Phewwwww. The last two weeks saw a lot of changes at Cutcaster, some of which you see on the front-end and some of which are behind the scenes or still need to be released. I did want to pass along a quick update to see where what we have done and where we are headed. This is only a partial list.
Corporate accounts and Cutcaster Credits are going to be rolled out in the next day or so and I will have a blog post about the two new ways to purchase images tomorrow. This will definitely help increase sales even more. Buyers told us that they love the quality of your work over our competitors but needed more ways to purchase the content then just the pay-as-you-go or bidding model that we have right now. This is a really exciting step for us, I believe. Invoicing and accounting for this is a huge undertakinggg..but we are going to nail it.
We are looking to get any feedback you have on our lightboxes so we can improve them. If there is a competitor site that you think does them particularly well or there are little tweaks we could implement, please let us know.
We renamed the downloaded comp files on the site to “[Cutcaster]-(TITLE)-(MEDIA_ID)” so that it was easier for people to remember where they downloaded the comp and be able to come back to find it.
In terms of the site’s speed, I am still working on decreasing the load time of the homepage and would love to hear any programmers or computer hacks thoughts for how we can speed it up. I think I may have to take some of the graphics and scripts off the homepage so it loads faster. Maybe just have the main flash player and the three spotlight areas minus the other graphics. Those graphics are weighing down the page. Any ideas for how we should make this look or improve the speed of the loading time?
We added back the roll over preview when you are searching for images. This will give the user a simple way to view the thumbnail at a slightly larger file size without the need to click through to the Media Details Page. One issues is I think it could be slowing down the search slightly, which I am looking into and will let you know. The JPEG preview image size could be taking too much time to load the page when looking at 100 images at one time in a search result.
We cleaned up some bugs in the upload area so things should run smoother when uploading via FTP or HTTP. In addition, we made it more user friendly and seamless to add your data. We always want to improve so let us know what you like and don’t like. Also I added some text to each of the different upload tabs, ie. describe, submit, pending etc., so you now have answers to many of your questions.
Still working on what to do in terms of offering extended licensing and how we want to set it up.
We have been cranking on a new email system that is going to really help our marketing efforts and our communication with buyers. On that note….
As far as marketing is concerned, we are aggressively reaching out and expanding our buyers list. We are hitting the phones everyday to build more relationships and tell more people about Cutcaster. I make about 6-8 phone calls a day alone. It’s a grueling and long process but I see it paying dividends. Also these new corporate accounts and credits, which we are just rolling out will offer buyers another two ways to purchase content from us. In addition, we have been dropping press releases, sending out email blasts to publishers, advertisers and graphic designers, joined two affiliate networks, created coupons and discount codes for buyers to use, expanded our referral program (sign up if you haven’t already through your studio page), optimized our site and blog even more, buying keywords on major search engines, started advertising in publications that are best for reaching out demographic, conducted interviews and are getting articles written about us, going to trade shows for buyers, doing in office meetings/demos with potential customers and reaching out to form new business partnerships with sites or businesses that could offer our services to their users.
There is a bunch more happening behind the scenes that would bore you but I hope this sheds light onto what we have been doing to keep ourselves busy and moving successfully forward. If you ever want to talk to me personally my email is john AT cutcaster DOT com or my cell is 215-688-2751. I am free to help at any time 
I’m still getting used to San Francisco and working from out here. I do miss NYC but love it here already. I have been working out of our office in the Presidio,
Hope this finds you well and I will have an update on the corporate accounts and credits tomorrow.