Phil Robinson

50% of my sales over the last year have been through distributors, including some of the biggest - and some of the smallest. The best come from Japan, so if you're thinking of opting in selectively, I'd certainly include Japan.

I'm sure I saw it, possibly in The Metro. Not sure what their circulation is though.

I had one in the Metro last month - it said circulation 'up to 2 million'

Now that is a good idea. Why didn't I think of that? Thanks.

(edit) However, if you then do a search from that page, you get results from the whole of Alamy - if you search from your link page the pics are all yours.

Searching on Alamy normally you can choose to see up to 120 images per page.

If you add a link in your own website to your Alamy portfolio, the view you get is limited to 15 pictures per page.

Couldn't this be increased?

Have you put the French accents in your keywords? I find that such diacritic marks sometimes fool some search engines into splitting up a word, assuming that what follows any accent is a new word.

(Though thinking about it, that still wouldn't explain the results in this case)

I've just had a look at the intro page of FAA - the inspirational sales page - and I'd say about 40% of them are photographic, some brilliant, some not. I have joined them recently and have had a few views but no sales yet. I take the 'it can't so any harm' view.

I've also joined Saatchi, with exclusive images, and have had far more views but no sales yet. A girl at the school where I used to work has sold a couple via Saatchi, but she is a VERY good painter.

This doesn't seem to be a problem that affected many people, but I have the answer if anyone is interested. 

I updated my graphics card driver and found it has been cured (at least, it seems to be, fingers crossed.......)

I've never understood this idea of not uploading more submission while one is waiting to clear. I would have a backlog of thousands of images if I did that. 

If your images pass, so do all the other submissions awaiting QC at the time so they can all be keyworded.

If one fails, you just resubmit the other ones (assuming you are confident they will pass) - it can take a while but it's a good excuse to watch TV while they upload.

Can anyone explain the advantage of uploading one sub and waiting for it to pass?

I quite like the fact that all my images can be seen together, but I can understand why others would feel differently. An option to direct the link to one pseudo would be a good idea. I do have one pseudo that contains images marked for deletion, which includes many inferior versions of images that I would rather leave hidden.

Are you in the newspaper scheme? It looks that way to me.

The size quoted is rarely correct and the publication dates are ALWAYS wrong with newspapers - that refers to when someone did something to do with reporting the sale, not when it was published. 

I have recently joined the newspaper scheme. The following day I found one of my images in the Observer. It has just been reported, with two others, and they each got about the same amount as you did, though they were less than 1/4 page.

I had one published in a paper just before I joined the scheme - that grossed about 3 1/2 times as much, though I am certainly getting more published since I joined.

I think as long as the customer can understand why the images come up - as long as grass and something black are visible - I think most will accept that and refine their search (adding 'weed' or the latin name - another keyword to include). What would annoy me is searches where some of the results seem totally irrelevant to the search terms. That can happen too (especially on the German site!)

Try blackgrass, one word, and it brings up only the right thing - though not many images. I would hurriedly add the keywords blackgrass and black-grass, both of which seem to be used and might give you the advantage in a search. 

Activity registers but isn't reported over the weekend (look for the 'last updated' date and time, top right). You have to wait for Monday (usually morning) to see the weekend's views and zooms.

As for 'ready' images, there has been a recent change - they now go on sale 24hrs after being made ready, whereas before weekends didn't count.

I'm not sure adding 'portrait' and 'landscape' is a good idea. Yes, they are frequently used in the business as synonyms for horizontal and vertical, but they do also have other meanings, which will be frequently used by searchers to find portraits and landscapes. (Most of my portraits are 'landscape' and many of my landscapes are 'portrait').

Alamy's software 'reads' whether a pic is tall, wide or square...

That's true, but that only works if the customer ticks the landscape / portrait box in the search options. If they use the terms in the keyword search instead, only images that have had those keywords added will come up. It's the same with cutouts - they are automatically recognised (mostly) by the system, but not if 'cutout' is used as a search term.

I started out doing that, then stopped when I realised there were choice options. But I do still add the words cutout and cut-out, which do get searched. Maybe I'll use the next rainy day to go through my collection and put them back.

Well spotted. Yes, passed QC on Friday, half keyworded then and the other half today. Yesterday's are already on sale. Very good news. No reason why it shouldn't be automatic, of course, but very welcome.

"00000218819603" - another odd search (strangely, no results, a gap in the market there).

Hi. Welcome and good luck. But remember, it's a numbers game - the first sales may take a while. Keep uploading quality and quantity and they will come.

Average sale since starting: gross - $77.25, net - $40.12. including NU.

edit

(Just to point out, those are hyphens before the figures - despite a few refunds I'm not averaging minus $77)

and then there is discounting

If that's 20% off the calculator price, I've no complaints. Given the amount of negotiation that goes on, 20% off what......?

I can't see any point in leaving loads of space around a cutout - they don't need to be cropped if the background is truly white (or black) I have noticed that if there is too little space around the image, it isn't always picked up by the automatic cutout detector at Alamy, so a good border is best.

And the bigger the image, the clearer it is in the thumbnail

Yes, the change seems to be that previously, if you had a processing error, most passed QC, the sub was marked in orange "Partial Fail" and the rejected images had to be resubmitted.

It seems now that after a partial fail, the processing error images are removed, the rest of the sub gets passed and the problem images,instead of being rejected, ore put in a separate upload group for another try.

This seems like an improvement, at least if you know in advance that this is what's likely to happen.

Earlier this week I had a partial fail due to four processing errors in two different batches.

Today I find that the orange 'Partial Fail' noticed have been replaced with a green 'Passed' notice and a new submission has appeared, with four images, dated 2nd August.

It seems the processing errors have been recovered and put into the system.

I have already re-submitted the images concerned but it might be worth bearing in mind if you get a partial fail, that the images might actually go through some time later.