Royalty Free or Rights managed ?

[genik76]

What is the difference between a Royalty Free and a Rights managed photo? Which type is better to use when characterising a pics that i upload?

[Betty LaRue]

Too long of an answer to explain. Hunt up the Alamy page that explains, or do a general Internet search about the subject. It’s not hard to research this for yourself. This is basic information that you should discover for yourself, rather than taking the easy way and asking us to spend 15 minutes explaining the fine points to you.

Please realize I’m not trying to be mean, but if you are serious about becoming a contributor, you need to do as much of the work yourself to accomplish that. It will stick better.

It’s when you have exhausted all means and searches on your own that the forum is happy to help. But your question isn’t one of those…it’s a basic requirement you need to study up on your own.

Good luck!

Betty

[Harry Harrison]

Here's a thread to start with, a little old but I think it still applies, it's a start anyway.

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/2642-royalty-free-vs-rights-managed/

 

Alamy's own advice here:

 

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/understanding-stock-image-licensing/

 

And an Alamy video from the buyer's point of view:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs--mdEG44Q

 

Edited December 2, 2021 by Harry Harrison

[Robert M Estall]

your three first uploads are fine for the RF option. your keywords look like they have been generated by a software program which is an option I wouldn't use. These systems produce inappropriate keywords which will cause your images to respond to searches in error which will eventually reduce your rank and so reduce sales. 10 accurate keywords are better than 30 words if half of the 30 are random and poorly matched.  Personally, I've always prefered the RM option as it fits my images usually and gives me more control, but many prefer the RF model

Edited December 3, 2021 by Robert M Estall

[genik76]

On 02/12/2021 at 19:21, Robert M Estall said:

your keywords look like they have been generated by a software program which is an option I wouldn't use

I dont use a software program to generate keywords, i didnt even know that such a program ever existed. I would appreciate it if you could tell me what are those keywords that give that feeling.

Edited December 4, 2021 by genik76

[Harry Harrison]

George, I'm not familiar with keywording software either but It may be that there are just a few errors creeping in because I'm guessing that English isn't your first language. Goodness knows I don't hold up my captions and keywords as anything to write home about but even so I can probably offer a bit of advice.

 

Firstly I would say to try and put more in your captions, the Alamy search algorithm is difficult to fathom and can change but I think most agree that it likes relevant information to be repeated in both caption and keywords, so more descriptive information about content and location up to the 150 characters would probably help. For example, for the lettuce shot more in the caption about the type of lettuce (variety would be great but you probably don't know) and the fact that it is fresh, growing in the field and covered in water droplets etc. It's a nice shot but there are a lot of lettuce pictures out there.

 

Definitely don't include too many irrelevant keywords, that may be where the 'software' impression came from. It's subjective of course but for the 'bench' seat I'm not seeing why 'saffron' is a keyword (a petty example but you know what I mean) but I do think that the actual location might help in both caption and keywords because it might be used to illustrate an article about that location, it's a nice shot. Also don't be afraid to include people, with and without people perhaps, many sales on here are of 'people doing things' though I appreciate that different countries have different laws about this kind of thing.

 

Incidentally the 'Location' field in the optional tab is not searchable but it is used to filter out images on the main search under 'Location', so include UK, Europe, USA and Australia where appropriate. I don't know how often that filter is used, clearly it's pretty limited.

 

Lastly, of course it is not acceptable to copy the caption or keywords from other similar images but is understandable to want to learn from others at first so do try searching for images of similar subjects until you get the hang of it, I tried 'steeple at Andros' for example.

 

Now I should spend the entire day taking my own advice on my own images, make that two days.

 

Edited December 5, 2021 by Harry Harrison

[Robert M Estall]

Harry is definitely on the right track without being aggressive; yes, solid information is more useful than fishing for words which just might fit. If you go to the bottom of your dashboard page, at the bottom left of your images will be a tick box which will show you which of your images have been viewed as well as the search terms used by researchers. It just about never includes vague requests. As you have only been here a few days, perhaps look at ALL OF ALAMY

 

I wondered about Saffron for the beach shot too. So, name that lettuce, name that beach, name the breed of that goat and that seagull ( in later submission) If you don't know the exact title, time looking things up is better spent than waffle

Edited December 6, 2021 by Robert M Estall

[genik76]

Thank you all for the nice comments on my work, i will look it up.
Id also like to ask one more thing. Under some pics that are about to be submitted, lies a small progress bar (with colours, orange, or red etc.), along with text saying "on sale" or "not on sale". What is meant by this and what can be done so that it is improved?

[Betty LaRue]

Red means you don’t have a caption. The bar that is orange and can turn green needs to be ignored. It gauges how many tags (keywords) you have. Some people keep adding tags that don’t really further searches by adding meaningless tags to turn the bar green. Just add only appropriate tags and if that means the image only needs 15, so be it. Don’t pad them.

If you have an image of a dog, you can have dog,dogs as tags. Some buyers only wanting a picture of one dog may search “dogs” just because they want to see a lot of pictures of dogs! So plurals work.

You can always say in the caption “single dog swimming in river” or whatever.