There is no need to follow anyone else's rules for Alamy. However, I can't see how the way you're formatting your caption can have any possible adverse effect on sales.

Alamy have a format for Live News, but that's not what you're talking about. You're talking about secondary editorial.
Just describe what's in the image.
Captions currently weigh higher than keywords, so make sure you have all the important terms in your caption as well as your keywords.
Be aware that their system merges any word from the caption with any word from the keywords, even taking one word from a keyword phrase.

As for sales - well, it can take up to six months for a sale to even be reported, so you might have had sales you don't know about. As guidance, I had over 800 files/8 months on Alamy before my first sale was reported, and that was over ten years ago, when the collection was a fraction of what it is now. To most of us (not counting Live News contributors), sales seem to be random, no way of predicting what will sell - it just seems to be what a buyer wants. Last month on Alamy was my best for a long time, this month looks like it will be my worst month for even longer. Ho-hum.

Most people (in fact all that I've ever read) do better on the Micros than they do on Alamy with a similar port size. That includes me, and I have different files on iS (exclusive) and Alamy (RM). Last month was my only exception to that rule in nine years submitting to both (my port is now c10% bigger on Alamy). However, with micros on a general  slide downwards, it's a useful extra pie to have a finger in.

To head off a possible future question, sales prices are what the buyer has negotiated (based on quantity) and have nothing to do with the quality or rarity of the image (same as micros).
The jury is out as to whether or not having images on micros and on Alamy is shooting yourself in the foot as far as Alamy sales are concerned. Alamy themselves "don't know". But you could think of it as 'covering all the bases'.

If you haven't read it already, it might be useful to read: https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/captions-and-keywords-for-images/?section=8

I get rid of that stupid town/ state/ country - date that you have to have on SS it leaves more room on Alamy for a bigger desription.

The Dateline is standard for news and reporting. You might not like it, but the rest of the world has been using that format for centuries, and there's a reason why the location of a news story and the date is important. WHEN Why would anyone want to leave out the location which is important to what is happening WHERE? This applies to anything that is actually newsworthy, not for someone who wants to slap Editorial on anything that they don't have a release for.

A dateline is a tag on a news story that specifies where the story was filed from. The date is very important for anyone reading news to know whether it was last week or two years ago.

Yes of course, we don't need a proper dateline for some subject that isn't actually newsworthy or the date and location are irrelevant.

So I suppose the answer would be "what kind of editorial" before people start applying generalities that don't apply to everything that falls into Editorial. And I still say there are many times when people in Microstock just call things Editorial to get around releases that could be necessary.

A proper dateline should actually help sales because buyers want specific locations and events. A mountain in Italy if someone wants to use that for background while writing about Italy will get more downloads than "A mountain" with no location. Detailed, good and accurate data will help get more sales than vague or flawed data, which was created for views or trying to be seen in a search.

When you do descriptions for your editorial images for Alamy.com, do you follow the same rules from other websites (City, Country - Day, Month, Year)?

Most of my photos in Alamy follow Shutterstock nomenclature, but I'm having low sales in Alamy. 

I'm started to think that if I start my description following that rule the chances for being shown in searches is minimum (therefore low sales). 

How do you do the description of the editorial images for Alamy?

What? Why would a good accurate bit of data, in the description cause lower appearance in searches or lower sales. I don't understand? One would think just the opposite, good data means good matches for people looking for what is in the image.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on June 27, 2019, 05:39

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on June 26, 2019, 10:32

I get rid of that stupid town/ state/ country - date that you have to have on SS it leaves more room on Alamy for a bigger desription.

The Dateline is standard for news and reporting.

The OP wasn't talking about Live News.
The Date Taken is an auto-populated field on Alamy, I guess unless you have done something to change it or it's an old scan. No point in wasting characters, of which you only get 150 on repeating it. I assume that if the buyer specifies a date, the Date Taken field is what is used, as I have searches with [DT] and I very seldom put the year into my caption or keywords.

Alamy editorial stock is secondary editorial. Nowadays, there is no tickbox for 'unaltered' (I can only assume that wasn't something their editorial buyers were using much, if at all), so  non-Live News doesn't have to follow the news editorial rules. In fact, they can be as altered as one chooses.

Yes I think in terms of events and news, which ethically should not be altered beyond some minor adjustments, color correction (not alterations), exposure,  white balance, no cloning in or out, no additions or subtractions, or filters.

At any rate, all agencies accept the same and require location and date, a brief description in present tense.

Only 150 characters, wow, that's potentially limiting. Here's one of mine... on SS Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin USA, June 25 2017 : Verizon Indycar Series Driver Scott Dixon, during the Kohler Grand Prix. Fast formula car rounding a corner. I count 152 

I've slowed on Alamy of late but:  https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/245438.html

Alamy file:  Newton Iowa, USA - June 29, 2017: NASCAR Xfinity Series, American Ethanol E15 250 race. Presented by American Ethanol Iowa Speedway. Ryan Preece, Toyota. Victory circle celebration at Iowa Speedway Xfinity race.

192, where's the 150 character limit? I'm missing that? Is that new this year?

 

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on June 26, 2019, 10:32

I get rid of that stupid town/ state/ country - date that you have to have on SS it leaves more room on Alamy for a bigger desription.

The Dateline is standard for news and reporting. You might not like it, but the rest of the world has been using that format for centuries, and there's a reason why the location of a news story and the date is important. WHEN Why would anyone want to leave out the location which is important to what is happening WHERE? This applies to anything that is actually newsworthy, not for someone who wants to slap Editorial on anything that they don't have a release for.

A dateline is a tag on a news story that specifies where the story was filed from. The date is very important for anyone reading news to know whether it was last week or two years ago.

Yes of course, we don't need a proper dateline for some subject that isn't actually newsworthy or the date and location are irrelevant.

So I suppose the answer would be "what kind of editorial" before people start applying generalities that don't apply to everything that falls into Editorial. And I still say there are many times when people in Microstock just call things Editorial to get around releases that could be necessary.

A proper dateline should actually help sales because buyers want specific locations and events. A mountain in Italy if someone wants to use that for background while writing about Italy will get more downloads than "A mountain" with no location. Detailed, good and accurate data will help get more sales than vague or flawed data, which was created for views or trying to be seen in a search.

Quote from: pixelme on June 26, 2019, 07:20

When you do descriptions for your editorial images for Alamy.com, do you follow the same rules from other websites (City, Country - Day, Month, Year)?

Most of my photos in Alamy follow Shutterstock nomenclature, but I'm having low sales in Alamy. 

I'm started to think that if I start my description following that rule the chances for being shown in searches is minimum (therefore low sales). 

How do you do the description of the editorial images for Alamy?

What? Why would a good accurate bit of data, in the description cause lower appearance in searches or lower sales. I don't understand? One would think just the opposite, good data means good matches for people looking for what is in the image.

Quite correct Uncle Pete but Alamy provides a date and location field in the optional data tab so having the location/date taken in the description field is largely redundant.

Alamy live news (if you can get in to it these days) allows a 600 character description and you have to put a credit line plus location and date in the description.

I was referring to bog standard none news editorials and illustrative editorial, i.e. a photo of a street scene or photo of a branded product.

Shadysue has explained it very well better than I could

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on June 30, 2019, 01:36

Quite correct Uncle Pete but Alamy provides a date and location field in the optional data tab so having the location/date taken in the description field is largely redundant.

Except that for sure the location field is unsearchable, and at least IME, locations are pretty important, and for some years now the caption has trumped the keywords. Usually I have the location in both, sometimes only the keywords, very rarely not at all.

It looks like the date field must inform 'date taken' searches, though.

Sounds interesting, I'll need to search the search and see about location. Yes I think that's important.

What I was pointing out is my images have over 150 characters and they are not live news. I never knew I was over the limit and they never bounced or clipped or rejected anything.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on June 30, 2019, 17:58

Quote from: ShadySue on June 30, 2019, 06:29

Quote from: Sammy the Cat on June 30, 2019, 01:36

Quite correct Uncle Pete but Alamy provides a date and location field in the optional data tab so having the location/date taken in the description field is largely redundant.

Except that for sure the location field is unsearchable, and at least IME, locations are pretty important, and for some years now the caption has trumped the keywords. Usually I have the location in both, sometimes only the keywords, very rarely not at all.

It looks like the date field must inform 'date taken' searches, though.

Sounds interesting, I'll need to search the search and see about location. Yes I think that's important.

What I was pointing out is my images have over 150 characters and they are not live news. I never knew I was over the limit and they never bounced or clipped or rejected anything.

Nononono.
Your captions are indeed under 150 characters.
What you have over 150 characters for is the "More Information" field, which is optional and unsearchable. Also it's not visible when someone hovers over a photo in a search, whereas the caption is. The caption is what's important. 'More Information' is for anything which might be important to the buyer which isn't in the caption. No need to repeat anything from the caption in 'More Information'.
E.g. file #JRX4GK
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8gcleavrk6nyn11/Xfinity.jpg?dl=0

NB, there isn't a field called 'description', and the caption and title are the same.

Oh I get it, maybe? I didn't know my "more information" was so extensive. I suppose if someone is already looking, they could use that for details that don't fit. I also nothing that the image I looked at, has no dateline in the Caption.

The term description varies from agency to agency, it's the caption on some, title on others, however title is different than caption other places.

The standards for IPTC call the field Caption, it's on the Description page and listed as... (description)


Here's the other important page: Origin or Credits



We don't use that page for Microstock but some of the places I submit files, require it. Also minor, there is a place for a standard category, which is also used, but not for Microstock?

I added a very distinctive location to an image, the exact town and county, which is not in the title, keywords or caption areas. Now I need to wait a few days to see if it's searchable. Unless that's been answered and I missed it.

It appears that Alamy has been loading my Caption into additional information. I'd have to upload something and watch more carefully, what's going where. You're right 150 isn't much, but for what I do, the location and date is important and relevant, some other subjects not so much.