The blog post “Guess the Keywords” has now been updated and the results of the polls are available. http://www.microstockposts.com/guess-the-keywords/

Related posts:

1. Guess the Keywords

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I’ll leave the poll open for a week and then show the results. Those of you who are following this blog via a reader, email subscription or facebook will receive notifications when this blog post is updated. (Update: The results are now visible and I’ve added some comments to the blog)

The image above has had 4 downloads to date on Shutterstock, each time being found with the word “door”. I wonder if the buyers cropped out my cat after they bought the image. I haven’t mentioned anything about this to her by the way, I don’t want to break the poor girl’s heart.

The image above has been downloaded twice so far, both times with the word “seascape”. There are 234,323 results on Shutterstock if you search with the word sunset, 433,940 results if you type in beach and 74,268 results if you type in seascape, still a lot but my image appears on the first page of search results with this word and I have no idea on what page it’s on if you type “sunset” or “beach”, but it’s not on the first few pages.

The image above has been downloaded 4 times (plus 3 more times since I posted these polls last week and with the same keyword), each time using the keyword “Singapore”. Unless we are shooting closeups of grass for example, location is very important even for photos which the location may not seem so relevant. The most common examples which I see are photos of beaches. People often just enter the words beach, tropical, sunset etc. but we have no idea where it is, either from the description or the keywords. I usually put the names of the beaches and the area they are in and I always see downloads coming from these keywords. I’ve checked also for similar images to the one above, with the term “Hindu statue” (sort: by new) and there are plenty of ‘Hindu statue’ images without the location given.

The image above has been downloaded 14 times, 7 times with the use of the keyword “coffee”. Although it is not a photo of coffee, this village’s main crop is coffee and the word can be used in conjunction with other words, such as “coffee village”, or “coffee bali”, “coffee area” etc.

The image above has been downloaded just eight times, each time using the keyword “Jogja”. Jogjakarta is an unusual city as it is commonly referred to in 4 different ways, Jogjakarta, Jogja, Yogyakarta and Yogya. So if we know this, we should put them all in to our keywords. There are 548 search results for Jogjakarta, my image is there somewhere, but I can’t see it. There are 108 results for Jogja and my image is on the first page, so my downloads for this image are largely a direct consequence of other photographers not adding this keyword, as my image is not getting as much competition with this keyword search.

I think hard about my keywords. Of course I don’t always get it right and I’m sure I’m missing out on downloads by various keywords being absent from my photos. I’m not suggesting going completely overboard, the keywords you choose must be relevant to the images, but quite often there are more relevant keywords than people think. I often hear it suggested that keywords should be limited to a certain amount, I don’t believe there is a correct figure, my cat images often have around 20 keywords, where as my Bali images have closer to 50, just stop when you have truly exhausted the possibilities. If you struggle to get photos online like I do, then it is even more important to concentrate on keywords, to maximise the sales potential from each image online. On Shutterstock I have 163 images, but they have been downloaded 1357 times and I have a ‘sell through rate’ of 76.36%, which is good for travel photos.

If only I had 1000 images online. I think I better work harder.

Related posts:

1. The Importance of Keywording in Earnest
2. Istock’s loss is Shutterstock’s gain

Some interesting blogs recently. Motivational but also a reality check. Starting with a must read blog by Bob Davies, creator of the microstock toolbar picNiche and file distribution service picWorkflow. The last blog on the list is not microstock, but still highly relevant to any photographer. Enjoy!

http://blog.picniche.com/featured/the-big-guide-to-improve-microstock-workflow/

Excerpt: If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong. You need to put passion into every image, it will shine through to buyers when they browse that layout of 40-80 competing image thumbnails in any search results page.

http://nicolesyblog.com/2010/11/24/the-reality-of-being-a-microstock-photographer/

Excerpt: Another thing is that I (and other successful stock photographers) put a lot of time, thought and money into my images. I started to see my success grow when I started treating this like a business.

http://blog.dreamstime.com/2010/10/23/microstock-adulthood-_art33666

Excerpt: Three-four years ago you only had to upload something decent and the cash slapped you on the face the next day… pretty much. Today… Today is not yesterday.

http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/2010/11/02/mistakes-2/

Excerpt: Get it right in the camera, don’t say I’ll fix that later. Photoshop is not an emergency room for grievously wounded pictures.

Related posts:

1. Microstock Group quotes of 2010
2. iStockphoto’s Opt in or Close Account Ultimatum

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© Photographer: Komar | Agency: Dreamstime.com

One of the most useful resources offered by a microstock agency is Dreamstime’s “Buyer searched after” keyword information. It’s great to have good, marketable images, it’s even better if they are found. If your images are found through a keyword search on Dreamstime, the keywords used to find your images are shown in the earnings section. I often read comments from contributors who are bemused by why their images aren’t selling. The first thing I do is go to their portfolio, where details of their keywords are displayed. More often or not they have far too few keywords or vital keywords are missing. People often like to put a figure to things, some will say 20 to 30 keywords is the right amount, others will say 10 to 15. I just keep going until I can’t think of any more words to associate with an image. I must admit I probably go over the top and for sites like Shutterstock, I often spend extra time re-editing keywords, as they only allow 50 and I often have more. However, when I see downloads for images coming from well thought out keywords, it does give me a sense of accomplishment, not to mention a few more pennies in the bank.

For the image at the top of this post there are so many keywords which can be used and it’s worth spending a little time to think about the possibilities. The obvious ones are are “help”, “cigarettes” and “smoking”. I also have keywords such as “stop”, “stress”, “vices”, “cravings” and “antisocial”. The image has so far been downloaded on Dreamstime using the keywords “giving up smoking” and “anti smoking”. Unlike 123rf and Shutterstock, you can not group keywords together on Dreamstime, so the words “giving”, “up” and “anti” may seem inappropriate seen on their own, however these words are generally not used without a secondary keyword.

© Photographer: Komar | Agency: Dreamstime.com

The image above is my best selling microstock image, it has been downloaded on Dreamstime using the words “Asian”, “Cambodia smile”, “poor smile”, “Cambodia kids”, “Cambodia child” (I use both singular and plural when keywording), “angkor” and also “angkor wat”, although it’s not a photo of Angkor Wat itself. I often see photos online without the location or famous local landmarks listed in the keywords, but it’s well worth putting them in. Although, often too photos of specific locations are downloaded from generic keywords. The image below is an aerial view of Manchester and was downloaded recently using only the words “aerial view”.

© Photographer: Komar | Agency: Dreamstime.com

The general consensus is that if you have one child in a photo you should only use the keyword child and if there are more than one, use the keyword “children”. In terms of accuracy this is correct, but you can’t account for the way a buyer will search for images, I often get downloads from both the singular and the plural keywords for an image.

My model shots are rarely downloaded and I’m the first to admit that I’m hopeless at photographing models. So I’m always surprised when I have one downloaded. This image was downloaded last month for the first time and found with the keywords “sexy Asian bikini girls”. The plural “girls” was used even though the buyer chose an image with only one girl or more accurately speaking only one “woman” in the image.

© Photographer: Komar | Agency: Dreamstime.com

It’s wise to sometimes go over your keywords again for images which are online and see how you can improve them. I find that some of my earlier images have too many irrelevant keywords, so I delete them if the agency allows re-editing of keywords. For 123rf you can not change your keywords once an image is online. You can send them a request to change keywords, but sometimes they fail to get around to it. The agency Canstockphoto provides a useful keyword tool free for their contributors. Just type in what the subject is about and the tool offers keyword suggestions, which can be imported straight into the keyword field. As far as I am aware Canstockphoto is the only agency which provides this.

For Dreamstime, the title and description also plays a role in the on-site search. And the title is what is used by search engines such as Google, so try to put only relevant keywords in the title, with the most important words first.

Keywording is a thankless, time consuming but necessary chore, which image makers are burdened with. These days it’s harder to get images accepted by the major agencies than in the early days of microstock, and an acceptance of an image is recognition of it’s potential. However, if you rush the keywording, you might not be giving your images the potential that they deserve.

Related posts:

1. Guess the Keywords

Sounds serious and it is, because BigStock will reject images that contain problem keywords or subjects, and just when you thought it couldn’t get any harder to get your photos online.

The use of the following keywords will trigger off sirens at BigStock’s Head Quarters and a cage will be dropped over the reviewer who is examining your image. The reviewer will not be released until the suspect keyword or image in question is fully screened, using the latest NASA technology. Once verified the reviewer is released and allowed a 15 minute break, where he/she will be served tea and biscuits and have an opportunity to talk to the in-house counsellor.

1. Apple – Apparently a computer company decided to name itself after a popular fruit, that’s a silly idea if you ask me, it will never take off! I’m not exactly sure what would happen if you keyword a photo of an apple with the keyword ‘apple’, hopefully good sense would prevail and the reviewer won’t be detained.
2. Ayer’s Rock – “Religious – not allowed”. Therefore, images of the Earth are not allowed as it is also a rock.
3. Car freshener -  Little Trees air freshener was invented in 1952 by a man called Julius Samann who “spent five cold years…in the Canadian wilderness”, chasing bears and extracting pine needle oils. “He came up with the shape, the name and the fragrance….It should come as no surprise, then, that we are so vigilant in protecting our trademarks.” They go on to say, “So whether you’re calling your new car-seat cushion-fluffing business “Car-Freshner”, or you’re using our Tree in your pet store ads, don’t be surprised if you get a letter (or more) from our legal team.” You can just feel the love, can’t you! I’m kidding about the bears by the way and stay away from car fresheners.
4. Eiffel Tower – “Daytime shots are OK. Night shots not allowed as a standalone commercial use shot (lights are protected).” I’ve never understood the French!
5. Granny – Well this is getting silly now, you mean to say shots of your Granny will be rejected because they infringe copyright laws? Oh hang on, I read it wrong, it says Grammy.
6. An expletive – Which I often repeat in quick succession, with increased volume on each repetition, when I receive notifications of image rejections, is “Not allowed as a keyword.” It’s there in the list, in between Frank Lloyd Wright and Garmin. Just in case you haven’t got it yet, it rhymes with pluck!

These are a few of the examples from the list that BigStock has kindly provided. These subjects can be accepted if submitted as editorial images, so long as they are considered to be newsworthy. I’m sure the list will continue to grow until one day there will not be enough memory on all those apples to store the information, and you won’t even be able to send photos of your dog sporting his new perm, because the breed is now the emblem for a new software company. Hehe ‘apple’, there’s hope for me yet.

Related posts:

1. Is it time to give Crestock another try?
2. Microstock agencies are like girlfriends

I read a very interesting blog on Dreamstime called Oops! Keywording Mistakes to Avoid, written by Ellen Boughn, who has many informative blogs on the site on how to become a Keyword Master successful Microstock photographer. In further follow up comments about the blog http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_11480, Ellen says “an image with one child should not be keyworded ‘children’ as there is only one child in the image. When there are more than one child, the keyword ‘children’ is appropriate as is ‘child’ as each individual in the image of two children is a child.” Aha, so now that I understand that, can you explain this to me? Billy Button bought a buttered biscuit, did Billy Button buy a buttered biscuit? If Billy Button bought a buttered biscuit, Where’s the buttered biscuit Billy Button bought?

An astute Dreamstime activist points out, “If I have a collection of images, all of one man wearing a suit, it would be perfectly correct to describe my collection as “images of men wearing suits” regardless of the fact that each shot may include only one man. I think it’s wrong to frustrate buyers on a purely literal interpretation of the image contents. The plural in this case is actually describing that the searcher is looking for more than one image, not the exact content of each image. I think you have to take this into account when keywording.”

Ellen fights back valiantly, “The searcher expects that no matter whether the keyword is the singular or plural that the search will return a multiple of images. The keywords relate to the contents of the image not a group of images.” Well put Ellen. So now that you’ve explained everything, we can put into practice our new keyword mastering skill.

But wait, it’s that guy again, he just won’t give up! “Maybe there should be some instruction provided to buyers in that case, because I’ve watched several different designers in different agencies use plural search terms even when searching for single items/subjects. It’s just a fact of how some people write and use language.”

I’m sure I can see the smile on Ellen’s profile pic. starting to fade. With one final gasp she replies, “I think it could be one of those…what came first: the chicken or the egg? Designers may use the plural to find images of a single because so many images of single items or persons alone in an image continue to be keyworded with the plural!” Definition of chicken and egg situation.

Anyway, what do you think and what do you do? Please take part in the poll so we can get a picture. The poll should really be for people who submit photos to agencies. Just to add, Bigstockphoto does not differentiate between singulars or plurals and submitting either version will show the same results in search. Plus, when I was looking for a photo for the post “What? Keywording? I thought I was a photographer!“. I wanted a picture of a man stressed and subconsciously I typed in “men stressed”.

Here’s a word of warning for all you keyword spammer masters out there, from a media buyer and the owner of a design firm. “As a media buyer and the owner of a design firm, I would hope that Ellen’s comments would be taken to heart by the photographers because I am tired of the keyword spammers and the nonsensical keywords for a photo. It only makes me more frustrated and consumes more of my time in trying to find the right images for a design. Sure there is a way I can make my thoughts known about the keywords to a photo, but that just adds to my frustration and I don’t have time for it. In recent years I have adopted a philosophy that I will boycott photographers who keyword spam or use nonsensical keywords. I can’t be the only media buyer/designer who is adopting this philosophy. The microstock model has been around for years now, and it is time for the photographs (think he means photographers) and Dreamstime to start cleaning up their acts. I believe Dreamstime if they truly want to be a good stock library they need to start demanding that keywording be done with in the rules or else your photos won’t be accepted and if you spam too much your gone. Just my two cents.”

You tell it to ‘em Mr. but better still tell the Microstock agencies to do the keywording themselves, so photographers can take more photos, media buyers and owners of design firms can find photos they search for and agencies are better able to justify why they give such small commissions. Just my two pence.

Related posts:

1. The Importance of Keywording in Earnest

Photographer becoming a Keyword Master.

So you’ve done your shoot and if like me, you’ve toiled with Photoshop. Right, lets send those amazing pics to the world. Wait, you can’t. You have to keyword your images, using words that you think a potential buyer will use in their search. What if I spent my youth bunking off school and my spelling is terribul? What if I’m Japanese or Russian and my knowledge of English isn’t as good as an American, hang on I’m English, I should be saying an Englishman. Well my amazing pics would be missed and the fat cats would stay fat and my cat would not be fed.

But hold your horses, Dreamstime will come to your rescue. They will do the keywording for you, but you will have to pay them, because they have many cats to feed. Not sure why i’m rambling on about cats so much, I’m more of a dog man myself. Dreamstime says in their paid service “The tedious task of completing the info. for the image will be taken over by our KeyMasters team”. The KeyMasters team! They sound like a fun bunch to hang out with. Shouldn’t the Microstock sites be doing the keywording anyway? Every time one of my pics gets downloaded on their sites, they get 50%, often even more, already sounds like a good deal to me. Anyway, this is already a well established industry and it’s too late to rock the boat about this issue. It is however a real time consuming, monotonous chore.

Oh! by the way, about the bad spelling thing, Dreamstime has a relatively useful spell checker tool, however it does not accept a lot of place names or names of things that aren’t famous like the “Taj Mahal”. If you put them in, they will stop you from editing your keywords in the future. Although I just tried “Jakarta” and it seems to accept that. Aha, it doesn’t accept “Kuala Lumpur” and “Phnom Penh”. You can however, add the place names and the not so famous things, after the photos get accepted, but it’s an additional annoyance about the whole process. 123rf doesn’t allow for any keyword changes once a photo has been accepted, which is annoying to say the least. However, I did write to support once to ask them to change a mistake, I didn’t put a space between two keywords, so it read as one keyword. To my surprise they changed it. Not sure how pleased they’d be if I wrote on a more frequent basis though.

Istockphoto asks you questions for every keyword you enter, I find it so difficult to keep awake during the process. Not only do they want you to do the keywording yourself, but they want you to jump through hoops with a glass of water balanced on your head. “But it’s for you own benefit” they might cry, yes probably and for the benefit of the the buyers and the benefit of Istockphoto, but only the photographers have to do the circus act. Where are those KeyMaster experts when you need one?

Here’s what we have to go through.

“Asian” Did you mean Asian Music, Asian Ethnicity, East Asian Culture or Asia? Would you like to be more specific?

Central Asia

East Asia

Southeast Asia

Indian Subcontinent

Middle East

Transcaucasia

“Are you sure you want to continue with this? This is a very long process.”

“female” Did you mean Female (Human Gender) or Female (Animal)? Would you like to be more specific?

Bitch

Cow

Ewe

Doe

Lioness

Mare

Sow

Nanny Goat

“We really don’t need your images, give up now and return to your life!”

“homes” Did you mean Home Interior (Built Structure), Residential Structure (Built Structure) or House (Residential Structure)?

Would you like to be more specific?

Moroccan Riad

Cottage

Semi-Detached House

Row House

Detached House

Bungalow

Townhouse

Trulli House

Snout House

“Look, we’ve already got Yuri and his team, don’t even think about continuing.”

“smile” Did you mean Smiley Face (Anthropomorphic Face) or Smiling (Facial Expression)?

Would you like to be more specific?

Smirking

Toothy Smile

Cheesy Grin

“I don’t know what I mean anymore. I’ve been staring at this screen so long, I can’t remember what a smile looks like.”

Anyway, finally I’ve done my keywords and all their meanings and made sure I’ve got less than 50 as requested. I’ve filled the category section, written a description and titled the photograph, oh and I’ve added the model release form which will be uploaded when I send the pic. Ok, I’m there, I can hardly see, but I’m there and I’m going to send this photo whether they like it or not. Ok send. Mmmm why has it not sent yet? Oh yeah that’s right, it’s uploading the model release form. Ok a new page is appearing on screen, this will be the sent page.

“HUH!! WHAT’S THIS”.

Errors were encountered:

* You cannot enter more than 50 unique keywords (single words or phrases). Please ensure that your submission follows the guidelines provided by iStockphoto.

I did, I did! It even said that I had entered 49 tags on the description page. And they’ve wiped out all the information that I spent eons filling in. Aahh! this is too much!

Does anybody want to buy a camera?

Related posts:

1. The Importance of Keywording in Earnest
2. Guess the Keywords