Gaining a profile

[PGrGr]

Newbie here. Apologies if this has been asked before.

 

I understand that it can takes months of contributing to make a first sale; I get that sales really result from having a portfolio of thousands of decent quality photos. My question is whether it is possible to make sales by posting a large number of high quality images on Alamy, without also having a profile as a photographer elsewhere, whether in social media, or as a professional or semi-professional photographer?

 

Can anyone elucidate, please?

[M.Chapman]

Yes you can make sales on Alamy without any profile as a photographer elsewhere. I've got virtually no presence on social media. I guess there's a slim possibility my sales might be slightly higher if I drove more potential customers to my Alamy images via social media or a personal website, but I'd also be alerting those customers to the masses of competing images there are here on Alamy. 

 

Most Alamy sales come from searches on subject matter using keywords. IMHO it's very, very rare to have a search for images by a specific photographer, other than when they have already searched by keywords first and then click the "more" button under a thumbnail of an image they like.

 

[PGrGr]

Thanks, M.Chapman and arterra. That's very encouraging.

 

Interesting insight from funkyworm, too. I hear your frustration. Fortunately for me, I guess, I am not setting out to be a pro photographer, but I enjoy photography and if I can earn anything at all from it, that would be a bonus.

[Matt Ashmore]

PGrGr .. going on a slight tangent.. I just had a quick look at your images and I think you want to cut down on the number of similar images you upload. For example, how many images do you need of the fence? .. they are pretty much all the same.

 

Alamy has the notion of CTR (Click Through Rate), This is basically a measure of how many of your images are zoomed (clicked on) compared to how many show up in search results (a view). It's possible that someone might see all of your pictures of the same fence but they are only likely to click on one of them... so this therefore effectively lowers your CTR. CTR used to (nowadays it's not clear whether it still does) play a part in the search engines calculations on who's images to display first. So having lots of similar (or near identical in this case) images could in the long run lower your chance of selling images.. but like I say, we don't know the search engne algorithm which alamy keeps as a closely guarded secret hence I say 'could' rather than 'would'

[PGrGr]

Thanks for the tip, Matt. I have edited down the number of fence pics. As I say, I'm only just getting started!

[Betty LaRue]

6 hours ago, PGrGr said:

Thanks for the tip, Matt. I have edited down the number of fence pics. As I say, I'm only just getting started!

Try this. 

2 wide angle of which one is landscape, one is portrait, then same subject 1 zoomed landscape, one zoomed portrait. No more.

Thats four images of the same subject, but each look different from the others.

Not all subjects lend themselves to 4 images. In that case, 2 may do what you need.

Don't get hung up on the numbers game.  Two well thought out images are worth more than 6-10 that one has to study hard to see imperceptible differences. Many times when you have a bunch of similars, the one that comes up first can be your poorest of the set. If you have two-4 stellar images that look different, it doesn't matter which appears first in a search. It will be your best because they are equal.

When I do a search and see a large amount of similars, I immediately lose any interest in looking closely at any of them. Maybe it's just my own eye/brain reaction. 

Betty