having just been accepted at Alamy I am finding, even with keywords encrypted into my metadata the file editing is going to be a long long haul. Most sites just require you to select the categories and Bob's your uncle. Alamy require a 3 tier keywording, caption, description AND other info. As this will slow things right down my question is will it be worth it as regard sales and income ? If not I will keep adding here and there. If it isn't as good earner as canstock, DT I won't bother as the latter are poor sellers for me.

How many files do you have with them?

Alamy keywording is a major PITA, and it's hard to say if it's worth it, as these are RM files I'm not submitting anywhere else.

You need to be quite careful as although they hae the essential main and others, in fact any combination of keywords can be looked for in a search. Also be aware that words in your caption can also be found in a search. So you can end up having your files found on totally irrelevant search results, which will hit your CTR and thus your Alamy Rank. To some extent, we are all hit this way; but if you can somehow avoid it, your AR will be better.

Sounds like it won't be worth it as I only sell RF, not exclusive.

Mine are all RF and the same images I upload to all the other sites. My highest sale netted me over 200$ and could have been had from any of a dozen other sites  as a sub sale.

Alamy wrote me an email today and I am just flabbergasted by the secrets they gave away on how to sell more images. I had never thought of this:

How to sell more images   
 
Hi Ronald
 
The fastest way to improve your chances of making a sale is to check your keywords.
Technique (top tips to get the best out of the system):
�   Use spaces to separate keywords
�   Add plurals if you think they're relevant - flower and flowers
�   Add words with the same meaning - mum, mom and mother
�   Make sure your keywords are relevant (our system is clever - irrelevant keywords will make your images harder to find)
Language (think about the words you�re using):
�   Literally - what's in my image? dog, car, woman, man, child, flower
�   Attributes - what does my image show? happy, calm, young, old
�   Locations - where is my image?
�   Specific - what's my image of? The White House, Washington DC, USA
�   Generic - what's my image of? house, school, office
�   Interaction - what's happening in my image? running, walking, shouting, touching, flying
�   Broad subjects - what's the subject of my image? travel, sport, business, lifestyle, wildlife
�   Techniques - have you used any specific techniques? black and white, digital manipulation, grainy, blurred

And finally, one aspect of keywording that is often overlooked by contributors is:
�   Concepts - moods, emotions and metaphors - heat, power, happiness, strength, humour, teamwork, tranquillity
Think like a buyer! What would you search for?


It is completely beyond me how such a large and professional agency can write me such a overabundant email with absolutely nothing clever to say. Thats an email for the newest of newbies. Not for the type of contributor that submits to Alamy.

Ever since I started to follow their rules of keywording and had been adding more images, my CTR dropped from around 0.5 to 0.14. So I wont sell a thing ever again there. sales were picking up but it seems my port is completely hidden now. No zooms, no sales.

Why do they need a description twice ? brief description in caption and another description on the next page.

I think it's just if you have more information than will fit into 128 characters.  I use it if I have digitally modified an image then I put the modification there in case anyone wants to know.  Otherwise just skip it.

For you Alamy experts: what's the best way to keyword a phrase?  Take for example a travel photo of Santa Barbara.  If you enter the city name as two separate words, I imagine someone searching just for "Santa" wouldn't appreciate having to wade through photos of the city.  Do you use quotation marks for keyword phrases on Alamy? 

At one point they said they would link words together with [] like [santa barbara]. As far as I can tell that never happened. It would be a pain to go back and include that, but it could potentially greatly improve their search.

If only they let you pre-set the attributes as a tenplate as well as able to copy and paste from images that are similar like Dreamstime lets you do.

I just wish they'd fix a few simple things.  We're always hearing about big plans, new marketing, suggestions for how contributors could do better;  but hey if the site would just put the keywords in 'main' by default- so we didn't have to do that mindless cut-and-paste on every image, every time...

Well I have nearly 200 images with them but no sales as yet 

I was 8 months and over 800 images before I had a sale.