Selling photos

[Fishing fool]

Hi I'm needing some input on why I haven't made one sale yet. I'm not sure if my photos are just not good or just too plain or just not unique enough. I know that there is a lot of great competition that my photos are up against and I have been shooting for close to 2 years but it seems like some one should have like one of my photos and bought it.  if some one can give me some input it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[Richard Tadman]

Hi - I don't think it's an issue of the quality or suitability of your photos but simply that with a portfolio of 35 it would be a miracle if you had sold any!
Bear in mind that Alamy has 145,000,000 images for buyers to choose from and I think the answer is self-evident. You probably need a portfolio in the thousands before you can expect sales unless you get incredibly lucky.

 

Good Luck

[Sally]

With only 35 photos in a limited range of subjects, it’s unlikely you will get sales here any time soon. It’s partly a numbers game. I was prepared to wait a year before getting a sale, but in the equivalent time you have been on Alamy I had uploaded hundreds of photos. 

 

PS nothing to do with the quality of your photos, which are great.

[Cryptoprocta]

11 hours ago, Fishing fool said:

Hi I'm needing some input on why I haven't made one sale yet. I'm not sure if my photos are just not good or just too plain or just not unique enough. I know that there is a lot of great competition that my photos are up against and I have been shooting for close to 2 years but it seems like some one should have like one of my photos and bought it.  if some one can give me some input it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I was over six months and over 800 photos before I got my first sale.

[Alex Ramsay]

I agree with what others have said about numbers - keep uploading! You might also have another look at your captions, which could be plainer and convey more information - have a look at the Alamy guidelines on captioning

 

Alex

[gvallee]

35 images? Add a few more thousands images and you might get a sale.

 

I noticed some of your captions:

MEW8BA 'Waiting for a free meal'

MEW87W 'Eyes so small yet a world so big'

 

These are not adequate for the editorial market. You have to describe what it is. In this example, the animal common name, Latin name, what it's doing, location, etc...

You are going to get false hits, for example if a buyer searches for 'meal', there is no meal in your picture. Your ranking will sink and your images won't be seen.

 

I would suggest you read carefully all the guidelines before uploading any more.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Gen

 

 

 

[RedSnapper]

1 hour ago, Sally said:

 nothing to do with the quality of your photos, which are great.

 

 

but the captions and keywords are rubbish

 

km

[Richard Baker]

https://www.wikihow.com/Write-Good-Captions-in-Photojournalism

 

 

 

 

 

[Doc]

1 hour ago, RedSnapper said:

 

 

but the captions and keywords are rubbish

 

km

+1 - listen to what gvallee is saying and you will do better

 

Kumar

[John Morrison]

Captions and keywords need to be boringly literal; you're catering for the requirements of a search engine rather than visitors to an art gallery...

[Jill Morgan]

Your putting a Title on your image, not a caption.  A caption is the WWWWWH synopsis of what the image is about.  And it is searchable by clients.  Clients don't give a whit about a cute title, they search specifics.  

 

Jill

[RedSnapper]

4 hours ago, Jill Morgan said:

  A caption is the WWWWWH synopsis of what the image is about.

 

 

Just to be clear.....your caption should aim to answer these questions:

 

who

what

where

why

when

how

 

 

km

[Fishing fool]

Thank you every one! this exactly what I was looking for.  Looks like I need to work on my captions and keywords as well as work on numbers of photos.  Just being pretty new at this I had no idea the caption played such a big role in getting sales and I thought only the keywords were the searchable items and I defiantly plan to keep uploading as many as I can and try get as many topics as I can. Again Thank you everyone!

[Fishing fool]

10 hours ago, RedSnapper said:

 

 

but the captions and keywords are rubbish

 

km

thank you for your advice! should I always try to get as many keywords as possible? because I struggle at getting a lot that have anything to do with what my photo is 

[Fishing fool]

10 hours ago, Richard Baker said:

https://www.wikihow.com/Write-Good-Captions-in-Photojournalism

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for this link! I have saved it in favorites and will be reading it!

[Fishing fool]

10 hours ago, gvallee said:

35 images? Add a few more thousands images and you might get a sale.

 

I noticed some of your captions:

MEW8BA 'Waiting for a free meal'

MEW87W 'Eyes so small yet a world so big'

 

These are not adequate for the editorial market. You have to describe what it is. In this example, the animal common name, Latin name, what it's doing, location, etc...

You are going to get false hits, for example if a buyer searches for 'meal', there is no meal in your picture. Your ranking will sink and your images won't be seen.

 

I would suggest you read carefully all the guidelines before uploading any more.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Gen

 

 

 

Thank you this does help a lot! My captions need a lot of work  Again I had no idea the caption played such a huge role  Instagram is the furthest I have posted photos looks like I have picked up a bad habit  but I now know what I need to do better at Thank you! 

[Richard Tadman]

Please take this as constructive criticism. We've all been here and you were right to ask the Forum for advice and support. The good news is that your images are fine, but enabling prospective buyers to find them is a particular technique as the various contributors have pointed out. Good luck with your endeavours

[Fishing fool]

32 minutes ago, Richard Tadman said:

Please take this as constructive criticism. We've all been here and you were right to ask the Forum for advice and support. The good news is that your images are fine, but enabling prospective buyers to find them is a particular technique as the various contributors have pointed out. Good luck with your endeavours

This is perfect I need constructive criticism to get better at all this  and this is why I decided to ask the forum to get help and advice from seasoned contributors such as your self and others and its really helpful to know that my images are good although I think there is still room for improvement there too but hearing from a contributor as your self is very helpful.  Thank you for  all the help

[Cryptoprocta]

On 23/07/2018 at 21:15, Fishing fool said:

thank you for your advice! should I always try to get as many keywords as possible? because I struggle at getting a lot that have anything to do with what my photo is 

No, only keyword what is relevant to your image.

For example, IMO you have irrelevant keywords and marginally relevant keywords for file  MFKFRA, a Snowy Egret, and you've missed some I'd have put in

Examples of irrelevant keyword - 'Earth Day' (even if you took the image that day, it's not relevant)

Examplesof marginally relevant keywords: black legs*, long neck, etc. (You'd have to trawl though Alamy Measures 'all of Alamy' to see if that sort of term is searched by buyers.)

Examples of missed keywords: USA, American, US, North American, standing, rocks**

The system will merge keywords, sometimes unfortunately, but you might like to keyword phrases like American bird, North American Wildlife. You should also say in the caption and keywords that the bird is in 'breeding plumage' (long feathers on back, these are dropped later in the season).

 

*Though I'd probably write 'yellow feet' because not all photos of Snowy Egret will show the 'golden slippers', and that may be exactly what a buyer wants, whereas all Snowy Egrets have long necks, long beak etc, and probably most pics show the black legs.

 

**You have rocks in the caption, and at the moment, the system seems to favour the caption over the keywords; but that can change, and has done so in the past, viz keywords trumping caption, best to have the most important keywords in both.

[Fishing fool]

9 hours ago, Cryptoprocta said:

No, only keyword what is relevant to your image.

For example, IMO you have irrelevant keywords and marginally relevant keywords for file  MFKFRA, a Snowy Egret, and you've missed some I'd have put in

Examples of irrelevant keyword - 'Earth Day' (even if you took the image that day, it's not relevant)

Examplesof marginally relevant keywords: black legs*, long neck, etc. (You'd have to trawl though Alamy Measures 'all of Alamy' to see if that sort of term is searched by buyers.)

Examples of missed keywords: USA, American, US, North American, standing, rocks**

The system will merge keywords, sometimes unfortunately, but you might like to keyword phrases like American bird, North American Wildlife. You should also say in the caption and keywords that the bird is in 'breeding plumage' (long feathers on back, these are dropped later in the season).

 

*Though I'd probably write 'yellow feet' because not all photos of Snowy Egret will show the 'golden slippers', and that may be exactly what a buyer wants, whereas all Snowy Egrets have long necks, long beak etc, and probably most pics show the black legs.

 

**You have rocks in the caption, and at the moment, the system seems to favour the caption over the keywords; but that can change, and has done so in the past, viz keywords trumping caption, best to have the most important keywords in both.

This is helpful to because I was trying to get the discoverability in the green  now I know that is not as important and I can replace those random keywords I thrown in with better keywords like the ones you have exampled. Its also helpful you said that is in breeding plumage I try research as much as I can but that is really good know for here and just in general 

[Cryptoprocta]

14 minutes ago, Fishing fool said:

This is helpful to because I was trying to get the discoverability in the green  now I know that is not as important

That green bar is a mystery to all of us. It's not even as though Alamy expect us to get 'into the green' - this is a screenshot from their own video on the current Image Manager, so it must be what they see as good practice - for the particular exemplars, there are only 16 keywords.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/int98rsxud1usey/AlamyDiscoverability.jpg?dl=0

(Sorry, I can't remember how to get pics into a post. )

[Fishing fool]

23 hours ago, Cryptoprocta said:

That green bar is a mystery to all of us. It's not even as though Alamy expect us to get 'into the green' - this is a screenshot from their own video on the current Image Manager, so it must be what they see as good practice - for the particular exemplars, there are only 16 keywords.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/int98rsxud1usey/AlamyDiscoverability.jpg?dl=0

(Sorry, I can't remember how to get pics into a post. )

I'm glad you clarified this for me I would so much time trying to get to that green bar. I'm going to go through all my images and do a lot of rework on them, now that I have a much better idea of what should be included and what shouldn't be included 

[Sally]

10 hours ago, Fishing fool said:

I'm glad you clarified this for me I would so much time trying to get to that green bar. I'm going to go through all my images and do a lot of rework on them, now that I have a much better idea of what should be included and what shouldn't be included 

Easy to do with only 35 photos. I learned the hard way after several hundreds. I didn’t even find this forum until about six months after starting on Alamy.

[Avpics]

9 minutes ago, Sally said:

Easy to do with only 35 photos. I learned the hard way after several hundreds. I didn’t even find this forum until about six months after starting on Alamy.

You're probably not aware of this, but Alamy changed the Image Manager in 2016 which caused a great deal of corruption of the keywording. Many of us took this as a reason to go through our collections to not only repair the problems but also to sharpen up the tags (as they had become). I had just over 3000 images at the time, and other contributors had many more, so to anyone with so few photos it is well worth taking the time to work back through them now before going forward.

[Fishing fool]

In this case less images was a blessing in disguise spend less time doing rework and more time moving forward. Is there any advantage to selling photos as rights managed vs royalty free and vise versa or is it all personal preference?