well it is nice to hear thoughts from a buyers perspective.  I think there is all too little of that here.

So you are planning on selling and marketing your images on your own?  that sounds like a bit of a work load!

a) free photos won't boost your sales to cheapskates like me.

Cross marketing works. Just because you do not ultimately buy something that does not mean that someone else will not.

Someone might be looking for a free image. They might also see and therefore know about a better collection of pictures. Another day, week, month in their job someone needs an image and are prepared to pay. Presto.

Free pictures is about growing a market. It's about big numbers.

I guess that boils down to the market you're aiming at. I see two different markets   - having been on the pre-press side, with a wider (anything goes) market view, you're right, but in a limited (specialised) market you're wrong.
At the end of the day your image has to be the right image for the job, sometimes diversity works, sometimes it doesn't, in any case, correct keywording will double an image's capabilities.

There is a lot of talk about keywording (rightfully so, I'm sure) and I was wondering if you are suggesting that there are not enough keywords or too few?  Or, is it more about accuracy of key words?

I'm not sure why anyone would bother keywording a free image in the first place? 

I do get your point ShadySue, but if they were also labelled correctly, they'd probably have the additional sales that the named butterflies got instead, and perhaps if there were more images correctly keyworded, more people would start looking there for them?

Regarding correct keywording, I meant the accuracy of describing what something is. For example, I just did a search on BigStock for 'blue butterfly' to show what I mean. On the first page there are a couple of shots of a 'Painted Lady' butterfly, but it's unnamed. It's not blue but has blue sky. If I was looking for a painted lady butterfly in particular, I wouldn't find it as I wouldn't be searching 'blue'.

Even worse, on the first page of 'blue butterfly', there's a black and white tiger moth on a grey wall with the keywords "black, blue, butterflies, butterfly, close, grass, green, insect, peacock, red" - only three correct but not very useful words - black, close and insect. I realise that's an extreme example!

Not only does it make really hard to find what you want, it pushes more suitable images further down the pack. Not to mention wrongly-named butterflies. With 23,062 butterflies, a butterfly needs all the help it can get.

So - the first blue butterfly wins (even though it's not on a yellow dandelion as the keywords say)

Can you feel a buyer's frustration here?

Some of the problem is down to contributors without native English, but it doesn't take too much research (preferably not on stock sites) to find out what it is that's been photographed.

@Pixart, the keywording applies more to RF/RM images. I imagine some of the freebies were RF at one time, and therefore have keywords.

Incidentally, I just did the same search on the big 6 - the results: fotolia and 123 were pretty bad and stockxpert was appalling. SS and dreamstime are the places to go for blue butterflies.

I accept the criticism about freebies, but I'm a once-in-a-lifetime buyer, with no money - not the market you're aiming at, hopefully, but blame the sites for offering them as well. I'd love to be able to buy more, better, images, but I can't.

Gill, good luck with your project, but I suspect a big problem
with being unknown is that if potential customers can't find you,
or don't know you exist, you aren't going anywhere, even with
good keywords.







-God bless

I accept the criticism about freebies, but I'm a once-in-a-lifetime buyer, with no money - not the market you're aiming at, hopefully, but blame the sites for offering them as well. I'd love to be able to buy more, better, images, but I can't.

Nothing wrong with accepting freebies at all.  That's why they are there.  Just trying to point out that you can't be too critical of contributors if you aren't willing to compensate them to do a better job.

The old saying "Don't look a gift horse (or butterfly) in the mouth" seems to apply here.

Well, thanks for everyone's input. Just to clear the point, I was referring to the paid images being a problem for searchers. As for stock sites just being for human-related subjects, that's down to the sites themselves and what they want to be commercially viable, but there's no reason why they couldn't have a broader spectrum of buyers if they were to whittle away some of the commercially nonviable stock they have.

I'm not being critical for they sake of it, I hoped some people might find it useful, and perhaps I don't word things in the best way.

Let me put it this way - Dreamstime has 16,401 generic tulip photos, if you search for a specific variety, say tulip gavota, you get two results (both of which have had downloads), now for the amount of work adding the variety name, isn't it worth it for narrowing down the opposition and a possible extra sale, just on the off chance that someone may be looking for that variety, even if only one?

On the other hand, maybe it's better income-wise for nature photographers to stick with the macro sites. They're just out of reach for people like me (to buy). I did have a specific variety of honeysuckle rejected by one micro site as they've "got too many already" - they didn't have that variety, but that's up to them. I just think it's a bit short-sighted of them, not meaning my photo, but different varieties/species in general.

As ShadySue said

However it's the first time it's been downloaded in almost two years

Perhaps buyers from other areas are tightening their belts and looking to microstock.

I had several butterfly images on istock, paper kites and painted ladies as well as several other varieties.  I painstakingly researched the names and keyworded them appropriately.  My images were tagged, though for inappropriate keywords because I had the words "painted" and "lady" in the keywords or "Paper" and "kite".  Since the image had neither lady or paint, nor paper nor kite istock removed them.  I have also had keywords removed for other things such as an emerald cut diamond had the word emerald removed because it was not an emerald but a diamond.  I had an image of a child waiting at a bus stop.  The word bus and stop were removed. 

You could have keyworded the child waiting at a bus stop with "Bus Stop" it's part of the CV.

Quote from: jalap on November 18, 2009, 17:46

I had several butterfly images on istock, paper kites and painted ladies as well as several other varieties.  I painstakingly researched the names and keyworded them appropriately.  My images were tagged, though for inappropriate keywords because I had the words "painted" and "lady" in the keywords or "Paper" and "kite".  Since the image had neither lady or paint, nor paper nor kite istock removed them.  I have also had keywords removed for other things such as an emerald cut diamond had the word emerald removed because it was not an emerald but a diamond.  I had an image of a child waiting at a bus stop.  The word bus and stop were removed. 

Painted and lady should not have been in your keywords for exactly the reason you give above. If you keyword 'painted lady', the CV maps it to Painted Lady Butterfly.
However, IMO, paper and kite, especially kite, should have been left in. I see that 'paper kite' is one of these phrases that someone has added as a 'legacy' term (odd name, I always think) which mean they're findable if someone actually types "paper kite" in quotation marks. I'd ask for kite at least to be replaced in your keywords and you could consider sitemailling ducksandwich to ask for 'paper kite' to be put in the CV.

Originally, I thought the Dreamstime keywording philosophy ... separating phrases into single words ... was ridiculous but now think their approach makes a lot of sense.  I've never used the iStock CV approach but, from the above, it doesn't seem the "best" approach to keywording. 
I found something else that I like about Dreamstime.   

Quote from: jalap on November 18, 2009, 17:46

I had several butterfly images on istock, paper kites and painted ladies as well as several other varieties.  I painstakingly researched the names and keyworded them appropriately.  My images were tagged, though for inappropriate keywords because I had the words "painted" and "lady" in the keywords or "Paper" and "kite".  Since the image had neither lady or paint, nor paper nor kite istock removed them.  I have also had keywords removed for other things such as an emerald cut diamond had the word emerald removed because it was not an emerald but a diamond.  I had an image of a child waiting at a bus stop.  The word bus and stop were removed. 

You could have keyworded the child waiting at a bus stop with "Bus Stop" it's part of the CV.

You should put the phrase "paper kite" and "painted lady" in your keywods. Even if no accepted in the CV, the photos soul come up when some knowing customer puts the phrase in quotes.
Ypu must realise that 99.9% of the clients looking for "paper" and "kite" are not looking for butterflies.

Originally, I thought the Dreamstime keywording philosophy ... separating phrases into single words ... was ridiculous but now think their approach makes a lot of sense.  I've never used the iStock CV approach but, from the above, it doesn't seem the "best" approach to keywording. 
I found something else that I like about Dreamstime.   

So out of curiosity, I hopped over to Dreamstime, searched on Painted Lady. None of the possible options included butterfly, and none of the first page of images featured butterflies. However, if you type Painted Lady Butterfly, this throws up only butterflies, though several of them probably aren't what most people typing in painted lady butterfly would want; but not necessarily wrong keywording.
At iStock, the only option you get for Painted Lady is the butterfly, but when you search on that, about half of the first page consists of some buildings in San Francisco which are known as the Painted Ladies, but which the contributers have no other option for keywording. The other half is butterflies, though inevitably, a few are wrongly identified.
I've SMd Ducksandwich to add the SF buildings as a DA option.

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".