MircoV Posted December 23, 2014 Share Posted December 23, 2014 Dear forum members, I am not complaining about sales since my portfolio is only few weeks online but i want to improve my portfolio. Since you are all experienced stock photographers i would appreciate to know what you would change or do better when looking at my portfolio. I thank you allready. Mirco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
george Posted December 23, 2014 Share Posted December 23, 2014 Hi Mirco, Firstly how is the baby? Good to see you back and I see you are loading at a fantastic rate again! Well done. I am no expert or huge seller myself but for what my opinion is worth, I shall give it. I have actually looked at your portfolio a couple of times and I do not think you are missing much. You have a good variety and plenty that contain people and model released which is good. I have thought a number of times that your main problem would come from your keywording, but I think that is just the language limitations for you. A while ago someone posted a link to a keywording sort of dictionary/thesaurus which I have found a huge help for suggesting alternatives. Sorry I am not at my PC at the moment so do not have the link. Perhaps someone else can help? Its going to be things like, mother, mum, mom. I will take another look at some examples and send you a personal message. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted December 23, 2014 Share Posted December 23, 2014 Hi Mirco I'm relatively new at this game myself so I'm not sure how helpful this will be. All manner of images sell, you will get some sales, however.... I feel that you need to be thinking about the requirements of the customer a bit more, why would they use that photo? What would be the perfect shot for that application? e.g. in crude terms a photo of a particular shop needs to be just that, not containing half the street. Some of your shots look a tad empty to me, your'e not close enough to the subject, e.g. there's a couple of a cyclist in a park and I can't make out the cyclist in the thumbnails. Not sure that photos of trolley wheels etc will sell, why would they be used? No doubt they'll sell like hot cakes after I've said that! Lots of people taken from behind, they do sometimes sell, but a few more from the front might help. You do have some full front model released shots, they're nice portraits, but I'm not sure that they are telling any particular story. People need to be doing something; man digging garden, woman using phone, looking at view etc. Maybe I've said too much, best of luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted December 23, 2014 Share Posted December 23, 2014 Mirco, I didn't go through your entire portfolio, but I glanced at six or so pages. My thoughts? You have a diversified portfolio, with nature, food, buildings, people, and some concepts (pregnant belly/coffee beans). That is good. I can't see why you cannot be successful here. By successful, I don't mean rich, I only mean you should sell here. Just realize that since you have so many images, yet have only been on Alamy a few weeks, I suspect you are coming from microstock. I apologize if that is a wrong assumption. If I'm correct, then on microstock you were probably seeing frequent downloads. Your sales won't come like that on Alamy. But they will come. Just stay patient. It took me months to make my first sale, but then I was building my portfolio a few images at a time. I expect you will see results much sooner. Just don't expect to get rich. Realistically, you can expect sales of anywhere from one or two a month to several more than that. You could even see months with none. Alamy is pretty glutted with images now, so every year it is more difficult to have one's images stand out from the rest. I had more sales several years ago than I do now, even though my portfolio has grown. Then since you are new, your images are probably ranked somewhere in the middle of the pack. Once you make a few sales, and when we have a re-rank, and if that re-rank moves you up, sales should pick up a bit. Making those first few sales to get things moving is the hard part. Of course, there are opinions about having several pseudonyms. I do have several, dividing my animals, birds, etc. to one, my plants to another, and several more. Some people only have one pseudo. Think about it since if you separate your images now, it shouldn't hurt your rank. If you are coming from Micro, then you know what your popular images are. Put the best sellers and any new ones you shoot that you are excited about or you feel stand out from the rest in one pseudo, the lesser more average ones in another. Just remember anything that has ever sold on Micro RF, must be listed RF on Alamy. Images that never sold before cam be listed RM if you choose. Good luck! Betty Whoops! While I wrote my lengthy missive, others weighed in and now I see you have been here before and most surely know the ropes. Disregard my idiotic ramblings, lol! But yes, as suggested above, when you take an image of a shop or building, let it take up most of the frame, maybe a bit of copy space. I did that and sold a restaurant image a week after I uploaded it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
christian58 Posted December 23, 2014 Share Posted December 23, 2014 I am not at all sure too much diversity in a RM/RF agency is a good thing. An agency with lots of creative buyers, i.e. Art-directors, art-buyers, designers and so on, this sort of crowd would look upon it as a sort of "jack of all trades but master of none". Diversity is much more a micro thingy where buyers don't really care too much anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted December 23, 2014 Share Posted December 23, 2014 I am not at all sure too much diversity in a RM/RF agency is a good thing. An agency with lots of creative buyers, i.e. Art-directors, art-buyers, designers and so on, this sort of crowd would look upon it as a sort of "jack of all trades but master of none". Diversity is much more a micro thingy where buyers don't really care too much anyway. This is an interesting point. It still pays to have a niche IMO. Most of my Alamy sales come from my travel-related images in my main pseudonym, and I think that I have a fair number of repeat buyers on Alamy. What I did was put my "Jack of all trades" images under a secondary pseudo that has actually started to do OK. I've had some decent sales from it this year, which is a good thing because I can't afford to travel much these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MircoV Posted December 23, 2014 Author Share Posted December 23, 2014 Bryan, Betty and George. Thank you very much. This is exactly the opinions i needed. I don't mint to hear the reality as long it can help me. Now i have some thing to think about and work on. I need sometimes some advice because i am getting blind after long time not doing so. This is another big reason why i love Alamy. Forum with full of helpful people. Mirco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
christian58 Posted December 24, 2014 Share Posted December 24, 2014 I am not at all sure too much diversity in a RM/RF agency is a good thing. An agency with lots of creative buyers, i.e. Art-directors, art-buyers, designers and so on, this sort of crowd would look upon it as a sort of "jack of all trades but master of none". Diversity is much more a micro thingy where buyers don't really care too much anyway. This is an interesting point. It still pays to have a niche IMO. Most of my Alamy sales come from my travel-related images in my main pseudonym, and I think that I have a fair number of repeat buyers on Alamy. What I did was put my "Jack of all trades" images under a secondary pseudo that has actually started to do OK. I've had some decent sales from it this year, which is a good thing because I can't afford to travel much these days. Same here John! my niched portfolio is outselling the rest by light-years, always done so for the last ten years. Its got so far that I can actually recognize regular buyers, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Yarvin Posted December 24, 2014 Share Posted December 24, 2014 I'm with Christian on this. However, there's always room for improvement. (At least in my case.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tarsierspectral Posted December 25, 2014 Share Posted December 25, 2014 Dear forum members, I am not complaining about sales since my portfolio is only few weeks online but i want to improve my portfolio. Since you are all experienced stock photographers i would appreciate to know what you would change or do better when looking at my portfolio. I thank you allready. Mirco Hi Mirco, You might want to improve your captions as well. For example, this image: EAY102 is captioned "Woman selling alcohol free beer to pregnant costumers at the Festiwal Dobrego Smaku event in Poznan, Poland" Neither we can see any pregnant customers nor a woman selling anything to anyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MircoV Posted December 25, 2014 Author Share Posted December 25, 2014 Dear forum members, I am not complaining about sales since my portfolio is only few weeks online but i want to improve my portfolio. Since you are all experienced stock photographers i would appreciate to know what you would change or do better when looking at my portfolio. I thank you allready. Mirco Hi Mirco, You might want to improve your captions as well. For example, this image: EAY102 is captioned "Woman selling alcohol free beer to pregnant costumers at the Festiwal Dobrego Smaku event in Poznan, Poland" Neither we can see any pregnant customers nor a woman selling anything to anyone. Thank you! You are totally right. Your comment makes me think again. Mirco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ernest Posted December 25, 2014 Share Posted December 25, 2014 Your best images, your RF images can be found on microstock sites. So buyers won't buy this on Alamy. RM photos are not good so... Buyers are very selective. So specializing is not a bad idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MircoV Posted December 25, 2014 Author Share Posted December 25, 2014 Your best images, your RF images can be found on microstock sites. So buyers won't buy this on Alamy. RM photos are not good so... Buyers are very selective. So specializing is not a bad idea. Thanks for your input Ernest. You have a great portfolio with superb images. I find them very inspirational so i know very good what you mean with specializing now. Mirco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc Posted December 25, 2014 Share Posted December 25, 2014 I am an experienced photographer, but not an experienced stock photographer. But I would make two observations. The first is that you should be more specific with your captions. For example you have referred to "church" and a "castle". I doubt that many buyers would search for a castle anywhere in the world, but a specific castle, or church. Or style of church. The second would be to make sure there is a focal point of interest in shots. So you have "an image of a field of dry grass". There is no horizon or change in texture, or focus point to draw my eye through the image. That said, I have sold a couple of images this year that are rather uninspiring from a photography point of view. But clearly worked to illustrate a subject. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted December 25, 2014 Share Posted December 25, 2014 Micro, I do not want to critique your English, which is pretty good, and I'm sure everyone in here understands you just fine . . . but "allready" is spelled "already" (one L) or sometimes "all ready." What I'm concerned about is that you might have English spellings mistakes in your keywords. So I suggest, if you are not doing so now, turn on your English spell checker and maybe use https://translate.google.com/ sometimes. Have a good holiday. Edo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MircoV Posted December 25, 2014 Author Share Posted December 25, 2014 I guess before i even think about my images i should first correct my spellings in my keywording and titling. I let my girlfriend check my keywords and she totally agrees with you all. It looks that i need you guys sometimes....... Thanks for your attention. Mirco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
christian58 Posted December 25, 2014 Share Posted December 25, 2014 Hi Bryan! yeah and I have only got a small port here, but many thousands at another huge RM/RF agency and still the niched images are selling lots better. I'm with Christian on this. However, there's always room for improvement. (At least in my case.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.