Suddenly, sales decreased horribly.

[Onuchcha]

Dear fellows, 

I am Jahangir Alam Onuchcha from Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

Its been a long time as a contributor, since 10 Mar 2016 I started contributing. 

My Portfolio: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/onuchcha.html

I have earned more than a thousand dollars from Alamy so far. My sales were medium, but some were sold every month.

But September 2019 to April 2020 my Alamy sale is too low, and it's horrible, only 2 sales (16$).

I did not understand. At first I thought it was normal, at the same time my other agency is selling well.
I am waiting, wait, and wait...

What can I do? 
Those are my Alamy experienced fellows I want to know your experience. Please fellows help me. 

 

Stay HOME and be Safe.

Thanks

 

[Onuchcha]

29 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

some questions,

do you upload the same Caption and keywords to all the agency you use? I notice you have many incomplete caption. 

Why do you always include the date the image was taken in the caption, when it is likely not really relevant, but uses 8-10% of your allowed characters?

 How much time do you spend on tagging your Alamy images, how often do you compare search results in My Alamy to make sure you are not getting unwanted false positive?

Hi meanderingemu,

yeah, some times i used the same Caption and keywords others agencies.

Because of Editorial caption needs 5W (who, what, when, where, why) and Royalty free image don't need that. And some others of my organizing mistakes. 

4/5 years long time. From the beginning I could not give much time because I was working as a photojournalist in my country.

Gradually the sales of pictures continued to grow and my interest continued to grow. It's true that I was more focused on the picture, beauty, life, and travel, not on the captions and keywords.

Your cooperation in the forum will really be benefited to me and Ok, I also learned...

 

Good luck!

 

Onuchcha

[meanderingemu]

1 hour ago, Onuchcha said:

 

Because of Editorial caption needs 5W (who, what, when, where, why) and Royalty free image don't need that.

 

Onuchcha

 

 

 

the date is already provided in your EXIF.  Also if it's important you can put it in keywords.  

 

Looking at your images

 

"Bangladesh – March 30, 2020: Life under coronavirus lockdown in bangladesh. In the empty city, a horse-drawn carriage is running with to carry passeng"  eg.2BD3B29

 

Why would you think anyone would search for "March 30" for your image  (i would probably have March, 2020 in KW for future) ?  Now someone looking for passenger would not find it.  Of course this is probably good since there is no passenger in the image. 

Note you also wasted 7% of your caption by having Bangladesh twice. 

[sooth]

13 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

 

the date is already provided in your EXIF.  Also if it's important you can put it in keywords.  

 

 

when your image is sold by alamy, all that camera exif is stripped and replaced by:

 

author, credit line,  headline (the caption), the image id, date of photo (the date that's listed on the info page for that), and invoicing info

 

 

 

[Chuck Nacke]

Jahangir,

 

I am not a good person for advice to follow, but here it is anyway.

 

First, in my opinion you need to learn to edit or select your finished
images.

 

Second, You really do need to learn to write better captions and keywords

I know that is more than difficult, I was never able to do it in French or Russian,

but most online image licenses are English based so I can get by and new

translation software can help.  If you can, I would suggest that you get yourself

a copy of the AP style book or Strunk and White's book 'Elements of Style.'

 

Right now images of food production is a major issue and I would suggest

that you go through your "food production, Harvesting" images and rewrite

your captions and keywords.

 

In closing:  I have been in the photo agency business, photo library etc. for

decades and the business has been going downhill for a long time and I really

do not know when of if it will improve.  I currently contribute to several major

agencies or libraries and until recently Alamy was my favorite to work with.

Alamy's distribution is still very good.

 

Good luck,

 

Chuck

 

 

[meanderingemu]

8 minutes ago, sooth said:

when your image is sold by alamy, all that camera exif is stripped and replaced by:

 

author, credit line,  headline (the caption), the image id, date of photo (the date that's listed on the info page for that), and invoicing info

 

 

 

 

Once it's sold, why would you really care.  Adding the date in the caption, and reducing chances that it sales chance for this seems like a bad usage of captioning

[Onuchcha]

Chuck,

 

Thank you,

Your analysis of my picture will be very useful to me.

 

I know I have a lot more to learn.

 

Be Safe 

 

Onuchcha

 

[Steve F]

Hi Onuchcha, one more thing on similar pictures, a client doesn't want to waste time looking at lots of pictures that are all essentially the same, they just want the best one. So YOU choose the best one and upload this one (this applies to pictures that are almost identical; pictures with very different angles/compositions of the same subject are ok, but again, just pick the best few and discard the rest).

Steve

[Brian Yarvin]

13 hours ago, sooth said:

also a lot of people right now are not getting a lot of sales i'm guessing there's a pandemic going on and business is a bit slow. 

 

Robert:

 

This may be true for travel photographers but April was my best month in years. At the moment, pictures of home cooking and home in general are doing really well. Home health care is doing well too (but that's not something I have shot lately). Onuchcha - this includes Bangladesh. Another agency that will go unnamed lists each sale/download by country and I see activity from there often enough.

[geogphotos]

11 hours ago, Brian Yarvin said:

 

Robert:

 

This may be true for travel photographers but April was my best month in years. At the moment, pictures of home cooking and home in general are doing really well. Home health care is doing well too (but that's not something I have shot lately). Onuchcha - this includes Bangladesh. Another agency that will go unnamed lists each sale/download by country and I see activity from there often enough.

 

Brian, It's not clear to me if your comment refers to Alamy or is a general one including your sales at other sites.

 

I understood that the OP was asking specifically about his Alamy sales because he said that 'my other agency is selling well'. 

 

Good to read a post from you. 😀

 

 

[Brian Yarvin]

Sorry Ian! The answer is both. April was a banner month for me both at Alamy and at several other agencies too. 

[geogphotos]

7 minutes ago, Brian Yarvin said:

Sorry Ian! The answer is both. April was a banner month for me both at Alamy and at several other agencies too. 

 

 

Good news! 👍

[Brian Yarvin]

Thank you Ian. 

 

As you know, a burst of sales at Alamy can lead to a jump in rank that can improve things for months to come.