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Hello everyone, Lately, I just know that adding too many keywords in Alamy is harmful. For example, here: https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/10741-discoverabiliy-and-keywords/. So, I end up deleting most of my images, because I am in the habit of writing as many keywords as possible (a habit I learn from S..tt..stocks, A.... Stock, etc). So my question is, how many keywords is actually right? What is the "best" number of keywords? This is very confusing because that damn bar is not green if I put too few keywords. It says I don't get good enough discoverability or something. Alamy should change this.

I was cleaning up some old files that had more than 50 keywords now that the new interface has improved, making it seem less daunting, and discovered that it is more of a mess than I had anticipated. Many of my images seem to have most of the keywords doubled, and not because I put a word in singly and then as part of phrase (although that does account for some issues) but instead some of my photos seem to have big swaths of keywords repeated in order. It's as though the system is spamming itself! Being able to copy all, put them into a Pages (Word) document and then clean them up from there helps, but I am quite frustrated that I have to go through all of my images now. I had gone through some when the whole new AIM and tagging started and I don't recall noticing this problem with any of my images them; it seems to me like something changed recently to cause this to happen. And I'm noticing it with newer photos. If had been old ones from the days of the three-part entry method, especially when I was just starting out and thought that more was better, I'd shake my head and understand, but these are files that were keyworded much more sparingly, I even checked corresponding images in Lightroom to be sure. So what's up? Anyone else have this issue? After having gone through all my images when we were told to add quotes to phrases (remember when?), and then having cleaned things up again after that.. .and then spending several hours and day all over again when this whole tagging and supertagging thing started, I had decided that I wasn't going to kill myself by doing it all at once,, but would do some cleanup now and again, not really thinking it was a big deal. However, it seems as though I will have no choice but to review all my images or I will continue to see my views and CTR drop - they have gone off a cliff in the past few months and I'm wondering if this apparent glitch is part of the reason. All of my phrases, which were separated wither by commas or were in quotes, have been split up, so that, for example, images tagged "New England" suddenly have "new" and "England" as two separate supertags, really great for my CTR here in the states. Feeling very frustrated by all this. Really kinda annoyed after being invited to be among the first Reportage photographers, then unceremoniously dropped from Live News, and don't get me started on the new commission. (I am not jumping up and down about the exclusivity button - most of my pix are exclusive here, but I'm not ticking it as I don't plan to put all my eggs in this basket). Yes, rant over but really I'd rather be uploading new work than dealing with all my old images. And btw, that news rant wasn't for nothing. All of my Live News images that I've gone through so far seem to have their keywords doubled, some sort of glitch in the system so it's spamming itself? Weird! Anyone else notice this issue? I searched the forum but didn't see anything about it. I had not noticed it before. Thanks for any clues you might have as to what's going on and how I can fix it other than with countless hours of work. I have ordered a CSV file of my images, but while I use Numbers (Mac's version of Excel) for keeping track of various financial matters, I don't know if it will help me with data entry for my pix since I don't know how to export the data from an Excel spreadsheet. Numbers for Dummies perhaps? Ugh!

I am about to put a number of abstract images onto sale through AIM and I am not quite sure how to caption and/or tag them. They are all microphotography images of (largely) organic matter and whilst the identify of the "raw" material is apparent in some of them, for the most part, this is not. I have produced these with the aim of making interesting, colourful images and, to some extent, seeing what can be done via this media. My intention was not to produce scientifically authenticated images for educational purposes, rather interesting (to me at least) patterns and shapes. Some of these could be used a book covers but there is no category for that use so my questions are these: 1) Should I identify what the raw material is in the caption or just title it "abstract", leaving it to the imagination as to what it really is? 2) What should I use for the primary category? Abstract and Background or should I use what it actually is? 3) What should I use for the secondary category (if at all)? In the case of a colourful Stilton cheese rind, should I use Food? For a lovely lamb's ear leaf or opaque leaf, should I use Plants? For a owl's feathers. should I use wildlife? 4) Should I add 'book c over' to the tagging in the hope that somebody might find them for that kind of use? Any advice on the above would be very much appreciated. Thanks. Sheila

Hello, everyone. Really enjoying this forum so far. I am brand-new, and haven't found an answer for this yet in my forum or Alamy instruction search so far. I was in the process of putting my first image on sale, and trying to figure out the best method for choosing which excess Lightroom tags I wanted to delete. I deleted a few, and wasn't seeing any changes to the number of tags. I then counted the tags, and realized that although the screen was saying there were 50/50 tags, there were actually a lot more showing. (Before I counted, I had assumed Alamy had already deleted excess tags on import, and I was figuring I was going to have to put some important ones back in.) Then I saw a note that said changes wouldn't be recorded until you hit Save. So I went ahead and hit it because I thought you had to do that to refresh the page with tag deletions. But lo and behold, evidently hitting that button puts your image up for sale! So evidently it's gone into the process for sale with way more than 50 tags? Does this mean the system will automatically delete excess tags? Alphabetically? I'm curious why the system wouldn't tell you you had too many tags before putting the image into the sales queue. Thanks for any help anyone can give me! I hadn't designated any supertags or filled out the optional information either, so now I'll have to do that after the fact. It also defaulted to royalty-free, which I quickly changed. This is the second issue I've had so far with something Alamy could probably use a "Confirm" dialog box for before automatically launching a significant process. Edit: I've since figured out that the image goes on sale as soon as you meet the minimum mandatory info requirements. I've edited the listing to delete excess keywords, but I still have my question about what would happen if I hadn't.

Hey guys! I'm pretty new to this, and have had a few sales in the last year. But I'm looking to majorly improve what I have up and boost my sales as much as possible. Is a lack of sales just a bulk problem? (which I'm working on, I only have around 250 photos at the moment) - or is it more to do with how I'm tagging and captioning images? If anyone could take a look I'd be really grateful! Link to my page v https://www.alamy.com/search/imageresults.aspx?pseudoid={3A92B545-4EF8-4C6E-A366-ACD216CF0A69}&name=Cherie+Bridges&st=11&mode=0&comp=1&ps=100&pn=2&cbstore=0#BHM=foo%3Dbar%26st%3D11%26sortby%3D2%26qt%3D%26qt_raw%3D%26qn%3D%26lic%3D3%26edrf%3D0%26mr%3D0%26pr%3D0%26aoa%3D1%26creative%3D%26videos%3D%26nu%3D%26ccc%3D%26bespoke%3D%26apalib%3D%26ag%3D0%26hc%3D0%26et%3D0x000000000000000000000%26vp%3D0%26loc%3D0%26ot%3D0%26imgt%3D0%26dtfr%3D%26dtto%3D%26size%3D0xFF%26blackwhite%3D%26cutout%3D%26archive%3D1%26name%3DCherie%20Bridges%26groupid%3D%26pseudoid%3D{3A92B545-4EF8-4C6E-A366-ACD216CF0A69}%26userid%3D%26id%3D%26a%3D%26xstx%3D0%26cbstore%3D0%26resultview%3DsortbyPopular%26lightbox%3D%26gname%3D%26gtype%3D%26apalic%3D%26tbar%3D0%26pc%3D%26simid%3D%26cap%3D1%26customgeoip%3DGB%26vd%3D0%26cid%3D%26pe%3D%26so%3D%26lb%3D%26fi%3D0%26langcode%3Den%26upl%3D0%26cufr%3D%26cuto%3D%26howler%3D%26cvrem%3D0%26cvtype%3D0%26cvloc%3D0%26cl%3D0%26upfr%3D%26upto%3D%26primcat%3D%26seccat%3D%26cvcategory%3D*%26restriction%3D%26random%3D%26ispremium%3D1%26flip%3D0%26saveQry%3D%26editorial%3D1%26t%3D0%26edoptin%3D%26ps%3D100%26pn%3D2%26cbstore%3D0

I am in the process of switching everything over to Alamy and another macro site, but primarily have most of my images on Alamy. What is the benefit to ticking the "Only Available On Alamy" box for the images I only have here? Also some of my work was listed on a the microstock sites which I have now removed, do I still have to only sell them as RF here or can I now sell them as RM if I wanted since they're not being sold RF anywhere else? Or because they were once sold as RF they will always have to be sold as RF?