Hows your CTR doing from 1st August?

[John Mitchell]

Big drop this month according to my CTR graph, down to 0.36 from 0.56 in July and 0.65 in June.

 

Summertime blues?

[Reimar]

Over the last year my range of overall CTR is 0.32 to 0.56 with a total of 0.44.  August is 0.43, so nothing unusual for me.

[Colin Woods]

12 hours ago, Futterwithtrees said:

I hate seeing images that are highlighted as being of "Poor Discoverability" and have often succumbed to the temptation to include more keywords to make them more discoverable.

It makes them much more discoverable. So your images will correspond to an increasing number of searches to which your images are not relevant, which means your CTR will take a hit. Just pretend the discoverability bar is not there.

[Colin Woods]

12 hours ago, Futterwithtrees said:

 

[cbimages]

Last month, my CTR dropped to the lowest for many years, but bounced back this month. Currently 1.38. 2 zooms already turned into sales.

[Futterwithtrees]

I hate seeing images that are highlighted as being of "Poor Discoverability" and have often succumbed to the temptation to include more keywords to make them more discoverable.

 

Having said that however my August CTR is .54. With 8 zooms but not a sale in sight. In fact I have not many sales overall and of those i do have none have ever been zoomed before purchase. How does that work into my stats??

 

 

[gvallee]

5 minutes ago, Futterwithtrees said:

I hate seeing images that are highlighted as being of "Poor Discoverability" and have often succumbed to the temptation to include more keywords to make them more discoverable.

 

Having said that however my August CTR is .54. With 8 zooms but not a sale in sight. In fact I have not many sales overall and of those i do have none have ever been zoomed before purchase. How does that work into my stats??

 

 

 

CTR has nothing to do with sales. It stands for Click Through Rate. 

It is a very simple calculation and represents the percentage of zooms relative to views.

 

For example: since beginning of August, I had 9,131 views out of which 63 were zoomed.

So my CTR for August so far is 63/9,131*100 = 0.69.

Simples. Or confusing 

 

Gen

[Colblimp]

August figures as follows:

 

Sales - big fat zero, Views - 2049, Zooms - 13, which gives me a CTR of 0.63.  Meh...

[Southpole]

Bouncing off the floor down from 54 to 37

[gvallee]

What actually can we learn from CTR, except false hits?

 

Gen

[Guest Larbug]

August CTR 1.27

Overall CTR 1.46

One sale so far in August, 158 views and 2 zooms from a port full of insects and bugs

[Sally]

I’m not sure that CTR is a terribly useful statistic, especially because so many sales occur of photos that aren’t even zoomed. My CTR has always been pretty appalling. Doesn’t stop me having sales. Around 6,800 views, 16 zooms and a CTR for August of 0.23. Six sales so far this month.....

 

I haven’t managed to get my CTR above 0.4 since October of last year. I’ve had 65 sales since November. Quite a few of those are News, so they aren’t even in the equation.

[Bryan]

Mine is generally below average, but a peak of 0.72 in April, a trough of 0.33 in May and now, higher than normal, at 0.58.

 

Maybe reaping rewards of May's trough as this month's sales are well below par - but this is all black magic, not sure if it has much importance.

[wiskerke]

2 hours ago, gvallee said:

What actually can we learn from CTR, except false hits?

 

Gen

 

High CTR: no worries if there are sales. No or few sales? See low CTR.

From a low CTR in general:

My images are not what the client expected for his/her search terms.

- Maybe my keywords have suggested something different (=false hits=wrong keywords).

- Maybe the quality of the competing images are better.

- Maybe the client doesn't like the way I have depicted the subject.

- Maybe the client doesn't like my photographic style (am I behind the fashion?).

- ?

- ?

If sales are good for the same subjects, then you have no worries: some clients like them; some clients don't.

If views are high, but sales are low or non existent:  review the keywords and review the competition. Could be you're getting views because of your good rank or the results are so low your image is almost always included in the search.

 

My CTR has never been this low: 0.44.

So if views hold up, but sales are plummeting also, I'll have to be worried.

We'll talk again well after Labor Day; la Rentrée; end of summer; eind van de komkommertijd (=end of the silly season) or whatever you call it where you live: when normal life kicks in after summer.

 

wim

 

In the meantime listen to REM ; the Carpenters or Skeeter Davis or watch Stephen Hawking; Wim Wenders or the BBC. I'm sure you all can find those links yourself ;-)

Or just google TEOTWAWKI.

The executive summary (and I feel fine).

[Cryptoprocta]

58 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

 

High CTR: no worries if there are sales. No or few sales? See low CTR.

From a low CTR in general:

My images are not what the client expected for his/her search terms.

- Maybe my keywords have suggested something different (=false hits=wrong keywords).

- Maybe the quality of the competing images are better.

- Maybe the client doesn't like the way I have depicted the subject.

- Maybe the client doesn't like my photographic style (am I behind the fashion?).

- ?

- ?

False hits may mean wrong keywords, but it could also mean unfortunately combined correct keywords, which 'we' can do nothing about (client can avoid to an extent by searching for phrases inside quotations, but many don't.

 

Maybe the quality of your image is great, but another less great image happens to fit the layout/colour scheme better.

Maybe the client is behind the fashion.

Maybe the client has weird taste: I remember one instance in particular when I saw an Alamy photo of a particular species of bird used, which by several accounts was a pooriish photo. It's a fairly common bird here, but famously skittish. It turned out there were over a hundred photos of that species on Alamy at the time, all of which would have been "better" by any competition standard, and most of which most people would almost certainly have deemed 'better'. But that's the one the client chose!

Sometimes I'm surprised - and delighted - that one of mine has been chosen against stiff competition, usually with better light.

[gvallee]

14 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

High CTR: no worries if there are sales. No or few sales? See low CTR.

From a low CTR in general:

My images are not what the client expected for his/her search terms.

- Maybe my keywords have suggested something different (=false hits=wrong keywords).

- Maybe the quality of the competing images are better.

- Maybe the client doesn't like the way I have depicted the subject.

- Maybe the client doesn't like my photographic style (am I behind the fashion?).

- ?

- ?

If sales are good for the same subjects, then you have no worries: some clients like them; some clients don't.

If views are high, but sales are low or non existent:  review the keywords and review the competition. Could be you're getting views because of your good rank or the results are so low your image is almost always included in the search.

 

My CTR has never been this low: 0.44.

So if views hold up, but sales are plummeting also, I'll have to be worried.

We'll talk again well after Labor Day; la Rentrée; end of summer; eind van de komkommertijd (=end of the silly season) or whatever you call it where you live: when normal life kicks in after summer.

 

wim

 

In the meantime listen to REM ; the Carpenters or Skeeter Davis or watch Stephen Hawking; Wim Wenders or the BBC. I'm sure you all can find those links yourself ;-)

Or just google TEOTWAWKI.

The executive summary (and I feel fine).

 

Sure, it tells us about incorrect keywords. In my case, I did a lot of homework long time ago. I spent half a day every day for weeks studying Alamy Measures to see what keywords buyers were using. As a result, I am confident that I built an accurate hierarchy and templates in Bridge. The problem is when I make the effort of shooting something more editorial like people or objects. Then I'm out of my depth and I need to do more research.

 

Quality of competing images? I am often surprised at the choice of images sold I see. Not what I would have chosen. It's like Facebook. Often I post an image I'm really keen on and expect lots of likes but I get a handful (it happened this morning again). Conversely, I post a banal image and I get an avalanche. So who knows?

 

Fashion? I'll tell my birds and spiders to pay more attention to trends.

 

I'm being flippant, I'm sure CTR helps to some extent but there are so many other factors to sales that I don't waste time worrying about it.

 

Gen

 

[regen]

I don't think that CTR is worth worrying about nor is discoverability. Over the last 12 months my CTR has been as high as 1.5 and as low as 05 with an average of .79. I do not have a single file with good discoverability because years ago i decided on minimal keywords (average about 7 per file). I have not added to my port for about 5 years nor revisited any files and my sales continue to increase in numbers year by year and decrease in value.

 

There are too many people chasing to few sales of declining value to make it financially viable to submit let alone spend time trying to second guess the vagaries of the Alamy system! 

 

Regen

[Jill Morgan]

My click through rate has sunk since December.  Sitting at .32 and I usually am around .5.  Not a zoom this month, yet a couple of sales, which is the norm for me.  So I don't worry or think about it anymore.   I haven't added any new images this year as real life has been extremely busy, but would love some time for me and the cameras.  

 

Jill

[Doc]

Thanks everybody for your answers....Clearly there has not been a significant global change for most people one way or the other so I think I can put my poorer zoom results this month just down to the random roller-coaster that Alamy can be!

 

Cheers

 

Kumar

[John Mitchell]

4 hours ago, Doc said:

Thanks everybody for your answers....Clearly there has not been a significant global change for most people one way or the other so I think I can put my poorer zoom results this month just down to the random roller-coaster that Alamy can be!

 

Cheers

 

Kumar

 

It seems I'm the guy sitting behind you on that random roller-coaster. However, the nice thing about roller-coasters is that for every down there's an up.