Please criticize. 1300 images 1 sale

[Vicente Sargues]

Hello, greetings from Spain! I would like to know your opinion. I have been in stock photography for a while, although lately I am working more on it. With a portfolio of about 1,300 images, I have sales in several agencies, every day, but on Alamy I have only had 1 sale, in the last year. I know that the best thing about Alamy is not the amount of sales but the commission, but I've been thinking for a while that something I'm not doing well on the web !! ?? All my photographs are as optimized
According to my dashboard, my portfolio has 3780 visits and 0.24 CTR. Any ideas? Many thanks!
My portfolio: https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/650915.html

[MDM]

Hi Vicente. You are obviously an experienced photographer so I guess your lack of sales comes down to actual content and tagging. I imagine that competing with the generic stuff, which could have been taken anywhere, is very difficult here on Alamy, as there is so much of it already and you might be better off focusing on the specific Spanish stuff where you have a big advantage. For that, it is very important to give the location in the caption and in the tags (as supertags). Using the location field is good as well but it is important to be aware that it is not searchable. If I ever sell any of my Spanish  landscape pictures, it is usually because of a search on the place name. 
 

There has been an ongoing debate here about the value of optimisation and there is a general consensus that it is better to have far fewer but highly relevant tags. The reason for this is that your images will turn up in irrelevant searches which affects your click through ratio and rank. I hope this helps. Buena suerte. 
 

Edit. There is big interest in the UK at the moment in Spain and tourism because of the quarantine which was recently reimposed much to the dismay of many people who had booked holidays. If you can take pictures with this in mind you might be able to make editorial sales in the UK. 

Edited August 4, 2020 by MDM

[John Mitchell]

I notice that in some of your older travel and architectural images, you have used the "additional information" field for locations and descriptions. Remember that this field is not searchable. You need to put this important information in the captions, which are searchable.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 4, 2020 by John Mitchell

[Vicente Sargues]

13 hours ago, MDM said:

Hi Vicente. You are obviously an experienced photographer so I guess your lack of sales comes down to actual content and tagging. I imagine that competing with the generic stuff, which could have been taken anywhere, is very difficult here on Alamy, as there is so much of it already and you might be better off focusing on the specific Spanish stuff where you have a big advantage. For that, it is very important to give the location in the caption and in the tags (as supertags). Using the location field is good as well but it is important to be aware that it is not searchable. If I ever sell any of my Spanish  landscape pictures, it is usually because of a search on the place name. 
 

There has been an ongoing debate here about the value of optimisation and there is a general consensus that it is better to have far fewer but highly relevant tags. The reason for this is that your images will turn up in irrelevant searches which affects your click through ratio and rank. I hope this helps. Buena suerte. 
 

Edit. There is big interest in the UK at the moment in Spain and tourism because of the quarantine which was recently reimposed much to the dismay of many people who had booked holidays. If you can take pictures with this in mind you might be able to make editorial sales in the UK. 

 

Hello MDM, your comments are very interesting. I take them very seriously and I plan to modify the information in the images. You know, I create keywords for all agencies and it may not be the best plan for Alamy. I appreciate your comment! Thank you

[Vicente Sargues]

11 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

I notice that in some of your older travel and architectural images, you have used the "additional information" field for locations and descriptions. Remember that this field is not searchable. You need to put this important information in the captions, which are searchable.

 

 

 

 

 

Hi John. It is true. That data is something I had not paid attention to. What appears as additional information is what I usually enter as a description in Xpiks, but I see that in Alamy it is placed as "not so important" information and I think it is the most important, keywords apart. I think modifying that information is something that I'm going to have to take very seriously in the next days. Very thankful!

[MDM]

1 hour ago, Vicente Sargues said:

 

Hello MDM, your comments are very interesting. I take them very seriously and I plan to modify the information in the images. You know, I create keywords for all agencies and it may not be the best plan for Alamy. I appreciate your comment! Thank you

De nada. 

[John Mitchell]

7 hours ago, Vicente Sargues said:

 

Hi John. It is true. That data is something I had not paid attention to. What appears as additional information is what I usually enter as a description in Xpiks, but I see that in Alamy it is placed as "not so important" information and I think it is the most important, keywords apart. I think modifying that information is something that I'm going to have to take very seriously in the next days. Very thankful!

 

The "additional information" field used to be searchable, but Alamy changed that when they introduced their new image manager a few years ago. I had to go back and put information in the captions of hundreds of images. It wasn't a lot of fun, but it had to be done. Sometimes you can just cut and paste the "addtional information" into the caption field, which can speed things up. Good luck (mucha suerte).

[Vicente Sargues]

20 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

The "additional information" field used to be searchable, but Alamy changed that when they introduced their new image manager a few years ago. I had to go back and put information in the captions of hundreds of images. It wasn't a lot of fun, but it had to be done. Sometimes you can just cut and paste the "addtional information" into the caption field, which can speed things up. Good luck (mucha suerte).

 

A heavy job but I think it is necessary because of the way to use that information. Just yesterday I started to edit the information of the images. I hope there is a sales movement, no matter how few they are

 

Muchas gracias!*  

[AlexG]

Hello @Vicente Sargues,

Your photos have great pop, are bright and high quality. I can see a lot of work has gone into them, especially for food and medical ones, a lot of setup and preparation.

One thing that may not have been mentioned is that I think there are too many of nearly the same for the various subjects. I was told maybe limiting similar views/angles to 3-4. I have no proof it helps, but a lot of similar ones just from yourself pits images against each other and may make it harder for a customer to choose the "right" one.

 

By the way, any improved luck since your last post?

 

Alex

[Vicente Sargues]

Hi @AlexG

It is true that sometimes I have similar photographs, with slight changes in framing or composition. Thinking of different uses, but it might be harmful. Lately if it seems that the visibility has improved. My CTR has gone from 0 to 0.49, a few zooms and a sale of $ 11. I keep improving the descriptions.

Thank you very much!

[M.Chapman]

9 hours ago, AlexG said:

I was told maybe limiting similar views/angles to 3-4. I have no proof it helps, but a lot of similar ones just from yourself pits images against each other and may make it harder for a customer to choose the "right" one.

Another problem with having too many similars is that it’s hard to control the order in which they will appear in search results. They will be dispersed by Alamy’s search algorithm so they don’t appear as a block. If you’re not careful with tagging and captions, your best image may appear last and several pages down in the results.

 

Mark

[Steve F]

!Hola Vicente!

+1 to what others have said about too many similar photos. CTR stands for “Click Through Rate” which is the number of zooms divided by the number of views, multiplied by 100. If you have images which appear in searches, but never get zoomed, your CTR will drop - something more likely when you have lots of similars. Your CTR is one factor for how high in client searches your images appear.

 

Also, you have quite a few pictures where it is obviously set up with someone modelling for you. These pictures look like the person knows they are being photographed and is posing / smiling.

The industry as a whole has moved away from stock images which look deliberately staged. You very rarely see a model smiling directly at the camera or looking like they are posing published anywhere now. You would be better off making it look more as if the person was actually doing something in everyday life and not posing (still staged, but more 'natural' looking).

Steve

Edited September 30, 2020 by Steve F

[Vicente Sargues]

17 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

Another problem with having too many similars is that it’s hard to control the order in which they will appear in search results. They will be dispersed by Alamy’s search algorithm so they don’t appear as a block. If you’re not careful with tagging and captions, your best image may appear last and several pages down in the results.

 

Mark

Hello Mark
That is a good tip to keep in mind, thank you very much!

[Vicente Sargues]

17 hours ago, Steve F said:

The industry as a whole has moved away from stock images which look deliberately staged. You very rarely see a model smiling directly at the camera or looking like they are posing published anywhere now

Hola @Steve!

It is true, after taking the photo session I have had the habit of using photographs that had a decent quality, but I have not taken into account the issue of similar images and their position in the results, as you say. It may be interesting to remove a certain type of image to try to increase the ratios in the rest. If I understood correctly, perhaps that would be the result.
Thank you very much!

[Ed Rooney]

Vicente,

 

You are a very good photographer. MDM has hit on most of your problems. One that I didn't see mentioned was all the similars you upload. With Alamy, more is often less. You should edit tighter and try to submit just 3 to 5 similars. 

 

Also, you need to capture the things that are unique about Valencia. And don't skip the landmarks.

 

There are over a half million images of tomatoes on Alamy. But the one below of mine sold recently for a very good price. Why, I'm not sure, but I suspect it was the Italian sign with the price. 

 

Hola!

 

[Vicente Sargues]

17 hours ago, Ed Rooney said:

With Alamy, more is often less. You should edit tighter and try to submit just 3 to 5 similars. 

 

Hi ed
Definitely, I see that Alamy has a special way of showing images. At least different from other agencies. Maybe I should change the treatment of my photographs and take better care of sending them to Alamy. I know that commissions can be higher than other agencies, so I hope all the work I'm doing to improve my portfolio on Alamy is worth it.

 

17 hours ago, Ed Rooney said:

Also, you need to capture the things that are unique about Valencia. And don't skip the landmarks.

 

I do not have many photographs of Valencia, maybe having something very seen is not given importance, I should work more that type of travel or city photography, with the typical views and landmarks of Valencia

Thank you very much!

[Stokie]

3 hours ago, Vicente Sargues said:

 

Hi ed
Definitely, I see that Alamy has a special way of showing images. At least different from other agencies. Maybe I should change the treatment of my photographs and take better care of sending them to Alamy. I know that commissions can be higher than other agencies, so I hope all the work I'm doing to improve my portfolio on Alamy is worth it.

 

 

I do not have many photographs of Valencia, maybe having something very seen is not given importance, I should work more that type of travel or city photography, with the typical views and landmarks of Valencia

Thank you very much!

 

You are in the best place to get the best images of Valencia.

 

You can pick the right weather conditions, no tourists, lots of tourists, the correct light, time of day, golden hour of sunrise and sunset etc.

 

Take lots of everything to do with Valencia and if there is a search on Valencia, and your images are good and well tagged (keyworded), they should come up on the first few pages.

 

John.

Edited October 1, 2020 by Stokie

[Vicente Sargues]

23 hours ago, Stokie said:

 

You are in the best place to get the best images of Valencia.

 

You can pick the right weather conditions, no tourists, lots of tourists, the correct light, time of day, golden hour of sunrise and sunset etc.

 

Take lots of everything to do with Valencia and if there is a search on Valencia, and your images are good and well tagged (keyworded), they should come up on the first few pages.

 

John.

It is true. And the truth is that on second thought I have good sales (in the rest of the agencies) in travel photography of cities that I have visited, some from outside Spain, but I have taken few photographs of my city ... !! Pending subject for me  😣

Thanks John!