BobD Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 7 minutes ago, Elena Zajchikova said: I've got around 2000 views and 8 zooms since January. Average CTR is 0.42. Don't know whether this is good or bad. This is lower than average and would suggest to me that you may be over key wording ( I am sure others will have a different opinion ). Make sure you key words are completely relevant to the image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elena Zajchikova Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 3 minutes ago, BobD said: This is lower than average and would suggest to me that you may be over key wording ( I am sure others will have a different opinion ). Make sure you key words are completely relevant to the image. Keywords should be ok as all those files with the same keywords were previously tested on another microstocks and generated quite a nice sales. Maybe the trouble is that I uploaded all of them in one shot? Some sites "prefer" to see the regular activity of the contributor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Limb Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 10 minutes ago, Elena Zajchikova said: Keywords should be ok as all those files with the same keywords were previously tested on another microstocks and generated quite a nice sales. Maybe the trouble is that I uploaded all of them in one shot? Some sites "prefer" to see the regular activity of the contributor. Are they all still on MS sites? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elena Zajchikova Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 2 minutes ago, Matt Limb said: Are they all still on MS sites? Yes, they are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobD Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 I am no expert on MS but AFAIK they won't punish you for irrelevant search terms. I took a look at your image of chocolate cakes on the first row of your images. Examples of what words that I ( and I stress this is just my opinion) would think carefully about. Black, melting, molten, cream, ingredient, recipe, syrup. I don't think anyone searching for an image like that would regularly use any of those words and may hurt your ctr. for example a search for 'black cat' may well throw up your image. 'molten lava' could likely show your image especially as you have 'lava' as a key word too. As I said before this is just my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elena Zajchikova Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 2 minutes ago, BobD said: I am no expert on MS but AFAIK they won't punish you for irrelevant search terms. I took a look at your image of chocolate cakes on the first row of your images. Examples of what words that I ( and I stress this is just my opinion) would think carefully about. Black, melting, molten, cream, ingredient, recipe, syrup. I don't think anyone searching for an image like that would regularly use any of those words and may hurt your ctr. for example a search for 'black cat' may well throw up your image. 'molten lava' could likely show your image especially as you have 'lava' as a key word too. As I said before this is just my opinion. Thank you for your opinion, it may be worth it to re-keyword at least most of the best sellers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 21 minutes ago, Elena Zajchikova said: Yes, they are. GIS search results show your images on MS sites. None that I can find show on Alamy. Your customers are a right-click away from paying pennies for your images instead of pounds. Why would they buy here? You are competing with yourself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elena Zajchikova Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 3 minutes ago, spacecadet said: Then why would anyone pay pounds here when they can get the same images for pennies on MS? GIS search results show your images on MS ahead Alamy. You are competing with yourself. That may be the case, thanks. I would do a special release for Alamy exclusively to check that version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 37 minutes ago, Elena Zajchikova said: Keywords should be ok as all those files with the same keywords were previously tested on another microstocks and generated quite a nice sales. I looked at M93H7RI at random You have called it toffee cubes. This isn't toffee, it's fudge. These keywords are all totally irrelevant: background, butter, caramel, cream, cream caramel, celebration, cupcake, dessert, ingredient, kitchen, meal, party, powder, sugar, syrup, toffee. You should only keyword what you can see in the image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elena Zajchikova Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 5 minutes ago, Cryptoprocta said: These keywords are all totally irrelevant: background, butter, caramel, cream, cream caramel, celebration, cupcake, dessert, ingredient, kitchen, meal, party, powder, sugar, syrup, toffee. You should only keyword what you can see in the image. Well, this is a common practice for the food-stockers when you describe food ingredients in the keywords. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 Also image M93H57. These biscuits are called Jammie / Jammy Dodgers. These keywords are irrelevant to this image: background, bakery, cake, cracker, cream*, dessert, fat, marmalade, *I see you say the filling is cream. Fair enough if so, but it's usually vanilla icing paste. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 5 minutes ago, Elena Zajchikova said: Well, this is a common practice for the food-stockers when you describe food ingredients in the keywords. Doesn't make it right, and is very much frowned upon in the only micro of which I have experience. However, there are still lots which are nothing to do with ingredients. If a buyer searches on 'butter' or 'sugar', do they really want to see fudge? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elena Zajchikova Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 Just now, Cryptoprocta said: Doesn't make it right. However, there are lots which are nothing to do with ingredients. If a buyer searches on 'butter' or 'sugar', do they really want to see fudge? Ok, I see, thanks. I would put re-keywording to my todo list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katie Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 The difference here seems to be that CTR is a factor. In lots of agencies, especially dedicated news agencies, the most recent matching images are returned first, so you can keyword quite liberally because it won't harm you if it's irrelevant (although I doubt it does the reputation of the agency much good, if they're frustrating to search the database of, and often the photo desk will cull your keywords entirely if you've obviously overdone it, and some don't have keywords at all). Here, though, CTR and irrelevant results actively harm you, making your images less prominent if people don't click on them often. It probably doesn't harm the people with specialist collections, those doing lots of flowers and species for example, because any search for those subjects is always going be on-topic, but if you're shooting more generic stuff or news I can't imagine it's easy to keep a good CTR up. I'm struggling with it myself on my images, trying to weigh adding realistic keywords against the possibility of dragging my CTR down with unwanted results. The interesting thing about it all is that Alamy simultaneously punishes people for having too many bad keywords, while also featuring an arbitrary discoverability rating that encourages overkeywording. Some subjects are easy to genuinely reach 50 keywords on, but I suspect some people are trying to get "good discoverability" at the expense of their CTR, when discoverability isn't a factor in search prominence at all. I'd be interested in what sort of CTR the really prolific news and event type uploaders have. Surely they get lots and lots of false positives from keywording and from the words of the longer captions, but they still seem to sell. I guess maybe CTR matters less in certain subject areas, and it obviously doesn't affect live news either, but I guess that if you're shooting subjects that are heavily represented (or concepts, or generic type images) then CTR is your most important asset. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 After a couple of years here I did a serious keyword cull and saw my views drop by a third. They're now about half what they used to be, around 0.6/image/month, and it doesn't vary much. Sales are much better of course and I've keyworded pretty tightly since then. The new AIM encourages even tighter tagging. 35 is a lot for me nowadays, but of course it includes phrases so it's not directly comparable with the old system. I get the impression Alamy is faintly embarrassed at the whole idea of discoverability, since most contributors ignore it, and Alamy has effectively said it doesn't matter anyway. Incidentally, I ignore CTR as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elena Zajchikova Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 2 minutes ago, spacecadet said: I get the impression Alamy is faintly embarrassed at the whole idea of discoverability, since most contributors ignore it, and Alamy has effectively said it doesn't matter anyway. Incidentally, I ignore CTR as well. I found this also a bit confusing. I spent a bit time and tweaked some of the images to be "optimized" but it makes no difference still. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 15 minutes ago, Elena Zajchikova said: I found this also a bit confusing. I spent a bit time and tweaked some of the images to be "optimized" but it makes no difference still. Ignore it, it was a very bad idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Limb Posted June 1, 2018 Share Posted June 1, 2018 2 hours ago, Elena Zajchikova said: Yes, they are. And you are surprised you have no or little sales on here? Think about it ............ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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