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Hey Steve,
Yes, as you have such a massive portfolio, your server was hanging during the initial crawl. I had to re-organize the crawl into increments now, which is something that should allow unlimited scalability.
As it’s in beta, we’re trying to work these kinks out as quickly as possible. I’m going to continue running some tests to make sure your site is being crawled properly. Let me know if you have any other questions.
I’ve identified 3 potential issues and have solved two of them:
1) The watermark overlay was appearing pixelated when imposed over a vector. that has been fixed and was created due to some of the previous color space fixes I applied.
2) Some vectors, for some reason, would appear pixelated to varying degrees when thumbnailed. I’ve now increased the thumbnailing resolution and this issue is also resolved.
3) Some vectors have their colors altered when Imagick thumbnails them – additional details below:
Vector on the right – raster on the left. This was uploaded with no alterations and turned out looking great. IMO, the color matches quite well.
Raster image – original vector below. As you can see, colors are hued differently and does not present a completely representative example of the vector.
Right is the original vector, left is the raster after I re-saved the original vector and exported it myself.
Left image also gets produced when I activate ‘advanced color space profile correction’:
Advanced color space correction adds a color profile to your image if it does not already have one, then converts it to RGB. So, the problem appears to be that your original EPS is being saved without a color profile. However, when I save it, a color profile is being saved.
I’m not 100% on whether your EPS is not being saved with a color profile, or if it’s just a different color profile. I’ll get more into it tomorrow. Regardless, at least the resolution and watermark are resolved.
2.1.4 is released.
Hey Steve,
You can usually safely ignore those warnings for now. Due to the fact that the updating service that Symbiostock Express (and pretty much everything else) was running through is becoming less and less reliable, we’re going to be releasing an internal updating service. In the meantime, unless you have issues or are missing features, just ignore the template warnings.
FYI, I’m going to do some testing to determine what the exact best settings are when saving EPS files for Symbiostock to create nearly flawless JPEGs. If I am unable to do this, I will invest time in creating a system so you can upload an accompanying JPEG.
Hey Steve,
I’ve made the links a little more navigation friendly in that regard. Just click on ‘Join Symzio’ on the bottom. And yes, you need to re-sign up as it is a completely new system.
First of all, I’m now going to ignore anyone suggesting Symzio is ‘just another micro stock agency’ – the amount of free work I’ve put into Symbiostock, that you’re using, demands more respect out of you.
To the point – Picfair does exactly what you are suggesting, with hundreds of thousands of dollars of seed money, and is not doing very well. Following in that direction with less marketing prowess is not a logical course of action, and so, custom pricing has proven to be an unsuccessful business model. Zoonar tried the same thing with their bidding option, and even Pond5 is losing ground to both VideoBlocks and Shutterstock due to their custom pricing models.
Contrasting these examples, Canva, Shutterstock, and Fotolia, arguably the market leaders in their own right, all have standard pricing models.
The conclusion? Custom pricing confuses customers and does not work. It may make you feel a lot better, but it will still result in failure.
As to the second question:
What do contributors control? Through Symbiostock, you control exactly what images are available, when they are available, their titles, descriptions, their tagging, even the images themselves. Want to delete an image? Do it. Want to remove it temporarily? Do it. Want to disable your port temporarily? Do it. Want to add an image? Do it.
No submission process – once you’re approved, you have full, absolute control over every aspect of your portfolio, 24 hours a day. Symzio doesn’t even host your images.
I need not delve into the nightmarish experiences people have, or the plethora of monthly posts that show up everywhere about submission reviewers rejecting whole submissions, unfairly. Or the inability to contact the reviewer directly about some image that has certain artistic liberties taken with it. Or about people’s portfolios apparently being deleted randomly.
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Hope this clarifies things. Unless you have new evidence that suggests custom pricing will increase customer demand, it won’t be entertained. We’re not here to babysit contributor emotions – we’re here to protect their careers.
The industry has changed, and will never be where it was ten years ago. A hard pill that you’re going to have to swallow if you want to survive.
Weird – send me your login info and I’ll take a look.
FYI, Symbiostock 2.1.3 now allows you to activate Symzio inclusion on all your files at once.
That’s totally understandable, and each contributor must decide what works for them. Our goal with Symzio is to maximize contributor revenue through competitive pricing and volume.
If you think we can charge significantly more than agencies and still get lots of volume, let us know how and we can discuss it to see if it is viable.
Contributor earnings comparison
Agency subscription sale: $0.25 (full size, royalty free)
Independent Symzio sale: $0.79 (low resolution, one time use)
For a 6000×4000 image, that translates to:
$0.0000000010417 per square pixel through an agency
$0.00000033917 per square pixel through Symzio
For a difference of:
$0.0000003381283 per square pixel, or:
326x the revenue per square pixel.
So, through Symzio, the average contributor that is currently with Fotolia or Shutterstock will earn, at a minimum, at least 326 times more per square pixel.
That number, large as it is, is still under-represented. Why? Because the former is a RF license; the latter is a one-time-use, rights managed license. I can’t quantify that number, so I left it out.
Of course, if you are currently not dependent on agency subscription sales for a majority of your revenue, you are not an ‘average’ contributor. In that case, Symzio may not be for you – no worries, use Symzio to whatever capacity it benefits you.
In conclusion, to suggest that earning 326x the revenue per pixel is the:
lowest possible standards
Just means you’re not clear on things. Could it be better? Maybe – let’s talk about that. But variable pricing just serves to confuse customers, and though we initially wanted to integrate individual pricing, the market just seems to dictate that customers want simple, clear, homogeneous costs.
Unfortunately, your conclusions are incorrect – nevertheless, good luck with your independent site.
To be competitive with the agencies, we’ve priced where we’ll earn about 3 times what we’re currently earning while charging customers less. Canva, for example, charges customers $1 for a One-Time-Use license and pays contributors $0.35. Through Symzio, if I refer a customer to it and get a sale, I will earn $0.99 on that same sale.
On other sites, for subscriptions, we are giving away our full size images with royalty-free licenses for $0.25 each. On Symzio, the equivalent is $24.99. By integrating the one-time-use license we’re able to be very competitive and still make more money.
We also determined that it would be better for customers to have one homogeneous pricing model rather than have varying pricing to increase sales.
The full licensing details are here:
http://www.symzio.com/support?licensing=1
Obviously, we’re still in beta so things may change as we progress, but I think the pricing is really good for both contributors and customers right now.
Hey Andrew,
Send me a PM with your login info and I’ll take a look.