Welcome to my entertaining & hopefully useful July 2024 Brutally Honest Report, where as usual I’ll be discussing my monthly earnings as well as keywording tips from Clemency Wright’s “Make Search Better at Alamy” seminar.

I’m also introducing a new segment on these earnings reports where I’ll be naming and shaming contributors who make outrageous claims about their microstock earnings in public. I’ll start calling the segment “Stock Shockers: Tall Tales of Tiny Profits”. This month I’ll be featuring on such TikToker who claims to earn thousands every month with iPhone snapshots.

Before getting started, below is a reel from a recent visit to Troia, Portugal where I captured from drone footage using my new Air 3 which I’ve fallen in love with.

And a panorama also captured with the Air3.

Industry News – Alamy Keywording Seminar

Last month I discussed Clemency Wright’s “Make Search Better at Alamy” Webinar – below is the link to the full talk:

Some key takeaways as published on the Alamy Forum’s Q&A page:

Q. Are captions searched in the same way as keywords?

A. Yes text in captions are searchable, though it’s worth repeating relevant words in the keywords as this will add to weighting of importance of that word.

Q. Is there an optimum or maximum/minimum number of keywords that works best? What is optimum keyword quantity for where my images appear in the search results? The number of keywords doesn’t matter but images will not fully optimise with less than 50?

A. No, there is no optimum number as you should only add keywords that are relevant to your image. If you add 15 relevant words and you’re struggling to find reason to add more, then it’s possible that there is nothing more to add that would be useful. You can add a maximum of 50 words, but this shouldn’t be seen as a target to reach – it’s all about thinking: ‘would the customer expect to see this image if they searched on this word‘. Where images appear in results is also based on a complex algorithm that includes other factors including customer data, but the best place to start is to use accurate and relevant keywords only. The discoverability bar where you can ‘optimise’ discoverability was to encourage contributors to add to all metadata sections, your images will still be found even if you have only 20 keywords.

Q. Is it better to have 10 strong/relevant Super Tags with fewer ordinary tags. Or have the 10 Super tags and dozens of “other” tags. How are supertags different from ordinary tags? Does it matter what order to add the keywords? 

A. It is best to add 10 supertags for the most prominent features in the image as the supertags will give the image more weighting in search if a customer searches using one of the supertags. Then you should tag only on what is accurate and relevant – always ask yourself, ‘if a customer searched on this word, would they expect this image to be in the results?‘ No, it doesn’t matter what order you add the keywords, but supertag the ones that are most relevant to the image.

Q. How important is the word “Concept/ conceptual” in super tags?

A. If you believe the image is primarily a ‘concept image’, then add it to the super tag and the search will give this more weighting if someone searches for ‘concept’.

Q. How do foreign buyers search on Alamy – in their own language? Should I caption and keyword in different languages?

A. You should always caption and keyword in English only. Customers who visit the .com site will have to search in English to get the results they need, including any translations of any place names (though you could add ‘Firenze’ as well as ‘Florence’ for example). For the German site, any text will get translated into German for customers to search on in German.

Q. How important are plurals – s’s !  In keywords.  Eg Car, cars….

A. If there is more than one car in the picture, then definitely add both ‘car’ and ‘cars’. If there is only one car in the picture then you might assume that the customer is looking for an image of one car only if they search for ‘car’. If there are two cars you could also add ‘two’ etc.

Q. Should I add both British English and American English spellings e.g. colour and color?

A. Yes – customers will be in both US and UK so good practice to add the alternate version of each word if you want to reach customers in both locations.

Q. When entering the country usa, is it best to spell out United States, United States of America, US, USA, America, etc… how is it most commonly searched? Should I add ‘Europe’ if images have been taken in France, Germany etc.?

A. Yes – use all common forms of spelling. Different customers will search in different ways, so it’s worth adding all variants, with ‘United States’ and ‘United States of America’ as a phrase. Yes it’s worth adding the continent name too!

Q. Should I use accents on words? Do buyers tend to use the captions provided by the photographer or write their own?

A. Yes – especially in the caption for veracity. Results will appear in search regardless if customer uses accent in their search or not. E.g. searching for ‘Paul Cézanne’ or ‘Paul Cezanne’ yields same number of results, as any accents will be stripped to make a simple text search, but it’s good practice to help inform the customer of correct spellings in the caption. In essence customers will be replying on the accuracy of the data you provide, so they may use your caption directly, or rewrite it according to their needs, but in choosing whether to buy, they will want to know what they are licensing is what it says it is, and not something else!

Q. What is the impact of Capital letters in keywords, Verses all lower case (as I believe is recommended)? 

There’s no difference in search weighting using whether you use capitals or not. Same number of results show whether customer searches using capitals or not.

Q: Should I use full stops, punctuation – st. marks cathedral -Vs- st marks cathedral?

A. Again it’s good practice that in the caption you use the correct grammar and punctuation (“Saint Mark’s Cathedral”), as this is the informative part of the image that helps the customer understand the context. But when customer searches, the punctuation will be stripped so you get the same number of results when searching for either “st. marks cathedral” or “st marks cathedral”

Q. Is it relevant to add some specificity to the keywords, for example “cat”, “domestic cat”, black domestic cat” and so on?

A. Yes definitely – some customers may want specifically a ‘black cat’ because it’s for Halloween, others may search more generally for ‘cat’ not sure what they are looking for until they see it, and then might refine their search to ‘black cat’.

Q. As Alamy already ask for location and time of shooting already when uploading a photo, do we need to duplicate again in the keywords? If you put location in the location field, do you still need it in the keywords? 

A. Yes, as customers will search in different ways – some using the filter for date taken, others using keywords. So especially on archive images if you have a photo taken in 1964 (and that’s in the date taken field), it’s worth adding ‘1964’ and ‘1960s’ to the keywords.

Q. Do I need to use vertical or horizontal orientation in keywords? Do customers search for color vs black and white? What is the best keyword/s for black and white photography? Relevance of special terms such as copyspace, copy space, side view etc.?

A. You should not need to add ‘vertical/horizontal’ as there is a filter where customers can search for landscape, portrait or panoramic images based on the aspect of the image file. There is also a filter to search for b&w images only, but if it is a ‘black and white’ photo it’d be worth keywording for that, but not ‘colour’ as it’s the norm now that most images will be in colour. Yes it’s worth adding keywords that describe the image like ‘copyspace’ as customers may be looking specifically for images with copyspace.

Q. Is it worth time and effort to re-keyword images on Alamy for over ten years? Will re-keywording give an image the advantages of being a new submission?

A. You may want to look if there is anything missing in your keywords or metadata that may be relevant now, that wasn’t then. But re-keywording with new words will only meant that those images will appear for the customer searching for it, and this could also be combined with the date taken filter. 

Q. I have some pictures from Leicester Square in London.  When a customer asked for something from Leicester and the photos from Leicester Square came up.  How can I avoid this? How does Boolean search work? Do customers use combinations of keywords or are they just processed individually?

A. Customers are informed of how to search with lots of guidance, so if they find irrelevant images coming up, they’ll know to refine the results on offer, e.g. they can either search either: ‘Leicester Leicestershire’ or search: “Leicester NOT london’. So keyword with the town, county, area (east midlands) etc. as they can refine that way, or by using ‘not’ in their search. More on how a customer might search and how it can work for them here: https://www.alamy.com/blog/how-to-think-like-a-picture-researcher-and-find-the-content-youre-looking-for-on-alamy

Q. Is there a way of cutting down on the hugely time consuming work that is filling in metadata. Is there any AI-generated software out there that you’ve tested that you may recommend to save time (at least as a starting point) ? 

A. We’ve seen some AI software to help with keywording however I think it’s still too early for this to be useful as it does tend to either add irrelevant keywords, make assumptions that aren’t true, or write captions that are really over the top! We are working on a new tool for managing your images and metadata, which will hopefully make it more efficient, but this is still in very early stages of development.”

AI Keywording Services – Post at Xpiks

As we’re on the topic of keywording services, check out Xpik’s latest article:

An unscientific test of AI keywording services for microstock contributors

New Segment – “Stock Shockers: Tall Tales of Tiny Profits”, featuring Jade the TikToker

One day I was casually flicking through TikTok when I came across an account where a 21-year old North-American woman by the name of Jade, is actively making bold claims about earning $20,000 a month by licensing iPhone images to microstock agencies. I was curious so I dug deeper.

Here’s the link to her TikTok account and naturally she’s selling a pricey ebook.

In one of her TikToks she mentioned that one snapshot (with a crooked horizon) she captured of a cypress tree overlooking the ocean in Monterey, California earned her $26,000 in cumulative sales, which incidentally is also prohibited for non-personal usage.

Definitely a popular spot with many much more worthy images and I looked for her exact image on Shutterstock with no success as well as Adobe Stock. So she must have earned all that from another agency.

Giving Jade a chance to provide credible evidence

Perhaps I’m being too harsh and there’s more than meets the eye. Let’s give her some benefit as maybe she’s found the holy grail of microstock while I struggle to even cover half of my travel costs with stock sales.

After too many red flags, I contacted her directly to give her a chance to justify such outrageous claims. It’s been a few days and of course no reply – no surprise there.

One of the reasons why I started the “Brutally Honest Blog” was to combat these people making outrageous claims, including putting this industry in the “get quick rich” type of scheme while we all see diminishing returns. Stay tuned for next month’s “featured artist”.

Enough about this alleged scammer, now let’s move onto my very realistic detailed earnings report.

AUGUST 6 UPDATE:

Thanks to Jerome Cid, a keen-eyed follower of the blog, he has spotted some inconsistencies in Jade’s stories:

“On her first video: https://www.instagram.com/p/C7KrKzCvaBg/ , she shares this picture, which happens to have been taken by another photographer in 2020 apparently, with a much much much better camera than an iPhone (a 6D and a 35mm f2): https://www.pexels.com/photo/plants-on-sandy-shore-near-ocean-under-cloudy-sky-5063831/

So, I’m now trying to look further. Based on her profile pictures, her real name is Jade Bullock, her instagram is sunshinenhade (strangely, however, there’s no link between this instagram and her “business” instagram). Based on her Linkedin, she’s studying and working part-time in real estate (so, not exactly in stock photography…)”

Aug 15 Update:

Check out the lively discussion on the above scammer on the Reddit page.

Let’s move onto my monthly earnings breakdown.

Detailed Monthly Earnings Breakdown

Image Earnings (US$)

Agency	Number of Images in port (new images July)	Net Revenue July	Avg Return Per Download
Alamy	16,246 (75)	85	5.31
Arcangel (RM-exclusive)	4,506 (130)	0	0
Adobe Stock	4,680 (24)	80	0.77
DepositPhotos	8,419 (58)	14	0.35
Dreamstime	9,309 (59)	10	0.44
Etsy	8 (0)	0	0
Freekpik	1,121 (15)	10	0.06
iStock Turds (June 2024)	9,080 (54)	74	0.38
MotionArray	256 (27)	10	0.16
Robert Harding (Q2 2024 monthly average) – RM/RF exclusive	564 (5)	10	N/A
Shutterstock	12,395 (54)	115	0.47
Wirestock	3,066 (0)	17	1.72
Total		425

Clip Earnings (US$)

Agency	Number of clips in port (new clips July)	Net Revenue for July
Adobe Stock	1,181 (44)	11
Pond5	2,761 (55)	41
iStock Turds (May 2024)	889 (32)	32
Shutterstock	2,111 (60)	21
Total		105

Grand Total: $530

Thoughts on the month

Without any reported/spotted book covers and Adobe Stock upfront payment specials reality hit once again as my results dropped far below the minimum threshold of $1k that I’ve set myself.

The only bright spot this year was an encouraging uptick at Pond5, which isn’t difficult after a blank June. Otherwise very disappointing everywhere else and I’ve skipped some of the major agencies below on the report as really not much to discuss. Also no YouTube video as not enough content to discuss. August will probably be super slow as it’s traditionally the worst month, along with January. Hopefully we can break the $1k mark in September…

At least outside of stock I’ve had a good month with regular client work which has easily surpassed these joke results on here.

Alamy

An aerial image of my neighbour Cristiano Ronaldo’s under construction mansion in Cascais, Portugal was licensed to Hello Magazine and viewed by millions of people, literally.

For my efforts I earned net $8.84, which is what Ronaldo earns per second, literally.

Other highlights were two images that I captured last year at Obidos’s annual medieval fair/market earning me $14.64/each net.

Shutterstock

Not much to discuss here other than an aerial drone clip I shot late-last year in Braga, Portugal earning me just over $12.

On the flip side I’m depressed to report that one of my clips sold on Shutterstock earning me a pitiful 29 cents…

Pond5

Two sales this month and a Netflix extension.

Until next time!

That’s it for this report, hope you’ve had a great month (I didn’t) but I hope Jade can offer me some tips on how to earn $20,000 in the next few months (but I’d be happy with just $2,000)…why stop there, maybe $50,000 a month is possible from next year!

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About Alex

I’m an eccentric guy, currently based in Lisbon, Portugal on a quest to visit all corners of the world and capture stock images & footage. I’ve devoted ten years to making it as a travel photographer / videographer and freelance writer. I hope to inspire others by showing an unique insight into a fascinating business model while shaming scammers.

I’ve gone all in on submitting book cover images to Arcangel Images. Oh and was also flying a DJI Mavic 2s drone regularly (although it crashed into Botafogo Bay on NYE – here is the story), which I’ve upgraded to a Mini 3 Pro and the Air3.

I’m proud to have written a book about my adventures which includes tips on making it as a stock travel photographer – Brutally Honest Guide to Microstock Photography