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I just registered for your site with the same test password, and I did also receive an email with a different, random password. Just FYI.
Congrats! That’s great. I had the same issue…my one customer was unable to download the file, so I emailed it to her (along with a second free file for her inconvenience). I think working out purchasing bugs should be a big priority.
@dp69_2001 wrote:
Of course promoting ourselves is more important! and in the long run that promotes each one of us.
As mentioned. How can we really afford advertising as individuals and make profit. That $15.66 to pay for keywords “stock images” is really expensive for any one of us to get one click … However, between 165 of us … $1 each would mean 16 clicks … That’s more what I’m getting at. Honestly, I’m not afraid. But, other people have their livelihood riding on making Symbiostock work.
There’s no way I’d spend $15.66 per click! I’m using Google AdWords Express (very easy), which gives you just a few keyword phrases to choose from and allows you to input geographical areas you’d like to target (I’ve input several countries that seem to get the most sales on Shutterstock). My traffic shot up as soon as the ad started running. I’ve set a very low daily budget (just enough to use up the free advertising they gave me for this month after I spent my initial $25). So far it’s “costing” about 50¢/click…if I was actually paying full price.
IF I start getting sales and it seems worth it, I’ll pay for clicks next month. If not, I might just advertise here and there when I have a special promotion or something. I paid for clicks for an old site of mine (not stock art) and it was successful, but I was selling $50-$100 items on that site.
Now that Leo’s shared so much great info about how he got traffic to his site, I’m going to try some of that too.
Everyone’s efforts to get traffic has to pay off or it’s not worth it. But not promoting doesn’t seem to be working, since the great majority of people who answered the poll about sales have 0-1 sale so far. That doesn’t even pay for monthly hosting. I may give my site a year, but then if I’m not even making enough for hosting, what’s the point? The hours I spend uploading to my site I could spend generating more illustrations that will earn money on iS and SS.
I’m just trying to figure out way for this network to get enough traffic so we all start making money. I want us to be successful.
@dp69_2001 wrote:
@shelma1 wrote:
My day job revolves around advertising as well.
Right now I pay about 50¢ per click on Google. But actually it’s less than that, because my Google coupon gave me $100 of free advertising after I spent $25…so those clicks are actually about 13¢. Of course next month the coupon’s up, so I’m back up to 50¢. Facebook gave me $50 of free advertising, so those clicks are free for now. Why wouldn’t you at least go for Facebook ads, if it’s free?
I’m working every day on the Facebook Symbiostock page, but with Facebook monetizing the site you either need to get involved as a group (liking, commenting) or you need to keep paying to get people to see the posts. There are several of us who like and comment every day, but that’s less than 10% of people who’ve signed up for Symbiostock.
Hey, I’d definitely rather not pay. If you have ideas other than paid advertising that will get us noticed, please share! I’m certainly open to ideas, and I would guess everyone else would be too.
Shelma, what keywords are you getting at 13? I wasn’t trying to imply that I’m against advertising. But, of course organic traffic is always better. Mostly I was just trying to put the competition into perspective and inform everyone that, like it or not, it will take time and work 🙂
Can you pinpoint if your sale was a result of your advertising efforts? For me at least, my posts are what are bringing me the most traffic and the one sale that I’ve had. I share the Symbiostock post on my personal facebook daily, and have been putting in a deal of effort on Linkedin since I belong to a couple graphic artist groups there. But, if we decide we want to get an advertising group together, I mean, we could do something donation based even, to try and bring in some traffic and get us noticed. Hopefully, with a small amount we could start a snowball 🙂
Looking at my stats, the search term “clipart” was most popular.
I’m pretty sure my one sale was sent from my Facebook page, since I was promoting a sale on that image via FB at the time and was not advertising on Google yet.
Advertising “Symbiostock” is a good idea, but I also think individuals actively working to bring traffic to their own sites is just as (if note more) important. And I suspect more people would be interested in that. Just a guess. Maybe I’ll start a poll.
@christine wrote:
If you look at the success stories of things like Google, Facebook, Twitter — you can see that exceptional ideas do not need promotion, as they tend to gather their own popularity.
So if we could come up with an idea that you (or others) could build as a social platform for pictures – a sort of legal pin-interest for stock suppliers and users that would be a way to go ?
I respectfully disagree. Sure, great ideas can gather their own momentum. But far more great ideas fail. Remember yahoo? Ask Mr. Jeeves? MySpace? Apple nearly failed before they brought Jobs back aboard to aggressively micro and macro manage it into the world’s biggest brand, with help from one of the world’s most creative ad agencies. Even now, though Macs are far better computers than PCs, that portion of the company still has a very small market share.
Just reading recent posts, the people who are getting sales with their Symbiostock sites are marketing them. Leo did a huge amount of work getting his site noticed. Redneck is using paid advertising to promote his site (so am I).
I remember when Snapple was a little independent brand of fruit juice sold in stores in Soho–until they got the ad agency I was working at (in Soho) to do a wacky TV campaign for them. Now they’re a huge brand.
Sure, things can absolutey gather momentum. But they do need marketing in one form or another.
Just curious…what did your motivation consist of? I’m not being facetious. Were you motivated to be patient and wait it out, and in time the sales started organically? Or did you somehow go out and seek out clients without paying for them? Your site is successful, so clearly you’re doing things right.
Of course, since my job is advertising, my first thought is to run paid ads. Until I started Facebook and Google my site was getting very little traffic.
My day job revolves around advertising as well.
Right now I pay about 50¢ per click on Google. But actually it’s less than that, because my Google coupon gave me $100 of free advertising after I spent $25…so those clicks are actually about 13¢. Of course next month the coupon’s up, so I’m back up to 50¢. Facebook gave me $50 of free advertising, so those clicks are free for now. Why wouldn’t you at least go for Facebook ads, if it’s free?
I’m working every day on the Facebook Symbiostock page, but with Facebook monetizing the site you either need to get involved as a group (liking, commenting) or you need to keep paying to get people to see the posts. There are several of us who like and comment every day, but that’s less than 10% of people who’ve signed up for Symbiostock.
Hey, I’d definitely rather not pay. If you have ideas other than paid advertising that will get us noticed, please share! I’m certainly open to ideas, and I would guess everyone else would be too.
Great! I’ll add you as well.
Also, I’ve mentioned this before…at least hosting with BlueHost, there are Google and Facebook advertising coupons. You get $50 in free Facebook advertising and $100 in Google advertising after you spend $25 with them. Just scroll down in your C panel to “promotional.” There’s also a Twitter coupon, but I haven’t checked it out yet.
But surely spending $25 and getting $175 worth of advertising between Google and Facebook is a pretty good deal.
@marthamarks wrote:
I’d be very glad to do some paid marketing, too, but I don’t have any idea how to go about it and haven’t had time to research it.
Has anybody found a good online tutorial for such things?
Advertising on Facebook and Google is pretty easy. They don’t accept many words, so you’re forced to make your message short and sweet. I’ve posted a few articles about it in the marketing and Facebook threads, but I’ll look around and see if I can find something more tutorial-like.
@redneck wrote:
I’ve done this with Facebook ads, Google adwords, and Bing. While it might be ok to get people’s attention, I don’t think it will directly help your sales since a sale in stock photography is always so specific that you can’t really plan or market for it.
Yet you’re advertising and you’re getting sales.
Before you can make a sale, people have to know you exist and you’re selling something. So advertising directly helps your sales. People might not buy something that one time if they don’t find it on your site, but now they know your site exists and might visit again if they need something. And, of course, linking to other Symbio sites gives them more choices, and they’re more likely to find what they’re looking for and return.
Going 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.
I’ll jump in to agree with the others. I’m happy with the workings of my Symbiostock site right now. I think our number one goal for this year is attracting buyers.
Fixing bugs is also very important. But no matter how Symbiostock is overhauled or how easy it is to use, if nobody sells files everyone will lose interest. I’m not a programmer, so I actually find threads like this a little distressing. “Oh no, I’ll have to overhaul things,” I think? “But I’ve already spent so many hours on my site, and have made one sale.”
First, as many people have suggested, Symbiostock.com has to be redesigned to be the place for everyone, with a search box for buyers and links to instructions for setting up a site and the forums for sellers.
.com is the URL people naturally type in.
instructions for setting up a site also need to be rewritten. I’d love to see that look like the tutorials at vectortuts, for example. And that can only happen if changes to Symbiostock slow down a lot so someone or a few someones can get a grasp on the options available. I’m happy to help with that, but if there are always major overhauls it just can’t happen.
But most of all we have to coordinate an effort to get sites in the network seen. I’m trying with the Facebook page, but I think Symbiostock also needs its own twitter account. And…please don’t shoot the messenger…I think people need to realize they’ll almost certainly have to spend money advertising their site in order to attract buyers. If each of us spends a little, it can snowball. But if nobody spends anything, it will all go nowhere. I know to some folks that sounds like an “agency,” but I think it’s just reality.
Thank you, Leo, for the tremendous amount of work you’ve already done. For the few of you who were already successful with independent sites, symbiosis may work as you send existing buyers to each other. But if the rest of us link to each other without making an effort to be found, nothing much will happen.
I’ve gotten some decent results with Facebook, but Google seems to be working better for me. I do plan to run a promotion soon on Facebook, though.
At some point we need to discuss how to get more eyeballs to Symbio sites. This poll is a bit depressing.
