famousbelgian Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 I had a very long chat with Alamy staff at the Photography Show last weekend and thought I would share a few things which some of you may find useful: Keywording If, like me, you keyword your images in advance before uploading to Alamy and, like me, put the 10 most important keywords in the front, you can ask Alamy to turn the first 10 keywords into supertags. This avoids you having to go into the AIM to pick your 10 supertags manually. A simple email to Contributor Relations is all that is required. Valuable Images I never realised you can ask to create several accounts with Alamy (within reason of course). This means you can have one account (A) for all your more unique or valuable images, and another account (B) for the images you don't mind selling for below-average prices. Images in Account A can then be restricted for Personal Use, Novel Use, Editorial, etc without your images in Account B being affected by these restrictions. This is particularly useful if you have some historically important and unique images which a potential buyer is not going to find anywhere else. Note that having two accounts is NOT the same as having two pseudonyms as any restrictions in one account will apply to all pseudonyms in that account. Batch sizes They confirmed to me that there is a definite advantage when uploading small batches of images, i.e. it is better for your overall rating to upload a batch of 100 images once a week compared with uploading 400 images once a month. Captions Captions are very important to the search engine. In fact, you can submit images without keywords but they MUST have a caption. An example was given of contributors with massive bulk uploads who normally only include a caption. Contributor events I was pleased to hear that Alamy is considering organising more events for contributors, such as their presence at the Photography Show, in order to get more face-to-face feedback from contributors. Marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barking Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 Some good advice there...I generally shy away from 'small batches' for fear of rejection...mine must fall under micro batches (rarely more than 10 at a time). 😀😀 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colblimp Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 Chatted to the Alamy guys on the stand and grabbed James today as I was leaving. They're great people who are passionate about what they do. James said he's optimistic about the future of stock, which gave me a massive boost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MandyD Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 thanks this is very helpful. I tend to upload in small batches. I do up a batch and then work on more until that batch is passed and then upload what I have, and repeat. Hasn't hurt my QC rating any (3 star) and my batches are usually evaluated in less then a day. So anywhere from 6 to 60 in a batch depending on how ambitious I am that week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Nelson Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 Thanks for the info. All very helpful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andremichel Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 For batch size, what do you mean by better overall rating? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
famousbelgian Posted March 21, 2018 Author Share Posted March 21, 2018 15 minutes ago, andremichel said: For batch size, what do you mean by better overall rating? Basically, better overall rating means your images will appear higher up in search results, which in turn means they are more likely to be seen and chosen by potential buyers Marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fahd Khan Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 11 hours ago, famousbelgian said: I had a very long chat with Alamy staff at the Photography Show last weekend and thought I would share a few things which some of you may find useful: Keywording If, like me, you keyword your images in advance before uploading to Alamy and, like me, put the 10 most important keywords in the front, you can ask Alamy to turn the first 10 keywords into supertags. This avoids you having to go into the AIM to pick your 10 supertags manually. A simple email to Contributor Relations is all that is required. Valuable Images I never realised you can ask to create several accounts with Alamy (within reason of course). This means you can have one account (A) for all your more unique or valuable images, and another account (B) for the images you don't mind selling for below-average prices. Images in Account A can then be restricted for Personal Use, Novel Use, Editorial, etc without your images in Account B being affected by these restrictions. This is particularly useful if you have some historically important and unique images which a potential buyer is not going to find anywhere else. Note that having two accounts is NOT the same as having two pseudonyms as any restrictions in one account will apply to all pseudonyms in that account. Batch sizes They confirmed to me that there is a definite advantage when uploading small batches of images, i.e. it is better for your overall rating to upload a batch of 100 images once a week compared with uploading 400 images once a month. Captions Captions are very important to the search engine. In fact, you can submit images without keywords but they MUST have a caption. An example was given of contributors with massive bulk uploads who normally only include a caption. Contributor events I was pleased to hear that Alamy is considering organising more events for contributors, such as their presence at the Photography Show, in order to get more face-to-face feedback from contributors. Marc Wonderful information, thanks for your time and effort... Wonderful forum and generous members Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andremichel Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 6 minutes ago, famousbelgian said: Basically, better overall rating means your images will appear higher up in search results, which in turn means they are more likely to be seen and chosen by potential buyers Marc That is surprising. So if you stop uploading new images because it is no longer cost effective to produce new content, will your existing images sink into oblivion? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 12 minutes ago, famousbelgian said: Basically, better overall rating means your images will appear higher up in search results, which in turn means they are more likely to be seen and chosen by potential buyers Marc Are you quite sure that's what you were told? Because I took rating to refer to QC time, whereas what you refer to is ranking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 12 hours ago, famousbelgian said: Valuable Images I never realised you can ask to create several accounts with Alamy (within reason of course). This means you can have one account (A) for all your more unique or valuable images, and another account (B) for the images you don't mind selling for below-average prices. Images in Account A can then be restricted for Personal Use, Novel Use, Editorial, etc without your images in Account B being affected by these restrictions. This is particularly useful if you have some historically important and unique images which a potential buyer is not going to find anywhere else. Note that having two accounts is NOT the same as having two pseudonyms as any restrictions in one account will apply to all pseudonyms in that account. Thanks for posting this, Marc. How does this differ from having all images under one pseudonym and placing restrictions on "valuable images" within the pseudonym? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 14 minutes ago, Joe said: Thanks for posting this, Marc. How does this differ from having all images under one pseudonym and placing restrictions on "valuable images" within the pseudonym? I'm tempted to say it doesn't, because I already have a pseudo with PU removed on all the images. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camera Girl Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 1 hour ago, andremichel said: That is surprising. So if you stop uploading new images because it is no longer cost effective to produce new content, will your existing images sink into oblivion? Well I have found, though I wondered if it was just my imagination, that if I have a period where for whatever reason I have not uploaded any new images for some time, my zooms and sales do seem to go down. As soon as I start to upload regularly again, the sales increase - and it's not the new images that are being sold. So maybe my gut was right and it wasn't just my imagination? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 2 minutes ago, Camera Girl said: Well I have found, though I wondered if it was just my imagination, that if I have a period where for whatever reason I have not uploaded any new images for some time, my zooms and sales do seem to go down. As soon as I start to upload regularly again, the sales increase - and it's not the new images that are being sold. So maybe my gut was right and it wasn't just my imagination? It was. I've had the opposite- during a period when I was having repeated trouble with QC sales were unaffected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Ashmore Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 I have to admit, I had always been of the understanding that how regularly you upload has an impact on your ranking in the image search results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inchiquin Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 37 minutes ago, Camera Girl said: Well I have found, though I wondered if it was just my imagination, that if I have a period where for whatever reason I have not uploaded any new images for some time, my zooms and sales do seem to go down. As soon as I start to upload regularly again, the sales increase - and it's not the new images that are being sold. Not my experience. I've hardly uploaded anything for the last two years because of other commitments but my sales are still climbing healthily year on year and my ranking doesn't seem to have changed significantly. Alan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David McGill Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 Thanks for all this Marc. One question one of the other photogs and I put to James on Monday was would there be any reduction in the rate of commission paid to us. We were told that there were no plans to reduce this to below the current level. This is good news, I have heard that other agencies/libraries have cut their rate for new photographers to 30%! David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andremichel Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 11 minutes ago, David McGill said: Thanks for all this Marc. One question one of the other photogs and I put to James on Monday was would there be any reduction in the rate of commission paid to us. We were told that there were no plans to reduce this to below the current level. This is good news, I have heard that other agencies/libraries have cut their rate for new photographers to 30%! David Alamy doesn't have to pay people to curate our images or to keyword them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andremichel Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 1 hour ago, spacecadet said: It was. I've had the opposite- during a period when I was having repeated trouble with QC sales were unaffected. I wonder if this is a relatively new thing they have put in. Maybe just coincidence but... From March to Sept 2017 I was uploading heavily from my Australia trip and my zooms surged to 95 for the rolling month. I then cut down my rate of submission substantially when I run out of OZ images and my zooms fell rapidly over next 3 months to below 60. Now my submissions have picked up somewhat, my zooms have been creeping back up again (today at 85). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sultanpepa Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 1 hour ago, Camera Girl said: Well I have found, though I wondered if it was just my imagination, that if I have a period where for whatever reason I have not uploaded any new images for some time, my zooms and sales do seem to go down. As soon as I start to upload regularly again, the sales increase - and it's not the new images that are being sold. So maybe my gut was right and it wasn't just my imagination? 1 hour ago, spacecadet said: It was. I've had the opposite- during a period when I was having repeated trouble with QC sales were unaffected. I haven't been able to get out and about much this year due to home improvement work so I'm wondering if that's the reason behind my CTR crash this month to 0.14. I've only uploaded around 50 images this year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David McGill Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 1 hour ago, andremichel said: Alamy doesn't have to pay people to curate our images or to keyword them. You still have to keyword images for other libraries. I have had images with other libraries in the past and still had to caption and keyword them before submitting them. It was more difficult in the past to do this with slides - not much room on the mounts so some libraries asked for spreadsheets to accompany the slides! David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colblimp Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 2 hours ago, funkyworm said: Did anyone ask why they use images on the front page with CA which should fail QC? Forgot to ask that - damn it!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andremichel Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 1 hour ago, David McGill said: You still have to keyword images for other libraries. Yes but with some you don't. Also a leading microstock site pays a disgraceful 15%. Libraries will pay as little as they can get away with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reimar Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 18 hours ago, famousbelgian said: I had a very long chat with Alamy staff at the Photography Show last weekend and thought I would share a few things which some of you may find useful: Keywording If, like me, you keyword your images in advance before uploading to Alamy and, like me, put the 10 most important keywords in the front, you can ask Alamy to turn the first 10 keywords into supertags. This avoids you having to go into the AIM to pick your 10 supertags manually. A simple email to Contributor Relations is all that is required. Marc Well, not exactly, apparently. This would of course be useful to many, including me, but here is what I got back from CR: "This has been taken out of context and this isn’t a regular Alamy service we can provide. We can very occasionally do this for some photographers if they have a very large batch of images they need to supertag but it’s not something we can do automatically for each individual submission." For a high tech company one wonders why such a simple script could not be written for those that ask for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alamy Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 Hi everyone First of all, it was really great meeting so many of you at the photography show. We had some really good conversations and it was very interesting to hear all about your individual experiences with stock and with Alamy! We'd like to mention that some of the above advice was given with a specific scenario in mind, and doesn't necessarily apply in a different context. It’s always best to contact Contributor Relations with any questions you have as they’ll be able to give you accurate information based on your account. Thanks Alamy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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