Why are my photos not sold ?

[ali_cobanoglu]

Hi, I'm alamy member since 2018, I have 2,400 photos in my portfolio, other photo sites sell 70-80 photos per month. At Alamy, it has not been sold for months, I have been searching for the reason and cannot find it. My photos seem open for sale. If the reason is the quality of my photos, why are they sold on other sites. I would be glad if you could help. Greetings.

[Mr Standfast]

Just for clarity, are you selling the same images on microstock and Alamy?  If you are the buyers are seeking the cheaper option and you have priced yourself out of the market.

[Chris Burrows]

2 hours ago, Mr Standfast said:

Just for clarity, are you selling the same images on microstock and Alamy?  If you are the buyers are seeking the cheaper option and you have priced yourself out of the market.

Looks to me that OP has pictures on just about every microstock site I am aware of, certainly some duplicates have not checked them all. This does seem to me to be happening a lot on this forum especially the portfolio critique section.

[Steve F]

Hi Ali, you have a wide variety of good quality pictures in your profile. What is your CTR? (on your Alamy Dashboard)

 

If you are on many microstock sites with the same photos, then you're selling them for cheap everywhere and not having success selling on Alamy, where photos are generally sold at better prices. I'm sure people shop around when they're online...

[ali_cobanoglu]

On 04.05.2021 at 13:53, Steve F said:

Merhaba Ali, profilinizde çok çeşitli kaliteli fotoğraflar var. TO'nuz nedir? (Alamy Kontrol Panelinizde)

 

Aynı fotoğrafların bulunduğu birçok mikro stok sitesindeyseniz, onları her yerde ucuza satıyorsunuz ve fotoğrafların genellikle daha iyi fiyatlarla satıldığı Alamy'de satışta başarılı olamıyorsunuz. Eminim insanlar çevrimiçi olduklarında alışveriş yaparlar ...

Total Views for Ali Çobanoğlu:276

Total Zooms for Ali Çobanoğlu:0

Average CTR for Ali Çobanoğlu:0.00

Total CTR for Ali Çobanoğlu:0.00

Average CTR on Alamy for last month:0.59. Thank you for the answer, I think I should make a separate portfolio for Alamy. Is it true ?

[ali_cobanoglu]

On 04.05.2021 at 14:01, David Pimborough said:

 

Burada satış yapmıyorsanız, asıl soru, Alamy müşterilerinin istediği türden bir şeyi fotoğrafladığınız şeyler olmalı mı?

 

Belki de mikro stok kavramlarını daha az ve Alamy'de satılan röportaj, yazı işleri gibi daha çok şeyi düşünmeniz gerekiyor.

 

Sadece Alamy için ayrı bir portföyüm var. 

Thank you very much, you are right

[ali_cobanoglu]

On 04.05.2021 at 13:45, Chris Burrows said:

Bana, OP'nin bildiğim hemen hemen her mikro stok sitesinde resimlere sahip olduğu görünüyor, kesinlikle bazı kopyalar hepsini kontrol etmedi. Bu bana bu forumda, özellikle de portföy eleştirisi bölümünde çok şey oluyor gibi görünüyor.

Thank you very much

[Steve F]

1 minute ago, ali_cobanoglu said:

Total Views for Ali Çobanoğlu:276

Total Zooms for Ali Çobanoğlu:0

Average CTR for Ali Çobanoğlu:0.00

Total CTR for Ali Çobanoğlu:0.00

Average CTR on Alamy for last month:0.59. Thank you for the answer, I think I should make a separate portfolio for Alamy. Is it true ?

Ali, no zooms in the last year (12 months)?

[ali_cobanoglu]

3 minutes ago, Steve F said:

Ali, geçen yıl (12 ay) yakınlaşma yok mu?

I'm so sorry it was wrong, I just looked at April, that's right

Total Views for Ali Çobanoğlu	:	2,555
Total Zooms for Ali Çobanoğlu	:	8
Average CTR for Ali Çobanoğlu	:	0.31
Total CTR for Ali Çobanoğlu	:	0.31
Average CTR on Alamy for last month. 1 years

Edited May 6, 2021 by ali_cobanoglu

[Steve F]

4 minutes ago, ali_cobanoglu said:

Unfortunately not

Sorry to hear that. Hmmm, I'm a bit at a loss... I just had a look at your keywording - this is very important so that your images are found. You have too many irrelevant keywords - we call this keyword spamming. You don't need to get the 'Discoverability' bar to the green 'Optimised' for each image if it means you have to use lots of irrelevant keywords:

 

Your pictures will appear at a certain level (e.g. first page, 10th page... etc.) in searches by clients, depending on various factors. CTR and Sales are the only factors we know about for sure in the secret formula Alamy uses to set our search ranking. Your CTR rank (on your Dashboard) is a function of the number of times a client zooms (clicks on) one of your images versus the number of times your images appear in a client search, but are not zoomed.

CTR=Zooms/Views * 100

This is basically a long way of me saying, don't spam keywords. E.g. don't put sky, blue, clouds for every single outdoors picture you shoot. There is a tendency to try to put lots of keywords for your images to try to get them seen by clients. So they may well appear in searches, but if they're not zoomed by a client, your CTR rank will drop. Which means your images won't show as high up in client searches. You don't want your images to get buried in the 255 million images on Alamy. By all means, put a lot of keywords in for certain pictures if they're relevant. Captions and keywords are almost more important than the image itself because you can have the most amazing images ever, but if they're keyworded wrong, no one will ever see them.

 

Include variant spellings, in particular British and American spellings. Also include singular and plurals  of words if appropriate. Don't worry about moving the line to optimised (green) - we have collectively decided that this is not a good idea unless you really need that many keywords.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Steve F

[Steve F]

19 minutes ago, ali_cobanoglu said:

Unfortunately not

Deleted. Ali's post changed.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Steve F

[ali_cobanoglu]

4 minutes ago, Steve F said:

Sorry to hear that. Hmmm, I'm a bit at a loss... I just had a look at your keywording - this is very important so that your images are found. You have too many irrelevant keywords - we call this keyword spamming. You don't need to get the 'Discoverability' bar to the green 'Optimised' for each image if it means you have to use lots of irrelevant keywords:

 

Your pictures will appear at a certain level (e.g. first page, 10th page... etc.) in searches by clients, depending on various factors. CTR and Sales are the only factors we know about for sure in the secret formula Alamy uses to set our search ranking. Your CTR rank (on your Dashboard) is a function of the number of times a client zooms (clicks on) one of your images versus the number of times your images appear in a client search, but are not zoomed.

CTR=Zooms/Views * 100

This is basically a long way of me saying, don't spam keywords. E.g. don't put sky, blue, clouds for every single outdoors picture you shoot. There is a tendency to try to put lots of keywords for your images to try to get them seen by clients. So they may well appear in searches, but if they're not zoomed by a client, your CTR rank will drop. Which means your images won't show as high up in client searches. You don't want your images to get buried in the 255 million images on Alamy. By all means, put a lot of keywords in for certain pictures if they're relevant. Captions and keywords are almost more important than the image itself because you can have the most amazing images ever, but if they're keyworded wrong, no one will ever see them.

 

Include variant spellings, in particular British and American spellings. Also include singular and plurals  of words if appropriate. Don't worry about moving the line to optimised (green) - we have collectively decided that this is not a good idea unless you really need that many keywords.

Steve, thank you very much, I think I need to be more careful from now on, especially with keywords.

[Steve F]

12 minutes ago, ali_cobanoglu said:

I'm so sorry it was wrong, I just looked at April, that's right

Total Views for Ali Çobanoğlu	:	2,555
Total Zooms for Ali Çobanoğlu	:	8
Average CTR for Ali Çobanoğlu	:	0.31
Total CTR for Ali Çobanoğlu	:	0.31
Average CTR on Alamy for last month. 1 years

 

Ok, I was very surprised the views were so low as well!! I think you may need to work on your keywords and captions more. I understand that that is difficult because it's not your first language. You probably also need to be more selective about the images that you put up. You've got some really great ones, but also some really boring e.g. landscapes, that don't look like they would ever sell.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Steve F

[ali_cobanoglu]

3 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

Ok, I was very surprised the views were so low as well!! I think you may need to work on your keywords and captions more. I understand that that is difficult because it's not your first language. You probably also need to be more selective about the images that you put up. You've got some really great ones, but also some really boring e.g. landscapes, that don't look like they would ever sell.

Thanks again Steve, I'll definitely be more selective now. I wish success to you

[Steve F]

1 minute ago, ali_cobanoglu said:

Thanks again Steve, I'll definitely be more selective now. I wish success to you

Ali, thanks, you too. Have a look at the 'Portfolio Critique' section of the Forum. There's lots of tips from contributors there.

[meanderingemu]

18 hours ago, Steve F said:

 

Ok, I was very surprised the views were so low as well!! I think you may need to work on your keywords and captions more. I understand that that is difficult because it's not your first language. You probably also need to be more selective about the images that you put up. You've got some really great ones, but also some really boring e.g. landscapes, that don't look like they would ever sell.

 

 

I actually think the views are still extremely low.  2555 views in one year for 2400 images?    I'm curious what are the general numbers people get.  I have 5-6 times that rate, while still maintaining a CTR 3 times higher.  

 

So i am not sure the spamming is hurting OP as much as not getting images in front of people, which could be subject related, repetitiveness, or not even having relevant KW in first place.

[Steve F]

10 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

I actually think the views are still extremely low.  2555 views in one year for 2400 images?    I'm curious what are the general numbers people get.  I have 5-6 times that rate, while still maintaining a CTR 3 times higher. 

That's true. I have 20,343 views from 3200 images in a year. But my CTR is about Alamy average.

[wiskerke]

deleted

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by wiskerke

[Jill Morgan]

2 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

I actually think the views are still extremely low.  2555 views in one year for 2400 images?    I'm curious what are the general numbers people get.  I have 5-6 times that rate, while still maintaining a CTR 3 times higher.  

 

So i am not sure the spamming is hurting OP as much as not getting images in front of people, which could be subject related, repetitiveness, or not even having relevant KW in first place.

 

I would think people based in the UK would definitely have higher views than people in other parts of the world.

 

Regular contributors get higher placement that those that don't upload for a long period of time. Mine did go down over the last couple of years, as I hardly uploaded anything.  I do believe that is one of the criteria for placement on Alamy. 

 

My views for the past year are 4725 with a port of just under 2300 images.  Only 24 zooms but still average 1-2 sales a month.  Hopefully as I am back contributing, it will go back up.  CTR of .51 

 

But I am also in Canada, so generally wouldn't get as many views as someone located in the UK or even someone in Western Europe I would think.  No real travel images to cover searches for other countries either.  Your port subjects can distinctly affect your views.  People have to be looking for those subjects.

 

Jill

[wiskerke]

Ok I'm always game 😁

I have been following this and wondering about my own numbers for a while and this is a good reason as any to do some bean counting.

And to see if views and zooms in any way correlate with sales numbers and revenue. My guess is that it's different for every contributor. So a contributor can learn from his/her own numbers, but not all that much from somebody else's.

 

Rolling-Covid-year: 61,928 views - 533 zooms from 2600 images

My CTR is pretty irrelevant because I have a couple of different pseudonyms: at the moment between 0.00 for 4 pseudos and 3.45 for a pseudo with hardly any images in it.

My main pseudos: 0.70 and 0.92 for the rolling month.

 

2020 whole year:   61,593 views - 539 zooms from 2587 images - sales 255 for $   8,891 (9th of 16 yrs in $$ gross)
2019 whole year:   86,558 views - 792 zooms from 2558 images - sales 322 for $ 11,802 (5th)
2018 whole year:   87,016 views - 743 zooms from 2449 images - sales 330 for $ 14,680 (2nd)
2017 whole year:   76,817 views - 774 zooms from 2346 images - sales 315 for $ 14,476 (3rd)
2016 whole year: 105,883 views - 992 zooms from 2177 images - sales 351 for $ 16,798 (best year)
2015 whole year:   98,865 views - 771 zooms from 1980 images - sales 219 for $ 12,838 (4th)

Numbers of images on sale are averages for that year - I do delete once in a while.

Do take into account that many things have an influence on our numbers.  On Alamy (search engine changes; tsunamis of micro-stockers or Getty-deserters) as well as outside of Alamy (Brexit; Covid).

 

wim

[meanderingemu]

3 hours ago, Jill Morgan said:

 

I would think people based in the UK would definitely have higher views than people in other parts of the world.

 

Regular contributors get higher placement that those that don't upload for a long period of time. Mine did go down over the last couple of years, as I hardly uploaded anything.  I do believe that is one of the criteria for placement on Alamy. 

 

My views for the past year are 4725 with a port of just under 2300 images.  Only 24 zooms but still average 1-2 sales a month.  Hopefully as I am back contributing, it will go back up.  CTR of .51 

 

But I am also in Canada, so generally wouldn't get as many views as someone located in the UK or even someone in Western Europe I would think.  No real travel images to cover searches for other countries either.  Your port subjects can distinctly affect your views.  People have to be looking for those subjects.

 

Jill

 

 

I would think subject matters more than location.  Yes people in UK might have subject that have more search, but they also have more competition.  I have now been in Canada for over a year, and i still get similar ratio of views to image for editorial content as i did with my UK images.   Where my numbers of views/image drops is for wildlife and nature regardless of where they were taken.