Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
A network of artists’ sites can give buyers great value through fair trade by cutting out the agencies (who take a lot, do very little, charge buyers a packet and give the contributor a pittance).
That’s the sentence, but the explanation is that if you compare artist-run sites to an ideal agency, the idea of an artist-run site isn’t very appealing.
But in the real world, agencies just don’t deliver on most of the promises (such as protecting works from copyright infringement or credit card fraud, marketing and pricing expertise, getting the best returns for contributors while offering buyers a great choice and reasonable prices.
So given the experiences over the last decade with agencies, buyers have been getting worse and worse deals (Getty bought iStock and jacked up the prices), contributors have been shortchanged (lower royalty rates, fewer services) and that has created an opportunity for trying something new. Stocksy was one such thing and Symbiostock is another.
Symbiostock owners do not have private equity backers to pay off (Getty and Fotolia) or stockholders to keep happy (Shutterstock). What was once a market where buyers met sellers with relatively few complications has become a victim of its own success – the money guys saw microstock working and figured they could make a packet. They have, but at the expense of buyers and contributors, the two groups that really made this market work in the first place.
Symbiostock has the potential to undercut the greedy @#$* who took over microstock agencies by returning the model to its roots – buyers and sellers both getting good deals and making money.
If you’re tired of the high prices and stocky-stock look at the big agencies, check out the reasonable prices, fresh look and direct artist contact at a Symbiostock network site.
+1
(at least it appears to be fine based on a quick check)
Yes, each artist has their own licensing agreement, and you can buy via PayPal which means you don’t need a credit card, but which might not be all that appealing to a larger company. There’s no “net 30 days” terms from Symbiostock 🙂
There can be sections you don’t complete – it’s very kind of you to get this started – I just think this area is at least worth a placeholder.
Even if we end up saying that this network isn’t for your company if you need x and y and z to keep your accounting folks happy, that is a help to buyers. Subscriptions don’t exist here, for example and right now there’s no system to enforce a monthly spending cap.
Not a large audience, but you keep those folks content or for many companies you don’t sell to them.
In the past, when iStock was introducing subscriptions and people were discussing why subscriptions (Shutterstock) were appealing to certain customers, people pointed out the need to get their bosses or finance people to OK the budget and how they acquired images.
So, if you didn’t have a way to get lists of purchases or set a monthly budget, or could only buy with a credit card and the company didn’t give anyone credit cards to make purchases…
I can imagine that courting individual designers or small firms wouldn’t be the same as a larger company where the people choosing the images aren’t the same as the people controlling the purse strings.
Does that answer your question?
I think it might be worth dividing (1) into potential contributors and current network members
I see attracting new contributors as a different pitch from existing ones who want to build their portfolio, marketing efforts, site functions, why have exclusive content here or upload here first, or whatever.
I’d also as 4. Finance/corporate – the managers who approve the budgets or authorize the list of suppliers. I think they’d be interested in stuff about tracking purchases, controlling costs and the non-creative side of why it’s OK for people in (2) to buy here
I think if you have your own thread in the SEO/Marketing section, that would work.
I check the forum via New posts and generally don’t subscribe to topics unless it’s urgent technical support – too much e-mail.
I would also suggest that a source of information is how we’ve tried to explain things on our own sites – which obviously is primarily focused on the buyer, not the artist.
I have done that in a couple of places – the overlays on the slider on the home page. I wanted to have some way to get the high level ideas across without a lot of reading.
I’m planning to add a blog post about why I’m starting up the site but haven’t finished that yet (too busy site building and uploading)
Examples of sites with “why we’re wonderful” text:
http://www.picturemojo.co.nz/about-symbiostock/
http://thpstockphotos.com/
http://www.backyardstockphotos.com/about-backyard-stock-photos/
http://ajotte.com/about/
http://stockimages.kerioak.com/read-me/
http://www.stocklabb.com/about/That isn’t everyone, but just to give you an idea
@cathyslife stockphotos wrote:
@Semmick Photo wrote:
I agree with Chromaco once again. FAA has an option on a thread to make it contributor only, or member only. Why not? Buyers dont need to see the back office. All they need to know and see is a working front.
I agree. Tech support and development should be members only. Great idea.
+1
For the moment, I have one price on all my images (those I’ve uploaded).
I did note when looking around at other Symbiostock sites that some people had a couple of tiers of pricing, which might make good sense in some cases. If I remember right, the site I saw had the isolated objects priced more cheaply than the other images.
As someone who has lived through all iStock’s price ups and downs (since Sept 2004 anyway), my conclusion was that the biggest single factor is being able to price in such a way that it made sense to the buyer why some things were more expensive than others.
I think the Dreasmtime model where images that sell more a priced higher is a bit odd, and I also think shifting prices – where you never know what price something will be and possibly it changed from the time you bookmarked it – isn’t a buyer-friendly thing to do.
I have already excluded a few sites from my Marketing tab (so they don’t show up with promoted keywords in a search on my site) where I didn’t feel the content was a good fit with mine. I think it would be simple for someone to do that if they felt that another site’s pricing wasn’t in line with their views on that subject.
I would add to the comment about the beauty being that we set our own prices – for me, it’s that, plus the fact that we can be as loose or tight a network of sites as we wish to be.
I think it is possible now with the marketing tab on the Symbiostock admin page.
I started a thread about excluding certain sites from search results and tried excluding a few that I didn’t want to see and it appeared to be working just fine.
I was excluding based on types of imagery that I didn’t feel was a good fit in the search results on my site, but it would work equally well for any other sort of incompatibility.
I do have the premium plugin, but I don’t think the feature is related to that – does every site have a marketing tab?
Thanks for the snippet of code to clean up the search box.
The Edit CSS feature is from Jetpack and I did a bit of searching to find out where the file is kept but it apparently is internal to the Jetpack database and not in a separate file. See this discussion
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/child-theme-edit-css
I didn’t take the above at face value but hunted around on my site to see what I could find and I couldn’t find a file. So I cut and paste from the Edit CSS window into a text file on my system here (where all my other Symbiostock stuff is).
@leo wrote:
Just dropping in quickly – here’s a package of Symbiostock branding which is available for your use:
https://github.com/orangeman555/symbiostock/tree/master/symbiostock_branding
Thanks. I was able to download all but one of the individual elements but the zip file said “Failed – server problem” when I tried to download it; same with screenshot.psd.
I think I have what I would need (unless there are other files in the .zip), but just FYI.
Joined this one too. I’ve had an account there for ages, but don’t use it much. Made sure all the web site links are up to date though 🙂
I joined. Not sure exactly how we can use this, but let’s see
Back in the MSG thread about use of English on your site you asked for a review of your FAQ text. A bit late, but here it is 🙂
“- No payment in beforehand” – I would suggest “No pre-payment”
“If you require a variation of one of my photos or a special image editing, please…” – I suggest “…my photos or custom image editing, please…”
“Do the photos I can purchase on Flashstockphoto carry a watermark?
The photos presented on Flashstockphoto carry a watermark for security reasons, but once you have bought a license you can download a file without watermark of course.”
I suggest:
“Do the photos I purchase on Flashstockphoto have a watermark?
The small photos shown on Flashstockphoto carry a watermark for security reasons, but once you have bought a license you download a file without a watermark.”
On your home page, you have “part of symbiostock network” under your logo. I think “part of the symbiostock network” would read better. You could also do “symbiostock member site” or “a symbiostock network site”
