Is there a quicker way to add tags?

[CNG]

It looks like discoverablity is taking a long time. The more tags I add the more my orange line turns to green but I am still not there after over 20 tags and starring 10 of them.

 

Is there an app that will fill in the tags more quickly than manually entering them one at a time?

Thanks!
Craig

[Steve F]

Hi, 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. If you add too many irrelevant keywords, this will hurt your CTR ranking. 

 

 

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 315 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.

 

1 hour ago, CNG said:

Is there an app that will fill in the tags more quickly than manually entering them one at a time?

 

Yes, Lightroom. But in AIM (Alamy Image Manager), you can also copy tags between images.

Steve

[Rebecca Ore]

Not a good idea to use a keywording program.  For some subjects, a file of possibly relevant keywords might be useful: <species name> whole plant,  flower spike, flowers, fading flowers, seed pods; <common name> with the same modifications.  Birds same pattern but with perching, in flight, preening,feeding young, group fighting, mobbing.  Then you pull up the file and drag and drop what's relevant to any individual photo.   Architectural terms could be used the same way. People: age ranges, ethnicity, at a desk, using <whatever>, etc.

 

     In my first period with Alamy, I got some photos up to green, but didn't license any of those.  The highest licensing fee I ever got then was from a search for "cichlid pair."  So you never know. 

[Cal]

it's not as hard as it may seem to get a decent amount of KWs because Alamy does not stem keywords. So if you had a photo with a water reflection you'd need to put "reflection, reflect, reflecting, reflects" etc, whereas some other sites need just one of those variations. That said, and Steve has already covered the guts of it, don't spam KWs.

 

Incidentally, I have a truly abysmal CTR (really, really bad) but I still get a respectable amount of sales per port size. Shrug?

[PatsyCollins]

If you tend to use the same tags for multiple uploads you can copy them from one image to another and then delete those which don't apply.

[Marianne]

If you keyword in Photoshop, Bridge or Lightroom (as well as in many other programs), the keywords will upload in the IPTC data with your images so that you don't need anything to do much in Alamy Image Manager (AIM) other than star the most relevant ones or add anything else you forgot. You can keyword multiple images at once in those programs and in AIM. Just be sure if you're keywording a batch that you check to be sure the keywords are relevant to all of the images. 

 

As noted, if relevant, add both singular and plural as well as other stems, but don't worry about turning them green - that takes around 40 keywords. Unnecessary keywords, even if appropriate, may hurt your CTR, even if you are not spamming (adding irrelevant words). 

 

Good luck!

[Cryptoprocta]

On 16/01/2023 at 15:21, Steve F said:

Hi, 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. If you add too many irrelevant keywords, this will hurt your CTR ranking.

This can't be stated often enough.

Alamy should get rid of this silly feature, which only encourages spamming.

Note that in Alamy's own tutorial, they only have 14 keywords, and some of them were previously discussed here on the forum as 'marginally' relevant at best.

 

[Mr Standfast]

Dear Alamy.

 

Second discoverability thread this year.

 

Perhaps the high discoverability concept is confusing people?

 

Love,

 

🦔

[M.Chapman]

11 hours ago, Mr Standfast said:

Dear Alamy.

 

Second discoverability thread this year.

 

Perhaps the high discoverability concept is confusing people?

 

Love,

 

🦔

Not to mention the confusion that arises from defining the minimum acceptable image size as 17MB (uncompressed image size in megbytes) instead of perhaps 6MP (6 million pixels).

 

Mark

Edited January 19, 2023 by M.Chapman

[Steve F]

12 hours ago, Cryptoprocta said:

his can't be stated often enough.

Alamy should get rid of this silly feature, which only encourages spamming.

 

Totally agreed. How many times do we explain this?!

 

34 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

Not to mention the confusion that arises from defining the minimum acceptable image size as 17MB (uncompressed image size in megbytes) instead of perhaps 6MP (6 million pixels).

 

I think Alamy have more or less sorted this, they've added to the explanation on submission guidelines:

" File size of over 17MB (when uncompressed/open)

Your JPEG file is likely to have a compressed size of 3-5MB. Opening a JPEG in an image program such as Adobe Photoshop will show you the uncompressed/open file size."

[M.Chapman]

6 hours ago, Steve F said:

I think Alamy have more or less sorted this, they've added to the explanation on submission guidelines:

" File size of over 17MB (when uncompressed/open)

Your JPEG file is likely to have a compressed size of 3-5MB. Opening a JPEG in an image program such as Adobe Photoshop will show you the uncompressed/open file size."

It's better but it's still causing confusion though. Why Alamy don't just swap to quoting 6,000,000 pixels is beyond me. The size of the open image in RAM just isn't as easily understood. It also introduces another layer of confusion if working in 16 bit or grey scale in PS before saving as a jpg.

 

Mark

Edited January 19, 2023 by M.Chapman

[Sally]

On 16/01/2023 at 17:12, Cal said:

it's not as hard as it may seem to get a decent amount of KWs because Alamy does not stem keywords. So if you had a photo with a water reflection you'd need to put "reflection, reflect, reflecting, reflects" etc, whereas some other sites need just one of those variations. That said, and Steve has already covered the guts of it, don't spam KWs.

 

Incidentally, I have a truly abysmal CTR (really, really bad) but I still get a respectable amount of sales per port size. Shrug?

Don’t forget “reflected” 😝. If you use Lightroom there are a number of keyword generator plug-ins. I tried one once but like others, I think it’s better to do it yourself, tedious though it may be at times. After a while, you’ll have built your own keyword system; using hierarchies makes the work a lot easier.

Edited January 20, 2023 by Sally