In partnership with Bigstock.com, GCU is excited to roll out a soft launch of a new feature - Stock Card Creations. This targets card creators who are good with words and verse and/or have clever ideas but do not have access to high quality art / images.
The intent is not to replace the creative artists in our community today but to open the same opportunity to new contributors, different types of contributors.
Here are some highlights:
1. Access to millions of high-quality stock images licensed by GCU (no charge to card creators)
2. Simple interface to create cards
3. Standard earnings (these cards are exempt from premium earnings and will not apply to meeting quarterly earnings thresholds)
4. GCU review process and Submission Guidelines apply however since images are “pre qualified” reviews will be much quicker
5. Cards must be marketable & serve less populated and niche categories on GCU. GCU will decline cards deemed not marketable, considered “more of the same” and with little to no added value. This will be very subjective. Simply overlaying “Happy Birthday” over the image of a cake will not pass muster.
6. Cards automatically appear in Private gallery until reviewed
7. Approved cards are limited to this category: “Collections >> Off the Cuff”. Over time top selling cards may be moved to their functional occasion based category
8. Card visibility relies on self promotion and search (search engines & onsite search) – cards will thrive or not by their metadata (title, keywords, artist notes, etc.)
9. GCU artists can participate within their existing store
See the landing page and complete FAQs here:
www.greetingcarduniverse.com/bigstock Here is the reserved category (I have added a few of my own examples):
http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/collections/offthecuffgreetings Here’s how you can help:
1. Try it out by creating a few cards (please limit it to 5 cards) – when logged into your artist account direct your browser to the landing page:
www.greetingcarduniverse.com/bigstock 2. Be patient! This is still in testing phase so there are bumps and hiccups
3. Report any bugs or significant findings by posting on this thread
4. Supported on Firefox and Chrome. It is not supported on Internet Explorer.
Please let me know if you have any questions and thank you in advance for those that give this a go.
** 11/23 Updates **
1. Inside text is defaulted (font, size, color, alignment) but can be edited after via Manage Cards
2. All elements of the card can be edited EXCEPT the image. For image edits you'll need to re-create the card from scratch.
3. these cards will be set as "Card Front: Stock" vs Standard / Custom. On Manage Cards you'll see on the left Search Cards we've added a By Card Front.
4. Image by "unknown" appears to be a bug, we will look into correcting this
** 11/25 Update **
Creation temporarily disabled while we make some important fixes - please stay tuned. We'll let you know when it's turned back on, thank you!