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Bumping this one- 50 responders so far, some interesting information is forming. I would be interested in how some of you are interpreting the information. What are your thoughts?
Susan, if I could ask a favor? Would you be willing to chime into this thread and comment on your progress? Like “just installed the theme but had this question” or “I’m looking through the dragonfly themes and I found it easy to use”
Many of us have been doing this for a while and the perspective of a brand new user would be incredibly useful. Sort of “Susan’s New Site Thread”
Would you be willing to do this?That impossible!. No one is paying for images anymore. Haven’t you heard… you just charged to much. It’s ironic that we little guys can make these types of sales but Getty can’t.
Seriously though… congratulations to both of you. Business as usual over here at Symbiostock.
@jezper wrote:
Thanks for the ride…….. Getty finally F***** it up for all of us.
Not so sure yet. The world has its own way of reacting to things. Free is most always “not free” and smart people know it. There is a reason people are paying for images right now. Among other reasons is uniqueness or relatively limited use of the image. I might be wrong but I see this action as dividing the image using public into “paying” and “not paying”. If I have to choose a target market I will choose “paying customers”. This seems very shortsighted by Getty. “Non-paying Customers” probably won’t pay for advertising either. In the long run they will be winning the hearts and minds of people who want everything for free. No matter what plans you have for the future to monetize it, if you are courting the wrong customers it will never work. This does however dramatically affect who I will allow to sell my images. Looks like I might have to wait at least another year before I upload new images to any of the major micros.
I don’t think anyone even knows how to respond to this. Give it about two months when commissions plummet and we will see what happens. I’m glad I have started building my life boat. This is just crazy.
Nice words, Thanks!
One last thought. I am fully aware that certain types of images lend themselves to the subscription model. I have learned which types of my images should stay exclusive to me and which types probably will only sell on subscription sites. I am now creating images specifically for the sub sites. (I haven’t actually uploaded any yet though). They will go to my sites first and then to the agencies 3-6 months later. Unless they sell well on my own sites. If they are selling for me personally I will keep them for myself and perhaps send them to a few of the higher paying agencies. Illustrators have it much easier in this respect. Clipartof and Toonvectors have an average RPD of $8.00 and $14.00 respectively and GLstock for me is above $4.00. It is much easier to be picky when you have good options.@ezeepics
Hi, I’m not sure if this was directed at me or more to everyone in general but I will respond as though it were directed towards me. Here is the answer… “I don’t know” I am not sure anyone does. Do categories help? I’m not sure but they are included in the theme so I use them. Do they hurt? I doubt it so why not assume they are good and use them.
Quote “You said that you wouldn’t let your customers see what you have in the site without make at least one search.”
I haven’t reread the entire thread but I don’t remember this and I am certain I didn’t say it. What I did say was that I try not to make my customers use the search bar for the obvious specialties on my site. I put links to those images in the center of my homepage and imbedded in the images and slider so they are one click away from finding my images without having to guess at keywords. I have images all over the first page of Google images but very few of them are from my own sites (most are from the micros and their PP’s). Nevertheless, I still get a good number of direct sales. I really don’t think there is a magic formula. Give yourself as many opportunities for customers to find you as you can and trust that a few of those opportunities will work.
Quote “Also, I’d like to know how many days are u waiting since you upload your images in other stock agencies after you uploaded them on your site?”
I haven’t uploaded an image to the agencies that sell subs in over a year. I really dislike the subscription model and feel like it is a better long term plan to avoid these sites. I want to be selling my images 20 years from now and I don’t think that can happen if my images are downloaded hundred of times a year. For every sale on my symbio site it is worth 38 sub sales. That is 1/38th the amount of people who have my images for virtually free and 1/38th the amount of people who are likely to upload my images to a free site.
Is this good advice for other artists?- probably not! – You should make money in the smartest way that you can for your particular circumstances. I also believe that for most contributors IS and SS are a major part of that equation. Here is part two to your question. I track all of my sales and after a year or so I will upload the images that don’t sell well on my own sites. If my circumstances changed and I needed the agencies again I would wait around 60-90 days before uploading.Hope that helped a bit – perhaps others can engage this discussion with their own impressions. I would really like to hear some other perspectives.
Thanks everyone. I’m trying to figure out a workflow for this. I have been trying to retweet everything with #retweet in it. A couple of times last week I got buried with real work and might have missed someone. If so, sorry I will try to make it up on the next one. Try to make sure you post your tweet here when it is your turn. That will help it keep from getting overlooked.
Hi everyone. Here is mine. (I hope I did this right)
https://twitter.com/BaseballClipart/status/440183688270053376
Thanks
DennisI like the initiative. I think there is a lot of potential with this approach. If you are indeed working with your own programmer you might want to discus the possibility of making those additions in the form of a plug-in. If you do it this way you could sell the plug-in and help defray some of your initial start up costs.
I have a consultant who is an expert on social networking coming in this afternoon to educate me about all of this. I will ask her some of these questions and get back with you.
Yep, trying to figure this out. Hope to have my first tweet in the next couple of hours. Also need to figure out how to retweet all of your images.
Sorry about the distraction, Leo thinks this is a great idea so I am in. I just don’t understand how it works so I can get started. Maybe a moderator can move the last three posts into a new thread?
I think I don’t know what I don’t know. Could someone get me up to speed on a very general idea of what Twitter does? I can’t understand why anyone would care about a couple of lines about my images. Who would I be reaching? How do they find my tweet? Why does this work? It seems like it is very important but I just don’t understand why. I am happy to join but I don’t even know where to start. Can I tweet without having an account or do I need to get a twitter account. Is there a place where it is explained a bit better. Looks like it is time for me to learn something new again.
Thanks everyone.Thank you everyone for responding so far. Silently reading is great too. In fact any type of interaction is good. Sometimes I think Leo is so used to hearing negativity from one or two people that he assumes that everyone is discontent. I actually think it is the opposite. I bet most people are very happy and quietly going about the processes of selling images.
