Showing posts with label alamyrank. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alamyrank. Show all posts

Alamy Measures Stats November 2008


*Sigh* The most depressing part of struggling on Alamy is actually that they make your stats so available and detailed. I am clearly not succeeding on Alamy and I don't wish to go into denial and blame the credit crunch. I have found some enthusiasm to start shooting some stock over winter at least but the following stats represent my worst month so far.

Here is my view of Alamy for the month of November:

Proportion of searches for:

1 word = 15% , average of 22.48 pages viewed
2 words = 52% , average of 10.38 pages viewed
3 words = 24% , average of 7.14 pages viewed
4 words = 8% , average of 7.75 pages viewed
5+ words = 1% , average of 7.33 pages viewed

Total number of pictures at end of month: 403
Number of sales for month: 0
Average number of my pictures viewed matching query: 2.11
Total average CTR for searches in which my images appeared: 1.35%
My CTR: 0.37% WTF!!!!!
Coloured and golden Koi carp, Hiroshima, Japan 3/4
Coloured and golden Koi carp, Hiroshima, Japan 3/4

Proportion of searches for:

5 letter words 15.86%
4 letter words 15.69%
6 letter words 14.44%
3 letter words 14.08%
9 letter words 11.59%
7 letter words 11.23%
8 letter words 8.20%
2 letter words 4.28%
10 letter words 2.14%
11 letter words 2.14%
13 letter words 0.18%
16 letter words 0.18%

Most popular words (top 5 in each position ignoring "and"):

First word: christmas chinese tinsel toilet amsterdam book ENGLAND victorian
Second word: CARDS dragon UK christmas child office
Third word: UK manger Traditional shop lake smith
Fourth word: UK district beautiful buildings mountain concrete
Fifth word: village
Any position: christmas CARDS UK chinese dragon

Most popular variations:

shell: (petrol OR fuel)
christmas: (cards OR stars OR decoration angel OR penguin OR presents)
amsterdam: (coffee shop OR bike)
book: (pile OR chapter)
old: (book OR paper)
toilet: (seat OR flush)
household: (rubbish OR recycling OR store)
victorian: (street OR christmas OR doll OR toy)

In contrast to the stats that I can gather from my own Measures data, here is what the whole of Alamy is searching for:

Most popular Alamy searches (top 5 in each position ignoring "alamy" as a search):

by number of unique customers searching: Christmas "christmas tree" dubai cat champagne
by number of sales: tallin leeds "kid profile" "dawn ireland" warnemunde
by number of zooms: courcheval malaysia hawaii christmas cuba

All of Alamy Theories


Japanese coins in a bottle
Japanese coins in a bottle

I've titled this as All of Alamy Theories since that should avoid any abuse, but also because this analysis is based on only a week of Alamy Measures data and I'm supposing that this can give enough information to suggest a trend!

People searching for everyday subjects have the least patience for searching

This theory is based on the top searches on Alamy. This week the top searches started with "woman", "child", "man", "christmas", "children", "family", "school", "young", "old", or "red". With the exception of "christmas" and "red", I would expect these words to come out top every week in terms of the number of unique customer occurrences (all have 100 or more searches in a week). The subject "woman" has a possible 1,683,703 results, which even when qualified with another word gives about 10,000 results on average. However, these top subjects get less than 400 views by each unique customer, that's approximately 4 pages viewed. It's as if the customer has an expectation to find what they want on popular subjects without digging. This theory stands for the top 173 subjects, which received less than 7 pages of views on Alamy, which this week were:

woman child man christmas children family school young old red car dog london new couple the computer business boy teenager van mexico PEOPLE white snow san money water black traffic uk female lake baby police house girl india ST green city shopping great teen office dubai modern hotel florida hospital chinese North Person beer john vietnam Texas building Virginia african la horse british spain Gold asian broken River kids french teenage father open sports south one student hand digital male human Ice women cat winter eiffel switzerland fish big manchester japan home obama empty vintage australia two russia credit beach small road rock shanghai dublin COSTA BUSINESSMAN drinking china Indian night paper video american wolf mother metal book Earth Russian english senior University glass moon coffee older mobile royal sun fiji blue back hispanic chocolate polar construction happy St. Italian sydney high window World street maldives teenagers party supermarket table doctor bermuda hurricane group james nurse students hot Electric animal shop champagne native vegetable BUS air classroom cafe football crowd TREE adult apple

Theory: To sell stock photos of popular subjects you need to have pictures on the first four pages of the results on Alamy. To achieve this takes a good Alamy Rank and if you don't have a good rank, you may not be best placed to cover these subjects

There are popular subjects where searchers will spend longer searching when the subject is more specific

This theory is based on the lower ranks of the most popular searches on Alamy. This is perhaps the best place to look for subjects as there is plenty of demand and although possibly plenty of images, the searchers appear to spend longer looking, an average of 13 pages. These subjects probably change each week so the following is only an example:

telescope Havana poland cup cabbage perspective damascus corridor laptop orca huayna Malaysian atm workman asia smiling satellite ljubljana pollenca byzantine Sarawak sixties hammock porridge multicultural designer positive chile hungary morecambe celebration valencia taoist bend mann caribbean blues wrist Sharm honeycomb calcutta botanist connection Crutches Mountain stretching dead Anatomy shadow elementary kindergarten boobs x Olives guatemala salvador photos support backgrounds forest CHURCH fir aquarium greenhouse doll seattle caravan volleyball Cayman Bangkok cider panda machu penguins surfing ball baseball active community malaysia beetle Tatra jail balanced sunrise wristwatch marble stormy tango picture fuerteventura lips Sabah volcanic breasts stone Hawaii award savings fisherman gymnastics nova puzzle feather venice

Theory: More specific but still popular subjects are perfectly accessible by lower ranked contributors on Alamy - particularly conceptual images where the searcher will spend lots of time looking in the lower pages

There are popular searches which go unanswered on Alamy

In the lower ranks of the popular searches on Alamy are a number of subjects which return no results. These subjects will vary each week but consistently go unanswered. There is a good deal of misspelling and poor english in this area but that is not to say that the searches are invalid. There is clearly an opportunity to fulfill these requests with no competition at all. There were 119 subjects this week which fell into this category as follows:

Blowholes amazonen junio "Marrakech "pioneers" Cabo chritmas del eyl Hilditch Kenneth Kingda musso neolithic rusizi teenagerd vegatable 1963 A/B aaron Avenida Avranches AX30DWpeople Barrios Berberis 'bill blathnaid brazillian bruno buddha buddhamonton businessperson canna Caroline chewit chil Chines chritsmas colage collage Collapsing columbines compter consoda daithi dart dava debretts 'Dutch dzanga-sangha elasticated elephans ELY, emilie eucalypt frederik freston Gilboa gus hameau Heliocidaris Hgirl highly hotle hstern Hsuehshan Ibn icleand iiza Isaiah Jebisseh judge Kamalame Kazimiercz kim kiviak, Kleburg konstruktion latvian leke Lev loose louguan Meadowhall menie milage mosesberg MUNICIPAL munk na nasser neptune Noel Oparach owner Poste poundbry preda Prestes Prima process reservoir retangular rouelette roza Sakalava samuel sant Sheila stawberry stefani stopped tenn trafficcongestion tricyrtis Wesminster woddy zhinan

Theory: This one is more about keywording than shooting. When you keyword you need to think out of the box, which All of Alamy will help with, and use appropriate, unambiguous misspellings

Alamy Measures Stats October 2008


I think I am losing enthusiasm for Alamy. Whilst it provides a meaningful outlet for my photography, it is rather soulless as far as photography goes. It does not reward artistic merit but rather rewards those who can "produce" photos, something I have not scratched the surface of. November in England is not an inspiring place for the artistically shallow!

Here is my view of Alamy for the month of October:

Proportion of searches for:

1 word = 18% , average of 19.00 pages viewed
2 words = 50% , average of 20.04 pages viewed
3 words = 20% , average of 7.44 pages viewed
4 words = 9% , average of 5.44 pages viewed
5+ words = 3% , average of 8.73 pages viewed

Total number of pictures at end of month: 375
Number of sales for month: 0
Average number of my pictures viewed matching query: 2.01
Total average CTR for searches in which my images appeared: 0.95%
My CTR: 0.65%
The A-Bomb Dome at night with moon, Hiroshima, Japan 3/3
The A-Bomb Dome at night with moon, Hiroshima, Japan 3/3

Proportion of searches for:

4 letter words 19.93%
5 letter words 16.93%
7 letter words 15.52%
6 letter words 12.87%
3 letter words 11.82%
8 letter words 6.70%
9 letter words 5.47%
2 letter words 4.94%
10 letter words 3.53%
11 letter words 1.94%
15 letter words 0.35%

Most popular words (top 5 in each position ignoring "and"):

First word: snowman cape christmas haunted UK boots
Second word: house town UK garden cards shrine
Third word: UK cape town chemist money
Fourth word: town UK money turbine open sign warm group africa driveway
Fifth word: EUROS
Any position: snowman insulation ludlow ostrich Hiroshima

Most popular subjects:

japanese: (home OR Bullet train)
willow: (river England OR tree river)
UK: (road signs OR foorball ground OR motorway OR autumn hedgerow)
old: (house OR paper)
car: (wash OR wind turbine) ?!?!
affordable housing: (UK OR building)
empty restaurant: (UK OR London)
baby: (stroller OR hide OR strollers)
christmas: (angel OR cards OR stars)
home: (depot OR ventilation)
queue: (UK OR Britain)

In contrast to the stats that I can gather from my own Measures data, here is what the whole of Alamy is searching for:

Most popular Alamy searches (top 5 in each position ignoring "alamy" as a search):

by number of unique customers searching: Christmas "christmas tree" barcelona fireworks football "credit crunch" iceland
by number of sales: meditation "historical art collection HAC" "venice art" "northern ireland" "child yoga"
by number of zooms: Nice Skagway "person and red" puppy madrid

There is no good news this month. I've added 100 pictures in the last month and my CTR has more than halved. Even though Alamy's CTR is depressed this month, this is not good news. I think I need to create a new Pseudonym to house my Travel pictures as they are terrible at the moment (in fact, I ought to remove them altogether at this rate). Time for a bit of reflection on what should be on my portfolio I think, before I dissappear into the lowest ranks of Alamy.

Andy

Excessive similars? Too much competition more like


Himeji-jo (Himeji Castle), Himeji, Japan
Himeji-jo (Himeji Castle), Himeji, Japan (deleted)

I have started editing the next batch of our Japan trip and so another 50-odd images are Awaiting Processing with Alamy. In the meantime I have come to a difficult decision, I am going to remove some of my images from Alamy. This is based on some consideration of AlamyRank.

The pictures illustrating this post are of Himeji Castle, probably the best castle in Japan as it was not bombed in the war and has not burnt down in recent history, and so is a stunning and almost unique site in Japan. Unfortunately it is not a unique sight for Alamy contributors as a search for Himeji castle shows 523 images. There are pictures of it in the autumn, pictures of it in the snow, pictures of it with cherry blossom and pictures of it at sunset, or at night...and so my 30 images of the place, albeit taken on a blue sky day, need to be significantly different to the others otherwise I will get lots of views (probably more than 10 views every time someone searches) and no zooms and sales. The effect on my AlamyRank would be significant.

I already put these pictures in my lesser ranked pseudonym but this morning I took the decision to remove 14 of the 30 pictures. The pictures on this post are now residing in my Alamy recycle bin awaiting deletion. I have also done a scan of some other recent pictures in my portfolio and deleted a couple of others - for example, a picture of the Lutheran Cathedral in Helsinki on a overcast day, there's 382 pictures of it on Alamy, none of which have a grey sky like mine.

The temptation to leave similars on Alamy is very strong. Once the images have passed QC they don't cost me anything to store, however the cost to my Rank - and hence my sales in the future - could be very significant. Whether I will ever learn to edit the pictures before uploading remains to be seen!

Himeji-jo (Himeji Castle), Himeji, JapanHimeji-jo (Himeji Castle), Himeji, Japan
Himeji-jo (Himeji Castle), Himeji, Japan (deleted)

Abstract editorial? Oh dear...

Blue pyramid glass bulidings against a blue sky
Blue pyramid glass bulidings against a blue sky

Ho hum, this week has been spent at work and the weather has not been stock-friendly in the evenings. I've had another two batches of images go through QC and one or two images, though perfect technically, probably won't sell. They've been plonked in my "Creative" pseudonym as I don't expect them to sell and I don't want them to affect my main pseudonym's Rank. The main problem with them is that I don't have a property release so they can't even be used "creatively", which leaves them in the wilderness of non-editorial non-released subjects - which I am quickly becoming a specialist in :-(

At least the Olympics are exciting for us Brits...

Abstract of wooden clad multi-storey car park in Reading, UK
Abstract of wooden clad multi-storey
car park in Reading, UK
Close-up of the pages of a book 1/6
Close-up of the pages of a book 1/6
 

The image on the left, by the way, is an image that I re-shot this week on my D300, using the same settings and lens as the two examples that failed shown in my QC Tests. This one passed with no issues whatsoever, my best case yet for soft or lacking definition being linked to upscaling and not lens or technique. I'll soon forget about my QC issues, but I'm still feeling hurt from all the comments that were made...about crap glass, crap technique, crap workflow...well here is the proof.

Alamy Measures Stats July 2008


Last month was both my best and my worst. Alamy took the opportunity to re-rank their contributors and because of my lack of zooms and sales in the preceding period they have downgraded both my pseudonyms. That is quite a blow as my CTR was rising and I reached the 200 picture mark. At the same time, last month I made my first sales! I sold two pictures, the first picture twice (once for a printed folder and once for an associated web page) and the second picture for an educational book. The second one is intriguing, and I've posted it here, because I can't think of an educational use for such a specific image.

What I do know is that John Lewis this weekend announced a fall in profits so the same image got quite a few views over the weekend but alas no other sales as yet (fingers crossed that the papers used it and will report the use in due course). It is not a very exciting image (slight understatement!!! and remember, with a D100 I don't even get to crop!) but I am proud of the sale nonetheless, after all, I must have got the keywording right!

Without further ado, here is my view of Alamy for the month of July:

Proportion of searches for:

1 word = 13% , average of 17.21 pages viewed
2 words = 43% , average of 11.93 pages viewed
3 words = 29% , average of 6.09 pages viewed
4 words = 10% , average of 6.15 pages viewed
5+ words = 6% , average of 11.02 pages viewed
The John Lewis customer collections depot in Reading, Berkshire, showing delivery vans
The John Lewis customer collections depot
in Reading, Berkshire, showing delivery vans

Total number of pictures at end of month: 206
Number of sales for month: 3
Average number of my pictures viewed matching query: 2.43
Total average CTR for searches in which my images appeared: 1.43%
My CTR: 0.63%

Proportion of searches for:

5 letter words 18.72%
7 letter words 14.87%
4 letter words 14.62%
6 letter words 12.82%
3 letter words 11.79%
8 letter words 11.03%
2 letter words 5.13%
9 letter words 5.13%
10 letter words 2.56%
11 letter words 1.54%
12 letter words 1.28%
13 letter words 0.26%
17 letter words 0.26%

Most popular words (top 5 in each position):

First word: Cape, coastal, berkshire, Edinburgh, mudeford
Second word: and, town, bin, erosion, boat
Third word: uk, bin, table, south, bag
Fourth word: uk, mountain, africa, and, station