How to get 'good' discoverability

[Nogsy]

Hi, I am a relative newbie, (just over a year, 200+ photos, 3*QC)

All of which have 'poor' discoverability (what ever that means?).

How can I improve this? Any advice would be gratefully received?

 

If anyone wants to have a look at my portfolio and pass on any advice regarding content, quality, style, sale ability, etc. I would be very appreciative.

I just take photos, choose ones I like, enhance the image a bit and upload. I don't have an Instagram presence nor website. Do these make a big difference?

 

Thanks in advance for any time you take to peruse and comment.

 

[Mr Standfast]

Hello, I suggest you put Discoverability into the forum search. Many helpful posts already. Good luck.

[Michael Ventura]

PLEASE Alamy, get rid of Discoverability in AIM.  It just promotes contributors to add irrelevant keywords just to reach "good discoverability".  This is not good for Alamy or the contributor.

 

Nogsy, don't worry about it.  Just add any word or words that is relevant to your photos.  I average 21 sales a month and very few of my photos have a "good discoverability" designation 

[Rebecca Ore]

Most of us, with some talented exceptions, don't make regular sales until we have around a thousand photos in our portfolios.   Some specialize and others try to have as wide a range of subjects as possible.  Keep an eye out for failed searches in All of Alamy, and add those if you either have the photos or can take them.  Also, look at "What should I shoot," also on the contributor's dashboard, and if appropriate, add the search term to relevant photos and check that you have this (I'm had one or two licenses from this). 

 

Also, your eagle doesn't seem to be eagle size compared to the plants around it.   Looks more like a smaller Buteo, but I'm not familiar with British birds.   Eagles are really quite large and young out of the next are as large as adults.   Golden Eagles do show up in Scotland -- International Falconry Forum would be good for check IDs of birds of prey as it's based in the UK.   https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/birds/birds-prey/golden-eagle  for more information.  They're described as being Scottish birds.   You've got one other eagle species in the UK but it's quite rare.  Buzzard is a common name for one of your buteos.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_buzzard.   This looks more like your bird.  Buteo buteo.  Very similar to the American Redtailed Hawk. 

 

If you've got an interesting subject, try vertical and horizontal, and close framing and environmental framing.

[Betty LaRue]

Another thing, like your photo of church & 13th street bridge.  Put the name of the church in the caption, also. For instance: CAPTION:  Exterior of (name of church) in background with 13th street bridge in foreground, in (name of town), country.

Then also use exterior in your keywords. I also add day, daytime as keywords to show difference between night shots & day shots. I’ve gotten quite a few searches & sales because I’ve added “exterior, front, entrance” if each applies. Most often searched in mine is exterior. Although a few “interior”. Be sure to put location & country in all captions & tags unless it’s an image of a generic object found everywhere…like a bowl of apples, etc.

I really like your images. Very well developed & colorful. You need to flesh out your captions & tags, but only what is relevant.

Betty

[Harry Harrison]

14 hours ago, Nogsy said:

I don't have an Instagram presence nor website. Do these make a big difference?

Thankfully no but in this day and age it's a reasonable question to ask! All the great advice above does allude to something else though, something hidden, the mysterious Alamy Algorithm. This governs how well your images compete with other similar ones in the search results and the way it works can change. Of course it's most important that you get all the relevant information in both your caption and keywords and it's worth bearing in mind that Alamy doesn't help with plurals (no 'stemming') so think about those as well, basically think about how people might be searching for images and so possibly include conceptual keywords as well if these might apply. I don't think Supertags have been mentioned, I think it's agreed that these are particularly important so choose them carefully, but definitely choose them. None of us get to see which Supertags anyone has chosen so it's difficult to advise.

 

Recently it's become clear that you do need to enter information in the Property & Model Release 'optional' fields because the new Ultimate & Vital categories look to them, so even if you have no models, no property and no releases you have to tell Alamy that. 

 

Primary and Secondary Categories? No evidence that they do anything currently ( they are not publicly searchable) but best advice is to probably enter at least a Primary in case Alamy move the goal posts.

 

The things you don't have direct control over? Well probably and understandably images from successful contributors (in terms of Alamy sales) will probably appear above yours (and mine!). I think that this probably means that a photographer who is great at 'Y' and has had many sales, but is hopeless at 'X' will still get their images of 'X' above yours. It probably also means that actual individual images are weighted, big sellers as it were, and again that's understandable.

 

It's quite possible that regular uploading could help you, it's also possible that new contributors are given a bit of a help in the beginning but all this is just surmise really, or is it  paranoia?  Is it just my imagination that when I'm critical of Alamy on here my sales drop off..... don't forget that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

 

There is also 'All of Alamy' or AoA as most call it on here, you get to it from your dashboard and it shows what a representative sample of important clients have been searching for and if any of your images have been included in those searches. It's pretty complex and Alamy don't really explain how to use it but there is a lot of very valuable advice on here. I don't use it nearly enough, I think actually it's really very important to do so.

Edited February 19, 2023 by Harry Harrison

[Alex Ramsay]

Of my roughly 12,000 images just 8 have 'good discoverability'. Of those, I think only one has ever sold. I wouldn't worry about it if I were you.

 

Alex

[Steve F]

17 hours ago, Nogsy said:

All of which have 'poor' discoverability (what ever that means?).

How can I improve this?

 

Don't worry about it. There's lots of threads on this on the Forum you can look up. Just make sure you have relevant keywords rather than keyword spamming.

 

17 hours ago, Nogsy said:

If anyone wants to have a look at my portfolio and pass on any advice

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/forum/18-portfolio-critique/

You can post under here for a Portfolio review

 

17 hours ago, Nogsy said:

I don't have an Instagram presence nor website. Do these make a big difference?

 

The vast majority of us don't either. Unless you photograph in a really unusual style and have a big following, then social media won't help at all. Alamy buyers won't be searching on social media generally.

[spacecadet]

I was surprised to see that a quarter of my images have good discoverability.

On closer inspection I see that most of them were tagged before the concept was adopted (early on I used to overtag) so their status has nothing whatever to do with me.

I have never knowingly attempted to make an image "discoverable".