Ales Sokoloff
Hobbies/interests: travel, studying cultures, design, photography, snowboarding
Work: web development
Place of birth/current home: Minsk, Belarus (although I attended both high school and college in the states)
Website: http://alesandemily.com

1) Can you introduce us into your an ordinary work day?

I like to wake up early and get a good start on the day… my wife and I make breakfast and enjoy the morning and then we usually get to work. We work out of our house, so no commute makes life a lot easier. Depending what our projects are we distribute the work; I usually do more of the back-end programming while my wife takes care of the design end of things.

A lot of times I meet with clients or work on getting new ones throughout the work day.

2) Are you just a freelancer or do you rate yourself as a trade web developer?

Freelancer, and loving it.

3) When did you create your first web? Do you look back and think about it?

When I was 18 – so almost 7 years ago. I think about it some and think I’ve come a long way since then! I’m glad that I started early and learned as much as I could.

4) What are your goals? Do you want to reach some “webdesign” level in?

Well I am definitely planning on expanding the business. Our goals are to have up to 20 employees and free ourselves up to more traveling and choosing our personal projects.

5) Have you ever sold any photo to the photobank? Are you interested in taking a photos?

I haven’t sold any photos, hadn’t really thought about it much, but that is a great idea that I will be looking into.

And actually my wife is more the photographer of the family, although I dabble in it as well. My wife loves taking pictures and is very passionate about it.

The Pixmac microstock agency is proud to announce that we now offer 7 million stock photos for our customers. Only a few competitors can say the same. Our collection consists of 3 sources. Two are creative and one editorial called “Celebrity”. Pixmac is the fastest way to get a stock photo or illustration for your design for a price that might surprise you.

When the pink company launched its marketplace in September 2008 it might have seemed like just another microstock company that is trying to make it. But look how much we have grown in a year! Pixmac has partners in 9 major markets and its sales are growing faster than expected.

Our company is  growing faster than other competitors in the microstock market according to respected site Alexa.com and  the amount of pictures grows with it. Not only that, Pixmac invented the “One Stop Shopping” way to get inexpensive quality photos in a matter of seconds without need of registration. Lee Torrens, a well known microstock blogger, says: “I LOVE your one-stop-shopping idea! It has always been a missing element of microstock agencies…” Yes, Pixmac focuses on speed and user friendliness.

Pixmac offers a lot now and has more in the oven to offer our customers. For example, Pixmac is working with a University on a project that will change your searching abilities and will make searching quicker and easier. We are also adding another few million photos to the database soon and working on some nice stock photo searching tweaks.

This week we’re launching a new updated website together with features such as Moneybookers payment method which added with payments by PayPal and/or  Credit Card. Also we have included a popular feature that sorts search results by downloads or date.

Vitezslav Valka (CEO) comments: “I’m always thrilled to see our customers happy with the user interface. Everybody deserves an easy tool that just works. I’m watching everything that happens in the company and believe me, it’s better than Red Bull and Duracell together!”

And one last thing for insiders. Watch our Twitter for special offers!

Professional designers, as others, sometimes need a rest. They take a job for a non-profit organization or do a favor for their friend. When there is a need for a photo, Pixmac can help to keep the budget as low as possible. As one forum said: “The best free pictures available on the net…”

The best thing is, that the collection is here for you to use. You can register at Pixmac any time, and pay nothing for hundreds of free photos. Also you can look for some other themes in our collection of millions low-budget pictures of high quality ones from 0.1 Megapixel up to 16 Megapixels.

Another good thing is the speed and comfort. Pixmac is made to serve you photos. That is its purpose and that is why there are pictures easily available. Without any marketing text which just disturbs you, even without pop-up windows and blinking banners. Nothing like this at Pixmac.

Thanks to all this, the collection is growing every day. Now we have covered almost every aspect of your personal and business life, so you can find anything you need just by clicking: Search. Isn’t that easy?

We at Pixmac hope, that you will be satisfied or we will be contacted right away!

Specialists say that the usual software will become history soon. The new era of using a computer connected to internet just with a browser is closer than we might think. Let’s jump into the future and experience online image editing right now!

Pixlr

A fast and easy to use application just like Photoshop on your desktop. I’ts unbelievable that it runs so fast, without registration and has so many functions. These swedish guys have same targets as we at Pixmac. Making a good tool is the primary vision for both. And, their name starts with “Pix” as Pixmac The only bad thing is that you cannot save your pictures with layers.

Pixlr homepage: www.pixlr.com
Pixlr application: www.pixlr.com/app

Splashup

This was for few months, the number one in online image editing. The good thing Splashup has the possibility to connect to image posting sites like Flickr, Facebook or Picasa. And also, you can save your images if you’re registered user or use a Light version if you don’t want to learn all those fuctions of the full version.

Splashup homepage: www.splashup.com

Picnik

The third application is a bit too compliacted to use. It has similar functions as Splashup above, but it is more focused to the enduser and to young people. It seems more like added value for social sites users rather than a bitmap picture editor. Additionaly, there is a premium version with some more functions for a small payment.

Picnik homepage: www.picnik.com

Photoshop Online

This is a real Photoshop thing. Ok, ok, not a complete Photoshop online, but a clean tool from the makers of the Photoshop – the Adobe company. This piece is similar to Picnik but packed in a much better interface. It is a easy and simple tool to make few corrections with your photo, nothing more.

Photoshop homepage: www.photoshop.com

Summary

These apps prove the theory about user migration from standalone apps to online world. The editors are not that good and fast as a real Photoshop or GIMP in your computer, but they definitely will take a piece of cake. The world is changing in front of our eyes! Be ready to jump in!

There are some smaller apps like:

Foto Flexer: www.fotoflexer.com
Phixr: www.phixr.com
Snipshot: www.snipshot.com

Every day at Pixmac is an adventure. We are looking for new ways of how to satisfy Pixmac users. We already know that this is not the easy way, but we don’t want to be just a usual microstock agency. Pixmac will be the innovative & user-friendly tool always working for you.

To be honest, we have a pretty long list of things to include into Pixmac. But we also want to have the website clean and easy to use. So we have chosen a few big issues to solve. Below is the list sorted by our priority. If you think of anything else, feel free to comment this post.

1. More languages (Spanish, French, German, Czech)

As you may know, there are not just English speaking people as you are. That is why we started to translate Pixmac into more languages and we are still working on new ones. Watch the Pixmac website every day, they will appear.

2. Advanced Search (Addition for precise search)

Usually people don’t need it. But you know, sometimes there is a need for some tweaks. So we listened to our users and prepared a marvelous tool to make your search even better.

3. Subscription (Better prices for repetitive customers)

This is something for the buyers. People who need a lot of pictures usually deserve a better price. So we made this a reality in just a few months after Pixmac was launched. Isn’t it great?

4. Refferal program (Make money with us)

One of the most wanted feature of almost any microstock website is a referral program. It stitches the community together and offers the ability to make some money to everybody involved.

5. New payment methods (Phone, SMS, Debit Card)

We love the colors of the world. And we want to make those of you who don’t want your Credit Card to be exposed happy. That is why there are some new methods of payment prepared for you in our labs.

Hello there everybody! We recently launched new micro-stock website ‘Pixmac’ and would like to share our experience with all of you out there. First of all, let me introduce our targets and ideas. So we can share the spirit together.

The main idea of Pixmac from its beginning was to make website faster and easier to use. To bring the joy to photographers and to the buyers. That is why we are still improving the speed of loading and displaying. And that is why we have chosen to distribute the server data all over the world.

As for the usability, we try hard to make the tool easy to use, comprehensive and working without almost any help hanging around. We still look at the site from the users view, what he or she needs. This is something the competitors usually forget.

The last thing to mention is our picture database. We try and always will, to bring the best pictures in just few seconds. That is why we decided to make the keywording for those of you who are photographers. Also we have some hidden features under the hood to make the results even better and more accurate. And, we have a lot of ideas how to improve that even more.

Still, we know that Pixmac is not yet perfect. But that is our job to improve it every day as it grows. Thank you for all your feedback, we are listening!