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Hi all,
Leo has been prodding me for a while to speak up. I have been reluctant to be too vocal because sometimes the forums aren’t the friendliest place and success sometimes is greeted with quite a bit of negativity. However, it seems like some positivity is due, so here it goes. I am constantly here and on MSG and I know exactly what is going on. I am pretty sure that I am one of the more successful site owners and the poll last week kind of verified that notion. I average about 1-2 sales per day on my symbio site. Last month my symbio site out performed all the micros except Clipartof and Shutterstock and combined my self hosted sites outperformed both of those. I have learned a few things along the way and I thought I might share some of the things that I have done and am doing.
First off, a disclaimer: I am an illustrator who sells vectors, I have a very specific niche and I know it very well. I have a day job that is constantly feeding me with untapped image ideas and I work in the industry I am creating for. These are huge advantages and I know full well that this helps makes my sites successful. I also understand that most site owners don’t have these advantages. Nevertheless, I believe that there are some other things I have done to help my sites perform well. This is a partial list some of them below. There are some other things I do, I just can’t think of them right now.
1) I do have the premium plugin but I really don’t use any of its features. I bought it to support Leo and I do like some of the things it offers but I really don’t think in my case it is affecting my sales.
2) I haven’t done any modifications to the theme other than basic aesthetic. No CSS coding or special additions of any sort. My site is about as bare bones as you can get. My sites went live within 5 days of starting and I had zero experience with coding or even wordpress. I went live with as few as 10 images. By the time Google actually started finding my site I had enough images uploaded to not scare away customers.
3) I do upload to my sites first and I will wait for a while to upload to the micros if at all. If I have a very specific niche image I will keep it to myself.
4) I keyword all of my images specifically for my sites and am particular about which keywords I will and will not allow the micros to use.
5) I keyword with my target market in mind. I ask myself what I would type into Google to find this image and that is what I center the title and description, and body text around.
6) If an image was already on the micros I specifically changed the image name, keywords, and text to avoid that which is already out there.
7) I link my sites together all over the place. I currently have seven sites selling similar but different products and they are all tied together by multiple links. (not all of these site sell images)
8) I am now making all of my images “Green” by the Yoast standard. This is not all that hard once you figure it out but it does take a while. I hate uploading so I press myself to do 3-5 per day.
9) I place links to my most common image types right on my front page. I don’t make my customers look through categories or use pull down menus and they can see what my site has to offer without ever having to use the search bar. I don’t have the prettiest home page but you don’t have to guess about what my product is.
10) I name all of my images specifically for my site before I upload them and I coordinate my titles and descriptions to match the image names. EX. sample-clipart-image-002.jpg, sample-clipart-image-002.eps
11) I don’t do any social media or mass e-mails. Not because I don’t think they work but rather I don’t know how or I don’t have the time to do them well.
I am sure this is a huge missed opportunity and I would like to get to this eventually.I truly believe that symbio is the best way to change the tide of micro stock and if enough of us stay the course it will make a difference. I also know that it seems like a lot of work if you aren’t seeing the sales. Don’t get discouraged – It may take some time but this can work. Success is possible. If you are one of the other people who has seen some success please pipe in. If you have suggestions that have made your site successful I would love to hear them.
Well there you have it- I hope this came across the way I intended it to.
Thanks for listening and happy symbiostocking.Brilliant post Chromaco, I for one really appreciate your honesty with how things are going for you, and I also am absolutely happy for you that you are having such success!! Well done!
Thanks for sharing your insights, I hope it encourages everyone to stick around and keep supporting Symbiostock. I know I will be.
View my portfolio at THPStock Direct via Microstock Man. I also do Web Design & Graphic Design.
Thanks Dennis, I appreciate you spending the time to share your experience and the tips. It is all all very good info.
-Tim
i haven’t even read this yet and already I’m thanking you 🙂 🙂 🙂
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this investment of time you’ve made, with this wonderful information.
Often I want to post my sales (almost daily) but I feel as though I’d be showing off. But like you, I wish I could inspire people — its the idea behind this project.
You’ve mentioned quite a few good things, especially on how you make an effort to produce unique keywords and content along with your images.
Besides sales, I also get custom work orders from my site.
Just like all business ventures nothing is a success over night, it will take time for our sites to be seen buy the buying public.
TNX Chromaco, your post gives courage ! 😀
So…you work in an industry that buys images, you have an insider view of what they need, and you draw that. And i would guess most sales are to them?
Can you comment on Cathy’s assertions on MSG? Is it true a few people who started out together have zillions of links to their sites while the rest of us are limited to 10?
Sorry if this is taken as a “slam.” I’m just trying to figure out why some people are getting 60+ sales per month and the rest of us are close to zero.
Thanks for sharing.
@shelma1 wrote:
So…you work in an industry that buys images, you have an insider view of what they need, and you draw that. And i would guess most sales are to them?
Can you comment on Cathy’s assertions on MSG? Is it true a few people who started out together have zillions of links to their sites while the rest of us are limited to 10?
Sorry if this is taken as a “slam.” I’m just trying to figure out why some people are getting 60+ sales per month and the rest of us are close to zero.
As far as I know besides my own sites I only have 3-4 others linked to me and at least 2 of those happened in the last two weeks. So no… I am not part of a closed circle of original symbiostockers. Also despite the way it sounds I do not know my customers. I think almost 100 % come from google images. I genuinely believe my success is in not trying to be an agency but rather trying not to be. I intentionally go in the other direction and purposely try to reach those people that have never even heard of istock. In fact “stock” is a keyword I don’t even use. My EULA is a little more forgiving and hopefully a bit less complicated. Finally my pricing makes sense. I ask myself how long would it take to steal my art and redraw it or remove the water mark and I price it around that hourly rate.
@chromaco wrote:
I genuinely believe my success is in not trying to be an agency but rather trying not to be. I intentionally go in the other direction and purposely try to reach those people that have never even heard of istock. In fact “stock” is a keyword I don’t even use. My EULA is a little more forgiving and hopefully a bit less complicated.
I, too, believe that it’s important to keep things as easy and straight forward as possible. Many different licenses, or even the promoted existence of licenses, confuses potential buyers and might make them shy. I’m pretty certain that most people don’t (or don’t want to) even read license agreements. We always need to keep in mind that a potential customer just wants to buy a picture without any hassle. That simple.
@shelma1 wrote:
So…you work in an industry that buys images, you have an insider view of what they need, and you draw that. And i would guess most sales are to them?
Can you comment on Cathy’s assertions on MSG? Is it true a few people who started out together have zillions of links to their sites while the rest of us are limited to 10?
….
http://cascoly.com/symbio/list.asp?list=66 shows how many sites alexa has found that link to a site – this isn’t the same of course as actual links reported by webmaster tools
@cascoly wrote:
http://cascoly.com/symbio/list.asp?list=66 shows how many sites alexa has found that link to a site – this isn’t the same of course as actual links reported by webmaster tools
FYI: For some reason, the report seems to be missing Leo’s website (which has 310 sites linking in):
Thanks a lot for sharing this, Dennis. Very much appreciated!
I appreciate that. Seems like I started a bit of a S— Storm. That wasn’t my intention. I know some of these things work because I have tested them. For what it is worth, my site launched in August almost 6 months after symbio started. I am not part of the original group of sites and as far as I know I am not linked in with any of them. I might be wrong but based on the e-mails I have received regarding networking I don’t think I am. Symbio is not a sales Genie! It is simply a way to build a site if you don’t know how to program it yourself. I don’t know anything about the networking aspects but I don’t think they are going to help unless you are already doing things like titles and keywording correctly. This takes effort and anyone who says differently is lying. Just remember this… optimizing just 4 images a day creates almost 1500 “green” images in only one year.
Best
Dennis
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