Pseudonym

[James Hodgson]

Hi. Just a quick question as there was a previous discussion about it before but it was back in 2014.

 

Basically my ctr has crashed over the past few weeks. There are some key wording issues I need to address and a few reuploads of re edited images,  but to start with I'm planning to move all ex news uploads to another pseudo (during a culling period). 

 

Is a pseudo for poor/underperforming images still a 'done thing'? And any further info on experience would be great if anyone could.

 

Cheers

J

[Reimar]

Well I do it, so I guess it's a "done thing".  In order for an image of mine relegated to my third (lowest) tier pseudo to move up, it needs to be either zoomed or sold.  It's rare but it does happen.

[James Hodgson]

3 minutes ago, Reimar said:

Well I do it, so I guess it's a "done thing".  In order for an image of mine relegated to my third (lowest) tier pseudo to move up, it needs to be either zoomed or sold.  It's rare but it does happen.

OK, 

So I'm going to assume you have

1. Selling

2. Could do anything

3. Not

 

That's a great help if that's the case and makes a good layout for me actually.

 

J

[Reimar]

Yeah, that's about it.  I don't have any science to show that's better than one pseudo, but it works for me.

[Martin P Wilson]

12 minutes ago, James Hodgson said:

OK, 

So I'm going to assume you have

1. Selling

2. Could do anything

3. Not

 

That's a great help if that's the case and makes a good layout for me actually.

 

J

 

Essentially that is what I have used for last couple of years, although I have not added much in the last year:

1. My old archive going back to 2002, left to do what it will
2. My News archive, anything I shot and uploaded through the Live News route since I started doing news. It is different stuff to usual stock.
3. My new travel stuff, fairly generic stuff,mostly associated with my travel blog
4. My more recent, carefully selected new stuff, or stuff that has sold. Stuff did get promoted when I set it up but I am reluctant to do so now because I am not sure what happens to an image's history when it is moved between pseudonyms. This has my best CTR by far, and best sales number as a proportion of the number of image in it.

It seems to work better than the various arrangments I tried before, but could be the search changes over the last year or so.

 

[James Hodgson]

7 minutes ago, Martin P Wilson said:

 

Essentially that is what I have used for last couple of years, although I have not added much in the last year:

1. My old archive going back to 2002, left to do what it will
2. My News archive, anything I shot and uploaded through the Live News route since I started doing news. It is different stuff to usual stock.
3. My new travel stuff, fairly generic stuff,mostly associated with my travel blog
4. My more recent, carefully selected new stuff, or stuff that has sold. Stuff did get promoted when I set it up but I am reluctant to do so now because I am not sure what happens to an image's history when it is moved between pseudonyms. This has my best CTR by far, and best sales number as a proportion of the number of image in it.

It seems to work better than the various arrangments I tried before, but could be the search changes over the last year or so.

 

Right OK, that confirms that I should separate and divide what I think should be separated rather than go for just a quick news vs stock sort of thing.

 

Thanks both for your insight. As I said at the start that the most recent discussion on this I could find was back in 2014 and although that was before my time, I know a lot has changed since then so it good to have an up to date view.

 

If anyone else has any thoughts...

 

Cheers

J

[Allan Bell]

 

At the moment all in one basket regardless.

 

I have been considering moving images that have not sold and not even zoomed to another pseudo. Leaving the sold and zoomed images where they are now along with what I guesstimate will sell, making a small port.

 

However as it is now very difficult to work out the inner workings of the search engine, and its reaction to different pseudos under one name, I am loath to make changes until Alamy have finished making adjustments (playing about with) to the engine.

 

Allan

 

 

[Allan Bell]

 

Oh HELL!!!

 

I've just noticed that I now have more posts on this forum than I have images with Alamy.

 

MUST concentrate on the images side of things and leave chatting on the forums too much.

 

Sorry to go off topic.

 

Allan

 

 

[James Hodgson]

6 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

 

At the moment all in one basket regardless.

 

I have been considering moving images that have not sold and not even zoomed to another pseudo. Leaving the sold and zoomed images where they are now along with what I guesstimate will sell, making a small port.

 

However as it is now very difficult to work out the inner workings of the search engine, and its reaction to different pseudos under one name, I am loath to make changes until Alamy have finished making adjustments (playing about with) to the engine.

 

Allan

 

 

Ah bugger!

Just when I thought I had a plan! 

So nobody really knows if your lower pseudos come into it? 

 

Suppose I'll just have to give it a go. (Very small port anyway)

 

J

[James Hodgson]

4 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

 

Oh HELL!!!

 

I've just noticed that I now have more posts on this forum than I have images with Alamy.

 

MUST concentrate on the images side of things and leave chatting on the forums too much.

 

Sorry to go off topic.

 

Allan

 

 

Note to everyone...

Let's try and get Allan's greens higher than his port too!

 

J

[Allan Bell]

 

You deserve a greenie yourself for that.

 

Allan

 

 

[James Hodgson]

2 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

 

You deserve a greenie yourself for that.

 

Allan

 

 

[Martin P Wilson]

19 hours ago, Martin P Wilson said:

 

Essentially that is what I have used for last couple of years, although I have not added much in the last year:

1. My old archive going back to 2002, left to do what it will
2. My News archive, anything I shot and uploaded through the Live News route since I started doing news. It is different stuff to usual stock.
3. My new travel stuff, fairly generic stuff,mostly associated with my travel blog
4. My more recent, carefully selected new stuff, or stuff that has sold. Stuff did get promoted when I set it up but I am reluctant to do so now because I am not sure what happens to an image's history when it is moved between pseudonyms. This has my best CTR by far, and best sales number as a proportion of the number of image in it.

It seems to work better than the various arrangments I tried before, but could be the search changes over the last year or so.

 

 

I have just done some low level analysis of my pseudonyms. since 1 Jan 2017. My pseudonym structure has been stable for all that time and I added very little new work, I took a sabbatical because I was uninspired by my performance with Alamy.

 

Using (1) above as the base 100%, CTR: 0.24.

(2) News - Images: 27%, sales number: 33%, zooms: 45%, views: 54%, CTR: 0.21

(3) Travel - Images: 8%, Sales no: N/A, Zooms 7%, views: 12.5%, CTR: 0.13

(4) Best - Images: 6.5%, Sales: 44%, Zooms: 52%, views: 14.6%, CTR: 0.85

 

So from a sales point of view my best, carefully selected images are achieving a much better performance than my base collection and my newer, better stuff (news and carefully selected) are performing 120-700% better proportionally than rest of my portfolio; there is a lesson for me here! The generic travel stuff, often obscure locations, is doing about the same, or slightly worse, than my traditional stuff. I am thinking that I might return to resubmitting but being very much more thoughtful about what I add, it would be interesting to see if I could make my sales worthwhile.  If I can increase my Best pseudonym portfolio four-fold (currently 185, so only ~550 new images) I ought to increase my sales by more than 100% if the results above were to hold true. In which case I would find shooting stock just about worthwhile. I am going to give it some more, serious thought but it does suggest that sales are as much about quality (or the right stuff, whatever that is) as quantity.

 

Bear in mind my stats are probably not statistically significant so any predictions will be fraught with error!

[Bryan]

For many moons I had only my main pseudo and a dump for deletions. However, my main pseudo could be interpreted as being country specific (good for sales in that country but maybe not so hot elsewhere), so I added another one to cover additional geographic areas. Possibly too soon to say whether this will make any difference but there has been no perceptible change in sales since introducing it. Not sure that Pseudoscience is all that it is cracked up to be 

[M.Chapman]

21 hours ago, Martin P Wilson said:

 

I have just done some low level analysis of my pseudonyms. since 1 Jan 2017. My pseudonym structure has been stable for all that time and I added very little new work, I took a sabbatical because I was uninspired by my performance with Alamy.

 

Using (1) above as the base 100%, CTR: 0.24.

(2) News - Images: 27%, sales number: 33%, zooms: 45%, views: 54%, CTR: 0.21

(3) Travel - Images: 8%, Sales no: N/A, Zooms 7%, views: 12.5%, CTR: 0.13

(4) Best - Images: 6.5%, Sales: 44%, Zooms: 52%, views: 14.6%, CTR: 0.85

 

So from a sales point of view my best, carefully selected images are achieving a much better performance than my base collection and my newer, better stuff (news and carefully selected) are performing 120-700% better proportionally than rest of my portfolio; there is a lesson for me here! The generic travel stuff, often obscure locations, is doing about the same, or slightly worse, than my traditional stuff. I am thinking that I might return to resubmitting but being very much more thoughtful about what I add, it would be interesting to see if I could make my sales worthwhile.  If I can increase my Best pseudonym portfolio four-fold (currently 185, so only ~550 new images) I ought to increase my sales by more than 100% if the results above were to hold true. In which case I would find shooting stock just about worthwhile. I am going to give it some more, serious thought but it does suggest that sales are as much about quality (or the right stuff, whatever that is) as quantity.

 

Bear in mind my stats are probably not statistically significant so any predictions will be fraught with error!

 

That's very interesting - thanks for sharing.

Just checking. Does the above mean that 44% of the images in your Best Portfolio have sold since 1 Jan 2017, and were those sold images in that pseudo when they sold? Or, were they subsequently promoted to the best pseudo because they were zoomed or sold?

Over what time period have you calculated the CTRs?

If you did move zoomed images to the best psuedo, and the zoom history gets moved with the image, then this could drive up the CTR (depending on the time period the CTR is calculated over). But does that improvement persist i.e. do the best images continue to get zoomed at a better rate, or are does moving images simply distort the historic statistics? 

 

Mark

[Southpole]

I only use one pseudonym but been considering having one for sales from reading previous posts not sure it helps. With regards to news images I have recently changed my captions removing the news related bit and adding more relevant caption as the image is no longer news and hey ho one sold.

[Martin P Wilson]

I had a brief exchange with conbtributor relations and they confirmed that all Measures data is tied to pseudonym so that when an image is moved between pseudonyms it loses its ranking (from its old pseudonym) and acquires the ranking of the new pseudonym.

 

Sales history remains with the image though.

 

So think carefully before moving images, especially successful ones from a well ranked pseudonym.

[Martin P Wilson]

2 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

That's very interesting - thanks for sharing.

Just checking. Does the above mean that 44% of the images in your Best Portfolio have sold since 1 Jan 2017, and were those sold images in that pseudo when they sold? Or, were they subsequently promoted to the best pseudo because they were zoomed or sold?

Over what time period have you calculated the CTRs?

If you did move zoomed images to the best psuedo, and the zoom history gets moved with the image, then this could drive up the CTR (depending on the time period the CTR is calculated over). But does that improvement persist i.e. do the best images continue to get zoomed at a better rate, or are does moving images simply distort the historic statistics? 

 

Mark

 

No, it means that my Best achieved 44% as many sales as my big, old pseudonym despite only having 6.5% the number of images - proportionally it was 7 times more successful.

 

None of the images have been moved in the period under review (1/1/2017 to date). The CTR was as Measures calculated for that period.,

 

See my note above about the data being tied to the pseudonym not the image, so moving a high (or low) performing image will always end up with the ranking of the target pseudonym. It will only affect the ranking of its new pseudonym over time as it collects views, zooms and sales in that pseudonym.

 

As Bryan and I suggested, don't read too much into such analysis!

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, Martin P Wilson said:

 

No, it means that my Best achieved 44% as many sales as my big, old pseudonym despite only having 6.5% the number of images - proportionally it was 7 times more successful.

 

 

Ah, now I reread it, it's obvious what you meant - duh!  Thanks for clarifying.

That's really interesting, I'll ponder your numbers some more now.

[M.Chapman]

On 24/01/2018 at 12:22, Martin P Wilson said:

Using (1) above as the base 100%, CTR: 0.24.

(2) News - Images: 27%, sales number: 33%, zooms: 45%, views: 54%, CTR: 0.21

(3) Travel - Images: 8%, Sales no: N/A, Zooms 7%, views: 12.5%, CTR: 0.13

(4) Best - Images: 6.5%, Sales: 44%, Zooms: 52%, views: 14.6%, CTR: 0.85

 

Some further analysis on your numbers shows views per image in each portfolio (pseudo) - using (1) as the base 100%

(1) 100%

(2) 200%

(3) 153%

(4) 225%

i.e. you're getting 2.25x as many views per image in your Best (4) portfolio as you are in your old archive (1) portfolio. This could be due a number of factors

• differences in the popularity of the subject material in each portfolio
• differences in keywording approach between portfolios
• differences in number of images meeting given search criteria in each portfolio (fewer images = greater proportion likely to be viewed due to Alamy diversity algorithm)
• differences in Alamy rank of that portfolio (pseudo) - hopefully this affects where images appear in search results

One of the reasons for bothering to have separate "image quality" pseudos is the hope that the Alamy rank of the "best quality" pseudo will rise and this will generate more image views leading to more sales. Your results suggest that this may indeed be working, but it's hard to be sure because of the combined effects of the  first thee factors. I wonder if the following wold give further insight?

 

Have you tried a BHZ test by adding BHZ to one image in each of the four portfolios and seeing where they appear relative to one another in a BHZ search?

Have the views per image improved in your Best (4) image portfolio relative to the portfolios since the last Alamy re-rank at end of Nov 2017?

 

Mark

[Martin P Wilson]

47 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Some further analysis on your numbers shows views per image in each portfolio (pseudo) - using (1) as the base 100%

(1) 100%

(2) 200%

(3) 153%

(4) 225%

i.e. you're getting 2.25x as many views per image in your Best (4) portfolio as you are in your old archive (1) portfolio. This could be due a number of factors

• differences in the popularity of the subject material in each portfolio
• differences in keywording approach between portfolios
• differences in number of images meeting given search criteria in each portfolio (fewer images = greater proportion likely to be viewed due to Alamy diversity algorithm)
• differences in Alamy rank of that portfolio (pseudo) - hopefully this affects where images appear in search results

One of the reasons for bothering to have separate "image quality" pseudos is the hope that the Alamy rank of the "best quality" pseudo will rise and this will generate more image views leading to more sales. Your results suggest that this may indeed be working, but it's hard to be sure because of the combined effects of the  first thee factors. I wonder if the following wold give further insight?

 

Have you tried a BHZ test by adding BHZ to one image in each of the four portfolios and seeing where they appear relative to one another in a BHZ search?

Have the views per image improved in your Best (4) image portfolio relative to the portfolios since the last Alamy re-rank at end of Nov 2017?

 

Mark

 

I did but it did not correlate with the results I got with "real life" searches. For example if I search using "Honfleur France" I have images in the first 5 (Best|) and first 24 (Travel) for two different pseudonyms. When I did BHZ I was on the last 2-3 few pages! Similar with my other test searches. So, I tend to agree with Alamy re BHZ.

 

Keywording approach is much the same across all groups so I think it is down to 1 aand 3 on your list. I suspect Best does particularly well because of ranking, it has a very much higher CTR, but as we know that is only part of the ranking story.