MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Alamy.com => Topic started by: Chadlatta on April 29, 2011, 22:50
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I have been browsing Alamy's stats page looking at what popular and I notice that, for a one month period, there are not that many sales!
If I sort for sales or keyword searches, many of the top results seem very low. Am I using it correctly?
How do I best use those stats to my advantage?
Thanks
Chad
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I have been browsing Alamy's stats page looking at what popular and I notice that, for a one month period, there are not that many sales!
If I sort for sales or keyword searches, many of the top results seem very low. Am I using it correctly?
How do I best use those stats to my advantage?
Thanks
Chad
The system is very primitive. The notes tell you that sales don't register unless the actual visit which elicits the view gets the sale. If someone marks a photo and returns to buy it, that doesn't show up as a sale.
The stats are only taken from a selection of Alamy's top buyers, not all visitors or even all buyers.
The order of the search is relevant. For example a search for High Street Anytown won't show up in the stats for Anytown High Street. (This is a real pain if you're trying to check out what the popular searches are for Anytown).
Be aware that the search feature is also very primitive. I've repeated over and over here my astonishment at such 'hits' I've had, like "Elizabeth House" because my first name is Elizabeth and there was a house in the photo, and "office party" because I have a photo of the head office of a polictical party. Note that although your pseudonym will show up in searches ("Joe Bloggs" will show up in searches including Joe, Bloggs or Joe Bloggs), the date doesn't (so if your photo is of April in Paris, make sure you put April in the keywords). False hits, even when it's the fault of the system and not your bad keywording, hits you in Alamy Rank (but that presumably affects everyone equally).
New one this week: a hit on a search for "two rats" puzzled me, but it was a photo of two people walking in front of the Canyon des Rats.
Finally, check Alexa for Alamy on a comparison with the Big 4 micros.
I would love Alamy to do better. Have you ever seen an advert for Alamy? I certainly haven't, although iStock's advertising is almost non-existent these days (my dls there were much better when I was seeing their ads all the time). But, as they say, "it is what it is".
When you read on the Alamy forums that people have 'good months', which can mean 'more than five sales', they usually have many thousands of pictures uploaded there.