Image keywording by picWorkflow is now available through a programmatic interface to agencies, image-sellers, retouchers and service resellers via the picWorkflow APIKeywording Details
Keywording tasks on picWorkflow are charged per keyword and make it simple to have your images keyworded at the best price for your own business
FREE credits for distribution are awarded when keywording of your image is completed. 1 free credit is added to your balance for each destination configured on your account (upto maximum of 50% of the keywording cost).
The bidding model builds quality into the system whilst ensuring a fair price to purchase keywording, keyworders who perform well earn more than those who perform less well.
There is no time limit on keywording tasks, although most will be completed within 24 hours. You can still apply output tasks and distribution will be delayed until the keywords have been added.
If you choose to pay more per-keyword, your image thumbnails will be presented for keywording to the keyworders with the highest ranking on picWorkflow first. Choosing to pay more may make your images more attractive for keyworders to spend their time on, and your images may be keyworded more quickly.
Once a task is completed by picWorkflow keyworders you can review it and grant all keyworders who contributed to your images a rating (good or bad), this determines their score, and their eligibility to work on those keywording tasks which pay more and to work on other operator-based tasks in future. If you are not happy with any work please contact support for an admin-review.
The keyword count is the total number of keywords (not additional), ie. If you have keywords already on an image and task it for keywording, your per-keyword payment counts as a charge for auditing those keywords you already assigned (a partial refund will be made to the value of those keywords unaffected by the audit).
You can assign videos or other types for keywording, although you must ensure your JPEG preview accurately represents the media content as this is all the keyworders can see.
Keywords are currently available only in english. If the demand for supporting other languages is high enough they will be added.
Keyworders are crowd-sourced and subject to eligibility (and ongoing QA) to join and remain as keyworders. If you're interested in becoming a picWorkflow Operator, please email for info and describe what would make you a good keyworder.
Want to be a keyworder?
Stock Photo Keywording in just 3 clicks with picWorkflow
You can now purchase keywording services through picWorkflow to keyword your images before distribution.
The process is simple: you set how many keywords you want an image to have, and how much you want to pay per keyword. The price range is between 0.5 cents and 2 cents per keyword, which at 40 keywords makes between 20 cents and 80 cents per image.
Wondering how long photo keywording takes?
Purchasing keywords will also award free credits for FREE microstock distribution to your account at a rate of 1 free credit (upload of a file of 22mb or less) for each destination configured on your account (upto 50% of the actual keywording cost). For the vast majority of images this means completely free distribution for keyworded images. These free credits are automatically credited to your account when the keywording task is completed.
Quality is built into the system so if you choose to pay more than the default, your images are displayed to the best-performing keyworders first, if you choose to pay less, your images will stay in the keywording queue until a keyworder who wants to earn what you are paying chooses to pickup your task. This way, whatever the price-point you’re able to pay, the picWorkflow keywording service will work for you.
You can task many images at once, and even audit your existing keywords (you will then only be charged for keywords which are removed or changed and the remainder is refunded). You can also set your target agencies for a file whilst it’s awaiting keywording, and the uploads will be completed once keywords have been applied, making it super-quick to go from your local images, to available-for-sale faster than ever before :)
This video shows how to order keywords, and how to review them once purchased:
There are other similar services coming soon too such as pre-review and destination suggestions, keyword prioritisation and perhaps controlled-vocabulary disambiguation too. I also intend to add retouching/processing services once I find a good partner to fulfil the work.
I’m aiming to make the process of going from camera-to-marketplace as quick as possible for stock photographers.