Here we go in trepidation - critique please :-)

[Colin C]

many thanks

[NYCat]

It looks like you've had some wonderful travels. I like your images. I suggest you put as much information as possible in the captions. Captions are heavily weighted in search results.

 

Paulette

[Steve F]

Hi Colin, 

No need for trepidation! It's great to get a review now rather than when you have 5000 images up. 

 

Photos look fine. Try to produce images with people in too; images with people in / doing something sell well.

 

Your captions are too short, be aware that they are also searchable by clients. Include the Latin as well as the common name of plants, insects and the location (including the country). Some helpful links:

https://www.alamy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Captions-and-Tags-checklist.pdf

https://www.alamy.com/blog/tips-for-your-captions-from-the-sales-team

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

 

You are keyword spamming, which will hurt your CTR rank:

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 300 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.

 

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.

 

Good luck,

Steve

[ColdCoffee]

Lovely pictures!  Just watch out for too many similars. It can hurt your ranking. I see some of the flower photos being almost the exact same.

[Betty LaRue]

Everything Steve said. Your first images should have the full location, the country, in your caption. The scientific names in the captions. Searches are stronger if they are in captions and keywords.  The moth on the first page should have common name, scientific name in the caption, along with the plant’s common name and scientific name. Also the full location including country.

very nice images!

[Colin C]

 Dear Paulette, Steve F, Cold Coffee and Betty LaRue - very many thanks for taking the time to advise me of your very contructive comments 🙂 Very much appreciated. I will be foucusing on the captions from here on in - to be honest, I had not realised the importance attached to them! I have been concentrating on the leywords - and yes, I know now what spamming is 😞 this will be another area to update on existing images, likewise 'similiars'!!

 

So thank you all again and I will be cracking on with my homework on the existing images before posting new ones - Steve F was right, better to have your guidance now iwith less than 200 images than once I have reached 4 digits 🙂 Happy snapping all 🙂

Best regards

Colin 🙂

[Colin C]

On 13/09/2022 at 13:22, Steve F said:

Hi Colin, 

No need for trepidation! It's great to get a review now rather than when you have 5000 images up. 

 

Photos look fine. Try to produce images with people in too; images with people in / doing something sell well.

 

Your captions are too short, be aware that they are also searchable by clients. Include the Latin as well as the common name of plants, insects and the location (including the country). Some helpful links:

https://www.alamy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Captions-and-Tags-checklist.pdf

https://www.alamy.com/blog/tips-for-your-captions-from-the-sales-team

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

 

You are keyword spamming, which will hurt your CTR rank:

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 300 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.

 

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.

 

Good luck,

Steve

Thanks again Steve - I have steered away from images with people in due to not having modelling licence(s) and hence they would be 'editorial' - is editorial a route worth pursuing? Naive question I know 😞 best regards

colin

[Steve F]

57 minutes ago, Colin C said:

Thanks again Steve - I have steered away from images with people in due to not having modelling licence(s) and hence they would be 'editorial' - is editorial a route worth pursuing? Naive question I know 😞 best regards

colin

 

No naive questions when you're just starting out. Alamy is historically primarily an editorial agency, and although it is trying to go in a different direction at the moment, is likely to remain so. I do have model released images, but I don't think I've ever sold any for advertising purposes. And if you're making images you hope to be used for advertising, you'd need to have a particular theme and high production values. Generic images of landscapes and nature will generally only sell for editorial purposes so you should shoot them with people in too. Pretty much all of my sales have been editorial or for marketing purposes with no model release.

 

Trying to make advertising images would be too much work for me as you don't know if you'll ever make a sale. I only do product / website images for my clients.

 

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/whats-the-difference-between-editorial-and-commercial-photography-learn-how-to-become-a-better-professional-photographer

Edited September 14, 2022 by Steve F

[Colin C]

53 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

No naive questions when you're just starting out. Alamy is historically primarily an editorial agency, and although it is trying to go in a different direction at the moment, is likely to remain so. I do have model released images, but I don't think I've ever sold any for advertising purposes. And if you're making images you hope to be used for advertising, you'd need to have a particular theme and high production values. Generic images of landscapes and nature will generally only sell for editorial purposes so you should shoot them with people in too. Pretty much all of my sales have been editorial or for marketing purposes with no model release.

 

Trying to make advertising images would be too much work for me as you don't know if you'll ever make a sale. I only do product / website images for my clients.

 

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/whats-the-difference-between-editorial-and-commercial-photography-learn-how-to-become-a-better-professional-photographer

Link was most useful - many thanks 🙂

[ribeiroantonio]

On 13/09/2022 at 22:22, Steve F said:

Hi Colin, 

No need for trepidation! It's great to get a review now rather than when you have 5000 images up. 

 

Photos look fine. Try to produce images with people in too; images with people in / doing something sell well.

 

Your captions are too short, be aware that they are also searchable by clients. Include the Latin as well as the common name of plants, insects and the location (including the country). Some helpful links:

https://www.alamy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Captions-and-Tags-checklist.pdf

https://www.alamy.com/blog/tips-for-your-captions-from-the-sales-team

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

 

You are keyword spamming, which will hurt your CTR rank:

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 300 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.

 

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.

 

Good luck,

Steve

 

Reading your note I got interested on it. I would like to understand a bit more and better what you say about CTR, searches, good or optimized discoverability, or poor, etc, etc

 

Only 10% pf my images are Green. All the other are Yellow. What can I do change this?

 

Can we talk privately about these issues? 

[Steve F]

2 hours ago, ribeiroantonio said:

 

Reading your note I got interested on it. I would like to understand a bit more and better what you say about CTR, searches, good or optimized discoverability, or poor, etc, etc

 

Only 10% pf my images are Green. All the other are Yellow. What can I do change this?

 

Can we talk privately about these issues? 

 

Hi. Not much more to say really, I tried to be comprehensive! 

 

We have decided that getting an image's optimisation to green is detrimental if it means you need to include irrelevant keywords, as including irrelevant keywords will hurt your CTR rank. So only include 40 or more keywords for an image if they are relevant and not 'keyword spamming'.

 

How does your CTR compare to the Alamy average?

Steve

Edited September 22, 2022 by Steve F

[ribeiroantonio]

15 hours ago, Steve F said:

 

Hi. Not much more to say really, I tried to be comprehensive! 

 

We have decided that getting an image's optimisation to green is detrimental if it means you need to include irrelevant keywords, as including irrelevant keywords will hurt your CTR rank. So only include 40 or more keywords for an image if they are relevant and not 'keyword spamming'.

 

How does your CTR compare to the Alamy average?

Steve

 

I have two pseudonyms under my account, and I don't know why. One is 0.2 to 0.68 of Alamy average. The other is 0.4 (Alamy average: 0.68). Total CTR is 0.4. 

[Steve F]

9 hours ago, ribeiroantonio said:

 

I have two pseudonyms under my account, and I don't know why. One is 0.2 to 0.68 of Alamy average. The other is 0.4 (Alamy average: 0.68). Total CTR is 0.4. 

 

Not sure about the two pseudonyms thing. Are they in one pseudonym up to a particular date?

 

Your CTR is quite low. That's probably due to captioning and keywording, possibly subject matter? You also have a quite a mix of subjects which is good, many that are editorial, but also a lot that seem more suited to microstock. How well do the white background seeds, herbs, spices, flowers etc. sell for you on Alamy?