To Switch or not to Switch

The new Symbiostock is right around the corner. It looks great, but how will it affect my sales?

Here we will analyze the pros and cons of upgrading to Symbiostock. If you’re a new user, or don’t have a site currently operational, then there’s no need to read on – Symbiostock is an awesome, beautifully free opportunity to monetize your images. You should be all over it!

However, if you’re an avid photographer, illustrator, or vector artist, and you currently have your own media site that you sell through, you need to decide what’s best for your continued success.

There are only two questions you need to ask yourself: a) Am I making money on my independent site? and b) How am I making money on my independent site?

We’ve been getting questions about the networking aspect of the new Symbiostock. As the legacy version had networking built right into it, users were able to find other Symbiostock users’ sites relatively easily. But legacy users have had mixed results with this feature – do you get sales through it?

If the answer is ‘no’, then upgrading can only help increase your revenue. Your hard work in regards to SEO, keywording and tagging can all be preserved when you upgrade. It will take some elbow grease, but once switched over, you will have a much better experience, whether it be tweaking your site or uploading media. The new Symbiostock has a plethora of features and usability upgrades that make the entire process very fun and pleasant. Not to mention compatibility with any theme you prefer.

If the answer is ‘yes, I make lots of money through my legacy site, specifically through the networking features’, then you are one of the unique legacy Symbiostock users that has to carefully assess how you proceed with the upgrade. As Symzio, the massive search engine system that is the next step of the Symbiostock project, is still under development, if you were to upgrade immediately you would lose the networking feature that is gathering revenue for you.

Our suggestions, therefore, can be summarized as follows:

  1. If you do not currently have an updated, fully operational independent media sales platform, using Symbiostock is an awesome opportunity to monetize your digital art.
  2. If you currently do have a fully operational site, but find that it garners little to no sales, upgrading to Symbiostock can only help increase your sales and throughput through its ease of use, flexibility, and advanced features.
  3. If you currently have a profitable site that generates most of its revenue through your own hard work, whether it be SEO, marketing, or other mechanisms of promotion, then upgrading can likewise only help your sales as long as you take the time to do it right.
  4. If you currently have a profitable site that generates most of its revenue through the networking feature of a legacy Symbiostock site, then it may be best to install the new Symbiostock on a separate server, or go with one of our hosting options, and slowly start integrating your media with the new site, then slowly switch over as Symzio comes closer and closer to release.

If you have a current site, it is very important to take into account all the pros and cons of moving over, ensuring that all your hard work is preserved and amplified when you upgrade to the new Symbiostock. Once Symbiostock is released, our forums will be buzzing with upgrade related matters, so get involved there if you also want to make sure that your upgrade goes smoothly and painlessly.

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The Symbiostock Demo is Live!

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A long time coming, the Symbiostock engine is now almost ready to be released. Along with Symbiostock, we will be releasing Symbiostock Express, a custom premium theme we’ve developed that is built on the wonderful GPL Virtue theme by Kadence.

Fully customizable, Symbiostock Express is catered specifically for people who want to sell their media, whether they be photographers, graphic designers, or vector artists. The demo site can be viewed here.

Soon, we will be doing final testing on Symbiostock and then plan a full release. Symbiostock itself is going to be 100% free, and always will be. You can download the plugin, along with all the necessary other free software (WooCommerce, WordPress) and launch your own digital media store.

Symbiostock will work with any theme. But that doesn’t mean it will look it’s best unless you have a chance to personalize it, or buy one that fits your needs perfectly. Symbiostock Express is an optional theme you can buy that has been built specifically for Symbiostock. It does not add any features you cannot customize yourself with a little elbow grease and some coding expertise, but is still a simple way to get going easily and quickly.

For those of you that don’t want to setup your own server, install all your own software, and debug any possible issues, we have good news for you. Along with releasing the standalone, we are going to be offering the Symbiostock hosting service. With our hosting service, you will be able to sign up and log directly into a fully functional Symbiostock install and begin uploading immediately. No more database issues, no more PHP issues, no more directory permissions or fatal errors; we will manage all of that so you can just sell your media. As an added bonus, Symbiostock Express will be free for all hosting clients. This service is going to be the primary way we fund Symbiostock’s development.

Although not complete, below you will find a list of some of the features Symbiostock has to offer. We anticipate a release date in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

Theme Compatibility
– Compatible with any WordPress/WooCommerce theme
– Optimal with Symbiostock specific themes
– Theme can be switched any time without affecting Symbiostock

Front End Features
– Mark certain media to be featured in compatible themes
– Front end completely controlled by WooCommerce (no Symbiostock interference)
– Unlimited categories with category thumbnails
– Full store-front experience: search, categories, product page, add to cart, cart, checkout and more.
– Depending on theme, fully responsive design with animated sliders, large images, image centric.

Media Processing
– Upload via web or FTP
– All meta keywords, titles and descriptions are automatically extracted from media
– Process media automatically or manually
– Customizable processor – choose how many images to process in one go
– Support for most image types, including GIF, JPEG, PNG, EPS, TIFF.
– Auto-publish media with meta-data

Media Licensing
– Create as many global licenses as you need.
– Each license can be fully customized, from image size to title, description, and default price.
– Global licenses can be applied to any media in your store.
– Apply licenses to all the media in your store automatically
– Apply licenses based on media type (raster, vector etc.)
– Apply license changes (price, size etc.) to all products automatically.
– Create JPEG licenses for vector images and set the size of the rendered file.

Individual Media
– Apply as many licenses as you need to each media file
– Customize the price to override global settings
– Mark media as editorial for non-commercial media
– Mark media with model or property releases
– Disable or re-enable media as you need to
– Mass edit image descriptions, titles, categories etc.
– Media can be included in multiple categories

Sales
– Fully WooCommerce integrated
– Automatic, customizable emails to customers on signup, purchase etc.
– Customers can purchase as guests or with accounts
– Media locations are protected when provided to customers for download
– Globally set the number of days a customer has to download item
– Globally set the maximum number of times a purchased item can be downloaded
– Increase/decrease the number of downloads/days a customer has on an order by order basis

Watermarking
– Customizable watermark
– Decide on size and opacity of watermark
– Watermarks include diagonal lines to corners of media
– Customizable thumbnail size
– Thumbnail/watermark changes will trigger system to automatically regenerate them over time

Currencies and Tax
– Multiple currencies supported
– Support for VAT, GST, custom rates etc.

Payment Methods
– Hundreds of payment gateways
– PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Payments, ANZ, Authorize.net, eWay, BrainTree etc.

SEO and Marketing
– Compatible with any 3rd party WordPress plugin
– Compatible with Yoast SEO, SEO Ultimate, etc.
– Image information auto-populates page title
– Customize URLs en masse or individually

 

If you have questions about any of these features, or don’t see something here that you would like to, let us know in the forums.

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Legacy Symbiostock Updates – Don’t do it!

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If you’re a wonderful legacy Symbiostock user and are eagerly awaiting the new release, don’t jump the gun when you see an update available for your website. We no longer have control over the update feature connected to the legacy Symbiostock software which departed with a previous developer.

To keep up to date with the new release, subscribe to our forums or keep track of everything through our blog.

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Beta-testing is about a Week Away

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Want pre-release access to Symbiostock? Volunteer to be a beta tester.

We’re going to be rolling out the hosting solution along with the standalone release as well as the Symbiostock Express theme. But prior to that we’re going to be running a closed beta for a few days. You won’t need to download anything or set anything up – as a beta tester, you will have an account created for you where you can log right in and put your media for sale in just a few clicks.

Our motto is: Break it!

We want this to be a robust plugin that is coded tough and ready for abuse. We’ve developed it from the ground up to be seamlessly integrated and easily removed. It is, however, such a powerful plugin that you shouldn’t expect to be using your Symbiostock install for much more than selling media. Perhaps a blog here and there.

Back to the point – as a beta tester, you will be tasked with the job of breaking Symbiostock. Upload weird files. Put in weird settings. Of course, you can easily break your install by deleting pre-configured settings – our goal is to stretch the limits of normal use. And we’re confident you can help us with that.

The Symbiostock Forum

The closed beta will be run within our coding forum. We want to not only hear about bugs, but your thoughts on the system – what you like, and what can be improved.

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Welcome to Symbiostock.org

Welcome!

A new refit to go along with a spectacular new plugin. The new fully Open-Source Symbiostock plugin is almost ready to go. With beta-testing only a week or so away, we’re going to be launching what we hope is an indispensable tool that gives contributors and artists a means of showcasing and selling their wonderful creations online.

Almost there…

Development was a bit rocky with changes and transitions, not to mention an intense couple of weeks of wrestling with both WordPress and WooCommerce! But as with most experiences where you weather the storm, the end result is always more satisfying.

All the colors.

Speaking of beautiful media, we’re going to couple each one of our blog posts with a fantastic, interesting or fun image. Stay informed by frequenting our forums and checking out our blog. We’ll be rolling out some exciting stuff in the next short while. If you have an image you want to throw us, we’d love to showcase it!

It’s all you.

Endless thanks to all the supporters and contributors who have cherished and backed up the project all these years.

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