No Sales - Please help

[stevednp3]

Hi Everyone

 

Can anyone please take a look at my portfolio and just give me some idea where im going wrong. Ive been submitting now for 2 months and not had one single sale. I sell to other microstock sites and do ok, why I am not getting sales here. Is my portfolio just not good enough or is what I photograph more related to microstock and shall I stop wasting my time submitting here

 

Thank you in advance - Steve

[Stokie]

11 minutes ago, stevednp3 said:

Hi Everyone

 

Can anyone please take a look at my portfolio and just give me some idea where im going wrong. Ive been submitting now for 2 months and not had one single sale. I sell to other microstock sites and do ok, why I am not getting sales here. Is my portfolio just not good enough or is what I photograph more related to microstock and shall I stop wasting my time submitting here

 

Thank you in advance - Steve

 

Steve, You have some good images, a bit microstocky, but varied and nice, bright and colourful.

 

2 months isn't long enough to judge. Sales can sometimes take a couple of months before they are reported.

 

Upload another 1000 images and you should get regular sales.

 

John.

[stevednp3]

Thank you guys, are sales not reported instantly then, so could it take a month before I see if any sales have come through. Istockphoto works like that too, its always a month behind

[spacecadet]

20 minutes ago, stevednp3 said:

Thank you guys, are sales not reported instantly then, so could it take a month before I see if any sales have come through. Istockphoto works like that too, its always a month behind

GIS suggests that you have the same images on sale here and at MS sites. If you have, why would a buyer pay pounds here when they could pay pennies there? You do yourself (and, more indirectly, us) no favours.

[stevednp3]

2 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

 

Steve, an image used today might not be reported for 6 months! It is a long-haul and you won't get that same instant gratification feeling you get at microstockm sites. However, you will feel gratified when some decent sales start to be posted. Just keep going, add careful captions - what breed of horse, location, type of behaviour, latin names etc- decent keywords and keep shooting and uploading. Think more editorially rather than just about general concepts that designers might be looking for at microstock sites. 

 

Wow it really takes that long :-@ thank you for the advice, so basically have 2 hats when thinking about stock photos, 1 for designers on Microstock and 1 for Editorial for news on here

[stevednp3]

1 minute ago, spacecadet said:

GIS suggests that you have the same images on sale here and at MS sites. If you have, why would a buyer pay pounds here when they could pay pennies there? You do yourself (and, more indirectly, us) no favours.

 

Sorry if caused any problems I am new to the game, so Basically is it best for me to split my work and keep the microstuff and editorial stuff separate

[Matt Limb]

16 minutes ago, stevednp3 said:

 

Sorry if caused any problems I am new to the game, so Basically is it best for me to split my work and keep the microstuff and editorial stuff separate

 

yes, .............. very seperate

[stevednp3]

1 minute ago, Matt Limb said:

 

yes, .............. very seperate

Thank you, its a learning game, but I learn quick ;-)

[Sally]

Might also be a good idea to be more specific in some of your captions and tags eg M790Y4, what about the man drilling wood wearing goggles?

[Vincent Lowe]

You may have made the common mistake of forgetting to deselect images once you've keyworded them, so they get overwritten when you keyword the next image - a 'feature' of the clunky 'Image Manager'.  For instance - M7A5FC, which looks like the control panel of a recycling plant but most of the keywords are irrelevant, such as 'blue collar worker', 'blurred motion', '25-29 years' etc.

[stevednp3]

Thanks everyone, really helpful, I will take everything on board

[stevednp3]

37 minutes ago, Vincent Lowe said:

You may have made the common mistake of forgetting to deselect images once you've keyworded them, so they get overwritten when you keyword the next image - a 'feature' of the clunky 'Image Manager'.  For instance - M7A5FC, which looks like the control panel of a recycling plant but most of the keywords are irrelevant, such as 'blue collar worker', 'blurred motion', '25-29 years' etc.

Yes I do find the selection a problem in the image manager, thanks for pointing that out, I will go back and correct my keywords

[spacecadet]

 

7 minutes ago, David Pimborough said:

 

 

I hear a lot of that however there is nothing wrong with having royalty free images both here and on microstock.

 

 

Aside from the argument about the damage MS does to stock photography in general, if a buyer want one of my images, they have to buy here. If they want one of the OP's, they can do an image search, go to MS and potentially pay a tenth of the price.

Why compete with yourself?

Edited May 3, 2018 by spacecadet

[stevednp3]

I think I'll split my work going forward and try to only post editorial photos here and not to microstock. I find editorial photos easier to do as don't need releases so shouldn't be too difficult to do. Thanks everyone for the advice, I understand it's annoying to see a newbie coming aboard and doing things wrong. But I'm passionate about stock and photography and of course want to make money but don't want to annoy the community at same time as I know the market is getting harder.

[stevednp3]

41 minutes ago, David Pimborough said:

 

You are only doing it wrong if you don't make money

 

As to communities well they have their own views but that doesn't pay the bill

 

Good luck Steve and I think splitting the work is a good way to go.

Thank you, fingers crossed I'll get a sale soon :-)

[Sally]

Two months really isn’t very long, as far as I can tell from others’ experiences here. I had my first sale around two months after uploading, but I think I had more than 600 images by then. It depends on so many different factors, eg what clients are looking for, how diverse your portfolio is, your ranking, how well you tag and caption, as well of course whether it’s a good image. But let us know on the other thread when you do get your first sale.

You will also probably find that sales are relatively few and far between for the first year or so.There is a cumulative effect, since the process of clients finding and deciding and using images can take months. And, if it’s a new image, it can take up to four months to be reported, too.  Then it can take months for funds to clear, and then you only get paid if your cleared balance is over $50, as you probably know. I started uploading in February last year, but didn’t get my first payment until October, and the second in March of this year, the third in May, so you can see how it needs time for things to build. 

 

You have to have oodles of determination and perseverance to be in this business  

Edited May 4, 2018 by Sally

[stevednp3]

12 minutes ago, Sally said:

Two months really isn’t very long, as far as I can tell from others’ experiences here. I had my first sale around two months after uploading, but I think I had more than 600 images by then. It depends on so many different factors, eg what clients are looking for, how diverse your portfolio is, your ranking, how well you tag and caption, as well of course whether it’s a good image. But let us know on the other thread when you do get your first sale.

You will also probably find that sales are relatively few and far between for the first year or so.There is a cumulative effect, since the process of clients finding and deciding and using images can take months. And, if it’s a new image, it can take up to four months to be reported, too.  Then it can take months for funds to clear, and then you only get paid if your cleared balance is over $50, as you probably know. I started uploading in February last year, but didn’t get my first payment until October, and the second in March of this year, the third in May, so you can see how it needs time for things to build. 

 

You have to have oodles of determination and perseverance to be in this business  

Thank you, makes me feel better in that what im doing so far is not wrong, fingers crossed sales will come at some point and yes I can see that you need plenty of that, cheers :-)

[Betty LaRue]

Steve, you are going about things right in the forum. Respectful, listening, taking suggestions. Many new contributors don’t. They ask for help but absolutely cannot take constructive criticism and are argumentative. Not to say you can’t have opinions, but there are nice ways and bad ways to express them.

You are ahead of them in this respect and I expect you to eventually do well. Because we all are eager to help people like you.

It’s a numbers and waiting game here.

Have patience.

Betty

[Brasilnut]

Lots of people above have had much more success than me, but here's my 2cents anyway:

 

Since Alamy is predominately an editorial-based agency, lots of the concepts you have here probably will never sell. Those include the more generic type of images, composites and even if model-released, as well as the backgrounds. No harm in having them here though...it's sort of a lottery ticket. I also have a passport series and even though they sell regularly on micros, on here they're just drifting. 

You have a nice series of shop-fronts, such as Carperight, TGI Friday's, Maplin, Costa, etc. and I imagine those are exactly the types of images that are licensed on here and feature heavily on the Guardian, Daily Mail, etc. Times move fast and who knows if one of those establishments will be wound up in the next few years. One tip is to have more people in the frame...since it's editorial anyway it's a plus. 

 

You're doing well. Keep submitting. I'm relatively new to Alamy as only been submitting regularly for 18 months or so and only recently have I seen an uptick in regular sales (although many very low amounts). 

 

Good luck

 

p.s Liking the timber factory images, I imagine those will do well.

 

 

[stevednp3]

Thanks Betty and Brasilnut :-) I have a lot to learn within the stock industry and hence I would like to keep in good terms with everyone to keep learning :-)

 

I have uploaded a new batch of just over hundred images today that I now think will be more suited to this site. I'll keep pushing forward and keep my fingers crossed :-)

[MandyD]

1 minute ago, stevednp3 said:

Thanks Betty and Brasilnut :-) I have a lot to learn within the stock industry and hence I would like to keep in good terms with everyone to keep learning :-)

 

I have uploaded a new batch of just over hundred images today that I now think will be more suited to this site. I'll keep pushing forward and keep my fingers crossed :-)

as a newbie myself, this forum has been very helpful...has helped me tweak things and starting to see more zooms now, with hopefully sales to follow.

[Joseph Clemson]

Steve, you seem to have quite a lot of photos posed with a young lady which are crying out to have a model release so that they can be licenced for commercial use, not just editorial. If you have a model release you need to mark it as such in the optional tab of the Alamy image manager. If you don't have a model release, can you obtain one? It would make the images much more saleable. If you can't get a model release you might want to mark the images as editorial only, then you don't get inadvertent commercial sales which infringe the rights of the model.

[stevednp3]

5 minutes ago, Joseph Clemson said:

Steve, you seem to have quite a lot of photos posed with a young lady which are crying out to have a model release so that they can be licenced for commercial use, not just editorial. If you have a model release you need to mark it as such in the optional tab of the Alamy image manager. If you don't have a model release, can you obtain one? It would make the images much more saleable. If you can't get a model release you might want to mark the images as editorial only, then you don't get inadvertent commercial sales which infringe the rights of the model.

If it's a single person then it should definitely have a model release attached unless it's a new batch like car mechanic which has only just been approved and I haven't attached the release yet. But all others should be ???

[Joseph Clemson]

5 minutes ago, stevednp3 said:

If it's a single person then it should definitely have a model release attached unless it's a new batch like car mechanic which has only just been approved and I haven't attached the release yet. But all others should be ???

 

I noticed the young lady and new car series didn't have a model release assigned.

[stevednp3]

28 minutes ago, Joseph Clemson said:

 

I noticed the young lady and new car series didn't have a model release assigned.

Ah brill thanks had me worried then ha ha, I'll update those soon cheers