A jump in CTR and zooms

[Southpole]

though no sales my CTR jumped to 0.86% and 6 zooms is 0.86% good or bad ??

[Nick Jenkins]

Be optimistic but it doesn't necessarily mean sales will come out of it. It probably means that at least your work has been viewed, along with others, so there is an increased potential, but in and of itself, it doesn't mean a sale - or sales!
Good luck anyway

nj

[tarsierspectral]

I have sales but my CTR is only 0.16 and it's not really going up much.  So honestly I no longer know what it all means.  I have the same amount of sales as I had before when my CTR was above Alamy's average.  The only thing that I am noticing different is that my views went way up in the past few months or so that's why my CTR is so low but he amount of sales is the same.  I get more sales than zooms.

[David Davies]

I gave up trying to make sense of CTR months (or was it years?) ago, I would not place too much importance on it!

[OneWay]

With a good CTR, it's nice to know that buyers are taking an closer interest in some of my images, but whether that translates into sales is another thing. Most of my sales are not from clicked zooms.

 

Dave

[tarsierspectral]

The only good CTR is a CONSTANT CTR that has a value above the "Average CTR on Alamy for last month " (see my Alamy >Pseudonym Summary)

 

One that is usually 0 or very low and suddenly jumps to 3, 4, 5 or higher and then back to 0 for weeks on end is meaningless. In my opinion, a constant CTR can only be achieved when having many thousand images of very varied subjects.

 

Cheers,

Philippe

That used to be the case for me for years until something happened recently (within last several months).  Now it's still kind of constant but way below Alamy's average.

[dov makabaw]

An above average CTR has to be a good thing. You are obviously doing something right. Hopefully sales will follow but bear in mind that you do not yet have many images in your portfolio. Good luck anyway

 

dov

[Niels Quist]

I gave up trying to make sense of CTR months (or was it years?) ago, I would not place too much importance on it!

 

Neither would I.

[Pearl]

In my experience it is easier to achieve a high CTR when you have a small portfolio as just one zoom can make a big difference and so it is also less meaningful. Maintaining a high CTR is less easy but at the end of the day it's really only sales that matter.

 

Pearl

[Ed Rooney]

In my experience it is easier to achieve a high CTR when you have a small portfolio as just one zoom can make a big difference and so it is also less meaningful. Maintaining a high CTR is less easy but at the end of the day it's really only sales that matter.

 

Pearl

 

May I make a small addition to your conclusion, Pearl? It's sales and price-paid that matters.

 

And, Philippe, that is the perfect explanation of the roll of CTR. So now I guess I will have to adjust my statement to Pearl: it's sales and price and CTR that matters. 

[DavidC]

Just do not know what it all means - looking over a three month period I seem to have 29,000 views, 208 zooms and 78 sales - with a big drop in all activity during the current month - the CTR is 0.74 as against Alamy average of 0.48 (I've got about 5,000 images in the system).

 

The bottom line, and the only one that seems to matter is - the bottom line ! Here the value of my sales is markedly down for the current month with the sales numbers just a few down. The period was boosted by a number of extra sales of images rejected by News which I marketed myself to the nationals and major provincials (for reasonable sales figures) - but the number of sales made through the Scheming Newspapers Subscription arrangements continue to frustrate me - especially when I see the same image used a number of times on different web pages for the same dismal amount. As my images would not be seen at all if I was outside the scheme it is really a catch22 situation.

 

Anyone who can make sense and projections from the above figures is welcome to try !

[Pearl]

 

In my experience it is easier to achieve a high CTR when you have a small portfolio as just one zoom can make a big difference and so it is also less meaningful. Maintaining a high CTR is less easy but at the end of the day it's really only sales that matter.

 

Pearl

 

True, but sales are only made when a client has a chance of seeing your images. The higher your (constant) CTR, the more your images will show up in the first few pages of a search result. A (constant) low CTR and your images are lost like a needle in a haystack

 

Cheers,

Philippe

With respect Philippe I beg to differ.  I really don't believe that CTR makes a big difference to Alamy Rank and it is AR that controls (as well as keywording of course) the position of your images.  A low CTR does not mean your images disappear from view but few sales and a very low average price does.  Alamy wants us to believe that CTR is important to make us keyword more carefully.  Before AR came in some contributors were spamming the keyword fields to ensure that their images were seen in as many searches as possible, relevant or not.  CTR is a good guide as to how appropriately or otherwise we are keywording but that is all IMO.

 

Pearl

[tarsierspectral]

 

 

 

In my experience it is easier to achieve a high CTR when you have a small portfolio as just one zoom can make a big difference and so it is also less meaningful. Maintaining a high CTR is less easy but at the end of the day it's really only sales that matter.

 

Pearl

 

True, but sales are only made when a client has a chance of seeing your images. The higher your (constant) CTR, the more your images will show up in the first few pages of a search result. A (constant) low CTR and your images are lost like a needle in a haystack

 

Cheers,

Philippe

With respect Philippe I beg to differ.  I really don't believe that CTR makes a big difference to Alamy Rank and it is AR that controls (as well as keywording of course) the position of your images.  A low CTR does not mean your images disappear from view but few sales and a very low average price does.  Alamy wants us to believe that CTR is important to make us keyword more carefully.  Before AR came in some contributors were spamming the keyword fields to ensure that their images were seen in as many searches as possible, relevant or not.  CTR is a good guide as to how appropriately or otherwise we are keywording but that is all IMO.

 

Pearl

 

Euh....... what do you mean by "AR"?

 

Dunno, but I just see the following facts. Arterra has several pseudonyms. One has a bit more than 4000 images and a constant CTR, equal to Alamy's average CTR or usually slightly above. Nothing spectacular, something between 0.45 and 0.8 BUT constantly!

 

Some random searches:

 

World War One: 22,457 results / 250 pages of 90 pictures each >>>>  7 images on page 1

Garden Birds UK: 4,190 Results / 47 pages of 90 pictures each >>>> 9 images on page 1

Goats: 18,206 Results / 203 pages of 90 pictures each                >>>> 3 images on page 1

France Coast: 54,338 Results / 604 pages of 90 pictures each   >>> 10 images on page 1

Red deer: 16,783 Results / 187 pages of 90 pictures each          >>>> 3 images on page 1 (this pseudonym only has 3 red deer images)

Flowers UK: 91,154 Results / 1013 pages of 90 pictures each    >>>> 9 images on page 1

 

Cheers,

Philippe

Phillippe

 

Which searach did you perform, "creative" or "relevant"?

[dustydingo]

 

 

In my experience it is easier to achieve a high CTR when you have a small portfolio as just one zoom can make a big difference and so it is also less meaningful. Maintaining a high CTR is less easy but at the end of the day it's really only sales that matter.

 

Pearl

 

True, but sales are only made when a client has a chance of seeing your images. The higher your (constant) CTR, the more your images will show up in the first few pages of a search result. A (constant) low CTR and your images are lost like a needle in a haystack

 

Cheers,

Philippe

With respect Philippe I beg to differ.  I really don't believe that CTR makes a big difference to Alamy Rank and it is AR that controls (as well as keywording of course) the position of your images.  A low CTR does not mean your images disappear from view but few sales and a very low average price does.  Alamy wants us to believe that CTR is important to make us keyword more carefully.  Before AR came in some contributors were spamming the keyword fields to ensure that their images were seen in as many searches as possible, relevant or not.  CTR is a good guide as to how appropriately or otherwise we are keywording but that is all IMO.

 

Pearl

 

I'm with Pearl 100% on this. CTR can change drastically day to day, especially with smaller pseudos, whereas the truly important AR, made up as it is of several different (secret squirrel) components, will almost certainly change much less drastically day-to-day. And where any particular image shows up in a search is more determined by the comparative AR of all the other contributors with images showing, than by one's CTR in isolation.

 

Obsessing over CTR is, IMO, absolute folly if there is any expectation that sales will increase or decrease in tandem with CTR. AR is king, but for some reason Alamy won't share the formula with us . . .

 

dd

[Paulstw]

I see views/zooms and CTR as simple as people walking into a shop and looking around. They know they want a new fridge but they want to see what offers the best value for money. A view is walking into the area of the fridges and a zoom is opening a door to see inside. The consistent zooms/sales ratio works well for folk who have an established portfolio. However for new people its less of an important statistic to work off. I'd say working on a quality catalogue of work and a large portfolio of saleable images is key.

 

My stats have gone up a lot, but until I start seeing sales then I'm not going to get excited. 

[OneWay]

Good analogy, Paul. My heart only beats a bit faster when a buyer zooms one of my images again...but only uses the Alamy ID code the second time (this morning and twice this month already!). Of course with the long lag time between zooms and reported sales, I often forget...

 

Dave

[JJ Gutierrez]

My CTR is low, around 0.4 this last trimester, but I've had a lot of sales of images that were zoomed long long time ago.  I've also had sales of images that were not zoomed (at least that I realized).