At first glance, doing keywording in-house seems logical. You already pay your staff, so why not assign them the job? But the maths rarely works out in your favour.
If an employee costs $30 an hour and keywords 100 images in that time with the help of AI, you’re paying $0.30 per image. That might not sound bad — until you compare it to outsourcing, where you might pay between $0.15 and $0.25 for faster, more consistent work from trained specialists. On every hundred images, that’s a saving of $5–$15. Multiply that by tens of thousands of files, and you start to see how quickly the difference adds up.
Internal keywording has other hidden costs. Training takes time. Staff turnover means repeating that process again and again. Productivity varies by individual, and errors multiply when people are distracted or inexperienced. You also lose efficiency because keywording isn’t their primary skill.
AI tools help but don’t eliminate the need for human supervision. Inexperienced staff often assume the computer is right and accept every suggestion — even when it’s obviously wrong. That produces messy, inconsistent keyword sets that require time-consuming corrections later.
Outsourcing to a professional keywording team like Picsell Media eliminates these problems. Our workflow combines automation for speed and human editors for accuracy, especially with our new AI Professional service. You pay for results, not time. There’s no sick leave or management overhead — just consistent, high-quality output delivered to deadline.
For most archives, outsourcing reduces both cost and risk. You get predictable pricing, guaranteed quality control and measurable improvement in discoverability. Internal teams often mean fluctuating quality and constant supervision.
In short, in-house keywording looks cheaper until you calculate the real cost of inefficiency. Professional outsourcing turns a slow, labour-intensive process into a scalable, predictable and profitable one.