Keywording – Your KEY to good sales
Alamy require all photographers to keyword their own
images and do not edit or monitor them. When a buyer
searches the Alamy database for an image it is only those
images that match the search that will be displayed.
In order for the buyer to find what they are looking
for you, the photographer, must provide accurate relevant
keywording. Take for example this picture of a helicopter
taking off. To some it may just seem like an average
helicopter lifting off from the landing pad. You would
keyword it as such: Helicopter, whirly-bird, rotors,
aircraft, flying machine, fly, lift off, take off, depart,
city.
Now when you consider this further you would also want
to include: landing, arrive. As you can’t tell
if the helicopter is landing or taking off. Once you
have the standard descriptive terms that describe the
actual appearance of the image and what is going on in
it you will want to consider broarder “concept” terms.
These are words that could be used to describe themes
or concepts that the image may illustrate. For example
with our helicopter image you would want to add: business
travel, executive commute, wealth, power, affluence,
luxury, influence, prestige.
Use a Thesaurus and dictionary to help with your research.
There are many online sources to help with this. A very
popular site is http://www.dictionary.com
Another great product is the VISUAL THESAURUS, a tool
that shows you a visual spiderweb of words, wonderfully
useful.
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The more time you spend keywording the better your
chances of a buyer finding
your image.
As Alamy is a community of photographers, what is good for one is good for all.
Therefore it is important to make sure that you do not include irrelevant keywords.
Consider that you are a buyer, you enter a search term such as “asian mountain
biking” and then Alamy displays a page of images that have nothing to do
with your search term, you will be annoyed and after a few attempts will give
up and try another source. As the library grows it becomes more and more important
for keywords to be relevant. Alamy is working on a new system to ensure the relevancy
of all keywords and the word on the street is that there will soon be a new policy
that penalizes photographers with irrelevant keywords.
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With Alamy you will always know where you stand, they have a great website that
tracks sales in real time. Sales made through the Alamy website or by their sales
staff show up in your account the same day usually around 4pm GMT.
Click on the link, Summary of images sold. Here you will see details of your
account. Your Gross sales the commission deducted and the cleared balance. Once
your cleared balance reaches $250 a payment will be issued to you. Read Alamy’s
payment terms and conditions carefully as they charge extra commission to payment
addresses outside the EU and USA…
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