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shannonslocker · Joined: 13 Jul 2011 Posts: 12

I'm new here but I have been selling designs on zazzle and cafepress for a long time so I am used to making descriptions for products in a copywriting style. Over there I would write something like you will totally love this super cute design of a pirate sock monkey. He is perfect for kids of all ages so take him home today...
but here they seem to frown on anything more than Sock monkey vector. A vector of a pirate sockmonkey. It seems so dry to me but I want my stuff accepted so I make my descriptions really simple.

Then there are the keywords. every time I put a common compound word in I get errors though I think as many people would be looking for sockmonkey as sock monkey. I feel like I am not putting enough keywords for fear of errors like you can put camp but not camps, camper or camping. What about camp out?

Are there some shutterstock sales techniques I am missing out on? I got a couple of downloads in July but August has been so dead.

apotterdd · Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2011 11:20 pm

Keywording and descriptions are dauting at first but I'm sure in no time you'll be able to do them for stock.

I'm not really long on descriptions either but a little over 6 months ago SS started implementing descriptions into searches so be as precise and detailed as you can get.

If the keywords throw you and error saying that it's misspelled and they're not mispelled, leave them alone and then submit them again and they'll go through.

Could use the sock monkey as an example say what it is. Adorable Sock Monkey (and if it's on a white background for instance) isolated on white or with room for your text. You could put the word vector in the descriptions of vectors (I don't because I use it in my keywords) and illustration if it's a large jpg/raster image.

Back to keywords (yeah I know I'm all over the place tonight) you can put in sockmonkey, sock, monkey, sock-monkey just in case someone might accidentally search that way and your image will get found. I use hyphenations a lot if the image calls for it (course that depends on what it is). I don't think you'll need the + tag like on Zazzle but then again I've not tried that for stock either. If there's a phrase you'll put it in quotations like "Happy Holidays", and of course you could also add them separate like happy, holidays and go on about keywording.

I know I've probably not made this easy to read or probably understand but definitely if you have more questions don't hesitate to ask them.

subarashii21 · Joined: 12 May 2011 Posts: 433 Location: Czech Republic

Hi. I suggest you search for similar theme images here at Shutterstock and check what keywords the experienced contributors use for particular topic (e.g. for children illustrations, website templates, fun stuff, various holidays themes, animals etc..) - go through as many as your free time allows - that could give you some hints which keywords could match your image, especially if you are not a native English speaker.

shannonslocker · Joined: 13 Jul 2011 Posts: 12

Thanks for the input. I think I am getting the hang of this although I just tried to upload a picture of a hippie and it did not like certain words. Specifically hippy and boho.

I personally think hippie is spilled with an ie but I have definitely seen it spelled with a y from time to time. Also boho is a fairly common abbreviation for bohiemian especially in woman's magazine that talk about boho chic but I tried to resubmit with the words as-is and it just wouldn't let me. I still get the your keywords has some errors message.

So bye bye boho hippy. I hope no one out there is searching for you.

mmanderson · Joined: 10 Jul 2010 Posts: 527

baz777 · Joined: 03 Dec 2008 Posts: 3429 Location: No idea, I'm old!

Agree with Linda.

Also try and have both 'English' and 'US' spellings - 'colour' - 'color' and alternative UK/USA terms - 'dustbin' - 'trashcan'

Personally I wish someone would bring out a UK/USA dictionary ^^

I wish these Americans would speak proper English, like whot we do ^^

evaners · Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 9:53 am