loop is linking to them. Red flag #2. If there were real interest in these sites, more established sites would link to them.
There are some people on SEOMoz and ProBlogger who refuse to link to their older sites when they start a new one. The rule of thumb is to wait 3 to 6 months, so that it isn’t interpreted that you are starting new sites just to create incoming links for your old ones. It’s possible that they are being paranoid, and there is no definitive proof that Google looks that closely. My guess is that they do, and it is a real problem for this model.
I think there is something to this. Also I understand that the quality of content that you link to and are linking to you has some affect on your results. If your partner sites aren’t showing up as quality related sites that may be causing some of the issues. Jo Ann has put together some pretty great ideas for improving the quality of your links. You can find it here http://www.digitalbristles.com/symbiostock-image-pages-go-green/
Dan, I really think that your comments are something people should consider. We need to collectively start a quality network. Not just a hap-hazzard network of sites. Smart blogs with interesting content and a conscious effort as to how things are being presented may be what the next step for symbiostock should be.
@chromaco wrote:
We need to collectively start a quality network. Not just a hap-hazzard network of sites. Smart blogs with interesting content and a conscious effort as to how things are being presented may be what the next step for symbiostock should be.
You nailed it Chromaco. I believe a valid way to increase exposure to your images is to create things which people need, and promote them through social media sharing (rather than spamming your business card all day like some people do on Twitter). Some people are good at making Apps. Others are experts in graphic design and can offer information and services. And others are article writers. We all need to pick what we do best, and provide something that people need.
For instance if I write a blog article on how to use a Gimp tool, it had better be good enough that I would learn from it if I read it somewhere else. Get enough material out there, and people will link to you organically. That will bring up the rank of your entire page, including your images.
As if it were this easy, however. It is a lot of hard work, and you need to do a really good job at it, share it, grow a social network, and stay patient.
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