Mauro C Posted March 26 Share Posted March 26 Hello everybody! From 2018 to 2023 I made an average of approximately 10 sales per year. I currently have 2800+ photos in my portfolio. As unattractive as they may be, it seems very strange to me that the past six months have passed without a single sale. Is there a way to understand if there is an issue regarding visibility of my portfolio or some other kind of problem? It is very discouraging Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rickygui Posted March 29 Share Posted March 29 Totally understand your pain point and I also have my fair share of frustration before. Am not an expert but I think it is determine by a few factors. The need of the images by buyer, minimise keywords spamming, or even similar image already is saturated. You got many awesome images, description and keywords is pretty on point. I suggest do look around the forum to study what other members had shared. Also in your acct overview, look at 'What shoot I shoot', particularly in your region, look at 'Alamy Measures' data too. I hope you had a bunch of great sales real soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foreign Export Posted March 29 Share Posted March 29 (edited) You have some good images, so I would expect more sales than that. Keywording does need some work in my opinion, remove keywords that aren't actually in the picture - for example vegetation in your picture of a helicopter and then focus on what the image actually conveys. Edited March 30 by Foreign Export 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Joseph Clemson Posted March 29 Popular Post Share Posted March 29 I would support the replies already made. In addition, I would suggest you need to be more focussed and specific with your captions. The caption plays a major role in what turns up in search results, not just the keywords. In addition, Alamy is primarily an editorial library, which means many buyers are looking for something very specific. A picture captioned 'Lively street in the city centre in a fresh summer morning' is not likely to be found by potential buyers. Which street? Which city? Does it convey 'freshness;'? Your captioning is too generic, it's not productive, given the way Alamy works. You will have benefitted in your early year by Alamy giving you a mid-table ranking in searches. Depending on how your images perform in subsequent searches - how often they are zoomed or sold - your search ranking will go up or down. Have a look for discussions on CTR (click through rate). Your own CTR needs to be be at least the Alamy average, ideally much higher. One of the problems with having large quantities of irrelevant or periperhal keywords in an image is that the image turns up in searches where it's not relevant and is ignored by the potential buyer. As a result, CTR decreases a little and, in time, buyers stop seeing your images in the first results of any search. It may be that you are just experiencing a blip in sales, and this happens to us all from time to time. However, do what is in your power to make your portfolio visible to the right potential buyers at the right time in order to reduce the number and length of such blips. When I had a similar problem some years ago, I created myself a new psudonym. I then steeled myself to put in that pseudonym only images which were tightly captioned and keyworded, sometimes with less than twenty keywords. Now it contains a small proportion of my portfolio but has a CTR well above Alamy average. It produces around 50% of my sales from 10% of my portfolio. At Alamy, taking the photo is only a tiny part of what it takes to be a stock photographer. 4 1 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve F Posted March 29 Share Posted March 29 Helpful advice on captioning: See also: 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 +1 to what Joseph said. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 On 26/03/2024 at 14:22, Mauro C said: ...it seems very strange to me that the past six months have passed without a single sale. Is there a way to understand if there is an issue regarding visibility of my portfolio or some other kind of problem? It is very discouraging Your recent lack of sales is similar to what many contributors at Alamy, myself included, and at other agencies across the stock media industry are reporting. It's likely not a particular shortcoming in your portfolio or key-wording, etc. IMO one plausible cause could be a widespread reduction in stock media demand in the current economic environment. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M.Chapman Posted March 31 Share Posted March 31 (edited) On 26/03/2024 at 14:22, Mauro C said: Is there a way to understand if there is an issue regarding visibility of my portfolio or some other kind of problem? Check how many views you're getting, try some test searches or even the BHZ test. This may help. Mark Edited March 31 by M.Chapman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Standfast Posted March 31 Share Posted March 31 I have also sorted 3 pseudonyms based on commercial value. For the last 12 months: Top Pseudo CTR is 0.65 8804 views Middle Pseudo is 0.56 44669 views Bottom Pseudo CTR is 0.42 1886 views Criteria for the top psuedo is sales repeat sales zooms and hunches. Mostly feedback from buyers. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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