A 6.1 magnitude earthquake shook Costa Rica on Thursday and we have had some requests for images of the destruction. Does anyone have images of the Costa Rica earthquake that they can upload to Cutcaster? We have had two requests for images of the Costa Rica earthquake in the last two hours and would be great to upload some of these editorial images. There were no reports of injuries or deaths. Thanks again.
Here is something very easy you can do to drive traffic to your studios and work. Some of you may not use these "share" buttons on your media details page or your studio pages but you should be.
They are a very important form of driving traffic to your studio as well as your images on Cutcaster or your own site and you should use this button to leverage getting more traffic and views/downloads of your content. And they are completely free.
On the media details page on the right side...
To promote your work or someone else's work (if you like their stuff) on Cutcaster you hover over the "share" button and click on the different networks you want to send the content to. The different sites will allow you to title it and put in a description and then feed it to their millions of users. It is very Easy. From our research and experience, this works in driving traffic and buyers to see your work and translates into sales.
Try it out for yourself and see how the views and traffic will pile up for you. Just click on the share button and send to the networks that you are a member at. My personal favorites are StumbleUpon, Digg, Myspace, technorati, facebook, reddit, twitter and delicious. But there are many places you can drive traffic from and I bet you will be happy that you tried it.
If you need some help understanding how to do this, just email us.
What Happened in 2008 - A few highlights: 1. Buyers outreach program started in mid-September- Email, print and web advertising, Google Adwords campaign, press releases, direct sales calls and email blasts, SEO techniques, joined two affiliate programs, our internal referral program, handwritten introductory letters, onsite Cutcaster demos, participation in buyers’ conferences i.e. Picturehouse, and participating in different forums. 2. Contributor outreach program- Grew from 800 files to over 107,000 by years end. Pretty amazing growth, I’d say, and the quality has been excellent so keep up the great work. 3. Started the year with 300 members and now we are over 3600 members and 1700 members have uploaded a file or more. 4. Numerous site features and enhancements rolled out. We have always been fast to correct things and roll out features that the community needs and things will continue to be like that in 09. 5. New image and vector search algorithm 6. Best customer service in the industry- We roll out the red carpet for everyone.
What to expect in the New Year 1. I’m moving the Cutcaster headquarters to San Francisco at the end of January and you shouldn’t notice any changes except a new address. This is so I can efficiently run Cutcaster and be close to the talent and money that I need to take on our competitors. I’m sad to leave NYC but extremely excited to be on the West Coast. 2. A lot more attention and work on the buyer front i.e. roll out corporate accounts, introduce credit packages and extended licensing, enhanced clipfolders, search algorithm tweaking and re-weighting the results, more direct sales calls, attending more buyer conferences, Cutcaster API’s, promoting more exclusive content on Cutcaster, tiered pricing for different resolution sizes and much more advertising in both print and web. 3. More sales, more data to help you make better decisions, more tutorials to help you know what to shoot and how to shoot it, more image and illustration requests 4. A much faster site
Goals for 2009 1. More sales, more revenue lines for contributors, more ease of use on the site. 2. Surpass 1,000,000 images and vectors 3. Get over 400,000 new images in the marketplace from sources that weren’t in the shallow pool of stock we see today 4. Increase membership to 20,000 5. More fun
Obviously, Cutcaster is a tool to earn money from your content or find outstanding content for the projects you are working on. However, Cutcaster is a community in action and is only as good as our contributors, supporters and buyers. We know we have nothing if we don’t have a strong community and that is why we work tirelessly to best serve our members. A special thank you goes out to Ashley, My family, Justin, Michael B., Zac, Lope, Barbara, Tara, Charley, InSITE, Lita, Dennis, Janie M, Linda, Carolyn, Jeffbeck, Martin, Shaolan, Victoria, Moriya, Dan M, Vasiliy, Jason, the whole Blip.tv team, Gracie, Henrik, Jeff S. and Shawn to name just a few.
There have been more, and I can’t thank you all enough for providing your support and patience as we grow. We know that it is a community in action that accomplishes more than any individual does, no matter how strong they may be. Spread the word, keep up the enthusiasm, and continue to be a part of something from the ground floor.
At Cutcaster, we have been speaking with more and more with the magazines out there and are hearing from quite a few that they are working on their spring issues. This is a great time to think about upcoming shoots. Here are some ideas we heard kicked around from our calls.
1. Spring Break travel spots/Concepts 2. Kids activities inside or outdoors 3. Fixing up the home/Home Renovation 4. Diet/dieting concepts 5. Upcoming fitness season 6. House/Spring cleaning 7. Home Gardening 8. Moving Season
Lets kick around some ideas here and see what new shots we can come up with. I will make sure it is seen.
