Newish to Alamy and I just can't sell or get zooms. Desperate for feedback

[Tim M]

Hi people

 

I know my request isnt new and I've read similar topics and I understand a lot of patience is required. It would really be helpful if I can get some feedback. I've been with Alamy for six months, and have over 100 imagse (I know it isnt much). I know now not to expect a quick sale - but I thought I'd get at least a zoom? I'm not sure where I am going wrong on Alamy. One of the things I'm also struggling at is the "discoverability." When I opt for little but very specific keywords, my discoverability remains poor.But if I populate the keywords using as much relevant information as possible, I can't get a zoom. I know I'll have to have about 1000 plus images to perhaps see a sale, but I need assurance or honest feedback of what I can do to achieve at least a zoom.

 

On the funny side, I've tried to search my images and nothing! But I was pleasantly surprised to be on top of Google's search returns for one photo and was so happy that I'd discovered a niche image. It was for the magnificent Sovre Lighthouse in Estonia, which I was amazed didnt have a single photo from other contributors. I'm back to earth though now, having discovered that I had in fact misspelt the key search term. Turns out it's "Sorve" on not "Sovre". Normal service resumed - I now cant find my once popular image, as it's drowned by others and I desperately want to join their ranks.

 

Anyway, please help. Is it the low volume of images? Is it my keywording? Is it style of photos or poor quality? I look forward to your thoughts and learning from them.

 

Regards

 

Tim

[Steve F]

Hi Tim,

It's a shame you haven't had any zooms, you have some good pictures. Your images will appear quite low down in the search results as you have no zooms, which will have dropped your CTR. I agree with M. Chapman (below), I only have 8 optimised images.  Your keywording looks fine - I would have said you even have too many words and not specific enough perhaps, although with the recent Alamy update they seem to want a min. of 40-50 keywords to get an "Optimised" image. To give you a comparison, I've been active on Alamy for just under 2 years. I got my first sale when I had about 250 pictures up after 6 months. Now I'm 14 sales and 1200 pictures.

 

I'm sure everyone else here will say it's definitely a volume problem. 100 images is a drop in the ocean. Holiday pictures are good, but the UK is Alamy's main market so concentrate on taking UK pictures if you live there. Good luck!

[Joseph Clemson]

Hello Tim,

 

If you want to sell at Alamy you need to be more specific and accurate. For example your 'seagulls' are black-headed gulls in their breeding plumage. Keyword fully and accurately in all cases - research is essential, more so than with generic microstock type images. Keyword places, precise locations, building names.

 

Be aware also that some locations may place restrictions on the commerical usage of your photos; English Heritage who run Stonehenge is one example. At the very least you need to make sure images showing property and/or unreleased people are marked editorial only. 

[M.Chapman]

Nice images. "Discoverability" has nothing to do with CTR. The "discoverability" is purely based on the amount of meta data (caption, tags etc) you enter. Don't worry about discoverabilty, it just encourages keyword spamming. I have over 3,000 images on sale, of which Alamy deems 2,900 have "low discoverability". It means nothing.

 

Your main problems are to do with quantity of images and subject matter. Some of your subjects are already well covered in Alamy (so you have a lot of competition), for example Westminster Bridge has 24,000 images on Alamy. Also you only have 100 images which is too few to see regular zooms. I suspect that you may have had even less than this on average over the 6 months?

 

I have 3,000 images on sale. I get about 800 views and 4 zooms per week. (0.5% CTR). I'd like more zooms, but I get sales nevertheless.

 

Taking those numbers gives about 27 views and 0.13 zooms per week per 100 of my images. With a small portfolio zooms are like "london buses" you might suddenly get a few, then none for months.

[Steve F]

Thanks Mark, made some edits to my post. Tim, I agree with Mark, some of your subjects are well covered in Alamy already. I like your deckchair shot, but I'm not sure where the focus point is, I would have focused on the front chair and let the other be out of focus behind. The London skyline shots are very black too, I can't see them selling. But it's good that you're being creative, something I don't do enough!

[Colblimp]

Hi Tim, welcome!

 

I'm a newbie to Alamy, having joined on 31st Dec 2015.  As it stands, I have just under 900 images in my port and have made 12 sales so far with around 35 zooms in that time.  I've managed to make one sale per month this year, with two in the last week.  Be prepared for Alamy to be a long term investment in time, with little reward, until you have tens of thousands of images in your port!

 

Good luck with it and give me a shout if you have any questions, if I don't know the answer, I'm sure someone will know.

[spacecadet]

About one view/image/month seems pretty standard for a mixed collection non-spammily keyworded. Zooms, rather less than one in a hundred views. Sales, maybe a fifth of that. So, with your hundred images, rather less than one sale a year.

To echo what others say about the drop in the ocean, it's worth my while submitting images with a lot of competition because I have a reasonable rank and they will be seen. Yours may not be.

[Betty LaRue]

Why am I seeing this information below? Yet when I click on images # I get an error page. This is what I'm seeing, everbody's avatar has that string of information under it. I've been gone for a few days and the whole forum page format has changed. Am I the only one? All of you who aren't using your real name, I'm seeing your real name. I'm seeing where you live. This seems to be revealing personal information.  On my iPad.

Sometimes I'm not getting capitalization after a period. I can see bold, italics, underline and cross through options at the top of the text box.  Did I miss an announcement? In a look through, I see no threads about it.

Betty

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[MariaJ]

Yes I see all of that too Betty.  The forum was down for a while today (this afternoon my time) and then this new version popped up.  I don't like my full name listed here.  

Edit-I'm thinking there must be a bug and all that http stuff is supposed to be a link to our images, which isn't working.

 

[Betty LaRue]

well, if it's a new forum format, there's so many bugs I'm getting out my bug spray! 

I think I might like it a lot better once it's been refined. For the iPad, I like that the emojis are available. I like that I don't have to use HTML to use bold or italics.

as you see, I'm not getting capitalization with a new sentence. The line spacing is messed up....double spaced some of the time. Maybe it's guessing when to start a new paragraph and double spacing those.  Or double spaces when we hit a carriage return.

I chose a font size on the top line, but it reverted to small on the second line and I had to choose the size again before it stuck.

The information that's being provided with our avatars must be fixed. There are people here that do not want that to be seen, and I expect a big stink when the rest of the world wakes up in the morning.

The changeover must've happened while the forum was down. Maybe the bugs will be fixed before all h*** breaks out in the morning.

I will like it a lot, I think. Good job, Alamy.....I think. 

Betty

...there went my font size again. 

oh my gosh! Insert image feature!!!

[Jill Morgan]

I hate that it marked everything as read when it finally came back up, so if I want to see new posts since I was last here, I have to scroll through threads. Real pain. It wasn't broke, so why did they try to fix It?  Now of course it is broke, so they will have to fix it.

Jill

[MariaJ]

I sent them an email.

[KTC]