My new portfolio

[ASarabia]

Hello to the whole community. I am a Spanish freelance photographer and until recently I only worked for my clients. Now I have decided to work with Alamy and give a new outlet to my photography and of course try to get some income. 
I have just created my portfolio in Alamy and all are doubts. I have read your advice about the portfolio thanks to your great experience. It would help me a lot if you could take a look at mine. 
I'm also wondering: Does it sell more if I sell my photos as exclusive? 
Thank you all very much for your attention. 
Greetings from Barcelona.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[Radim]

Hola

 

I recommend describing pictures exactly. I strongly recommend doing it right from the start. It will save time in the future. It is not enough to just write a horse. Not even a turkey is good to describe as a horse. What kind of animal is "Cohala". Maybe he has a Latin name, Procyon lotor? And so on.
Marginal note.
If I had to decide now whether to spend time with stock photography, I would say Never again.
I can imagine the time spent effectively

Edited November 12, 2021 by Radim

[ASarabia]

Thank you very much Radim for your advice.It is true that it takes a lot of work and even more without knowing English and struggling with translators.
I will review again the gallery following your advice and I will keep it in mind for the next uploads.

[Steve F]

!Hola Ana!

 

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/captions-and-keywords-for-images/?section=8

 

"Before you start, think about the potential use of the image and what it’s likely to be sold for, the more accurately you describe your image, the more visibility it will have in customer searches, which will significantly increase your chance of making a sale."

 

Also, see:

 

https://www.alamy.com/blog/captions-and-tags

 

Steve

 

p.s. One way to get around the language barrier is to see how other contributors have labelled similar photos to yours. So do a search on Alamy for the type of  image that you want to caption/keyword, there will nearly always be lots of examples you can use.

Edited November 12, 2021 by Steve F

[ASarabia]

Thank you very much Steve. I will take the time to describe my photographs again. The idea that you point out to me to see how colleagues do it seems to me very interesting. I have purchased the Deelp translator, I have been advised that it is the best. Of course it has nothing to do with the native language, but between this and the solution you suggest I think I will improve the definitions. 
Thank you very much.

 

[ASarabia]

Estoy pensando en tus consejos y también he leído el artículo que me ha propuesto Steve y lógicamente todos estáis de acuerdo en lo importante que es la descripción de la fotografía para el posible comprador, pero desde mi desconocimiento me pregunto: El comprador lee la leyenda de la foto cuando ya la ha encontrado, así que si ya la ha encontrado, ¿por qué es importante la leyenda? Entiendo que las palabras clave son fundamentales para que el comprador encuentre la foto, pero una vez encontrada la foto, supongo que lo que le importa al comprador es el contenido y no el pie de foto. Lo siento mucho por mi inocencia, solo he estado aquí por un corto tiempo y solo estoy tratando de entenderlo. De todos modos, ya he comenzado el trabajo de reescribir las definiciones y agregar tantas palabras clave como sea posible. 

 

[Steve F]

16 minutes ago, ASarabia said:

Estoy pensando en tus consejos y también he leído el artículo que me ha propuesto Steve y lógicamente todos estáis de acuerdo en lo importante que es la descripción de la fotografía para el posible comprador, pero desde mi desconocimiento me pregunto: El comprador lee la leyenda de la foto cuando ya la ha encontrado, así que si ya la ha encontrado, ¿por qué es importante la leyenda? Entiendo que las palabras clave son fundamentales para que el comprador encuentre la foto, pero una vez encontrada la foto, supongo que lo que le importa al comprador es el contenido y no el pie de foto. Lo siento mucho por mi inocencia, solo he estado aquí por un corto tiempo y solo estoy tratando de entenderlo. De todos modos, ya he comenzado el trabajo de reescribir las definiciones y agregar tantas palabras clave como sea posible. 

 

 

"I am thinking about your advice and I have also read the article that Steve has proposed to me and logically all of you agree on how important the description of the photograph is for the potential buyer, but from my ignorance I ask myself: The buyer reads the legend of the photo when you've already found it, so if you've already found it, why is the caption important? I understand that keywords are essential for the buyer to find the photo, but once the photo is found, I guess what the buyer cares about is the content and not the caption. I'm really sorry for my innocence, I've only been here for a short time and I'm just trying to figure it out. Anyway, I have already started the work of rewriting the definitions and adding as many keywords as possible."

 

Because the buyer hasn't already found your photo. When a client (or you) does a search for a particular subject, they will normally get anywhere between hundreds to thousands to millions of images returned as a result. And each page for that search has by default 100 images on it. A client might look at several pages of results. Your image is just one of many. And all the client sees is a small thumbnail. If you've provided a minimal caption, they may hover over your image, see that the caption doesn't really tell them what's in the picture, and they'll move on.

 

For example, say someone wants a picture of a horse in a particular region of Spain. They do a search and your image is one of the ones that is shown as a thumbnail. But your caption just says "horse". Well, that doesn't tell the buyer if the horse is in the region, so they'll likely just keep looking.

Edited November 12, 2021 by Steve F

[Steve F]

Also, only add relevant keywords, not as many as possible. If you add too many keywords, we would call that keyword spamming:

 

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 280 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.

[ASarabia]

Steve, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain this to me, it's really interesting and I finally understand it. As I said before I have already started with the task of editing again these 90 initial images, and of course I have just uploaded ten more and from the beginning I will take this into account.
Thank you very much and thank you very much. I hope to be able to sell in Alemany and get to be one more of the team. 

[NYCat]

The caption has a big effect on the placement of your image so it's a good idea to include as many of the most important keywords in the caption... MBTFCJ for example where I include what the tiger is doing, that it is a side view, where it is, etc.

 

Paulette

[ASarabia]

I understand now with your explanations, I would never have considered it. Of course I will take it into account. I need to sell in Almy as the current income from customers has been greatly reduced by the pandemic in Spain.
Thank you NYcat .

Edited November 12, 2021 by ASarabia

[spacecadet]

16 minutes ago, ASarabia said:

I need to sell in Alamy as the current income from customers has been greatly reduced

Good luck.

You will need  thousands of images to have any chance of a reasonable level of sales. Next year your commission will probably drop to 20%.

Edited November 12, 2021 by spacecadet

[ASarabia]

44 minutes ago, ASarabia said:

 

Wow!!! But I will work hard, I think I have no choice. 

[ASarabia]

Hello friends. 
Here again and desperate. As we said I am redoing my keywords and definitions. 
After waiting for the system to update I do the first test the result is: 
1- I search with the most important keywords of my photo and others appear but not mine.  - Why doesn't my photo appear, even if it is on the last page, if it also has those keywords?

2- I add even more keywords that I have assigned to my photo and it shows only two pages of photos among which mine is not found either.  - If I have added more clues for it to find it, how come it still can't find it among only a few images?

3-I put in the search engine all the keywords that I have assigned and it returns me that no results can be found.  - How is it possible that I have no results if my image has all those keywords? it should come up even if it was alone. 

Well, I just want to tell you that I'm doing my homework, but I don't understand these things and they cause a lot of despair. 
If I am not able to find it myself, how will the clients find it!
I don't give up! 
A hug

[Steve F]

2 minutes ago, ASarabia said:

1- I search with the most important keywords of my photo and others appear but not mine.  - Why doesn't my photo appear, even if it is on the last page, if it also has those keywords?

 

 

Can you give us an example? Give an image reference and the keywords you searched for.

[NYCat]

The site only updates once a day so don't try right after changing keywords. Try the next day or day after that.

 

Paulette

 

Sorry. I realize you say you waited. Do the keywords show in the Image Manager? Alamy sent me an email today with this useful link....https://i.emlfiles4.com/cmpdoc/4/8/7/0/3/1/files/104892_captions-and-tags-checklist-.pdf?utm_campaign=2036280_Keywording importance&utm_medium=email&utm_source=contributoremail&dm_i=2SWW,17N7C,12IMQ4,4PKUC,1

 

Paulette

Edited November 15, 2021 by NYCat

[ASarabia]

Hola Syeve.  

I attach the data

 

ID- 2H4YY53
 

FOR CASE 1: house, night, darkness, lamppost light.

FOR CASE 2: house, night, dark, street light, trees, path, garden, big house

For case 3 - All

[ASarabia]

Sorry:

 

ID- 2H4YY53
 

FOR CASE 1: house, night, darkness,

FOR CASE 2: house, night, dark, street light, trees, path, garden, big house

For case 3 - All

[Steve F]

11 minutes ago, ASarabia said:

Hola Syeve.  

I attach the data

 

ID- 2H4YY53
 

FOR CASE 1: house, night, darkness, lamppost light.

FOR CASE 2: house, night, dark, street light, trees, path, garden, big house

For case 3 - All

 

Hola! The image is on sale. But yes, what NY Cat says above. Database hasn't updated yet.

 

Also, some keyword advice. 'Lamppost' is American. Also put 'lamp post'. I wouldn't put 'lantern' as a keyword. And this is a great Halloween image. Put some keywords in such as: eerie, spooky, gloomy, haunted house, evening, Halloween concept.

 

You're also missing the country and town.

Edited November 15, 2021 by Steve F

[NYCat]

I think we were posting at the same time. I amended my post to include this link from Alamy  https://i.emlfiles4.com/cmpdoc/4/8/7/0/3/1/files/104892_captions-and-tags-checklist-.pdf?utm_campaign=2036280_Keywording importance&utm_medium=email&utm_source=contributoremail&dm_i=2SWW,17N7C,12IMQ4,4PKUC,1

 

Paulette

[ASarabia]

Thanks Steve and NYcat.I know all beginnings are hard. 
Very happy for your advice. 
I'm going on a few days trip tomorrow, I hope to be more up to date when I get back. 
A big hug 

[meanderingemu]

53 minutes ago, NYCat said:

The site only updates once a day so don't try right after changing keywords. Try the next day or day after that.

 

Paulette

 

Sorry. I realize you say you waited. Do the keywords show in the Image Manager? Alamy sent me an email today with this useful link....https://i.emlfiles4.com/cmpdoc/4/8/7/0/3/1/files/104892_captions-and-tags-checklist-.pdf?utm_campaign=2036280_Keywording importance&utm_medium=email&utm_source=contributoremail&dm_i=2SWW,17N7C,12IMQ4,4PKUC,1

 

Paulette

 

 

and updates are taking longer recently.  I have changes from Saturday that are not reflected yet. 

[ASarabia]

Thank you very much Meandro.

[Ed Rooney]

Hola, Ana

 

Welcome to Alamy and the forum. Sadly, what space cadet said is true. Fee are low for all digital stock. And we need thousands of images to compete. Your images look good.

 

Edo

[Nick Hatton]

Beautiful photos Ana, a lot of my sales come from my annual 3 week holiday in Spain so plenty of scope for sales for you, think it is a beautiful country once you get in the countryside, trying to decide which part to visit next Spring?