So long Albumo, it's been.... forgettable.  I've left you, and you didn't even notice that I'm gone.   But then again, you didn't notice that I was there, either, did you?  

Albumo was a site that entered the market with a lot of momentum.  They paid artists to upload their work.  I'm not in the mood to look up the specifics, but I think it was upload 200 photos and receive 20 bucks or something along that line.  They had additional incentives for their 1000 club.  People were reaching payouts just by uploading.  They also had a nice referral plan to help spread the word. 

Encouraged by the star players they had attracted, I decided to give Albumo a whirl and ftp'd 100 odd photos.  I only managed to push about 30 or 40 through before I was distracted by something else... and well, forgot about them entirely until about 3 weeks later when I noticed friends on MSG discussing how things were going.  I logged onto my account to check for sales and not only did I not have sales, I didn't have a single view either.

3 weeks live and NOT A SINGLE VIEW!

And that is where I left things. 

Soon there were grumblings about poor commissions.  No marketing.  No sales.  No interest.  Artists who had received the bonus incentives were bound to keep their photos on the site for 400 days.  Those who did not receive a bonus were free to send a note to admin to delete their portfolio, and from what I have gleaned from other discussions, Albumo was deleting portfolios a'la contributor request as late as February, but more recently such requests have been ignored.  We are left to the "one per day" method of deleting our portfolios. 

Days before we lost LuckyOliver, I gave up on Albumo.  I've been visiting them once a day and picking a different little darling to kill.  If I go through a 24 hour period and have missed my opportunity to kill a photo, I feel somewhat the same as the day that I discovered the fish hadn't been fed (exact number of foodless days unknown, but regardless, the body was lifeless).  Note - I could delete the photos in the bullpen all at once.

How can these new microstock and midstock agencies get a foothold in today's market?   How many times will we log onto a site to see a variation of the following:

We are sorry to report that NaturalLifeStock is closing its doors today. April 1, 2008 was our one-year anniversary, and at the end of this period we have simply not had the returns we expected. The market is saturated with large and small stock agencies, and the competition is overwhelming.

We have found that image buyers are deluged with requests to "come see my stock site" and have little interest in startup stock companies. If we had millions to spend for marketing we might be able to make a dent, but as a Mom & Pop stock site our chances for success are very slim. Even the big guys, like Getty Images®, are having a rough time in this economy.  Text in italics from their website.

I've joined the new sites Zymmetrical and Mostphotos, but I await to see how they perform over the next year.  After the loss of LuckyOliver I am less than enthusiastic about the unproven sites.  Zymmetrical has recently become quiet and the guys haven't been flogging their site in the forums like they once did.  Hopefully they are too busy perfecting their site so they can soon transition out of beta and start marketing.

I have to let some of these lame ducks go so I can devote more time to the sites that actually pay me every month. 

So long Albumo.  Perhaps we'll meet again, once you get your groove back.


I'll leave you with a quote from user "ALBUMO" posted on MSG on March 5, 2008.

Still around... so, I guess it's a good news!  Anyways, I think many of you expect sky rocketing sales; well, let me disappoint you -- ain't gonna happen over night, BUT... we're working on it, and YES we are spending tons of money on promoting your art.  We will spend even more, but I can reassure you, you won't see numbers like at iStock or Shutter over couple of months.  Give us a little bit more time, and then judge us. 

The Good News -- Albumo is around for Good, and we are not planning on selling the company (not b/c we didn't get any sweet deal proposals, but simply b/c we believe in what we do).

Thanks for your hard work, we appreciate every bit of it!

Cheers, Co-founder, Maxim Basaraba