If you are not getting sales

[geogphotos]

9 minutes ago, Inchiquin said:

 

This is all very well, but when you have steady sales at reasonable prices for 10 years and then suddenly, from the same set of pictures, everything completely tanks just at the time Alamy make wholesale changes to the way their site operates, where do you start?

 

Alan

 

 

Good point, and no idea, but I doubt that Alamy's sales have collapsed - if so they will act.

 

That leaves us to work out what to do, if anything! 

 

Here is a blog post about Suffolk churches ( mentioned above)

 

https://blog.geographyphotos.com/2022/08/18/church-stained-glass/

Edited September 8, 2022 by geogphotos

[Allan Bell]

2 minutes ago, Alexander Hog said:

Thinking about quitting altogether Have had very useful advice from quite a few people on here which has been helpful and gone through the captions and tags and still nothing and not one pay-out I know the amount I've put up is still not enough and didn't know enough about stock sites before starting Has been a good learning curve 

For those who have commented on the threads that I've put up a big Thank You for your time  

 

Stick with it.  It took me from November 2008 to February 2011 to get my first sale.  Yes I was on the point of jacking it in too when I had no sales by January 2011.

 

Strange how that feeling has returned.

 

Allan

 

[Inchiquin]

16 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

 

Here is a blog post about Suffolk churches ( mentioned above)

 

 

On the subject of churches... over the last 50 years I've taken a lot of photos of churches. Very often the church is the most, and sometimes the only, interesting architectural feature in a village. Some years ago - probably on the old Alamy forum - I'm pretty sure it was you, Ian, who said churches don't sell. Partly as a result of that comment I moved all my church photos into a separate pseudo so it wouldn't harm my main pseudo's CTR (I don't think it made any difference at all!).

 

Over the 14 years I've been with Alamy pictures specifically of churches (i.e. not including landscapes that happen to include a church) have accounted for just 3% of my sales.  That said, I've taken very few interiors and details such as stained glass and I suspect they may sell better than straightforward church portraits.

 

Alan

[geogphotos]

5 minutes ago, Inchiquin said:

 

On the subject of churches... over the last 50 years I've taken a lot of photos of churches. Very often the church is the most, and sometimes the only, interesting architectural feature in a village. Some years ago - probably on the old Alamy forum - I'm pretty sure it was you, Ian, who said churches don't sell. Partly as a result of that comment I moved all my church photos into a separate pseudo so it wouldn't harm my main pseudo's CTR (I don't think it made any difference at all!).

 

Over the 14 years I've been with Alamy pictures specifically of churches (i.e. not including landscapes that happen to include a church) have accounted for just 3% of my sales.  That said, I've taken very few interiors and details such as stained glass and I suspect they may sell better than straightforward church portraits.

 

Alan

 

 

I visit churches and take pics primarily out of personal interest. They don't sell as well as other subjects that I can think of - signs, industry, shops, environment. But on the other hand there is a certain market for images of churches as I describe in my blog post - estate agent brochures, personal use/ancestry, art, architecture, textbooks. 

 

Another agency will not take more than a very few of my churches pics for the same reason that they aren't great sellers.

 

There is no panacea. 

 

 

[Steve F]

30 minutes ago, Alexander Hog said:

Thinking about quitting altogether Have had very useful advice from quite a few people on here which has been helpful and gone through the captions and tags and still nothing and not one pay-out I know the amount I've put up is still not enough and didn't know enough about stock sites before starting Has been a good learning curve 

For those who have commented on the threads that I've put up a big Thank You for your time  

 

Sorry to hear you're thinking of quitting Alex. I didn't know so much about more suitable stock subjects when I first started out and some of my early captions and keywords leave something to be desired (editing captions is a task for a rainy day...). It's also been a learning curve for me.

 

I only sold 1 photo in my first 6 months. And only 10 the year after that. 7 years later, looks like I'm on for selling over 200 this year.

[Doc]

1 hour ago, Inchiquin said:

 

This is all very well, but when you have steady sales at reasonable prices for 10 years and then suddenly, from the same set of pictures, everything completely tanks just at the time Alamy make wholesale changes to the way their site operates, where do you start?

 

Alan

Alan - With that history of consistency, and then the sudden change coinciding with Alamys' changes it certainly sounds to me that the two are related. Alamy seemed to make some changes that affected BHZ ranking at that time - I know that BHZ is not completely reliable, but do you check it and did you have any change in your rank that you could see? Also, Have you had a reduction in "view" numbers corresponding to your reduction in sales?, and finally, are your "Optional" tabs in AIM fully completed for your images or not? 

Sorry for all the questions !

 

Best

Kumar

[Harry Harrison]

I wonder if anyone using BHZ has ever discovered if particular fields in the Optional tab affect the ranking, I genuinely don't know, could try myself I suppose. Which of these could help anyway? The defaults of Property Release and Model Release are 'No', could 'No. of people' help with ranking, I doubt it. Sooth has pointed out that Google indexes the information on the page so that will include Location and More Info if present. I usually enter Location just because it is displayed but more than likely I've put it in the captions and keywords if it is significant. 'More info' is trickier because it can include a great deal of irrelevant 'keywords' if you're going to treat it like that, it's often detailed background information.

 

'Exclusive to Alamy' - could Alamy reward you in the rankings for checking this? It's now become rather devalued since the preferential commision rate has gone.

 

'Sell for Editorial use only' has now got much more significant since that is the only way images will come up under 'Editorial', difficult to say how important that might be for 'secondary editorial' when it comes to sales though.

 

Primary & Secondary categories. Seriously?

 

There has been a major change though, how does your well-earned ranking fair if people are searching within Creative or Editorial? Editorial is just chronological now, also difficult to fathom what's happening in Ultimate, Vital, Uncut or Foundation.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[Harry Harrison]

Another question - can an image be in Editorial and also in Ultimate, Vital, Uncut or Foundation? I think not but I don't know for sure. 

Edited September 8, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[Steve F]

9 minutes ago, Alexander Hog said:

Am glad you are doing well Just been struggling with it now Get E-mails in from Alamy to try and get inspiration but a lot of it is either I have no access to or do not know how to do it Also would never get a press pass either as don't work with newspapers Am finding it a bit limiting and trying to get new ideas, I get what you have in a previous post and agree with you Wasn't going to delete the account but just feel like I cannot carry on at the moment 

 

I don't follow the Alamy inspiration stuff and I don't do any press; there are other routes too. I would really keep a look out for published stock photos and compare with what you're producing. Concentrate on producing saleable content.

 

By the way, I do a lot of walking and shooting and flower pictures too because I like doing them, not because they particularly sell well. But I also try to keep producing a lot of photos of subjects I think have potential / good sales potential.

[Sally]

6 hours ago, Alexander Hog said:

Thinking about quitting altogether Have had very useful advice from quite a few people on here which has been helpful and gone through the captions and tags and still nothing and not one pay-out I know the amount I've put up is still not enough and didn't know enough about stock sites before starting Has been a good learning curve 

For those who have commented on the threads that I've put up a big Thank You for your time  

Ha, just noticed 2JW91PD

Not a free show but a photocall for photographers, one of whom me, for the Fringe (which should be in both caption and keywords btw)

Hope you don’t mind a comment about your portfolio. Apart from those taken in bright sunshine, quite a lot of photos are flat and dull 2JG50HW (needs straightening too btw) and 2JG50GY for example. Either don’t shoot in those conditions or work out how to bring them to life. They will not stand up to the competition here. Might be better to focus on improving the quality of the photos or only uploading the best if you want to achieve sales.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Sally

[Cal]

7 hours ago, Alexander Hog said:

Thinking about quitting altogether Have had very useful advice from quite a few people on here which has been helpful and gone through the captions and tags and still nothing and not one pay-out I know the amount I've put up is still not enough and didn't know enough about stock sites before starting Has been a good learning curve 

For those who have commented on the threads that I've put up a big Thank You for your time  

it can take months from a photo being used to it being registered as a sale, and then further months for you to be paid.

 

however, you should not be doing this if you don't at least somewhat enjoy it. if it's only about the money, go and get yourself a minimum wage job helping out somewhere, from a financial perspective it is a far better earner for the time you put in.

[John Mitchell]

8 hours ago, Inchiquin said:

 

This is all very well, but when you have steady sales at reasonable prices for 10 years and then suddenly, from the same set of pictures, everything completely tanks just at the time Alamy make wholesale changes to the way their site operates, where do you start?

 

Alan

 

Things have definitely changed for me as well. What I'm finding is that I'm being kept afloat mainly by my old repeat-sellers that seem to license "come Hell or high water."

 

Hopefully this a temporary situation, but it's tough get motivated... 😐

[Harry Harrison]

20 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Another question - can an image be in Editorial and also in Ultimate, Vital, Uncut or Foundation? I think not but I don't know for sure. 

An unexpected twist on this, for me anyway.

 

If you take an image that appears in Vital and make it 'Sell for Editorial only' then it remains in Vital BUT it does not come up in the Editorial filter.

 

Whether 'Sell for Editorial only' images are selected for Vital (or any of the Creative Collections) in the first place is a different matter, no answer for that.

 

Note that the image that I changed does now come up marked as for Editorial Use only so it has been updated on the server. I suppose it's possible that the server has yet to do a special 'Creative correction' sweep. I'll wait and see.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[Cryptoprocta]

On 09/09/2022 at 08:04, Harry Harrison said:

If you take an image that appears in Vital and make it 'Sell for Editorial only' then it remains in Vital BUT it does not come up in the Editorial filter.

That might explain a lot. I've designated most of my files 'sell for editorial only, as a 'belt and braces' protection against misuse.

[Harry Harrison]

26 minutes ago, Cryptoprocta said:

That might explain a lot. I've designated most of my files 'sell for editorial only, as a 'belt and braces' protection against misuse.

Thanks for jogging my memory on this. I've just searched again and this image, the one that I made 'Sell for Editorial only' as a test does now appear under Editorial and no longer  appears under Vital. So my final afterthought, that I thought pretty unlikely in fact, turned out to be correct. At some point the server swept through and did some housekeeping on the Creative images, bundling this one out on account of it now being 'Editorial'. It's a just closeup of a flower weirdly and there were seven quite similar shots taken at the same time in Vital, now there are only six of course.

 

I'm sure you're not alone in making images 'Sell for Editorial only' as a safeguard and clearly the significance of that move has changed since the makeover. I think that it is very disappointing that contributors received no warning of what was about to happen, and still no explanation of how best to make use of it with respect to 'secondary editorial'. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't even see how we can search for images that are set as Editorial, there is no such attribute to search on, and it doesn't appear in the data download.

 

So to correct my statement above:

 

If you take an image that appears in Vital and make it 'Sell for Editorial only' then it is removed from Vital and comes up in the Editorial filter, but this does not necessarily happen at the first server update.

[meanderingemu]

40 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

 

 

So to correct my statement above:

 

If you take an image that appears in Vital and make it 'Sell for Editorial only' then it is removed from Vital and comes up in the Editorial filter, but this does not necessarily happen at the first server update.

 

 

thanks.  i assume the reverse also happens, but will test it. 

[Harry Harrison]

34 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

i assume the reverse also happens, but will test it. 

Not sure how to go about that unless it's by spot-checking Vital (or Ultimate) to see if any are Editorial. That doesn't sound like fun.

[meanderingemu]

26 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Not sure how to go about that unless it's by spot-checking Vital (or Ultimate) to see if any are Editorial. That doesn't sound like fun.

 

It might be a long validation.  I took images that were marked as Editorial (default since uploaded as News),they do not show anywhere on Creative side, picking subject with low coverage.  I'll track if they ever show up in any of the collections. 

[Harry Harrison]

8 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

It might be a long validation.

Without giving too much away (Alamy may not want me to give chapter & verse) I can save you the trouble. You have 363 images in Vital and 1 in Ultimate (!). None of those are in Editorial.

[meanderingemu]

4 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Without giving too much away (Alamy may not want me to give chapter & verse) I can save you the trouble. You have 363 images in Vital and 1 in Ultimate (!). None of those are in Editorial.

 

i knew that editorial didn't make it, i now will track if any of my former editorial ever make to the collections. They should at least be in the creative- and advantage with LN, is I generally have at least 2 image for most subject, so i will now cover both options.

 

(i have one Ultimate 😀)

Edited September 15, 2022 by meanderingemu

[Harry Harrison]

1 minute ago, meanderingemu said:

(i have one Ultimate 😀)

Congrats!

[meanderingemu]

Just now, Harry Harrison said:

Congrats!

 

the whole thing has been so badly developed by our leaders, that i find laughing about it is the only option by now

[meanderingemu]

2 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

the whole thing has been so badly developed by our leaders, that i find laughing about it is the only option by now

 

 

like these are the "Ultimate" images for "Wood duck".  

 

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/wood-duck.html?collectiontype=ultimate&imgt=0&sortBy=creative

 

 

[Harry Harrison]

9 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

like these are the "Ultimate" images for "Wood duck".  

Hand-picked. Yes, you do have to have a sense of humour.

[Rebecca Ore]

Looked a bit and found one of an African boy crocheting that was labeled African boy knitting.