The Whims Of Social Media...

I've had two picked for explore... like you the whims of their algorithm are a mystery... I have heard adding to groups is a sure why to have an image not get picked but both of mine are in many groups...

This was the first one https://www.flickr.com/photos/89866486@N02/15128863311/

I was not even aware of explore when this got picked... so when the view count and favorite went wild I was a bit surprised...

this was my second one https://www.flickr.com/photos/89866486@N02/15188901310/

over 10k views and nearly 200 favorites... way more then my average...

when one gets picked up it is a bit exciting...

Yeah .... I've been on Flickr a few years and very active. Only in the past year has things taken of as far as Explore is concerned. The first one was pretty high up so it got a lot of views, and the one that made it to the first row started pretty low and then raised to the top just by activity on it. That one saw 40k views on one day. More important I got a ton of referrals to my FAA and a number of subscribers to my email campaign. So people must visit my profile ...

If you go to bighugelabs -dot-com click on "Scout" and put in your screen name you can check your Explore status. Here is mine for example:

http://bighugelabs.com/scout.php?username=Frank+J.+Casella+|+Photographer&sort=date&year=0

Chris - those are great photos!
Frank - it's awesome that you got referrals to FAA. I have a link to FAA from my flickr profile but maybe I should also add that link in every photo's description...

For a long time I didn't put a link with each photo post, however, the recent improvements with Flickr and their TOS I put a link to my profile for each photo post. Flickr frowns on links in posts that lead to a site with a shopping cart ... your blog is okay, but I just nip it and lead them to my profile which I use as an on-site conversion platform.

It's crazy what happens when a shot gets on Explore. I'll have to check on my home computer, but shots I consider to be somewhat mundane of mine suddenly got 30K+ hits there and less than a hundred here.