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Greetings forum  ;)

This is my first post and also small question.

I don't know what I m doing wrong but I haven't  sold anything yet.I am very patient and I am contributor for almost two years at Alamy but still nothing happens.I have tagged all may pictures and having occasionally views but hardly any sale.

Is this a bad luck or my portfolio really sucks? :(

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Alamy has more than 50 million images, you have 207. In other words, you're merely a needle in the haystack.

 

Add a zero to the end of your figure and you should start to see some sales.

 

Alan

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Even with only a couple of hundred images you should expect a few sales per year. I think you have some great pictures but they are also of subjects where the competition is huge: Sagrada Familia; Sacre Coeur, Eiffel tower, general Venice canals etc. It's very difficult to find a subject that is popular with buyers but less popular with photographers but that is what you need to do. Find something a little more "nichey" sell some pictures, improve you rank and then you'll be in a better position to compete for sales of bicycles in Amsterdam and panoramics of Paris or the Vatican.

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 But to tell you the blunt truth: you missed the boat 7 years ago. I would never recommend stock photography to newcomers who have to start from scratch

 

I hate to put you off, however Arterra is rite!,  a editor from a very large German stock Archive told me a few years ago that he could not advise any photographer to start in Stock.

 

For me stock is more for the hobby shooters who don't have to rely on a steady bread and butter income with their photos.

 

As been suggested, you need thousands here to have a chance,  yes it is a lot of work and effort for the return in stock photography today.

 

If you put images up as a hobby it will be more fun without the stress.

 

Paul.

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Upload one picture of Sagrada Familia or about any other famous subject is totally useless in my opinion. I have been reading frequently about contributors who uploaded just a few hundreds of images complaining because zero sales. The only answer to struggle no sales is just one: upload, upload, upload. Only by creating a strong and varied portfolio you can make a reasonable amount of sales nowdays.

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I had about 200 files like you do now. After around 4 months got my first sale. Regular sales started with over 700 files. It was few years ago. Now you need at least 2-3k good files (or niche!) to see it rolling. However, I know people who have 5-10k files, a lot of similarities in it, and they sell one image for a year or two...

 

Be patient, work hard and don't look back. But remember, the best days of many and valuable sales are behind...

 

 

 

Add a zero to the end of your figure and you should start to see some sales.

 

 

That's right!

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I don't think it's as cut and dry as having so many images equals sale etc. I have over 1500 images and this year,and it's been like a ghost town on views, zooms and sales. That number of total images is just getting bigger and bigger everyday. If you're not keeping up with the figures, you're pretty much dead in the water. 

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Ed, this ladybug brings me luck and I thought it could work with A. sales... ;) Let's try it! :P

 

I've got a colony of them in my bedroom and they haven't brought me any luck with sales yet :(

 

Alan

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Even with only a couple of hundred images you should expect a few sales per year.

 

 

I don't agree with that. A few years ago maybe. But the fewer images you have, the more it becomes a lottery as to whether your pics are ever seen. You might be lucky to get a couple of sales a year but you can't expect any.

 

Alan

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I only have 10 images up so far and am happy to wait for my retirement while my portfolio builds. All of my many 1000's of older images were pre DSLR compact camera so are useless for Alamy's quality control although other sites will take them.  This summer I will just get out there on my travels with my new cameras and start to build a collection all over again.

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Dude,

I joined in October, 2012, uploaded 53 photos in November and had my first sale on December 9, 2012. As of January, 2015 I had 1,000 for sale with 90 sales. My suggestion is that you shoot anything trendy. I get an e-mail each morning from Yahoo which anyone with a Yahoo email address gets automatically. At the bottom, it lists the ten most popular searches for the prior day. For example this mornings searches were for E-file tax return, IPhone 6 Plus, Medicare Part D, etc. It gives me ideas on what I should be shooting. I would suggest you take a photo of an elderly person taking a Selfie. Things like that. Also, I've had four sales so far this month, 2 via Alamy (now at 1740 photos) and 2 via Stockimo (377 photos). So you might be better off going the Stockimo route, which has a modern vibe. I don't think you should give up, just try a new, more current subject matter to see if that sells. Best of luck to you.

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My comments are really the same as some of my fellow photographers here on Alamy. You need a large and varied portfolio, before you will start to see regular sales.  200 images is really just a starting point. The stock photography industry is a bit of a numbers game and  you should view it as a marathon, not a sprint!  Of course the quality of you images is important in terms of technique, composition, choice of subject, etc.,  but with 50 million images,  you need  far more images to be able compete in this marketplace..

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I only have 10 images up so far and am happy to wait for my retirement while my portfolio builds. All of my many 1000's of older images were pre DSLR compact camera so are useless for Alamy's quality control although other sites will take them.  This summer I will just get out there on my travels with my new cameras and start to build a collection all over again.

 

 -  and from your avatar it seems you have quite a good, long time to build that portfolio  :)

 

You could consider the reportage route on Alamy for older suitable images of quality.

 

Niels

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Dude,

I joined in October, 2012, uploaded 53 photos in November and had my first sale on December 9, 2012. As of January, 2015 I had 1,000 for sale with 90 sales. My suggestion is that you shoot anything trendy. I get an e-mail each morning from Yahoo which anyone with a Yahoo email address gets automatically. At the bottom, it lists the ten most popular searches for the prior day. For example this mornings searches were for E-file tax return, IPhone 6 Plus, Medicare Part D, etc. It gives me ideas on what I should be shooting. I would suggest you take a photo of an elderly person taking a Selfie. Things like that. Also, I've had four sales so far this month, 2 via Alamy (now at 1740 photos) and 2 via Stockimo (377 photos). So you might be better off going the Stockimo route, which has a modern vibe. I don't think you should give up, just try a new, more current subject matter to see if that sells. Best of luck to you.

 

Very good advice for us all, Lisa. Thank you.   :)

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Dado the Dude,

 

Lisa's got some great tips for you.   Some other suggestions are to add more details to your descriptions.  I like your images but noticed some had very vague captions.  For example DBJCYY is labelled 'wild strawberries'.  There are strawberries, but they're in containers with other fruit in what looks like a farmer's market perhaps, with no details as to where. And there doesn't appear to be a location in the keywords.  If someone is looking for a farmer's market image from that particular town, they will miss your image, ad the Locations box is no longer searchable (I believe).  I always add location (town and country) the the keywords, and often the caption.

 

Also getting more images up there, as many have suggested, is important.  Compared to the pros here, I'm just a beginner, starting at alamy right around the time you did.  I've got close to 800 images so far, with my first sale at around 320 images.   The content matters too of course, not just the numbers.  Good luck!

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Wow...I haven't expected such a great tips and comments in the first place... thank you all .This  means a lot  to me in terms of motivation.I have some 100k pix at my harddisc...images from all around the world...mostly Europe, because I am traveling most of my  time.

So the general strategy would be: keep uploading and tag keys by myself (most of the keywords I am getting from keyboarding tool,which I found now thats not actually working as wel)

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Here's what you have to do: spend the next couple of months keywording till you see blue, roots start growing from your bum into your office chair and your legs fall off.

 

 

This reminds me my 2014...  :(  ;)

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I’m in a similar situation as Dado the Dude: been with Alamy for one year and have over 700 images online. My one and only sale was withdrawn, so the total is zero.

However, my CTR is currently 0.72 overall and 1.65 for the last month – higher than the Alamy average. My question is, do those of you who sell regularly have CTRs that are higher still? Is there any relation at all between CTR and sales? It would be easier to understand the lack (total absence) of sales if there were also no clicks.
 

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I’m in a similar situation as Dado the Dude: been with Alamy for one year and have over 700 images online. My one and only sale was withdrawn, so the total is zero.

However, my CTR is currently 0.72 overall and 1.65 for the last month – higher than the Alamy average. My question is, do those of you who sell regularly have CTRs that are higher still? Is there any relation at all between CTR and sales? It would be easier to understand the lack (total absence) of sales if there were also no clicks.

 

I don't think there is a correlation between CTR and sales but there is a correlation between zooms and sales. I know some togs will jump down my throat saying most of their sales haven't been zoomed but that is not true in my experience. Sometimes you have to look back a long way to find the zooms that have turned into sales. I would say about 50% of my sales were zoomed first. Obviously this wouldn't hold true for those selling lots of live news though.

 

Pearl

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 I would say about 50% of my sales were zoomed first. 

 

That's good to know Pearl.  I was wondering what percentage of zooms have ended up as sales.  If zooms are so important to CTR, I'm curious how predictive they are of sales.  I haven't sold that many yet, so it's hard for me to tell.  But for my main pseudo, none of the zooms in the past year translated into sales.  My my other pseudo, about 25% of the zooms turned into sales.  The rest of my sales were never zoomed.

 

I'm also curious how the relationship between zooms, views and CTR works if your work is on distributor's web sites.  Would we know if our images are viewed or zoomed (if they have zooming) on those sites?

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