News, Views + Info
Image keywording tips and more to help you make improvements to work practices, and get a better understanding of issues surrounding the management and profitability of image businesses.
Avoiding DIY Keywording Agony
It's a tempting cost-saver, particularly when setting up a new image library, to do the keywording in-house. If you're considering going DIY, it's worth understanding the pitfalls. Consider these problems before making a decision to start, or continue further with,...
Dollar Keywording – Are You A Victim?
Many image and video libraries still pay more than US $1.00 per image for keywording at a time when companies such as Picsell Media are charging far less. How can this be? The reasons are that those paying the higher amount either don't know what's out...
Avoiding Spreadsheet Disasters
Sending keywording and other information in spreadsheets is a great way to update image metadata without going through the laborious process of re-uploading the images themselves. But be warned, there are ways that spreadsheets can also cause disasters....
The Hidden Cost of Image Research
Direct savings on license fees can lull image buyers into a false sense of thriftiness. The truth is that with subscription deals and other bulk-buying schemes, the cost of research can grow significantly and stealthily. The reasons are threefold:...
Learning Lessons From Smart Retail
Interested in boosting image sales by 20%? That's exactly the sort of thing smart retail is achieving for online sales - the same can be done for photo and video libraries. Companies in the image licensing business are perpetually looking for more effective ways to...
How to Beat Production Fatigue
Tired, listless, lacking focus? You could be suffering from production fatigue. Never heard of the term? Put simply, it's the inability to focus on important parts of the business because you're bogged down in production details. In the image business,...
The Hidden Cost Of Staff
When weighing up the price of outsourcing, it's easy to miss the hidden costs of existing staff or of ones you're thinking of hiring. The surest way to get those sums wrong is to focus on the hourly pay rate. Whilst the whole cost is included in a quote...
Make Your Hero Images Super
The hero image - the representative first image that customers see when looking through sets - is vital to promoting sales. Here's how to make hero images into superheroes: Make picking hero images a deliberate choice, don't just go with the first image,...
Helping Avoid the Production Squeeze
As the number of images being filed continues to grow, many photo agencies are facing a production squeeze - too many images, not enough time to process them. That means metadata is skimpy, perhaps wrong, there's little or no keywording, and likely there...
The Smart Way To Use AI For Images
There is a wave of enthusiasm for artificial intelligence which is engulfing the image business. All the promos sound incredible - yet the reality is somewhat different - if you don't know how to make the best use of it that is. On a recent trip to meet clients in the...
What Are You Waiting For?
We’ve all heard the saying: “feel the fear, and do it anyway”. But that’s definitely one of those that is easier said than done. Here are some common reasons why photo agency managers/owners tend to put off making necessary changes, and why they might want to look at...
Taxonomy Too Taxing?
Creating a great taxonomy for keywording is a never-ending job. Just when you think you've got your vocab perfect - along comes another word, and another, and another. You'd think that by now there would be plenty of taxonomies with every word in the English...