Backyard Stock Photo – creating your own stock agency

I blogged about this a couple of weeks back, but Leo (the designer behind the Symbiostock network) has been making remarkable progress and we now have a very substantial and flexible stock agency developing using WordPress.

Two things of note – the first is that the site design is now much more professional – I hope you agree that my own stock photo agency BackyardStockPhotos.com would not deter anyone from moving forward to buying an image from me!

The second is much more important. The SEO work – both behind the scenes and in our careful descriptions and titles is really paying off. After just 2 weeks of operation, my images are now the first entry on Google for some relatively simple phrases. As a simple example – “Bengal cat licking lips” in the Google search box brings up two of my images as the first and second results. I find that pretty amazing. We have also added a similars result now to the site. Not perfect yet, but a big help to a buyer looking for just the right image.

So far, no sales, but a lot of satisfaction in getting an agency online which is actually getting noticed!

**Update** I know that the main forums over on MicrostockGroup are getting very confusing and complicated to follow. There is a separate development site with a good summary of how to install Symbiostock and links to the videos on Symbiostock.com. This is the best place to start, as most of the posts on MSG are talking about bugs and issues that have been sorted as we worked through testing and various releases. The latest release has had no bug reports so far!