Hi All,

 I am curious, how do you know if a keyword is being used to purchase your images in Micro. Is there a way to track the buyers key word search. It sounds like some people here are aware of what key words work and which don't in the sales of their images. I would love to know how to track that info. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Jonathan

Also on Istock if you go into one of your images and look at the keywords the first 3 are the ones most often used in the searches that resulted in sales.

Thanks you two,

 That is really helpful info. really appreciate it.

Best,
Jonathan

Just an update...

I bought 12 images from IS. It took me days to find the images I wanted, and still I have some blank spaces. I don't know if I'm allowed to post a URL but given the amount of time spent looking for stock, I think I'm entitled to not spend extra time reading posting rules Anyway, www.frenchgardenworld.com

I've sent mails to some of the owners apologising for the smallness of images bought.

Just to reiterate, my point is � not everyone has time to look. How many people like me give up at the first hurdle? It's all about maximising your sales. Find out what it is that you've photographed and add it to your keywords, you just might get some extra sales because of that.

Luckily I can recognise a lot of plants without names, but that still means I have to wade through 20000 tulips to find one that someone hasn't identified.
Yes, I could go to a plant-specific stock site, but not having any spare arms and legs to give away, that's not an option.

Bon courage!

I am curious, how do you know if a keyword is being used to purchase your images in Micro. Is there a way to track the buyers key word search.

As far as I knows, only Dreamstime offers that option. You can see it on your sales page (click the amount$ after "earnings balance" on top when logged in) under the column "Buyer searched after". The keywords will be there.

Very interesting is the mentioning "n/a". That means that a buyer bought your shot by a visual search, browsing thumbs. Either by directly going to your portfolio, or clicking one of the "similar images" on other's pictures, or "more of this model" on your own pictures. The more diverse your portfolio is, the more chances to get a n/a sales since you will turn up more near other's pictures. To give an idea, of my last 20 sales, 14 (!) were n/a.

Keywords are obviously not the whole story in searches, but of course they are very important to select "similar images" with any image (especially of others) that is shown. This because similarity is decided on common keywords that are shared between the original shown and the similars.

Also buyers' searches seem to contain very simple generic words, seldom more than 2. From those last 6 sales that were found by keywords, the keywords were "plane", "rapper", "flag philippines", "philippines"x2 and "thumbs up".