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Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 104 total)
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  • #11443
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    Hi guys, You can almost always find the image by locating the image number from the confirmation e-mail or paypal confirmation and then going into the media library and searching by the number. That will pull up a minipic which you can then cross reference. Not pretty or smooth but it does work.

    For anyone who is lurking – when you get an order you should get an e-mail confirmation sent from your site and another from Paypal. Sometimes there is a lag of up to 1/2 and hour but usually they come almost upon each other. If for some reason you don’t get confirmation then the customer didn’t either. You should be proactive and contact the customer immediately. That will save all sorts of issues.

    Leo this is almost exactly like my issues with the ECM about 2 months ago. Haven’t had it since I disconnected and never had it with the base theme. If you discover what is happening you might look into the other thing for me.

    #11355
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    This particular issue seems to be the hottest topic and the first one to get 20 votes over at the Microstock Collective.
    http://www.symbiostock.org/collective/microstock_init/

    As of today about 90% of participants have opted out but interestingly that relates to only about 77% of the images represented.
    Also about 86% of the participants feel like the DPC boycott on May 1st was at least somewhat effective.

    If you haven’t added your vote or updated your image count please do so. Correct data and lots of participation makes the Collective results more and more reliable.

    #11409
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    Hey everyone, Leo got into programmer talk and might have made this sound way more complicated than it actually is.
    Actually I think it is really cool and you should check it out and play around a bit.

    What it does-
    It allows contributors to vote on the agencies on about 20 different categories and then ranks those agencies on those categories.
    There are also ideas and news items which can be voted on as well.

    The nice part about this project is that it eliminates the lobbying and arguing and just allows contributors to show their opinions without actually having to comment and without any forum backlash. You do need to be logged in to vote because that is the only way the system can record the data but everything is anonymous so you don’t have to worry about sharing.

    Please remember to go into your profile and add your total image count to the running total. (This number is total images on at least one agency- not just symbio) You can find that field at the bottom of your profile settings. (or by using the link at the top of the page that says “Stock Images/Files”)
    Total image count is a pretty important because it shows just how strong this contributorship is.

    The overall goal– Create a better consensus as to what the entire contributor base is thinking without the negativity and arguing that seems to be associated with the forums right now. New “voting initiatives” and “news items” will be appearing daily and should reflect what is currently going on in the industry. Eventually members will be able to create their own voting initiatives but that functionality is not in place yet.

    The collective is open to all contributors, not just symbio site owners. So feel free to participate regardless of your symbiosite ownership status.
    Just register and fill out your image total numbers and have fun.

    We would love to hear your feedback about functionality and user friendliness. We are still adjusting and refining the interface so please be patient with us while we iron out some of the aesthetic details and other issues.

    This is here for all of us microstock contributors and goes along with the Symbiostock theme of “Helping Contributors Help Themselves”
    Please take a look, play around for a bit and then let us know what you think.
    http://www.symbiostock.org/collective/

    #2223
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    You should get two e-mails.
    1st the copy of the one sent to the customer with your thank you message. It should show the image purchased (although my gmail hides the image unless I tell it to show them)
    2nd a confirmation of payment from paypal.

    If you are not getting both of them something is wrong.

    #11072
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    I would like to have the automatically generated image number removed or placed in a less prominent place. I use my own numbering system and when a customer asks for this automatic image number it is very difficult and confusing.

    #2221
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    Way to go, you can click on the image in the confirmation e-mail and it will take you right to the image page. That is an easy way to see which image was actually sold.
    Congrats

    #10857
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    Steve, did you develop a sales tracking/stats plugin for your co-op sites. If so I would be interested in purchasing that plugin from you. FWIW this is about 1 of five plugins that I could use. It looks like I might need to start paying someone myself to make these plugins for me.

    #10844
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    What if Leo were to offer a version that would be maintained but collected a 10% commission on sales? A free version could still be downloaded but eventually it would become obsolete because only the paid version was maintained. The core problem here is that any time spent on Symbiostock from a development standpoint is wasted and unpaid. It just doesn’t make sense. There is not a single person here who would have done what Leo did so far in building Symbiostock.

    10% commission might just about get it done and that would keep the theme essentially free. You only pay if you are making money. Who would have an issue paying $2.00 to be able to keep $18? At Istock right now we are paying $18 to keep $2.

    Thoughts?

    #10993
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    Ok I just spent about an hour exploring this problem. There are some inconvenient things. Which probably could be fixed fairly easily.
    1) It seems that the generated password in the welcome e-mail won’t work. I solved this by changing my welcome letter to inform the customer about this. Not perfect but a simple fix.
    2) When registering with an already used e-mail – I did get the error message. I clicked the lost password link and the reset worked fine. However it did eventually take me to a weird profile page instead of getting me back to the main site. When I reselected the main domain I was indeed logged in.
    This is a small glitch I could do without but not really anything that is killing my sales.

    Both of these issues don’t look entirely professional but as far as I can tell they aren’t killing sales either. I was able to make a purchase without ever having to check my e-mail and I am guessing that is what most customers will do.

    Leo if you get some time and have any questions about my experience just send me a note. Maybe we can make this one go away pretty easily.

    #10494
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    If you consider that time is money and support doesn’t seem to want to help all that much. You might be better off changing to one of the recommended service providers. I know nothing about coding and I’ve never had any issues with the theme. $5.00 per month might worth getting rid of all of these headaches.

    #10469
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    This happens with some versions of Mac safari. First I’ve heard about it with other browsers. Alaways macs though. You need to change the extension not delete it. I actually address this as a FAQ on my contact page because it happens fairly frequently. FYI I am a Mac guy and can’t duplicate the problem. It is only certain versions.

    #10311
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    Wow! OK, I really don’t understand menus all that well but I think you should simplify. Start by taking all of your pages out of your menus except 1. Then add pages 1 at a time and see what happens. That is how I did it. Its a bit slow but at least you can see what is going on.

    ETA: this part that you are in right now is what gave me the most trouble. Learning how to navigate the menus, pages, plugins and styles will take a bit of time. Lots of trial and error but you will get there. I would have two browser windows open. One in the back end and one so you can see what happened when you edit something. Don’t forget to refresh.

    #10437
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    I have been operating on a common sense premise which is the following. “Googles primary goal is to send the searcher to the most relevant page possible based on the search term.” It seems logical that they would consider keywords along with content – particularly content. I assume Google rates the keywords based on how they relate to the content of the page. I also assume that Google knows that not every keyword will be equally relevant. My guess is that Google uses content to determine which keywords are most important. By the way- the way Yoast ranks the images re-enforces this notion. So placing all of your keywords in the title and the description seems like it would be counter productive. However placing select keywords and phrases and focusing on these would be very helpful. Also if you have similars splitting the keywords among different images seems like it would help you out. Ex. focus on 3 -4 keywords for image #1 and 3-4 slightly different ones (with some overlap) on image #2. If you are using the similars widget then Image #1 will help sell image #2 and vice versa.

    FWIW- I built a second symbio site in November to test this concept. The first site uses unique everything (except keywords), titles, descriptions, image names, and maximizes Yoast scores. The second site is upload via FTP and forget it. (Same info as the micros) The first site outsells the second one about 50 to 1. In fact it was so obvious that I started re-structuring the content on the second site. I just had a sale on my the 2nd site this morning. Guess what… it was one of the few images on that site that had been reworked. My personal experience is that content is hugely important. It also give self hosting a massive advantage over the micros because they aren’t maximizing content like we can. I really think Google will wind up liking our sites better in the long run if we are very conscious about how we build the content around our images.

    I haven’t really explored this so I am just speculating, but I am guessing that reason guys with monster content like Sean Locke and CThoman aren’t experiencing huge sales via Symbiostock is for this very reason. I would bet that even though their content is awesome in reality Google sees their sites similar to my second one. They aren’t getting the search placement because the micros and their other sites are ranked higher. I only have 1400 or so images and only about 1/3 are actually up because my process is so slow. I can’t really imagine how I would handle this if I had 20K images. Maybe I would choose 1-2 in each category style and start by optimizing those and hope that they help sell the others. I’m not sure.

    #10278
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    That is because some people probably didn’t answer all of the questions. I only answered three categories to test the poll with the intention of filling the rest out afterwards and it won’t let me edit my vote.
    I’m interested in %’s
    Like 5 of six sites started are still functioning and 90% of people who tried were able to successfully get their sites up. 60% think they will see a return on the premium plugins but 65% don’t expect to see a profit in the first 6 months. To me most people can see the value of their own sites and are willing to wait for it to grow. Overall I think this is pretty much what I expected. Honestly it got a better response than I thought it would. I expected around 35 people to respond. Right now it is over 50. I would love it to get to 170 but I just don’t think that is likely to happen.

    #10300
    Profile photo of Chromaco
    Chromaco
    Participant

    Here is a secret for people like me who don’t know anything. Call Bluehost and own your ignorance. They will do a lot of this for you. Ask lots of dumb questions and make the techs feel really smart. That is how I got through my first install. I called Bluehost 6 times, Godaddy 3 times and Paypal twice. Seems silly but they don’t know me, they were very nice and super helpful, and I got my site up without spending hours of frustration. By the way, I learned a lot and now I can do this all myself. It really isn’t hard but it is until you understand how things work.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 104 total)