Milton

Thanks Bob! Kind of you to say so.

https://www.instagram.com/magicbones66/ - mainly London based shots. Not a prolific instagram user, have been meaning to post more - maybe this will encourage me.

You're a star. Thank you!

Thanks @LawrensonPhoto and @Katie. That has helped loads. One final question - when setting up the FTP server connection, after filling in the host/server and port number, it is asking for a directory path. Do you know what should be entered?

I am still trying to get my head around the setup of Press IPTC. For those of you who have sussed it out already are there any pointers on how to configure it correctly - particularly setting up IPTC templates and which fields to use for descriptions/keywords. Or alternatively, do you know of any step by step instructions that are available?

Hi Gen, I think I am confusing myself! You are right there is no issue with model release. Therefore there is no issue. Please ignore this question!

Yesterday one of my images (M1NF4W) appeared in a customer search for 'rescue boat [MR]'. in the optional information section I have acknowledged that the image contains property requiring a release but state that I do not have a release. My question is am I doing something incorrectly (I don't want to fall foul of any copyrights) or is this a glitch in the Alamy search? Has anybody else experienced this?

While I can understand that overhauling their purchase system to ensure each sale is properly catalogued at the point of sale could be a complicated and costly exercise, there doesn't seem to be much cost associated with introducing punitive charges for those clients who do not report purchases. If you are trusting everyone who visits your store to pay on exit, there are always going to be some customers who abuse the system - especially if, when found out, they only pay the regular purchase price. Introduce an additional charge for those who abuse the system and less customers will try and get away with it. Has Alamy ever commented on this subject?

Without wanting to stir up a hornets nest, why are you having to find and report usage of your images? Is this a failing of Alamy's account department or just a result of the business model in use? Almost sounds like the purchase system is built on trust, at least for distributors and perhaps larger clients.

Interesting. Didn't know about adding the important words to captions. I have been a bit hit and miss with captions - sometimes I fill them in correctly, other times I just quickly chuck something in. Will have to review them at some point.

Thanks for the responses - basically it's a common problem that affects everybody in a variety of ways. I was hoping that there was a neat trick to get around it (like using quotes) but, as you say Marianne, I won't sweat it anymore. Losdemas, it's good to know that at least it appears lower down in the search and that CTR isn't a major factor in the Alamy ranking algorithm.

Hi all, Although I have been registered with Alamy since 2015, it is only this year that I have started taking it seriously and uploading in volume, and this is my first forum post (although I have been lurking for a while). As I understand it the CTR rating is key to how high up your images appear in searches (is that right?), so I have taken care to keyword properly. But no matter how relevant I make the keywords my images are appearing in searches that bear no relevance to the image. As an example a couple of days ago a user searched for ‘Washing Up’ and my images of a young child playing with pegs on a clothesline appeared in the search due to the fact that two of my keywords are ‘washing line’ and ‘close up’. I am wondering if there is any method to avoid the individual words in a keyword phrase being used in isolation – my average CTR is taking a pounding.