Sally

SunCalc.net is simple, free and easy

1 hour ago, Avpics said:

Having been told that some overdue sales would be included in February I chased them up as still unreported to be told: "The month of February finished yesterday and due to the shorter length of the month the team have not long received the usage report so these uses haven’t been billed yet. The sales should appear within your account early this month." So no, February isn't over already!

How long is overdue?  I have one outstanding uncleared sale from 17th November.

5 sales for just under $200

2 hours ago, GS-Images said:

 

I'm not going to live that down, am I? 

And my serge came in today too for a couple of weather news images in December and January (after Storm Caroline)- both IMHO not very good or well processed.  But very decent amounts. February sales are almost equal to January so I am happy.

Sorry misread

5 minutes ago, losdemas said:

 

Lots of useful information. I’m glad I asked the question.

i don’t think I can (yet anyway) justify the cost of Photomechanic, but I will keep it in mind and maybe try out the trial version.

i will pay more attention to being specific about the images in captions I think.

15 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

Also I have noticed that some newspapers will use the exact text under the image as you have provided in the caption, so I'm guessing that making it more accurate MAY help give you a very slight advantage, as it'll save the editor time as they won't have to write out a description. That is also the reason why I generally add "in Brighton on the south coast" as well as having the location (following Alamy's requirements) at the start of the caption. If you upload and then edit the text later, it maybe too late because the newspapers will already have the original version.

Yes, that’s what I was concerned about. I suppose it depends on whether time is of the essence, as Red Snapper has suggested. 

Would like some advice. Is it best for a batch of Live News photos to have the same caption, even if there are different views,  not all of which may have the same objects. I used to make the captions specific to each image, but lately have just been keeping them the same, then editing once they go into stock. What’s best, or doesn’t it matter much?

12 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

 

I agree! I have an image somewhere just showing such tiles. They're everywhere here. I can't walk anywhere without seeing those damn tiles! I hate them! I was buying groceries the other day and a couple of those roof tiles pushed in front of me at the checkout! Such rudeness. You wouldn't get that from roof slates, would you? I don't know Allan, I think roofing materials need more education. I blame Trump.

 

 

Ha! Pantiles, on the other hand, I think are magic.

1 hour ago, GS-Images said:

 

That does seem a bit rough after 65 passes. I've failed twice since starting at Alamy in 2010, at least 2 or 3 years ago now (twice in a row, strangely!). I don't know how many batches I've uploaded since the fails but lately I've been going a bit loopy with uploading so much, so it's likely to be more than 65.

 

 

 

Yes, QC rank is based on your uploads and failures, although from what Mark said about, it doesn't make any real difference to how long it takes Alamy to check batches.

 

Nobody knows their AlamyRank other than Alamy, but you can sometimes get a good idea simply from looking at search results. That isn't accurate though of course, and in fact could be misleading due to all the factors at play (some known, some unknown to me) with image placement. Some of us used to use something called BHZ, which is where we would put BHZ (a random thing a contributor once came up with that wouldn't be searched for by a customer) in one of our RM images as a supertag (used to be in the Essentials field before AIM), and the position that image appeared in gave a rough estimate of our rank compared to others who were doing the same thing. That was frowned upon by Alamy, but I never understood why because it always gave a very good idea of things, and was consistent. Since the search engine changes over a year ago though, it's all become rather irrelevant so is probably no longer a good way of knowing our AlamyRank compared to others, although I still believe it gives a vague idea (the same images still appear highest like they always have), as long as you only put BHZ in one RM image in one of your pseudos, and don't repeat it in any other tag.

 

Probably best not to bother to be honest, but that's what we used to do.

 

Geoff.

Thanks for the fulsome explanation. I will just have to rely on having good saleable images (I certainly have a better idea about this than when I started) and comprehensive tagging.

Yes, even with 3 QC stars, images generally pass around 5-6.00pm the next day, or at that time on a Monday if uploaded on a Friday. There have only been one or two instances when they were passed in the morning of the day after upload.  I wonder if extra stars are earned from regular uploads, as I generally upload several times a week.

Edinburgh Lumens display

1 hour ago, GS-Images said:

 

Hi Sally. The 3 stars you have are only for your QC rank, nothing else. It just gives you higher priority if Alamy have lots of updates to go through.

 

Geoff. 

Ok, so I have clearly misunderstood. QC rank is different to Alamyrank? And how does one know what one’s Alamyrank is, or is that hidden?

1 hour ago, GS-Images said:

 

My CTR would be better now, but with having a higher rank than I used to have, I'm seeing searches that bring up so many of my images that the CTR plummets. Someone recently searched for "UK", unhelpfully, and I've had several searches bringing up over 100 views with no zooms! Anyway, according to Alamy, CTR makes very little difference (not sure of the exact phrase they used without checking) to our AlamyRank, so I think that as long as we're getting SOME zooms to show some interest in our images, the CTR isn't very important.

 

Have a nice Weekend folks,

Geoff.

That’s good to hear. As I have been growing my portfolio fairly quickly over the last year, my CTR has taken a dive,  but my rank remains at 3 stars. I get lots of views and reasonably regular zooms, and it does seem that relevant images are appearing reasonably high up in searches.

2 minutes ago, Normspics said:

 

Then it’s a valuable historical image, woohoo

That’s true.

1 hour ago, Normspics said:

 

Too funny, shoulda woulda coulda 😀🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇨🇦

Weird, because Lothian and Borders Police no longer exists. It’s all Police Scotland, now. So whoever bought it is buying an out of date image.

2 hours ago, Normspics said:

Simple image distributor sale

 

Good grief. You're in Canada.  I should have taken that!

5 hours ago, Bryan said:

After a singularly terrible start to the month a $800 sale popped in today, it's a canny shot mind, but you just never know.......

Wow! Well done. It would be interesting to know what the kinds of licenses for a larger sale like that are. Is it things like calendar, billboard? Then I can dream.

Just now, Stokie said:

 

I did similar: 2 days in Cairo then Nile cruise to Aswan.

 

I'd love to do it again!!

 

John.

Yes, so much to see. Not sure that my aim of getting through the many photos I took before I go away again soon will work out! I’ll no doubt have just as many photos of Chile and Easter Island.

5 hours ago, Stokie said:

 

Sorry to hijack the thread!

Where did you go to?

John.

Nile trip from Luxor, stopping off at places on the way to Aswan. Had been in Jordan before that.

Maybe I should ask people to guess where this was taken. No cheating and looking it up!

5 hours ago, Stokie said:

A couple from my trip to egypt in November. Haven't got round to tagging them properly yet!

 

You're ahead of me.  I was there in October and still not got around to even processing my photos, let alone uploading them.

1 hour ago, Niels Quist said:

 

Yes, two or three days later they'll be transferred. The time can vary a bit due to server updates.

 

Niels

But they will only go on sale if you add some tags.

2 hours ago, Russell said:

Could be ...

Exactly so. If you haven’t already got the tag ‘elephant in must’ you can now add it.

This is the same elephant as above doing it, too. Another sign I remembered is that they dribble pee (edit: see that’s already been mentioned) Perhaps we shouldn’t have photos of elephants doing that

7 minutes ago, Rick Lewis said:

 

This is good advice, but really, how does one know if the elephant in question is having a good day or a bad day?  (I'm not trying to be funny).  Wild animals are not always healthy and may appear normal until it's too late. 

 

My wife says I'm way to conservative (cautious) about many things but on this even she agrees.  Stay with the guide and listen to his or her wise advice.

 

The problem is that in most cases you are correct in your thinking you're safe right up to the point you're not.  This image, BTW, is superb!! 

 

Rick

Thank you. Not sold yet, however!