Hi. Where am I going wrong ?.

[Chicago]

Hi ladies & gents.

Just looking for some advice on where I could be going wrong. My average CRTon alamy is I think 0.22, which I believe is terrible.

I've been an alamy contributor for over a year now and my images are getting hardly any views at all.

I know I dont have a lot of images on alamy (128), but all the time on alamy I've only ever had 2 zooms in total.

Now I wouldn't say my images are absolutely breathtaking, but I dont think they are that terrible also.

If there is anything obvious someone can spot as to why I'm not getting any sales or zooms then please feel free to let me know.

Cheers in advance and kind regards, david.

Link to my profile...

https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/180007.html

Edited March 14, 2020 by Chicago
Forgot to add link to my alamy portfolio

[Cal]

I'm not far from Manchester and found looking at your profile we have been to a few of the same places. Nice to "bump into" someone who isn't on the opposite side of the world as is so common on the Internet.

 

I have a similar size portfolio as yours, been here for a year and a half (ish) only one zoom and 29 views according to what I just checked. CTR was 3.45, didn't really know what any of that means. I sold 2 separate images (one twice) which I'm still surprised by, in fact I'm still surprised that I ever passed the first quality check and got to go through the door in selling my photos.

 

I'm not an expert and so I'm not going to try and offer some kind of critique on your profile but I guess it's just a case of increasing your numbers? I am amazed I made any sale as I hadn't expected to for years until my portfolio size increased and to be honest I think it's probably a fluke. Consensus on here seems to be you have to be in the thousands to make anything approaching regular sales, so just keep at it. I still see it as a hobby I am having a chance at monetising that keeps me busy, I don't treat it as work.

[spacecadet]

I'm told the illustrative stuff doesn't do well here, it's primarily an editorial agency, but that aside, it's a numbers game.

With 100 images you can expect a sale a year at most, and that's with a general collection and a good deal more variety.

[Matt Ashmore]

I agree with Sally R. Some of your images are a little on the dark side.. if in doubt, take a look at the histogram in your editing software and try and centre it.

[spacecadet]

+1 on the dark images- mostly your exteriors. If they look fine to you your monitor may need calibrating. Many here use paid-for software, but the display adjustment built in to Windows is worth trying first.

Edited March 16, 2020 by spacecadet

[Chicago]

Thanks for the input ladies and gents, much appreciated. Cheers cal, yeah I'm not far from manchester united football ground. Never know we might bump into one an other one day lol. Wish I had 2 sales, my alamy portfolio is a bit like a ghost own at the moment 🤣.

Cheers spacecadet, yeah I agree the more images, the better chance of a sale, bit like fishing with 20 rods instead of 1.

Cheers Sally r, Matt cashmore, I'd also agree about my images being a little to dark. Think the way that happened was I was using photoshop on my laptop to slightly tweak the shots, one day my daughter came in and commented that my screen was bright, to me it didnt that bright so just carried on ☺😁. Should have listen to her I guess. And yeah I should have relied on the histogram instead of my eye, definitely will in future .

Sally r, yeah the kitty's our little ozzy, he really is such a laid back lovely little cat ❤

Dont suppose there would be an easy way to brighten the shots already submitted to alamy without deleting and resubmiting?.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Chicago
Added the last line

[sooth]

.

Edited October 19, 2023 by sooth

[Chicago]

Thanks all. Taking it all on board. All for the good. Better to know than not. See I wouldn't call myself a professional photographer at all.

Infact I'm quite an ameture ( picked up my first DSLR a little over a year ago ) to be honest it's been a bit of a head bender just getting my head around aperture, exposure & iso, didnt help at first with aperture being reverse of what youd expect. But I'm learning every day & hoping to get much  better. 

Didnt know about stabilization setting making the image blurred, ( see reverse of what you would expect ) now I do know. See I'm learning 👍. I do use a tripod & remote shutter, think if I remember right the campervan kettle shot it was a windy day and the van was getting gusts of wind a bit, maybe that didnt help + I would imagine the stabilization was set on the camera to on ?.

But please any other useful tips then please keep them coming. 

Maybe some will say what a stupid place to start ( alamy ), but I truely believe in throwing myself in at the deep end as I think you learn more that way. Maybe I'm wrong.

Oh yeah the tagging issue, I had previously read that over tagging can be detrimental, but the I relied on alamy's advice. Cant remember exactly the words, but it was along the drift of the more tags the better ?.

I was tempted to remove loads of tags but then thought I'd have no chance at all of getting my images seen at all.

Edited March 17, 2020 by Chicago
My bad.

[CAROL SAUNDERS]

17 hours ago, Chicago said:

didnt help at first with aperture being reverse of what youd expect.

 

Your few words above really struck a chord with me.  I know exactly what you mean and remember struggling with that when I was starting out.   Bear with it and it will all start making sense sooner than you think and experiment with your apertures and you will soon see how it works.

 

Carol

[Chicago]

On 18/03/2020 at 11:43, CAROL SAUNDERS said:

 

Your few words above really struck a chord with me.  I know exactly what you mean and remember struggling with that when I was starting out.   Bear with it and it will all start making sense sooner than you think and experiment with your apertures and you will soon see how it works.

 

Carol

Cheers Carol. Yeah definitely a bit daunting at first. But getting more familiar with my camera as time goes by. Yeah I'm going keep going-learning-improving.  Really could never see myself giving up on it. 

[Cal]

On 17/03/2020 at 18:05, Chicago said:

Thanks all. Taking it all on board. All for the good. Better to know than not. See I wouldn't call myself a professional photographer at all.

Infact I'm quite an ameture ( picked up my first DSLR a little over a year ago ) to be honest it's been a bit of a head bender just getting my head around aperture, exposure & iso, didnt help at first with aperture being reverse of what youd expect. But I'm learning every day & hoping to get much  better. 

Didnt know about stabilization setting making the image blurred, ( see reverse of what you would expect ) now I do know. See I'm learning 👍. I do use a tripod & remote shutter, think if I remember right the campervan kettle shot it was a windy day and the van was getting gusts of wind a bit, maybe that didnt help + I would imagine the stabilization was set on the camera to on ?.

But please any other useful tips then please keep them coming. 

Maybe some will say what a stupid place to start ( alamy ), but I truely believe in throwing myself in at the deep end as I think you learn more that way. Maybe I'm wrong.

Oh yeah the tagging issue, I had previously read that over tagging can be detrimental, but the I relied on alamy's advice. Cant remember exactly the words, but it was along the drift of the more tags the better ?.

I was tempted to remove loads of tags but then thought I'd have no chance at all of getting my images seen at all.

it might seem obvious but make sure you’re reviewing your images on a half decent monitor, that’s the best advice I can give. I got into stock photography last year on a whim after buying myself an iMac 5K (27”) and realising I’d given myself an excellent platform to start properly dealing with the PP/eval side of my photography. Talk about doing things the wrong way round, but if I hadn’t treated myself to that iMac I’d probably never have started taking photography semi-seriously. The other side of that is, only ever having had monitors with orders of magnitude fewer pixels, it highlighted how many of my existing images were of poor quality. Slightly out of focus shots, slight motion blur, even noise to an extent that just wasn’t being noticed on an ordinary monitor. It was only when I moved to the HiDpi setup that I realised how inferior much of my content from the last 5 years was. I’ve now ditched the bad habits like using a fast prime instead of a tripod and almost exclusively use manual focus for still subjects (partly though because my body is rubbish at focusing, but partly because it’s EVF which makes fine MF easy to get right). 

[zxzoomy]

Have to keep plugging away. I think I had about 800 up before I sold anything. On the more recent cityscape shots - isn't that Manchester Town Hall in the distance rather than the cathedral?

[Chicago]

On 20/03/2020 at 00:45, Cal said:

it might seem obvious but make sure you’re reviewing your images on a half decent monitor, that’s the best advice I can give. I got into stock photography last year on a whim after buying myself an iMac 5K (27”) and realising I’d given myself an excellent platform to start properly dealing with the PP/eval side of my photography. Talk about doing things the wrong way round, but if I hadn’t treated myself to that iMac I’d probably never have started taking photography semi-seriously. The other side of that is, only ever having had monitors with orders of magnitude fewer pixels, it highlighted how many of my existing images were of poor quality. Slightly out of focus shots, slight motion blur, even noise to an extent that just wasn’t being noticed on an ordinary monitor. It was only when I moved to the HiDpi setup that I realised how inferior much of my content from the last 5 years was. I’ve now ditched the bad habits like using a fast prime instead of a tripod and almost exclusively use manual focus for still subjects (partly though because my body is rubbish at focusing, but partly because it’s EVF which makes fine MF easy to get right). 

Hi, yeah think viewing/tweeking the photos on my laptop with a badly adjusted screen definitely didnt help my situation, I would tweak them then load them to alamy on my laptop and they didnt seem too dark, then after loading them and viewing them on my tablet they did appear too dark.

In an ideal world I'd buy a decent monitor setup but with money how it is nowadays it will have to be on the back burner for a while. But I will definitely be far more careful with my screen adjustment and vetting of photos before I load the to alamy in future. Thanks for the input 👍

[Chicago]

On 22/03/2020 at 13:43, zxzoomy said:

Have to keep plugging away. I think I had about 800 up before I sold anything. On the more recent cityscape shots - isn't that Manchester Town Hall in the distance rather than the cathedral?

Hi Zoomy, yeah it really is something I dont want to give up on and really cant see myself giving up on. I love taking photos, I find it good for my soul.

So I'll definitely keep going at it and hopefully improving as I go.

Yeah think you're more than likely right about it being Manchester town hall. Thanks for the heads up, I'll sort that out now. You would think with me living in manchester all my life I'd know the difference ☺. Cheers fella

[giphotostock]

You need to change what and how you shoot.

 

Choose the market that you'd want to supply to. Yes, there are different markets (ie buyers) for photography. Study that market, what images are in demand (ie being used)? Shoot that. Pre-visualize and produce images. "Shoot what you see" is arguably the least profitable approach, even travel is likely to do better.

 

If you keep "plugging away", that'll only lead to more fiscal disappointment in the future. If you doing it for the pleasure, that's a different ball game and my advise needn't apply.

 

GI

[Walnutter23]

Hi David,

I am an amateur too but a keen one. I have been on Alamy for about two years. I was a bit amazed when I got accepted then actually sold some images and then eventually got past the $50 barrier and actually got some money!

 

My day job is as a graphic designer and I work on a couple of small magazines so use Getty images and Adobe Stock a lot and Alamy,  and other photo libraries ocassionally so am looking at great images all day. I think it really helps to be inspired by great imagery so I would recommend looking at great images on all the best photo libraries as they will eventually improve the sorts of shots you take as you see how others take shots. Not that you should try and copy them but they can help I find. I have got into reportage a bit over the last year or so, photographing demos and marches. I love the energy. So I tend to look at Gettys news images a lot and see what works.

 

I would recommend tagging with as many accurate words a possible. Look at others on Alamy to see how they do it. Someone on here, I think, said that good tagging is more important than good tech skills which is exaggerating but without tagging no one can find your shots.

 

Finally I would say it's a numbers game. When I first uploaded and saw contributors with 1000s of images I nearly gave up but over time I have added bit by bit and now have just over 1000.

 

I will never make serious cash from this but I love taking photos and if it pays me a bit of pocket money so much the better.

 

All the best.

Stuart

[AlexG]

On 14/03/2020 at 05:00, Chicago said:

 

 

Hello Chicago,

I've been here now for close to a year. I just last week made my second sale and I have a bit over 350 images. I think we can't expect much with comparatively few images to some of the other users on here.

As mentioned above, editorial, lifestyle, and daily social activity images seem to sell well here. I've been told that having too many of the same subject can be detrimental and make it difficult for a customer to choose. So for example you have a bunch of photos of a cat. You could perhaps narrow it down to 2-3 of the best ones. That's not to say you can't upload more cat photos at a later time, but perhaps space them out a bit with fewer bunched together too.

I've been avoiding adjectives that describe subjective aspects like beautiful, gorgeous, because those can apply to many things and your images can pop up in unrelated searches, which won't help your CTR score. Mine's not great, hovering around 0.4, with the occasional zoom helping it shoot up temporarily.

 

I hope this helps. Good luck!

[ChiTownGallery]

I find that selling online is a whole different world than selling in person. Online its all about being on the first page of search, maybe the first three depending. If you're not on the first 3 pages, your work will prob never be seen. I have witnessed on many online sites that mediocre images sell and the reason is that they come up first in search. I would say that making a perfect picture is only about 25% of selling it online. Figure out the ranking criteria and algorithm of this site, and you will be surprised at the difference, regardless of how many images you have for sale. Don't ever kick yourself about thinking your images are not good enough just because they aren't selling now. Learn how to get them on the first page. I myself, care more about quality than just taking thousands of shots a week or month to put up for sale, playing a numbers game. It's proven that both ways work though.