Betty LaRue Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 Dylan, before you upload “heaps of images”, look at each one and ask yourself, How would a buyer use this image? To illustrate an article in a newspaper? To use in a textbook? Online? Magazine? If they wanted a picture of a bird in a nest, is your image better or as good as what’s already on Alamy? Would yours be one lost in thousands like it? Is your subject something you can conceive of as being a popular wanted subject or is it a nice shot of a ho-hum subject with little or no demand from a buyer? We all have to look at our images with those thoughts in mind. Having a thousand images in your Alamy portfolio when only a hundred suit what buyers are searching for won’t help you. Those 900 blah images will drag down the 100 good ones. Moral of this story is for you to judge each and every image on whether the subject matter is a good stock image....or not. I admit I struggled with that concept for a few years. I finally got it, but if you can figure it out now before you upload thousands of images that don’t suit, you’ll do better than I did. Betty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelv Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 46 minutes ago, Betty LaRue said: Dylan, before you upload “heaps of images”, look at each one and ask yourself, How would a buyer use this image? To illustrate an article in a newspaper? To use in a textbook? Online? Magazine? If they wanted a picture of a bird in a nest, is your image better or as good as what’s already on Alamy? Would yours be one lost in thousands like it? Is your subject something you can conceive of as being a popular wanted subject or is it a nice shot of a ho-hum subject with little or no demand from a buyer? We all have to look at our images with those thoughts in mind. Having a thousand images in your Alamy portfolio when only a hundred suit what buyers are searching for won’t help you. Those 900 blah images will drag down the 100 good ones. Moral of this story is for you to judge each and every image on whether the subject matter is a good stock image....or not. I admit I struggled with that concept for a few years. I finally got it, but if you can figure it out now before you upload thousands of images that don’t suit, you’ll do better than I did. Betty This is one of my issues, I look and see images and think thats better than mine, hence I only have 200 images, my trash is always full, it's going to take an eternity for me to get to a thousand images I'm proud of but it's a constructive challenge, obviously I'd love to make a sale and hopefully that day will happen ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 2 minutes ago, funkyworm said: Yes... sometimes the labels can be somewhat vague... I noticed one local supermarket here labels their rose plants "supermarktbloemen" - supermarket flowers - which is next to useless. Buying hybrids and waiting can also be challenging. My Mum bought a load of hybrid tulip bulbs two years ago and when they all came up they were all red and not at all what was on the packet - I bought a cheap 100 bulb box of various varieties from the same market for my garden and all mine were red too. This is why you need to corroberate. Many specialist gardens, council parks and rosaries or places like the van Dusen near you often have the plants labeled in latin and with hybrids. Having said which, it is an area which is typically economised upon in a world of austerity cuts. It can be hit and miss. I have often found it is not necessarily the so-called Western countries which have the best gardens and labelling but so-called poor places. You know about Van Dusen. I'm impressed. Yes, it is a great place for plant identification. However, they are very picky about commercial and even editorial photography. Hence the relatively few images of the gardens themselves available on Alamy. Of course, you can always photograph a flower, etc. and not have to say where you took the picture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Richmond Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 Well done for accepting recognition of the problem. We've had a few newer contributors who haven't To give you a couple of examples of the level of detail you'll need to research to generate suitable keywords and captions to enable your photos to be found I'll provide you with a couple of IDs: Your red / deep pink flower is a Diascia. There are a number of cultivars and seed strains of D. rigescens, the commonest species in cultivation and it's probably one of those. They're half hardy perennials grown as summer flowering garden annuals. The bumble bee looks to be (the image is a bit small to be absolutely positive) the common carder bee, Bombus pascuorum, probably an old worker as the ginger hairs have faded to beige. It's feeding on Devil's bit scabious, Succisa pratensis. In each case it's essential to include both Latin and common names in both your caption and supertags to give you the best visibility for buyers. Believe me, buyers look for specific flora and fauna by the Latin name. After that the tagging is up to you as long as it's relevant to the image. Irrelevant tags will throw up to many false views and drive your CTR steadily downwards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Ashmore Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 23 minutes ago, GS-Images said: Don't worry too much about seeing other images that are better than yours. I often get sales for images that are poor compared to many others, yet they are still wanted. As long as they're "not too bad", and THEY CAN BE FOUND (the most important thing), you'll be in with a fair chance. So don't upload rubbish and make sure what you have stands out and is technically good, and tagged/captioned well. Remember too that clients aren't only looking for a nice looking image, but one that fits (the content, aspect ratio, copy space, etc.). Yours might be the one that happens to fit exactly what they want, and despite others criticising me for stating this in the past, not all clients know what a good or poor image is as they aren't necessarily photographers or have a good eye for these things. Just get the images seen, and that's actually a lot easier than you might think. It's pretty easy for a new contributor to get an image on the first page of results with the right tags and captions, even if there are 10's of thousands others on Alamy. A lot of contributors don't appear to care much about tags, or maybe lack understanding or are lazy about it. Put the effort in and read forum posts where we discuss tags, captions, phrases, search weighting, etc.. Geoff. I agree with this. I have sold images of both The Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Both are well photographed subjects and I don't think my images were the prettiest available... but they still sold. I do tend to be of the thinking that as long as your images are OK technically and as Geoff says "not too bad" then it is usually worth uploading images, particularly if you don't already have the subject covered in your portfolio.... if you don't buy a lottery ticket then you cannot win the lottery. I think that you also improve your chances of selling if you cover as many different subjects as possible. Some people do well with a niche but I get the sense that people that do well in a niche also tend to have in-depth knowledge around the niche (e.g. immediately being able to identify a flower or insect, including knowing or being able to quickly find out it's Latin name). For lesser mortals like myself, I tend to think that a "spread betting" approach works best! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inchiquin Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 20 hours ago, Kelv said: John, Thank you so much for the advice ( and being gentle ) , that makes a lot of sense, I'll shoot a wide shot as well, and get the dictionary out too see you in a couple of thousand shots. You might want to look up the spelling of San Francisco too Alan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelv Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 14 minutes ago, Inchiquin said: You might want to look up the spelling of San Francisco too Alan Alan, Thank you so much, hopefully all corrected, Imagine all the sales I could have had Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 5 minutes ago, Kelv said: Alan, Thank you so much, hopefully all corrected, Imagine all the sales I could have had You're in good (or is it bad) company- 3303 mis-spelt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelv Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 1 minute ago, spacecadet said: You're in good (or is it bad) company- 3303 mis-spelt. Phew I felt so ignorant, I've been there 3 times in my life too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 I expect it's just a typing error, but, and please don't take this the wrong way, many people have mild dyslexia without knowing it. A possibility? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avpics Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 2 hours ago, Matt Ashmore said: I agree with this. I have sold images of both The Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Both are well photographed subjects and I don't think my images were the prettiest available... but they still sold.. Same here, of London subjects. [DT] - Date Taken - is a frequent search suffix so it's always worth a punt if you're in town and passing by with favourable weather, or, topically, extreme weather Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 Another thing to mention is that when possible, take a horizontal and a vertical. (Somewhat hard for me to always remember) How a buyer can fit it in a layout is important. Also on larger subjects such as buildings, mountains, trees, etc take a tight image then a more distant one with sky, copyspace. You will have 3-4 images of the same subject with each being different. As mentioned above, possibly one of that set will fit perfectly for the buyer, beating out the competition. Betty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klod Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 One element that I find very useful on Alamy is to be able to view detailed statistics. Under Measure in the dashboard, you can view which images were sold and the keywords used by buyers. That is strategic information. I only started to upload recently and my portfolio is still modest but as I build it, one thing I will try soon - and I wonder if others here have had success with this - is to create lightboxes and to send those directly to editors. I started to share some images on twitter with hashtags #editor #editors #photography. But I have yet to see the results. Do some of you do this as well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gina Kelly Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 This thread has been helpful - it prompted me to go back through all of my flower photos and add proper latin names to those that were missing that information, as well as common nicknames. It makes me wonder how many other things I'm overlooking - especially with my older images, when I knew even less about keywording than I do now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MandyD Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 me too, I have been cleaning up keytags based on what's being searched. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fahd Khan Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 I think you need good number of pictures and appropriate tags to be sold. I recently sold an image and I am also having very small number of photos in my portfolio. But I am very pleased with Alamy, just joined a month ago and had a sale as well....Thanks God, Thanks Alamy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inchiquin Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 17 hours ago, Gina Kelly said: It makes me wonder how many other things I'm overlooking - especially with my older images, when I knew even less about keywording than I do now! I don't wonder, I know. But whether I will ever have the time, or feel the motivation, to fix it is another matter. Alan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin B Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 On 3/19/2018 at 07:13, Stokie said: A few too many similars (angelic ceramics eg) but not too many. What do you mean by too many similars? He has 2 or 3 different compositions for each subject? How is that a bad thing? I mean, even if he had a dozen, how does that hurt anything as long as the orientation and compositions are varied? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 30 minutes ago, Martin B said: What do you mean by too many similars? He has 2 or 3 different compositions for each subject? How is that a bad thing? I mean, even if he had a dozen, how does that hurt anything as long as the orientation and compositions are varied? It depresses CTR. Besides, Alamy cautions against too many similars and can fail, and has failed, subs for that reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin B Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 23 minutes ago, spacecadet said: It depresses CTR. Besides, Alamy cautions against too many similars and can fail, and has failed, subs for that reason. Alamy will fail you for 3 images of the same subject with different compositions? Really? Or a dozen? I try to take at least ten shots at different distances, orientations, and angles of everything I shoot, and upload them if they are clean. I never once had Alamy fail one for that. And the CTR is the CTR. Shoot images of unique subjects and keyword properly and the CTR doesn't mean much as far as sales go. I think some people here obsess a bit much on CTRs and algorithms, when shooting and uploading good photos is more important. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokie Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 But I reiterate, as Spacecadet as also mentioned, having too many similars will affect your ranking, which in turn affect sales. John. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 23 minutes ago, Martin B said: Alamy will fail you for 3 images of the same subject with different compositions? Really? Or a dozen? I try to take at least ten shots at different distances, orientations, and angles of everything I shoot, and upload them if they are clean. I never once had Alamy fail one for that. And the CTR is the CTR. Shoot images of unique subjects and keyword properly and the CTR doesn't mean much as far as sales go. I think some people here obsess a bit much on CTRs and algorithms, when shooting and uploading good photos is more important. No. I said "similars", not "images of the same subject with different compositions". I wouldn't say that the sets on your first couple of pages contained many similars, but there is a lot of duplication. Anyway FYI from "how to pass QC" Failed image reasons (continued) Excessive similars Series of similar images with almost identical compositions or only slight differences www.alamy.com/contributors/alamy-how-to-pass-qc.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokie Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 1 hour ago, Martin B said: What do you mean by too many similars? He has 2 or 3 different compositions for each subject? How is that a bad thing? I mean, even if he had a dozen, how does that hurt anything as long as the orientation and compositions are varied? "A few too many similars (angelic ceramics eg) but not too many." Also reread my post - I did state that he didn't have too many but to be aware that Alamy will fail submissions for too many similars and it will hurt your rank and therefore your sales. Just trying to help. John. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
losdemas Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 1 hour ago, GS-Images said: John and Mark are trying to help Martin, and are both giving accurate information. Similars mean they look very similar. Some people upload different versions of the same image with different crops or processing or just the smallest angle changes. Those are classed as similars. If you upload 20 images of a swan but they are all very different shots, such as the swan flying, walking, eating, laying in snow, fighting another swan, peeling a banana -They would not be classed as similars. One you thing you wrote about people worrying too much about CTR is true.This is a direct quote from Alamy..... ".....your CTR is only a small part of what makes up your Alamy rank....." Geoff. ...rapidly reviewing my river shots for avian life peeling bananas! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 I've got one duffing up a labrador in a lake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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