-
Posts
-
I think many of us have started our Symbiostock themed sites because of a disillusionment with the existing stock agencies – not just microstock but macro as well who seem unable to quote and stick to fixed prices without moving goalposts and many other niggles.
If we are so disillusioned should we be keeping our images with agencies who think so little of them (and us) and pay us peanuts which seem to get more miniscule with every “improvement” ?
The reason for starting this thread is to discuss whether we would possibly be better off in the long run if we did go exclusive so that images available on our sites are ONLY available directly from us and we do not compete with ourselves via the agencies and whether we should find some way of advertising ourselves or to see if others have any constructive idea 😀
The poll is multi choice
http://kerioakimaging.com - trying to reopen
http://nail-art-at.kerioak.com - Art and Nail ArtGoing exclusive would be great…IF I could make up for all my lost income at the microstock agencies.
Right now that looks unrealistic, or at least a long way off. The fact is that uploading at the agencies immediately (or eventually) makes me money, but so far uploading to my Symbiostock site hasn’t made me any.
I’d love to see Symbio take off and become a serious contender, because I think it’s ridiculous to pay the commissions we pay to the agencies. However, we’re competing against established brands with huge IT/marketing/etc. budgets, and the wherewithal to gain serious financial backing when they need it.
Honestly, I think a Symbiostock customer is not the typical stock agency buyer. Therefore I think having your images listed at an agency won’t hurt your potential SYS sales.
Although I have to admit that I very much like the thought of many photographers pulling their images off the micro stock sites.I agree that symbio users are not necessarily stock agency users, so we need to adapt to that, but that aassumption needs verification , and only then can we really decide about exclusivity, paid advertising, etc
one approach I’ve taken is with keyword analysis – seeing which keywords and esp’ly promoted keywords are most effective in getting clicks
I didn’t vote in the poll, since it’s rather slanted towards a pre-conceived result, and doesn’t give room for more nuanced approaches –eg, there’s an enormous range of ‘paid advertising’, so the simple yes/never doesn’t work. better poll would allow a range of values for each proposition
–I plan to go exclusive 1-5
–I’m interested in paid advertising 1-5
another form of exclusivity would be to offer exclusives on the sym site while still working with agencies
I think the model that works for me is to upload to Symbiostock first and then in time – perhaps 6 months, perhaps longer – upload to those agencies that generate a lot of sales.
I cannot imagine going completely exclusive, but I wouldn’t rule it out. I think for high volume buyers, particularly those at larger companies which want to establish a fixed budget, it’s useful to have agencies like Shutterstock. I wouldn’t mind my older work going there after it had a time to sell here first.
Unless there is some really unique imagery, the thing we all need to face is that there are lots of reasonable alternatives to our work, so making things exclusive here may mean losing out on sales to other artists.
Last month I got a lovely note from someone – who hasn’t bought yet, so take that for what it’s worth – saying that he loved my work and had bought it via Shutterstock, but now he knew about my own site he’d buy from here in the future! I thanked him profusely for the compliment and the intent. I do think that the agencies can be a marketing agent for our work if we want to use them that way.
Look at how Sean Locke has set things up – exclusive new work at Stocksy and some of his “back catalog” here and at Shutterstock and a few other sites.
When WarmPicture was around, it was great to have a site where you could direct a buyer who wanted something that was not on an agency site – and I had a couple of those requests. One was a designer who wanted a vertical version of something I had uploaded only as horizontal. I had taken both and processed and uploaded the vertical shot to all the agencies. I wrote back that it was available now at WarmPicture and in a week or two would be elsewhere, depending on reviewer mood and speed. He bought that day from WarmPicture.
Today, I might not do the upload to the agencies right away, but could do the same thing – offer great customer service when they buy from me directly, but still have my portfolio at the agencies as a lead generator (of sorts).
I don’t know what to think about advertising, or how it would best be done (google searches or display ads somewhere or…). Dan Padavona, who started WarmPicture and did some advertising may have some thoughts on that topic. I’m not against it, but I think it can easily waste a huge sum of money if you don’t know how to target it well.
google seems to be hitting sym sites fairly quickly, so I’ve only been waiting a week or so before sending new images to the agencies, and that seems to be getting the sym images indexed
just set up authorship, so will see if that starts to have any effect
Not really – but uploading to your site, getting indexed, then uploading to others is nearly as good.
It is interesting seeing others views – I did try and show various views on the poll but it would need, for instance, an individual one on what members might be willing to do about paid-for advertising.
I think it would be great if we all had our own sites and thus the agencies were no longer required so customers had to come direct to us but I do not think that will ever happen with them being able to borrow more and more millions to finance themselves.
http://kerioakimaging.com - trying to reopen
http://nail-art-at.kerioak.com - Art and Nail ArtWell, exclusive subject is too much extensive. Just a short comment last year I’ve left the exclusivity after 10 years as a member and I think 7 of them as exclusive. I don’t intend again to keep all my eggs in one basket once now a days it is my only income. So,if one fails I have the chance to be covered by other. Besides that I still do not earn enough from stock agencies, so I still have to much work to do. :0)
Regarding the paid advertisement, I have mentioned in another thread to Leo: another idea (rough idea) for 2014 would be the network would have a budget to invest in Symbiostock.com advertise monthly. So, members which contributed with the budget within that month, will be the “Featured members” and have their images placed better in the search results at the Symbiostock.com. Member that do not contribute in that month is not in the “Ad/Campaign Network”. The budget would be paid to a Leo PayPal account that would manage the advertisement in Google Ads, other months printing ads in design/advertising magazines, and others, and other places. Well something like that. Also as JoAnn said: It must define very well the target and media, otherwise it can easily be a waste of a huge sum of money if you don’t know how to target it well.
As Shelma1 said, I also I’d love to see Symbiostock take off and I think it is an stunning idea from Leo. But so far uploading to Symbiostock seems nobody is doing good, so the paid advertisement would be one try, another try, maybe a free image of the week on the main Symbiostock.com cover site to bring users, buyers, spread symbiostock. Also, Shelma1 and I had commented a rework for the entire network 1st page as a regular stock agency main page site for selling images with search and so on.
With the multilingual SYM I think I’ll get to reach a bunch of customers that wouldn’treach just with English SYM version. So it is another step that SYM community need to share the multilingual files (I’m still on 70%). Sure I need some adjustments to solve like posted here and here.
Go Symbiostock and Leo! You’re going to take off soon!
a problem with a sumbiostock ad campaign is that we are so diverse — as noted, we can’t compete for keywords like ‘stock image’, so we’d need to be very niche conscious and that will be different fr each site
a better approach might be to continue individual efforts, but then pool results about which keywords are being used, with what results – obviously we’d need a balance between sharing and competing with each other; last thing we need is an bidding war among ourselves
there’s plenty of room once you go specific — I quickly ended up with hundreds of variations suggested on my first few tries
the combined keyword reports & promoted keyword summaries give us a head start by showing what is being used and what users are actually requesting. we can see the effects of different keywords across the network now, and can study which keywords to add or concentrate on
The forum ‘Archives’ is closed to new topics and replies.