Incentive for Self Curation

Thanks guys, something about how awful that clip is makes me happy. Sucks to here the eagle ride slowed down Miz, I still think those shots are some of the finest around.

Got the marionette in Cozumel earlier this year, he has a plastic head. He was in a bin with a bunch of other mixed puppets, I choose him because he was the creepiest. Had no price on him like the others, so it was a major hassle during purchase, but totally worth it. He resides in my office keeping me company while editing, keywording and wasting time posting off topic on forums.

Spend a lot of time thinking and rethinking keywords too. 2000+ files is discouraging enough to go through, but 7000+, that must have been fun.

Atomazul - do let us know when that clip sells. That would make me very happy. Also it minds me that I have a great opportunity here in Haines to shoot top-notch puppetry, although it would be more for the sake of archiving the performances than stock...but I consider the possibility that some shots could be made with puppets and sets, say, to depict urbane puppets at a cafe with a smartphone and tablet doing the stock video success thing....

I consider myself good at keywording. Maybe too good? In that I have a lot of words, and in general take the time to explore every angle by which a buyer might search for my clip. What I'm saying, (and really not trying to sound like a pompous ass) is that I wonder if too many keywords is detrimental, affecting search ranking somehow. Some clips (mine as well as other artists') sell very well with only a few bare, basic keywords. Is it that these clips are ranked upon curation by the curator, and are more likely to show up in related searches regardless of the tags used?

I'll never likely sit down and go through all my keywords - a truly daunting task - but will update them if necessary when the clip comes to my attention for whatever reason.

Sadly, I think re-keywording existing files with sales and or views much more productive than uploading new ones. Money-wise. iStock has a self curation system in place when you tag your clips. They put you thru a gauntlet of specific questions and pages. At the end of the process, you get to add your own. Recently I had the notion to generate two versions of each clip - each one slightly different in time and/or content - then keyword each one at the opposite spectrum of the keyword ballpark. I think I'll do that.

If we had access to the mass of data on these sales, we wouldn't be guessing in the dark. (I do hear of files selling with the just the file description!) The Flying Dutchman of ghost files. These must be the exception, not the rule.

I keyword for the title on hits, which I believe is very heavily weighted on results popularity. That is, I test the title to see if it comes up low or high in word combination using the http://research.picworkflow.com/. Then using one of the other http://microstockgroup.com/tools/keyword.php, I visually find the best selling shots matching my own. I have added all words of my own first.

I can't think of any reason why having vast amounts of really good keywords could hurt. Tags on commercial products and sites move beyond 50. At least fifty makes me stop somewhere.