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NEW CONTRIBUTOR HERE - WOULD ANYONE LIKE TO CRITIQUE MY PORTFOLIO??


air4den

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Hi all,

I've recently joined as a contributor, and lately I've been uploading some of my previously taken photos. I know that I'm lacking in the volume of images needed, so I will defiantly be uploading more as time goes on. 

If anyone would like to take a look and critique my photos, tag usage, etc., that would be great! Also, I have a few questions:

How long does it usually take to start seeing sales?

With what kind of volume of a portfolio does it take to start seeing regular sales. 

What general types of images sell best?

How to get images seen in searches? 

How to find good keywords?

How detailed it too detailed for caption and location?

 

Thank you so much for your help, 

Josh

Edited by air4den
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Hi Josh

Firstly you have some lovely images.

If you use the search facility or just trawl back through the forum you will find lots of information relating to all of your questions. Have a look at the 'images found in ....' threads which run every month, also 'images sold in ...' again every month. Although they are not exhaustive they will give you an idea. 
In your dashboard, measures, click on All of Alamy, select dates or just 'yesterday' and again you will see SOME of the images that have been sold. (Note, not ALL images sold will be shown on AOA). 
Keywording....what is in your image? I personally do not think you need to be using words like, cute, tasty, beautiful etc. image 2AHNC6X for example, you have coal (can't see it) satisfying, sledding, adorable, tinsel, yarn etc. I can't see tinsel, yarn, sledding....hopefully you get what I mean. Again, do a forum search keywording comes up all the time.

It used to be said on average you would sell 1 image per 1,000 per month. Not sure if that still stands now that Alamy is reaching 200 million images, but its pretty accurate for me. 

I am sure some others will come along with some information (probably more helpful than mine :)

Jenny

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On ‎12‎/‎01‎/‎2020 at 00:22, air4den said:

 

Hi all,

I've recently joined as a contributor, and lately I've been uploading some of my previously taken photos. I know that I'm lacking in the volume of images needed, so I will defiantly be uploading more as time goes on. 

If anyone would like to take a look and critique my photos, tag usage, etc., that would be great! Also, I have a few questions:

How long does it usually take to start seeing sales?

With what kind of volume of a portfolio does it take to start seeing regular sales. 

What general types of images sell best?

How to get images seen in searches? 

How to find good keywords?

How detailed it too detailed for caption and location?

 

Thank you so much for your help, 

Josh

Josh,

 

You have some nice images and don't let anyone convince you that sales, I call them licenses because I do not "sell" any of my images, will come.  I had my first license on Alamy with less than 300 images online.

 

Keywords: Unfortunately GOOGLE is your friend.  I used to have a stack of reference books next to my computer and now I just go on GOOGLE for background information.  As a retired photojournalist it is not difficult to pick out the keywords.

 

Need to add: Do Not use unnecessary keywords.  Who, What, Where, When and How is of first importance.

 

Best,

 

Chuck 

Edited by Chuck Nacke
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To pick up george's theme, you are adding way too many irrelevant keywords. I looked at the Merrry Christmas letters, and you have"candy cane", "snow", "top down" in there. Are you trying to get your photos optimised using the Discoverability Bar? If so, ignore it. Keywording is a bit of a dark art in which the gravest transgression is keyword stuffing. Your keywords should answer the question Who, What, Where, Why , When and How. Then you can add any emotional themes such as peace, peaceful, heppy. etc. Just describe what is in the photo. Sometimes that can take lots of keywords, others can be completely described in less than ten. Using the Discoverability Bar invites you to add irrelevant words just to get green. If you add irrelevant keywords you will be seen in more searches, but if you photo is not relevant to that image then it will not be clicked on. Alamy uses the number of your images clicked on to determine your rank in searches, so if you have lots of images coming up in searches and none of them are clicked on, then your position in future searches will go down. Search the forum on Discoverability Bar to see past discussions on the curse of a feature.

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24 minutes ago, Colin Woods said:

To pick up george's theme, you are adding way too many irrelevant keywords. I looked at the Merrry Christmas letters, and you have"candy cane", "snow", "top down" in there. Are you trying to get your photos optimised using the Discoverability Bar? If so, ignore it. Keywording is a bit of a dark art in which the gravest transgression is keyword stuffing. Your keywords should answer the question Who, What, Where, Why , When and How. Then you can add any emotional themes such as peace, peaceful, heppy. etc. Just describe what is in the photo. Sometimes that can take lots of keywords, others can be completely described in less than ten. Using the Discoverability Bar invites you to add irrelevant words just to get green. If you add irrelevant keywords you will be seen in more searches, but if you photo is not relevant to that image then it will not be clicked on. Alamy uses the number of your images clicked on to determine your rank in searches, so if you have lots of images coming up in searches and none of them are clicked on, then your position in future searches will go down. Search the forum on Discoverability Bar to see past discussions on the curse of a feature.

 

small miniature tasty sweet sugary pink and white marshmallows in holiday bowl top down shot Stock Photo

 

Yeah.. keywords for this one include 'antarctic, arctic, belge, chocolate, christmas, dessert, festive, holidays, hot, joy, warm, warmth, winter'.

 

... which makes me wonder if you are using the Alamy Image Manager tool to keyword images and are forgetting to deselect images before moving on to keyword the next image(s).

 

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Editorial images that can be used to illustrate books and articles ( magazines, newspapers, websites, etc.) tend to do best on Alamy. If you've keyworded your images for microstock, as it looks as if you might have, you will have to make some changes for Alamy -- think Who? What? Where? When?

 

Alamy has  suggestions for tagging here.

 

Good luck!

 

 

 

 

Edited by John Mitchell
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You have a very good eye for composition but your landscape photos look like unprocessed raw files.  If you look at your competition for the subject matter you have covered you will find images with more saturation, contrast, detail and drama.  It has been mentioned here before that it helps to have images that catch the customers attention as they are scrolling through the thousands of photos in their search results.  Here is a video that should help. 

 

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On 13/01/2020 at 09:24, Matt Ashmore said:

 

small miniature tasty sweet sugary pink and white marshmallows in holiday bowl top down shot Stock Photo

 

Yeah.. keywords for this one include 'antarctic, arctic, belge, chocolate, christmas, dessert, festive, holidays, hot, joy, warm, warmth, winter'.

 

... which makes me wonder if you are using the Alamy Image Manager tool to keyword images and are forgetting to deselect images before moving on to keyword the next image(s).

 

 

 

considering not one of the image in portfolio is related to "antarctic" nor "arctic"  this is more likely from so called "keyword generators" which for some weird reason many think are a good idea. (why would you want the same keyword as everyone else) 

 

i did wonder about belge, but i think the KW is beige maybe from background, but i surely wouldn't use it, as i doubt someone looking for 'beige' would want this image. 

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On 11/01/2020 at 23:22, air4den said:

 

 

How to get images seen in searches? 

 

 

Thank you so much for your help, 

Josh

 

 

Actually you have found the way,  For example your images figure prominently in a search for 

 

"marshmallow bowl christmas "

 

https://www.alamy.com/search/imageresults.aspx?qt=marshmallow bowl christmas &imgt=0

 

 

Though i am not sure they would fit what they are looking for.  In all fairness, most of the image on page one fail to actually have the 3 items included, which makes me worried overall for Alamy. 

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1 hour ago, meanderingemu said:

considering not one of the image in portfolio is related to "antarctic" nor "arctic"  this is more likely from so called "keyword generators" which for some weird reason many think are a good idea. (why would you want the same keyword as everyone else) 

 

I think it depends how you use the "keyword generators". 

I have started using one myself - MyKeyworder.com .. and I like it so much that I've installed the Lightroom plugin version (paid a donation) and I've changed my workflow so that I now keyword in Lightroom before upload rather than keywording in AIM after upload.

 

Personally I think of my own keywords first and then see what the MyKeyworder plugin suggests afterwards to add more keywords.. and I am finding many good keywords that simply hadn't occurred to me. But I think you have to apply "human filtering" to the suggested keywords and only take the ones that make sense.

Edited by Matt Ashmore
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32 minutes ago, Matt Ashmore said:

 

I think it depends how you use the "keyword generators". 

I have started using one myself - MyKeyworder.com .. and I like it so much that I've installed the Lightroom plugin version (paid a donation) and I've changed my workflow so that I now keyword in Lightroom before upload rather than keywording in AIM after upload.

 

Personally I think of my own keywords first and then see what the MyKeyworder suggests afterwards to add more keywords.. and I am finding many good keywords that simply hadn't occurred to me. But I think you have to apply "human filtering" to the suggested keywords and only take the ones that make sense.

Thanks for the tip- I'd found MKW last week when my previous one (microstockgroup)  went AWOL but didn't spot the plugin. Even I might start keywording in LR, now there's no risk of a QC fail trashing the effort.

Edited by spacecadet
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On 13/01/2020 at 08:53, Colin Woods said:

To pick up george's theme, you are adding way too many irrelevant keywords. I looked at the Merrry Christmas letters, and you have"candy cane", "snow", "top down" in there. Are you trying to get your photos optimised using the Discoverability Bar? If so, ignore it. Keywording is a bit of a dark art in which the gravest transgression is keyword stuffing. Your keywords should answer the question Who, What, Where, Why , When and How. Then you can add any emotional themes such as peace, peaceful, heppy. etc. Just describe what is in the photo. Sometimes that can take lots of keywords, others can be completely described in less than ten. Using the Discoverability Bar invites you to add irrelevant words just to get green. If you add irrelevant keywords you will be seen in more searches, but if you photo is not relevant to that image then it will not be clicked on. Alamy uses the number of your images clicked on to determine your rank in searches, so if you have lots of images coming up in searches and none of them are clicked on, then your position in future searches will go down. Search the forum on Discoverability Bar to see past discussions on the curse of a feature.

Thank you for your advice! I have been trying to get the discovery bar to green, but as you pointed out, relavant keywords are more important.  

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