Author Topic: Most important things for downloads? (Read 24627 times)

zorki · « **on:** November 10, 2007, 17:47 »

I'm just curious what the rest of you think the most important things you can do for your portfolio to get downloads, besides quality and volume. Does participation in the forums help? public Lightboxes? rating other peoples images? Inquiring minds would like to know...

vonkara · « **Reply #1 on:** November 10, 2007, 20:27 »

I'll say ratings for specific site. Being part of forums help too. I submitted pictures to a emerging contributors tread at Istock, and at this time I received many site mails from other people who seen my pictures there and like it.

That make now about two weeks and my incomes for November are equal to all the month of October. That after 10 days only. But I have to say it's probably normal that this income is raising like that, because I just started in July. Even this it's very encouraging!

sharply_done · « **Reply #2 on:** November 11, 2007, 00:11 »

The key reason I made the switch to microstock photography was that success depends only upon quality and quantity - unlike traditional models, schmoozing and networking are for the most part irrelevant.

fotografer · « **Reply #3 on:** November 11, 2007, 04:08 »

Keywording is one of the most important things. There's no point having wonderful photos if nobody can find them.

vonkara · « **Reply #4 on:** November 11, 2007, 09:18 »

Quote from: fotografer on November 11, 2007, 04:08

Keywording is one of the most important things. There's no point having wonderful photos if nobody can find them.

It's probably true. But I don't agree at 100%. For the example of an orange taken in macro, you have about 30 keywords who are good and 10 at the limit to be.

It doesn't take a genius to find them. I heard about people who was saying about some people was spamming their keywords sometime. LOL, What this people think about. That they are the only one who find the keyword juicy delicious and skin.

I think that everybody who take care of keywords are going to have about the same good keywords as other and then there is no advantage for everyone. What really make the file showing in first in best match it's where the reviewer want to place your file by rating it or not.

Keywords are just a way to make that file at an equal position to others.

zorki · « **Reply #5 on:** November 11, 2007, 11:59 »

I agree with Vonkara. I have tried to boost some of my images by constantly manipulating the keywords and it has little effect on the search engines in the various stock sites. OTOH, bad keywords can sink an image.

One reason I ask these questions is that I'm not very active at the forums on the various sites and I do notice that most of the most successful have large networks of people and I'm wondering if designers hang out very much on forums...

kosmikkreeper · « **Reply #6 on:** November 11, 2007, 12:03 »

I don't participate in forums and I'm doing quite well.

Quality and quantity... and as more good photogs show up quality will become even more important.

fotografer · « **Reply #7 on:** November 11, 2007, 12:10 »

I didn't mean to spam keywords but to make sure that you have all relevant keywords. I have seen images of a child with the word child missing from the keywords, etc etc.

Quote from: Vonkara on November 11, 2007, 09:18

Quote from: fotografer on November 11, 2007, 04:08
Keywording is one of the most important things. There's no point having wonderful photos if nobody can find them.
It's probably true. But I don't agree at 100%. For the example of an orange taken in macro, you have about 30 keywords who are good and 10 at the limit to be.

Pixart · « **Reply #8 on:** November 11, 2007, 17:00 »

The most important keywords in title, description and appearing first in list of keywords.

zorki · « **Reply #9 on:** November 11, 2007, 17:28 »

You are saying that the order of the keywords makes a difference in the search engine? Hmmm....

vonkara · « **Reply #10 on:** November 11, 2007, 19:54 »

But, it's always depend on what site you upload. I heard on Dreamstime that, before the 5 words rule in the description, the less and more relevent words you was having (in the description), the more up the pictures was in the search.

It's because that people was saying that the old pictures whit only EX: 3 words in the description...was advantaged compared to the new ones.

I can't say for all other sites, that keywords are very much important, unless you have a picture of a child whit no child in the description like say fotographer. (sorry for the missunderstanding)

What I can say it's that Dreamstime have the more difficult best match search engine.(for me) It's the only place I know that have pictures on the first page whit just about 7 or 10 keywords. Exclusivity, acceptance ratio, reviewer rating, but surely not the best job of keywords I saw...

Pixart · « **Reply #11 on:** November 11, 2007, 20:23 »

Quote from: zorki on November 11, 2007, 17:28

You are saying that the order of the keywords makes a difference in the search engine? Hmmm....

I clued in late at this about adding IPTC in photoshop. I was too lazy to try something new for the first six months. Then I started finding new sites and oh, boy, wish everything was just attached to the photo! Now, every photo is keyworded with the most important at the top. Mainly because of Fotolia. Then I don't have to reorder them after upload - it's important on FT that the most important are in the first 7. Others, like DT, for example, reorganize your keywords alphabetically.

I also try to put in as many variations of the same word as possible. skate, skates, skating, skater... SS will disqualify two of them, but some sites will not find "skate" on "skates" searches.

zorki · « **Reply #12 on:** November 12, 2007, 10:33 »

I thought IS was on a push to make people put less keywords. I had someone come through a few of my images and get rid of a bunch of keywords because they were "irrelevant"! The keywords were more about emotions than the actual things in the image, but the keyword police deemed them unnecessary.

oxman · « **Reply #13 on:** March 17, 2011, 02:43 »

For more downloads i guess being exclusive at IS. Key-wording well as mentioned. But in reality -- it is quality of your images in artistically telling a story well and hitting topics that are in demand. The best shooters have a sense of what sells and can produce it. Forums and SMM etc will matter very little.

Blufish · « **Reply #14 on:** March 17, 2011, 06:25 »

OLD THREAD PEOPLE! Sheesh

RacePhoto · « **Reply #15 on:** March 17, 2011, 11:16 »

Quote from: Blufish on March 17, 2011, 06:25

OLD THREAD PEOPLE! Sheesh

Odd

Blufish · « **Reply #16 on:** March 17, 2011, 20:21 »

Yes, I am

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #17 on:** March 17, 2011, 23:15 »

Quote from: oxman on March 17, 2011, 02:43

For more downloads i guess being exclusive at IS. Key-wording well as mentioned. But in reality -- it is quality of your images in artistically telling a story well and hitting topics that are in demand. The best shooters have a sense of what sells and can produce it. Forums and SMM etc will matter very little.

Is part of SEO strategy responding to old posts? You seem to have a few today.

raclro · « **Reply #18 on:** May 11, 2011, 22:43 »

I think the following are helpful, ranked in order. Quantity,unique subject, good but not spamy keywording, lightboxes. I personally see no link between quality and sales in most cases (within reason). I have similar images I have experimented with keywording. One I nearly filled the whole quota, the other only 5-8 good keywords. -- Sales essentially equal, makes me think buyers do not look beyond the obvious 5 or so keywords in a search. Admittedly, I have only tried this with a handfull of images, so it may not be statistically significant. Buyers seem to be looking for specific subjects. Quality? Many of my best photos sell very little, or not at all. Unique subjects in run of the mill shots, far outsell my "quality photos". I have earned many hundreds of dollars on shots I hesitated to even upload (and honestly was surprised they accepted), while my proudest shots are at 1 or 0 sales for years. Its all subject and getting buyers eyeballs to your photo in my opinion.
A big vote for public lightboxes. Pretty much every week, I have a string of 5-25 sales of images from a public lightbox. Maybe they found them in a simple search, but I think a buyer finds one image, looks into the linked lightbox and buys several more. Happens all the time. Twice in the past week, related subjects in the same lightbox, sequential sales, all the same size.
I can't quote who and when, but on iStock forums, I have read repeatedly that ratings (given or received), forum participation, etc, active uploading are no factor in best match placement. Who knows.

fotografer · « **Reply #19 on:** May 12, 2011, 02:51 »

Quote from: raclro on May 11, 2011, 22:43

I think the following are helpful, ranked in order. Quantity,unique subject, good but not spamy keywording, lightboxes. I personally see no link between quality and sales in most cases (within reason).

I couldn't disagree more. A portfolio of a couple of hundred great images will sell a lot more than a portfolio of 1000s of crap images.

raclro · « **Reply #20 on:** May 12, 2011, 22:11 »

Quote from: fotografer on May 12, 2011, 02:51

Quote from: raclro on May 11, 2011, 22:43
I think the following are helpful, ranked in order. Quantity,unique subject, good but not spamy keywording, lightboxes. I personally see no link between quality and sales in most cases (within reason).

I couldn't disagree more. A portfolio of a couple of hundred great images will sell a lot more than a portfolio of 1000s of crap images.

I understand your point, but for the most part, that approach worked well years ago when there were only tens of thousands of contributors, but is much harder now with millions of contributors on the Internet. Of course, some newer contributors have very high success rates with a couple hundred quality images, but most I find are lucky to make lunch money if they are new and only have 200 files available regardless of quality. When I study the contributor charts, I find the high selling/small portfolio contributors have been around from the start or close to it. Pick a very high seller with lots of quality photos (pro model shots etc), look back a year in file age, and see the sales numbers for a sequence of 200, let alone 3 months back. Then compare sales to 2004 uploads, often lower quality than their newer ones, but the old ones are big sellers.

spike · « **Reply #21 on:** May 13, 2011, 04:45 »

Quote from: raclro on May 12, 2011, 22:11

When I study the contributor charts, I find the high selling/small portfolio contributors have been around from the start or close to it.

Hm... might this be due to the fact that the files had the... longest time to sell?

raclro · « **Reply #22 on:** May 13, 2011, 09:22 »

I get it, however many of those older files with blue flames have been that way since prior to 2005. They rocketed up in sales rather quickly back then. They continue to sell very well in most cases, but the big initial sales early on keep them near the top of best match. Once again look through a big sellers portfolio. Go back a year and find some excellent photos that are everybit the equal of his/her highest sellers overall. Relatively few with big sales, and many great shots with 0 sales. If those same photos were available in 2003, they would likely be blue flames long ago. Of course there is still plenty of opportunity for a file to garner very significant sales quickly, but because of greatly increased competiton, it is simply harder to buyers to find it among the may thousands now available. The days of a photo of dice showing double sixes, selling 6000 times, are probably gone, except for those that sold it big to begn with.

spike · « **Reply #23 on:** May 13, 2011, 13:54 »

Quote from: raclro on May 13, 2011, 09:22

I get it, however many of those older files with blue flames have been that way since prior to 2005. They rocketed up in sales rather quickly back then. They continue to sell very well in most cases, but the big initial sales early on keep them near the top of best match. Once again look through a big sellers portfolio. Go back a year and find some excellent photos that are everybit the equal of his/her highest sellers overall. Relatively few with big sales, and many great shots with 0 sales. If those same photos were available in 2003, they would likely be blue flames long ago. Of course there is still plenty of opportunity for a file to garner very significant sales quickly, but because of greatly increased competiton, it is simply harder to buyers to find it among the may thousands now available. The days of a photo of dice showing double sixes, selling 6000 times, are probably gone, except for those that sold it big to begn with.

Yep, I agree completely.

One of the reasons the best match algorithm has to be changed is so the buyers don't buy the old 2003. double sixes by default. As it turns out, agencies are constantly revamping their best match algorithms - we can only debate can there be a better way.

takestock · « **Reply #24 on:** May 13, 2011, 14:45 »

Good Keywording I feel plays a big part.
Diversity in your portfolio gives you a better chance for regular downloads.
I don't participate much in forums or blogs - not sure if any of these help.
As said earlier its a case of quality and if you can quantity.

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Author Topic: Most important things for downloads? (Read 24627 times)

zorki

vonkara

sharply_done

fotografer

vonkara

zorki

kosmikkreeper

fotografer

Pixart

zorki

vonkara

Pixart

zorki

oxman

Blufish

RacePhoto

Blufish

PaulieWalnuts

raclro

fotografer

raclro

spike

raclro

spike

takestock

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