Hello from Illinois!

[KimB]

Hello! I just got accepted and want to say Hi!  I'm brand new here and always appreciate any tips or feedback.

I'll start reading the forums too, but if anyone has any words of wisdom, newbie mistakes to avoid, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks in advance,

Kim

[NYCat]

I think you are off to a great start. The images are good and so is the keywording. The only suggestion I can come up with is put "flower" as well as "flowers". I love the red outhouse. Maybe add "colorful" and also the British spelling of "colourful". Good work. Just keep it up.

 

Paulette

[KimB]

Hi Paulette,

Thank you for the kind words.  I'll update the keywords as you've suggested.  Thank you for that - I'll need to remember the British spellings, too!

 

Reading through other posts, I got the impression pictures that one might hang on the wall don't sell so well here.  Any suggestions on a better direction to go?

Thanks!

 

Kim 

[NYCat]

Think in terms of images that can be used in a book or magazine article. You can watch the threads here about "images sold" and "images found" to see what is selling. Also, go to your dashboard and to Measures and look at All of Alamy. You will see what searches have been made. If you have a subject near you that is easy to do put %subject in the search box to see what comes up. I went to India last year so I did &India and %tiger to get an idea of what to upload. Don't worry about how few show in the Sold box. They only show there if the sale can be directly attributed to that search and most projects happen over a period of time so the sale shows up later. By the way, your opioids image is perfect for here. It is a subject in the news a lot. Keep thinking that way and add a variety of images. It will take time but you will have at least a wee income. Don't expect to make a living at stock.

 

Paulette

[KimB]

Thanks for the info!
I'll get familiar with the Measures part of the Dashboard. Sounds very useful.
Yes, I've read this is not a get rich quick scheme, but maybe a way to earn a bit here and there, and have an excuse for taking pictures everywhere I go! :)

Thanks again!

Kim

[Colin Woods]

For the red outhouse, I would remove Christmas as a keyword. Just say what you see in the image (the famous Who, What, Where, When & Why). Including more remote keywords means you your photos will appear in more searches, and therefore ignored more if the keywords aren't completely relevant. Which will harm your Alamyrank. Have a look at the "How to Recover this Situation" thread from Feb 1st. In it I show a graph of my sales showing before and after I deleted all the less relevant keywords. As Paulette says, every month there is the "have you found any Alamy images" thread which is a goldmine. Also, from the first of each month there is a "how was your month" thread where contributors report their sales. They don't give which images sell (here on the forum you will find every aspect of stock photography discussed but "which images sell" is still the competitive edge and we are all competing here in an increasingly saturated market) but you can look at each contributor and look at their photos and think "how can I do better?". Which is exactly how I learnt photography - to look at my photos and those which were published and think 'his is published and mine is rotten - why'. And no, its not a 'get rich quick' scheme. 

[KimB]

Hi Colin,

Thank you for your advice.  I'll remove Christmas right away. 

Thank you for pointing me to those threads.  I'll read them after work - they sound very helpful.

It makes sense that people don't say exactly what's sold - I'll read the threads you suggested. 

Yes, I know what you mean, looking at my version of something compared to a published image, and thinking, about what I should have done differently.  I'm trying to learn and get better!

Thanks again for the advice!

 

Kim