Question About How Often To Upload Images

TL, I occasionally scroll through a bunch of my images (like 4 or 5 pages deep at least) and that seems to trigger the bots even if I'm signed in. I don't know about that other theory, but I have limited time to work in here, so I just upload everything at the same time once it's ready.

The sooner you get them up the better your chance of selling. Losing a month would surely be worse then any miniscule Google rank difference. For the FAA bots I would worry more about getting sales. That what matters more than anything.

It's certainly better to post every day to create more exposure within a group as most will only allow one submission a day. For the last 3 months I've consistently posted 1 picture a day and promoted it strongly by submitting it to every potential group. I've seen a huge increase in views as a result. Right now I'm able to get out and photograph on a daily basis and I'm currently posting 3 or 4 images per day just to keep up. I post a number of different subjects, such as a flower, a landscape and something in black and white and submit all the images to a smaller number of groups. I'd rather have those 3 or 4 images each get 4 or 5 features than one image get 12 or 15. I'd post a small number of pictures daily and try to take advantage of every group feature you can.

An image a day means new content each day.

A dozen images one day means eleven lost opportunities for an image to count as new content on any one day.

I thought bots loved new content, and so it seems to me that the newer you can make the appearance of that content, the more bot love you foster.

For groups you can add anytime. Just go back to the groups and add images.Groups don't care what day you uploaded.

OK, as Bradford stated, holding off on images might cost you sales.

Perhaps you get a slight bump in Google when an image is uploaded. This would be incredibly important IF I sold a lot of images within a day or two of uploading. I do not. For that matter, I almost never sell an image in the first week of uploading.

Now, conversely, lets say an interior designer or art consultant was looking to supply 20 images of Alabama State Parks for a client. She looks at FAA for these images and only finds a couple because I was uploading them one day at a time and she needed them and looked two days after I started uploading. Bummer.

I can say I uploaded some oil rigs from the Brooklyn Field and uploaded them with a bunch more I had shot that weekend. One of the oil rigs sold and sold large to a company that happened to be drilling there. It had all of 7 views when it sold and it was NOT to be found on Google. But they sure enough found it here. Had I uploaded one a day from that weekend that would not have sold. Money lost.

Thanks for the replies!!
JC, Bradford that's what I was thinking, if you upload one a day may be good for google, but if you don't have them up to sell people can't buy them, which is what I was thinking but just wanted to make sure, don't really want to sabotage myself anymore than I have to!!

Thanks again all for the replies.
TL Mair
tlmair.com

Personally I just upload everything I have to upload at that moment. My plan is to get a high image count anyhow. No idea if Google prefers daily uploads... Most likely only Google knows.

When I upload a bunch of new stuff it usually all gets crawled by multiple bots in the following hours.

there was a time that i upload 25 things at once each month. i can't say if it helped or not, maybe it did. but it was killing me. so i do 4 a week. it helps to get in early because google takes time to absorb things, and people may buy it in the mean time. plus you get a steady flow of people looking at your stuff.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

My philosophy is that if I have an image or images that are ready to be loaded, I load them. I uploaded seven this past Sunday, none since. This whole "Google prefers new content" seems a bit crazy to me. Go ahead and load what you have ready. If it doesn't sale immediately, it is still generating views, bot hits, etc.

I don't have hard statistical proof -- just anecdotal evidence -- but I certainly sold a LOT better in my first two years here, when I was working my way through my existing archives and uploading nearly every day.

Since then, I upload just when I have something new . . . and my FAA sales have dwindled to a trickle, despite all my off-site attempts at marketing.

As I said -- that's not hard proof -- but I often wonder what would happen if I were uploading daily, again.

I also upload an image as soon as it is ready to go.Sometimes it may be a single image or if I'm working on a batch then I'll upload a few at the same time.
I can't see the point of keeping them sat on my computer where no one can see them

Now, I am sure continually uploading probably does help sales but the key IMO is continually produce new images and still upload when you have them ready. When I am on the short side of new production I go back and do BW conversions so even then I am uploading.

I think sales were better the first couple of years - simply because the site wasn't over crowded and you weren't fighting Getty, Van Gogh and the likes.

Can't sell what you don't have.

But with marketing you would want to stagger things.

....

No doubt sales were "easier" in the early days. But more people buy art online today then they ever did. So its actually better if you have kept up with marketing your work.

I just uploaded a bunch, as least I think it was a bunch, and they seam to be getting just as many bot hits as if I had just uploaded 1 image, I thought it would be best to have them seen, but then I don't know all of the mystic parts of this POD selling yet!

As for marketing I thought I would just carry on like I always have, not that it has helped with sales in the past, one thing I did for marketing was make post card sized business cards with an image on them, placed them in a local cheese factory, don't laugh they get tons of foot traffic, I place several hundred cards there over time, then got a sale for the image on the card, I though that paid off for me until I found out they found the image doing a search for the mountain here on FAA, so far those cards have been a waist for me, but I'm still hopeful...since I already spent the money, and gave the cards away!!

TL Mair
tlmair.com

@ Tl Those cards may be on refrigerator or bulletin board for years. Your effort was not wasted

JohnHarmonArt.com

I only post on completion of a work and it seems that each work is taking more and more time to complete. Even then I look at a posted work and think that I should have done this or that to improve that image. I haven't taken out premium membership here so I am confined to 25 images so I will have to delete before I post anew.

Thanks John Harmon
That's what I was thinking, I just a bunch up to fill the holder, it was empty again, I was talking to the owner and told her I had already bought them so might as well give them away, then as I left I told my wife "you never know how long it might take people to order"
Thanks again everyone for your answers, and conversation!!

TL Mair
tlmair.com