Photo4Me

[stockastic]

I just discovered Photo4Me and put up a few images to try to understand how it works.  Photo4me used to have a forum, but it seems to be shut down following a rework of the site.

Before I get going on this topic - is anyone else here even interested? 

[LDV81]

They seem to be good guys, but I uploaded some 100 images last year and haven't had a single sale until now. I am not motivated to upload more for now.

[HappyBunny]

There is no forum but they do have a Facebook group. I have not sold one image on there. Many sales are from the people who upload photos there. If you want to buy your own image as print, you need to order it on there website as if you are a normal customer. That way it counts as a sale for them. They then refund your mark up. Nobody knows if it's actual customers buying the images or the photographers themselves. I nearly bought my own image there but wanted a more modern print and did get my image printed somewhere else.

[HappyBunny]

Forgot to mention that I do agree with LDV81, they are good guys. 

[stockastic]

They do read athe IPTC but it still takes wa-a-a-a-y too many clicks to upload one photo.  I don't know if I could summon up the motivation to upload hundreds.   And there are no 'galleries' or any organization for your photos.

I see a familiar pattern.  To try a new site I upload a couple of my best photos. In the first day or so I get a bunch of 'likes' or positive comments, as they pass through the "recent" page.  Then, nothing.  And Photo4me has no hit tracking.

[Johnski2015]

In the last 365 days we have paid out �91,104.14 in commissions, with 2,792 sales - See more at: http://mem.photo4me.com/#sthash.WoxvJGvz.dpuf

How big is their port then ?

[wordplanet]

I uploaded a handful of photos a couple years ago and forgot about them, then had a sale recently and made about $87 so I plan to upload more. I have some friends in the UK who have a lot more work on there and sell often. The people are nice and they treat you well and pay promptly.

[stockastic]

I have a bunch there now but I got discouraged after looking into the keywording.  They don't combine words, add/remove plurals, or automatically add media names (print, canvas etc).  If you look at the recent sales you'll see most have added numerous combinations and variations of the main terms. For example you might see "london, bridge, tower, london bridge, london tower bridge, tower bridge, bridges, tower bridge print, london bridge print, london bridge canvas, london tower bridge photograph" and on and on.  And then there's the plurals, where applicable. 

I just looked a recently sold photo of a RAF Lancaster bomber.  It included "Avro Lancaster Thumper, Lancaster Avro, Lancaster, Lancaster Bomber,  Avro Lancaster Bomber, RAF Lancaster, RAF Lancaster Bomber, BBMF Lancaster, BBMF Lancaster Bomber" etc.  and presumably the buyer searched on just one of those.

Doing all this for hundreds of photos is a big, tedious job and I'm not quite able to summon up the motivation.  Like many people, my photos are already keyworded and I'm not going to mess up the IPTC for just one site, so I'd have to do it all during uploads.  And of course if I did all that, the next week the site would announce that it's no longer necessary.

It also looks like the great majority of sales are landmarks, tourist sites, classic airplanes and ships, all UK subjects and I have none of that.

On the positive side, the people running the site seem reasonable and do answer questions.