Stock strategy

[Dave Colman]

Some advice on my strategy and if you agree with my thinking.
I have uploaded a fair few images from my time in China, most of my work is on drives back in UK, and because I have them on another site they are not exclusive obviously. Work I have taken from this week onwards will only appear on here so will be alamy exclusive for that potential few extra pennies.
Try to vary my work, take image horizontal and vertical whilst looking for unusual views or subjects. Sensible tagging with variable spelling options.
I go through alamy lists every few days looking for views and if the tags are similar to mine I may go back and change mine a little to get noticed.
My images have only been 'live' for about 2 weeks and so far 87 views and 3 zooms. I am here for the long term, I have set goals for image uploads per month and have no expectations, I just want to give it a go and hopefully get some returns from what used to be a hobby.

[Ed Rooney]

You seem to be on the right track, David. I have one suggestion. When you capture street art, include something that is not part of the art work such as a passing person.

[Dave Colman]

3 hours ago, Ed Rooney said:

You seem to be on the right track, David. I have one suggestion. When you capture street art, include something that is not part of the art work such as a passing person.

Thanks, will give it a try, it's not like there's a shortage of people here.

[Ed Rooney]

Knee how, Dave 

 

We can capture street art but not if the artist can see it as a simple reproduction of their original work. So even without a passerby, a bench, some buildings, a tree, will make it okay. We can capture statues, by the way. 

 

[Mr Standfast]

Dave, your stategy sounds fine.

If I can add something to subjects, keep looking for "things" that whilst not  they are not a big story at the momenthave the potential to may grow into a story. I was taking pictures of the Colston statue years before he tripped and umm "fell into the harbour". I wasn't there to get an award winning news picture of his fall; but have had some sales from editorial stock of the before and after views. Alamy is good at editorial stock.

 

Stay safe.

[Sally]

Sounds like a reasonable strategy to me, though I am a relative newbie in this business so others will know more. Don’t forget some bog standard images though, too. Things change, buyers may want a recent photo. Doesn’t always have to be a quirky different angle.

 

Take care with tags. Eg to take one a picked totally at random 2E52X33 has words bench, character, characters, writing, gem which I can’t see how they fit. Also passenger, tourist, tourists when there are no people in the photo, though you might want “passenger train”. All too easy to add tags to images you have clicked by mistake in AIM.  

Edited February 10, 2021 by Sally

[Dave Colman]

17 hours ago, Sally said:

Sounds like a reasonable strategy to me, though I am a relative newbie in this business so others will know more. Don’t forget some bog standard images though, too. Things change, buyers may want a recent photo. Doesn’t always have to be a quirky different angle.

 

Take care with tags. Eg to take one a picked totally at random 2E52X33 has words bench, character, characters, writing, gem which I can’t see how they fit. Also passenger, tourist, tourists when there are no people in the photo, though you might want “passenger train”. All too easy to add tags to images you have clicked by mistake in AIM.  

thanks for the heads up, some sneaked in as a copy/paste.  its a tourist hidden gem in the city and character always relates to Chinese writing, it's not words its characters. I have adjusted accordingly.
I will have to go back through everything, so many mistakes and errors in my rush to get uploaded before the new year when the internet dies for about 2 weeks with a quarter of the worlds population online.

[Sally]

6 hours ago, Dave Colman said:

thanks for the heads up, some sneaked in as a copy/paste.  its a tourist hidden gem in the city and character always relates to Chinese writing, it's not words its characters. I have adjusted accordingly.
I will have to go back through everything, so many mistakes and errors in my rush to get uploaded before the new year when the internet dies for about 2 weeks with a quarter of the worlds population online.

I’ve just been doing a major overhaul of my keywords (lockdown project). I have been guilty of liberal overuse and have revised my ideas about keywords significantly. If someone is searching for ‘character’ I imagine they are searching for a person or cartoon character and if they are searching for ‘gem’ they are likely to be looking for a precious stone. Alamy’s advice is to keep it simple. So IMO ‘Chinese writing’ might work better (though actually I wouldn’t even put this in as it’s pretty incidental to the image and there is no sign or signage). I have also made much more use of AoA (All of Alamy) and if no one has searched with a particular term in the last year I have taken it out. ‘Hidden gem’ has had zero searches. False positives in searches will harm your overall ranking so having tags in that are irrelevant or not what someone is looking for will bring it down. This cannot always be avoided with certain words.
 

I envy your position that you only have a few hundred images that you could review rather than 24,000. Using Alamy Lightroom Bridge however is making the task doable.

[Ian Morton]

On 10/02/2021 at 02:27, Dave Colman said:

My images have only been 'live' for about 2 weeks and so far 87 views and 3 zooms. 

 

Hi Dave

 

I am new to Alamy and noticed that you mentioned views and zooms - where are you seeing these please.

[NYCat]

Go to your Dashboard and click on Alamy Measures. You can click on Your Images or All of Alamy. Then explore. Click everything. See what it does.

 

Paulette

[Ian Morton]

1 hour ago, NYCat said:

Go to your Dashboard and click on Alamy Measures. You can click on Your Images or All of Alamy. Then explore. Click everything. See what it does.

 

Paulette

 

many thanks for the info, much appreciated 

[Phil Crean]

2 hours ago, NYCat said:

 Then explore. Click everything. See what it does.

 

Paulette

Best advice ever 😁

Phil