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Hello everyone,

I'm new on this forum, but recorded in alamy for several years, but I only had a few pictures on this site.

Since January this year, I encoded a large number of images (approximately 15,000 photos).

I got up today, about 130 zooms (which I think is very good) but only two sales (which are not linked to zoom).

I am quite frequently forum since January and I could learn from your experiences, it takes some time to become a part of zooms sales.

But can you tell me, from your experience, how many months do I have a hope that some of these zooms become sales?

Excuse me in advance for the spelling but I speak very little English

In advance thank you for your help
 
Vanessa
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Guest geogphotos

Some recent forum discussion suggests that the ratio of zooms to sales is somewhere between 2-6 zooms per sale with a few people having a much higher ratio.

 

It can take many months for a sale to be reported so you will just have to be patient.

 

But hopefully with 130 zooms since January you will have a nice stream of sales in the pipeline.

 

Ian Murray

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Guest geogphotos

It was hard to draw any conclusions from this recent discussion but I did think that the higher zoom to sales ratio were for less tightly edited collections - maybe the buyer looks at more similar images before deciding which one they want.

 

Looking at your images I would say that you have very many similars, an excessive amount in my opinion. I would guess that you would have a high number of zooms for each sale. I don't consider myself as somebody who edits very tightly but your editing is very loose. This will  damage your Alamy Rank and that will hit sales because your images will be way down the search order.

 

It is quite common for sales to take six months to be reported, often less, often longer, sometimes much longer. 

 

I hope that this helps - I am trying to be constructive rather than critical.

 

All the best with Alamy

 

Ian

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Quote from Geogphotos:  "Looking at your images I would say that you have very many similars, an excessive amount in my opinion. I would guess that you would have a high number of zooms for each sale. I don't consider myself as somebody who edits very tightly but your editing is very loose. This will  damage your Alamy Rank and that will hit sales because your images will be way down the search order."

 

I would agree entirely with what Ian says - If I was a buyer, looking at your photos and saw an image I might consider buying I may well zoom it - but if there were a whole load of very similar images I might well zoom many of them to see the actual difference between them, but I would still only buy one at the end of the day. 

 

So your zooms: sales ratio may well be greater than many others on the forum.

 

Kumar Sriskandan

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Thank you for your answers and advice ..

I would have to wait several months before you see the correct ratio "zooms / sales."

Depending on the result and I would adapt the number of images to a subject   ;-)

Thank you again!

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Vanessa, your English is just fine. 

 

I get zooms, and I get sales, but relatively few of my zooms turn into sales. There seems to be a disconnect. I like getting zooms because they help my Alamy Rank, which is important. I make it my policy to upload very few similars (Alamy's policy, really), so I'm thinking that Ian's point makes sense. Thanks, Ian. 

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Guest geogphotos

A more general question emerges from this, namely, what effect if any does the zooms to sales ratio have on Alamy Rank? Surely it would make more sense to 'reward' those with a lower ratio. It might be a mistake to think that just getting zooms is beneficial if the ratio to sales is poor?

 

I recall that Wim Wiskerke posted a very low ratio and I see that he is ranked number 1 one on BHZ.

 

Overall, for my own stuff, I think a ratio of 4-5 zooms to 1 sale probably suits me. I'd be concerned that I would lose out on the low ranking pseudo sales if I edited too tightly. I do see that the ratio is lower for my top pseudo and quite a bit worse for my lesser ones.

 

 

But as always it is a balancing act and, in any case, we don't have the full information about how Alamy Rank works.
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Yes, absolutely, I also think it is difficult to compare one person to another.

Everything depends on the subject of pictures, if the subject is targeted and rarely ..

In my case, it is too early to make reliable statistics.

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I had the same thought in relation to similars as Doc and Geogphotos when I looked at this post earlier. A buyer would undoubtedly have to zoom a large number of images to make a choice.

 

On another point, the direct link to your images makes it a lot easier to make sense of your query which is certainly a positive aspect of the new forum requirement to drop anonymity.

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A more general question emerges from this, namely, what effect if any does the zooms to sales ratio have on Alamy Rank? Surely it would make more sense to 'reward' those with a lower ratio. It might be a mistake to think that just getting zooms is beneficial if the ratio to sales is poor?

 

I recall that Wim Wiskerke posted a very low ratio and I see that he is ranked number 1 one on BHZ.

 

Overall, for my own stuff, I think a ratio of 4-5 zooms to 1 sale probably suits me. I'd be concerned that I would lose out on the low ranking pseudo sales if I edited too tightly. I do see that the ratio is lower for my top pseudo and quite a bit worse for my lesser ones.

 

 

But as always it is a balancing act and, in any case, we don't have the full information about how Alamy Rank works.

I understand from something I was told a few years ago by MS, that the ratio of sales to views is also a factor in determining Alamy Rank.  This would reinforce Ian's suggestion that too many similars can be damaging to AR.

 

Pearl

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As Ian suggests I don't think here is any doubt that many similars has an impact on your overall sales. We are all guilty of that from time to time.

 

But I'm not yet convinced that the BHZ exercise is a real indicator of overall success. Most searches are multi word phrases. My view is that accurate keywording of phrases is more important. But I am afraid that I don't have any answers other than to put into your description what you see in the image. And then emulate the keywords of what you see into the Essential Alamy field.

 

I'm not entirely sure of this but it seems to be working for me. I've been very careful lately to be less generous with non-essential keywords. Ask yourself what would someone looking for your image really be looking for, and think in terms of phrases.

 

A simple example is why put into your keywords " cloudy sky" when the main subject of your image is not a cloudy sky but xyz cathedral. The cloudy sky just happens to be a part of the image of the cathedral.

 

I might be accused of telling Grandma how to suck eggs, but reinforcement of such a view is sometimes useful.

 

Good luck

 

ken

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Thank you for your comment!

Although my initial question was simply how long on average a part of my zooms 130 could turn into sales.

I am a professional photographer for over 10 years and I only photograph dogs.
There are approximately 400 breeds of dogs and in each there may be types, colors and sizes.

When a magazine or a book wants to talk about a particular race, it is important to be able to offer different dogs, different poses, etc. .. for the same race

So I can understand that some of you think I have a lot of similar photos.


But for many races on this site, you will see that I am almost the only one to upload pictures and I'm usually in the first few pages.

About 130 zooms I got since January relates generally to different races and keywords used to specify each time a race and not a general term.

I know your comments are based on the photos too similar, but I think it does not apply to highly targeted and specific subjects.

So only time will tell if it's beneficial or not;-)

 

Vanessa

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I'm a prolific shooter and keyworder and therefore tend to have a high ratio of views to zooms, and probably also of zooms to sales (about 7:1). However, I have been looking at my stats and a) my average is better than Alamy overall B) I am impressed by how many times there's only been one zoom, and it's been mine, despite both a fairly high return from my collection and a very large found set from Alamy. I may have had say 30 found results, Alamy may have had 600, but only one's been zoomed and it's one of mine. That kind of result is reassuring because it confirms what I set out to do, which is to provide images which look most appropriate to a typical final use.

 

David

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Yes agree with this principle

People do not know a particular subject in depth will tend to enter a general keyword (in my case, "dog")

But I was surprised on this site to see the number of searches on very specific breed and the number of zoom.

I take an example of a little known race: "Vallhund" there are a total of 60 pictures on the website for this race, 52 of which are mine.
After about 2 or 3 weeks, I had 10 zooms with the keyword "Vallhund" on very different photos for this race.

This confirms me in the fact should not be be in a specialized agency to satisfy customers ...

 

Vanessa

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