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Author Topic: I have had a 500% increase in earnings  (Read 11739 times)

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« on: February 22, 2008, 15:57 »
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I have had a 500% increase in earnings since I have prioritized my key words on FT.
I recently uploaded over 200 new images to FT. The only thing I changed was I prioritized
all the keywords for each of the 200 plus images i uploaded.

In the past, all keywords were listed in Alpha order. I used to make about $35 - $40 every 2 months.
I started the policy of prioritizing the words in Jan of this year. It is now Feb and my earnings are $73
for this month alone (at the time of this post)

Now this is just an observation. It's not a scientific experiment. Too many other variables could be affecting
the amount of downloads: Better images, more designers DL'ing, more precise  key wording... etc

All in all, its a pain in the ass to list the keywords in any order other than random. However it may have paid
off in the long run for me.

The MIZ


CofkoCof

« Reply #1 on: February 22, 2008, 16:09 »
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The search on fotolia only finds the top 7 keywords:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=2409.msg35257;topicseen

« Reply #2 on: February 22, 2008, 16:24 »
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All in all, its a pain in the ass to list the keywords in any order other than random. However it may have paid off in the long run for me.

This Fotolia thing was the reason I wrote my tagging script more than a year ago. My port of the past year is already priority-tagged, since me thinks other sites will follow this path soon with 3M+ photo databases.

« Reply #3 on: February 22, 2008, 16:46 »
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FlemishDreams

Can you elaborate on how to best use that link in ur post?
Looks interesting.

The MIZ

« Reply #4 on: February 22, 2008, 17:05 »
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Miz, you haven't had a 500% increase in earnings - what you had was 500% less income before simply because you didn't follow FT's instructions.  It has always been the case that only the first seven words count, and there has always been an instruction on the upload page to reorder words into priority order before pressing 'submit'.

Yes, you can celebrate your windfall, but you should also reflect on how much money you lost in previous years.

You now need to think about how you can change all your earlier uploads - most people think that reordering existing keywords doesn't work, so the only other option is deleting all existing images and 'starting again'.

« Reply #5 on: February 22, 2008, 17:11 »
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hatman12

You are wrong.... I live one day at a time. I piss on the past because it is of no use to me now. I can't change it.
What I can do is live for today, and plan for the future. It's not viewed as a loss to me. The glass is half full if
you get my drift.

Be well hatman12
The MIZ

« Reply #6 on: February 22, 2008, 17:22 »
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I definitely prefer your positive approach to it instead of crying over spilt milk although Hatman is quite right :)
hatman12

You are wrong.... I live one day at a time. I piss on the past because it is of no use to me now. I can't change it.
What I can do is live for today, and plan for the future. It's not viewed as a loss to me. The glass is half full if
you get my drift.

Be well hatman12
The MIZ


« Reply #7 on: February 22, 2008, 17:28 »
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It has always been the case that only the first seven words count, and there has always been an instruction on the upload page to reorder words into priority order before pressing 'submit'.

What was never said however (I think) is that combined keywords don't count and therefore "Rio de Janeiro" must be "Rio, de, Janeiro", using three of the precious seven magic keywords.  :(

Regards,
Adelaide

« Reply #8 on: February 22, 2008, 17:28 »
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hatman12

You are wrong.... I live one day at a time. I piss on the past because it is of no use to me now. I can't change it.
What I can do is live for today, and plan for the future. It's not viewed as a loss to me. The glass is half full if
you get my drift.

Be well hatman12
The MIZ


very funny :)

CofkoCof

« Reply #9 on: February 22, 2008, 17:31 »
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rjmiz: You can delete the old files, improve the keywording and upload them again.

« Reply #10 on: February 22, 2008, 17:47 »
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Miz I agree that life is best with the 'half full' approach.  But you've missed my point: you haven't solved the problem - you've got two years worth of images that are not keyworded properly and somehow you've got to address that problem or they will continue to be lost in FT's system and earn a derisory income.  You can piss on the past if you wish - just make sure you don't piss all over your own pictures.

« Reply #11 on: February 22, 2008, 18:02 »
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Arranging keywords may have been a factor OK. but just to say that I have had a significant increase in sales recently - without altering keys.

« Reply #12 on: February 22, 2008, 18:06 »
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Me too, a 100% increase with FT in the past few months.  My theory is that they have taken some of istocks customers, after their big price rise.  This might be the reason why istock is having a sale.

« Reply #13 on: February 22, 2008, 18:32 »
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I seemed to remeber being told by a member of MSG that not only the order is important, but it is equally important to sequence them in the proper order if they read in a specific fashion

Crystal, Blue, Sky
Race, Car
Puppy, Dog

Mark
 




DanP68

« Reply #14 on: February 22, 2008, 21:23 »
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It is a bit of a pain, but I have gotten into the habit of ordering all of my keywords in IPTC with Fotolia in mind.  That way the work only has to be done one time.

graficallyminded

« Reply #15 on: February 22, 2008, 21:43 »
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I have recently gotten in the habit as well - I've been doing this stuff for 2 years now, and never noticed the "fine print" that the first 7 keywords should be the most important.  That sucks, ah well.  I have done really well on FT...I can only imaging how well I could have done if I knew this from the beginning.  It's easy to miss that, guys.  I have been going back to my hotter selling images that haven't gotten many DL's on FT, and reordering the keywords.  We'll see if that makes a difference.  2 years worth of images for me isn't huge, as i only have the time to upload about 5-10 new images a week on average.

« Reply #16 on: February 23, 2008, 03:29 »
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it is stated by fotolia's forum moderators that reordering doesn't change anything. you have to get it right before you hit submit
« Last Edit: February 23, 2008, 03:52 by rustyphil »

« Reply #17 on: February 23, 2008, 06:27 »
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I wonder if you can provide a link to that post?

« Reply #18 on: February 23, 2008, 06:45 »
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it is stated by fotolia's forum moderators that reordering doesn't change anything. you have to get it right before you hit submit

no wonder my sales suck big time at Fotolia - i use Aperture to manage my photos and it reorders all my keywords sorting by alpha. i'll never get a break at Fotolia this way :(

« Reply #19 on: February 23, 2008, 08:53 »
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I think, that rather than reorder  keys in all of your images - if you just work on the ones with the least views.

Would save a bit of time as the ones that have high views are already being found.

« Reply #20 on: February 23, 2008, 10:11 »
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it is stated by fotolia's forum moderators that reordering doesn't change anything. you have to get it right before you hit submit

no wonder my sales suck big time at Fotolia - i use Aperture to manage my photos and it reorders all my keywords sorting by alpha. i'll never get a break at Fotolia this way :(

Same thing in Lightroom but I do reorder them manually in FT. It's worth it! Just good business.  :)

« Reply #21 on: February 23, 2008, 10:24 »
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I wonder if you can provide a link to that post?


I have recently put this in discussion here (see my msg on Feb 20th with the forum quote):
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php/topic,2409.0.html

Regards,
Adelaide

« Reply #22 on: February 23, 2008, 10:48 »
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FlemishDreams
Can you elaborate on how to best use that link in ur post?
Looks interesting.
The MIZ

Apparently many people use FlemishTagger looking into my bandwidth logs. Well, there must be many lurkers around on forums ;-)

I wrote the script for myself actually, 1.5 years ago after finding out the 7-keyword Fotolia thing. It seemed to me that more sites would adopt this priority scheme sooner or later, and anyways it's only 10 sec extra work clicking the keywords in the right order.

The whole thing actually started with LO end of 2006 when they had problems with inter-keyword separators. I first wrote the script to easily output the list comma, comma-space, semicolon, or newline separated. You can do that with notepad or MSWord too of course, but you can make typos and you have to type. I'm very lazy by nature and just like to click ;-)

Then I added sorting, and finally spell check plus templates. There is also a high-watermark when you exceed 50 (or whatever) keywords.

The help files probably reflect those "organic" changes over time and aren't that clear any more. If anybody is really interested, I would streamline the help.
It has some hidden Easter eggs, like highlighting incompatible keywords for ShutterStock. Once got a warning for that.

I'm currently looking into the Princeton lexical database of synonyms and  more/less general terms to suggest extra keywords and maybe disambiguation. I think Duncan's heuristic method on CanStockPhoto is basically flawed. But for now, I'm just concentrating on my port for a while ;-)

« Reply #23 on: February 23, 2008, 10:54 »
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help says, your script can be downloaded, but I could not find the link on your web site.

« Reply #24 on: February 23, 2008, 10:54 »
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Same thing in Lightroom but I do reorder them manually in FT. It's worth it! Just good business.  :)
OMG, that Fotolia interface is sooo slow, and it will order your tags only on the site, not in your IPTC. I got so tired end 2006 to sort them on the site I wrote a script just for that, and save the sorted tags into my IPTC.


 

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