Tag: Attribution

How to Find Image Sources For Proper Attribution or Research

There’s no shortage of amazing images online, but that doesn’t mean you’re always going to find the original. So many images you find on blogs and other websites originated from somewhere else. While it may not seem like a big deal, it seriously pays to know how to find the original. 

Here’s how to find an image source quickly and easily.

Why It Is Important to Find Image Sources

It’s always handy to know how to find proper image sources online. It won’t just make your life easier when it comes to finding high-quality photos; it could also help you avoid legal trouble. 

You Saw an Image and Want to Find It Again

Is there anything more annoying than seeing a cool image online, saving it to your desktop, and then forgetting where you found it in the first place? Worse still, you then have to waste hours trawling through your browser history to find it.

All of this wasted time and effort can be avoided when you know how to find image sources quickly. 

You Want to Use an Image in Your Blog Post and Attribute It Properly

Images are vital when writing blog posts. Research shows articles with photos get 94 percent more views than those without them. That’s because nothing puts readers off more than huge blocks of text. Images help break your writing up, make points clearly and improve the reading experience.

However, you can’t just use any old photo you find on the internet in your blog. You have to make sure you are legally allowed to use it and that you can attribute it properly. You’ll need to find the original image source for both of these tasks.

Once you’ve found the image source, you’ll be able to work out whether you’re allowed to use the image (I help you with this below if you’re still not sure), and you can attribute it correctly if you need to. 

While it’s very rare for small sites to get into legal trouble for using copyrighted images or not abiding by Creative Commons, it’s better to be safe than sorry. 

You Need a High-Quality Version of an Image

Low-resolution images suck. They look bad on your blog, and they look even worse when you scale them up for printed marketing materials — but pixelated images are exactly what you’ll get if you don’t find the original image source.

Why? Because reposted images are usually shrunk to reduce the file size and increase website load times. This is great for the website in question, but it’s not great for you. The original image, on the other hand, is usually much larger in size. Whether you want to use an image in a piece of marketing collateral or edit it yourself, it pays to be able to find the source. 

5 Ways to Find Image Sources

Finding an image source isn’t difficult. Here are five different ways you can use to find any image source today.

1. Use Google’s Image Search to Find Image Sources

Google Images Search is the de-facto place to find images online. You probably don’t need me to tell you that, though. What you may need me to explain, however, is how to use Google Images to find the source of an image. 

Ways to Find an Image Source - Image Search on Google

You can do that easily using Reverse Image Search. Head over to image.google.com, but instead of typing in a keyword, upload your image. Google will show a link to every page on the web with that picture, and it shouldn’t be too hard to find the original. 

You can even use Google’s Reverse Image Search on your iPhone by requesting the desktop version of the site in Safari. 

2. Use Other Reverse Image Tools to Find Image Sources

Ever found an image on Twitter or Facebook and wondered where to find the original image? While it sounds like a tall order, reverse image search tools actually make finding original sources using just the image far easier than you’d think. 

All you need to do is upload or copy and paste the image into the tool, and the search engine will find every instance of that image online. In most cases, it won’t be hard to find the original image. 

There are plenty of reverse image search tools out there, but here are a couple of my favorites.

TinEye

TinEye is a great reverse image search tool that helps locate an image source in seconds. You can search by uploading a URL if you have one or the image itself.

You can also use TinEye’s Chrome extension to right-click on any image while browsing and instantly get access to the platform’s data. 

Search By Image

Search By Image is an Android app that lets you reverse search for images on Google TinEye or Yandex. Search by uploading images from your phone or opening images from Facebook, Twitter and other apps.

3. Look Up the Image MetaData to Find Image Sources

You can find a surprising amount of information about an image in the file’s metadata. Sometimes it will even include the image’s source. 

You don’t need to be a technical whiz, either. First, download an image. For the purposes of this example, I’ll be downloading this image from the Good Housekeeping website.

Ways to Find an Image Source - Look Up the Image MetaData

On a mac, you can find the image’s metadata simply by right-clicking on the image and selecting “Get Info.” You’ll be served up a load of data that probably won’t make much sense, but you’ll clearly be able to see the image’s source.

find image source - look for meta data

On Windows, just right-click the image and select “Properties.”

4. Use the Chrome Browser to Find Image Sources

If you use Chrome, you don’t need to visit Google Images to do a reverse image search. Instead, right-click on the image when you find one you want to search and click “Search Google for Image.”

You’ll be shown the full reverse image search results as usual. 

5. Use Visual Search by Bing to Find Image Sources

Bing has its own image search functionality called Visual Search that makes reverse image searches a breeze. 

You can drag your saved image into the search bar or upload it, and Bing will show every location it can find it online. You’ll also get a pretty in-depth rundown of the image’s attributes and any text that Bing can find in the image.

How Do You Attribute Image Sources Correctly?

How you attribute images depends on the type of image and where you found it. Most sites will be very clear about what you need to do when it comes to attribution, but it can help to know the following terminology. 

Creative Commons Images

This nonprofit organization allows the use and sharing of images and other creative materials through a series of licenses. Some won’t require attribution at all, some will let you edit images, and some will be incredibly strict. 

Attribution is a legal requirement of Creative Commons images unless the image has been published under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. The Creative Commons outlines clearly what it classes an “appropriate credit” using the TASL method. You’ll need to include the following details:

  • title
  • author
  • source
  • license

Here’s an example from Creative Commons that shows exactly what they mean. 

find image sources - how to attribute image example

“Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” by tvol is licensed under CC BY 2.0”

If you alter a Creative Commons image, you must include the changes in the attribution. 

Public Domain Images

When work is listed in the public domain, it means the copyrights to it have expired. It is free to use, share, and edit. You don’t need to attribute the image at all or ever reference the original source.

Royalty-Free Images

Royalty-free images usually aren’t free. Rather, you have to pay a fee to use the image once, but are then free to use it again as many times as you like without paying royalties. That’s what the royalty-free part means.

Royalty-free images usually don’t require attribution, but be sure to check the licensing agreements of the site you downloaded them from. There may be other restrictions, too, like not using them for a certain purpose or in a certain niche. 

5 Sites to Find Great Images

The costs of paying for images every time you use them quickly adds up for small businesses. It simply isn’t a sustainable practice. That doesn’t mean you have to go without images, however. 

There are plenty of places online to find high-quality royalty-free images. Here are a few of my favorites. 

Unsplash

Find Image Sources - Unsplash

Unsplash is probably the best stock photo platform in the world. You can use the images for free in almost any way you like.

Pexels

Find Image Sources - Pexels

Pexels is another large, free stock photo platform like Unsplash. It has its own license that governs what you can and cannot do with photos.

Burst

Find Image Sources - Burst

Burst is Shopify’s stock photo platform. You can download photos for free without being a Shopify customer. 

Flickr

Find Image Sources - Flickr

Flickr is a fantastic image repository where you can find thousands of images to use for commercial purposes for free. 

Canva

Find Image Sources - Canva

You may have used Canva to create a new logo or poster, but did you know it also has hundreds of free stock images you can use, too? You don’t even have to edit them to download them. 

Conclusion

Finding an image source can seem like a lot of work, but it’s well worth it to find a high-quality image or protect your site from legal issues. Use any one of the five strategies I list above, and you’ll be sure to find the original source of just about any image you can find online.

Once you’ve found your image, make sure you are using it in the best possible way on your blog or are using the best editing tools if you want to make the image even better.

Where do you find your favorite images?

How to Find Image Sources For Proper Attribution or Research

There’s no shortage of amazing images online, but that doesn’t mean you’re always going to find the original. So many images you find on blogs and other websites originated from somewhere else. While it may not seem like a big deal, it seriously pays to know how to find the original.  Here’s how to find … Continue reading How to Find Image Sources For Proper Attribution or Research

How to Use Amazon Attribution For Ad Campaigns

Every Amazon seller knows how difficult it is to track and measure the impact of external advertising channels on sales. It doesn’t matter how you are driving clicks to your Amazon page; once consumers land on the website, it’s anyone’s guess what happens. 

Thankfully, that’s not the case anymore. Amazon Attribution makes it possible for certain sellers to track what happens to every user they send to the platform. In this post, I’ll explain everything you need to know about Amazon Attribution, including:

  • who can use Amazon Attribution
  • the benefits of using Amazon Attribution
  • how to set up Amazon Attribution
  • what you can track using Amazon Attribution

What Is Amazon Attribution?

What Is Amazon Attribution

Amazon Attribution is a new tool that promises to grow your Amazon business by improving experiences away from the Amazon platform.

Specifically, the tool provides analytics insight into how non-Amazon marketing channels like search, social media, display, PPC, and email marketing impact sales on Amazon. It can also track traffic sent to a different website that ultimately converts on Amazon.

Access to Amazon Attribution is available through either the platform’s self-service console or through tools that already integrate with the Amazon Advertising API.

What Does Amazon Attribution Cost?

Amazon Attribution is currently available for free, which is great news for e-commerce owners.

Who Can Use Amazon Attribution?

Amazon Attribution is currently only available to sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry and Vendors in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, Spain, France, and Italy. That may change in the future, so keep your eyes peeled if you are in other locations.

What Can You Track Using Amazon Attribution?

Amazon Attribution lets you track a range of metrics that can impact e-commerce sales, including:

  • click-throughs
  • impressions
  • detailed page views
  • purchase rate
  • add to cart
  • total sales

How Does Amazon Attribution Work?

Amazon Attribution uses parameterized URLs—essentially a tracking URL. When users click on the link and go to your store, Amazon can track precisely what they do.

It’s a bit like a combination of Facebook’s Pixel and Google Analytics. Everything users do once they click on your ad is tracked, and you can see it all in an easy-to-use dashboard.

4 Amazon Attribution Features You’ll Want to Try

Amazon Attribution isn’t just a URL tracking tool. It has several key features marketers will want to leverage.

1. Full-Funnel Amazon Analytics

Amazon Attribution significantly increases the number of sales funnel data brands have access to. You’re not just limited to conversion data. Instead, Amazon lifts the curtain on how consumers interact with your product on their platform, providing metrics like clicks, detailed page views, and how many times customers add your product to their basket.

2. On-Demand Amazon Conversion Metrics

You can see campaign performance as and when it happens. Real-time reporting means marketers can optimize their marketing campaigns faster than ever before.

3. Customer Insights

Because of the wealth of metrics Amazon Attributes provides, marketers can understand how the users they send to their store behave once they get there. Do they add the product to their basket as soon as they land on a page? Do they find a different product they prefer? Do they not buy anything at all? Amazon Attribution lets you answer all those questions and more.

4. Separate Tracking for Each Advertising Channel

Amazon Attribution lets marketers create different tags for every marketing channel. Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, blog posts, social media posts, it doesn’t matter. You can make hundreds of tags so you always get granular detail on the performance of every channel.

Why Is Amazon Attribution Such a Big Deal?

It’s not an overstatement to say Amazon Attribution could be a transformational tool for sellers and vendors. Before the tool was created, tracking off-Amazon marketing campaigns was an absolute nightmare.

There was simply no way to differentiate traffic from separate marketing channels. It was all dumped together.

Let’s say you made 500 sales, and you know that your own Amazon ads generated 100 of them. That leaves 400 sales that could have come from any marketing channel or even through an organic Amazon listing.

Do you see what a problem that is for marketers trying to find the best channel? There’s no way they can tell.

Amazon Attribution changes everything completely. Now marketers and brands will be able to see precisely where each sale comes from, and that comes with a bunch of benefits.

3 Benefits of Using Amazon Attribution

“Why use Amazon Attribution in the first place?” I hear some of you ask. There are several reasons eligible brands should start using Amazon Attribution immediately. Here’s my top three.

1. It Identifies the Most Valuable Marketing Channels

It’s not always easy to calculate the ROI of your non-Amazon marketing efforts, especially if you use multiple channels. Amazon Attribution allows sellers to see exactly which advertising efforts drive the most sales and provide the highest ROI. With a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not, store owners can focus on their most profitable channels.

2. It Optimizes Existing Campaigns

Amazon Attribution lets you understand how users interact with your store and the broader Amazon ecosystem. If traffic from one demographic converts better than others, you can optimize your existing campaigns to drive more users that do convert and fewer of those that don’t.

3. It Can Drive More Sales

Some sellers may find the concept of sending external traffic to Amazon strange, but it’s becoming increasingly important. Amazon is becoming increasingly dominant in e-commerce. At the same time, the price of sponsored ads on the platform continues to rise.

Why Drive Traffic to Amazon in the First Place?

When you understand which marketing channels are most effective and how consumers interact with your products on Amazon, you can start to make real, data-backed decisions. The kind of decisions that will help you sell more on Amazon For some that could be investing more in a specific marketing channel. For others, it could be adjusting the price of their products.

What’s more, new sellers are signing up to Amazon every day. Oberlo recently reported that a million new sellers are joining Amazon every year. With so much competition, external traffic can be a vital lifeline to help sellers survive.

Reduce Amazon Advertising Costs

External traffic helps you sidestep the competition for listings on Amazon and drive traffic directly to your storefront. There’s no need to pay for sponsored ads on Amazon when you drive traffic directly to your products.

Boost Your Seller Rank

External traffic can seriously increase the number of sales your store makes. This can have a huge impact on your overall sales. Sales velocity is one of the ranking factors Amazon uses in its A9 algorithm, so the more sales you’re making, the higher your products will rank in the future.

Better Understand Your Amazon Customers

The insights from Amazon Attribution can help you learn more about your customers than ever before. You may find that one product doesn’t convert as well as you thought it did, for instance. Or that customers prefer one product over another.

You won’t just be improving your Amazon store’s performance, either. These kinds of insights can improve your business outside of the Amazon platform, too.

How to Set Up Amazon Attribution

The first step to getting started with Amazon Attribution is filling out a signup form and logging in to your account.

How to Set Up Amazon Attribution - Amazon Attribution form

Once your account has been approved and set up, you can start matching products to the campaigns you’re tracking:

  1. Create a tag by clicking on the relevant advertiser’s name.
  1. Click “New order.”
  1. Select the “Set up an order” parameter.
  1. Choose the product you want to link to by searching for your products and clicking “Add.”
  1. Give a name and external ID to your attribution tag. I recommend being as obvious as possible with your name, so you know which link is which (Don’t forget you’ll have a separate tag for each of your products).
  1. Choose where you’re going to place this link: Facebook, AdWords, etc.
  1. The clickthrough URL is the URL of your product. Find your product on Amazon, copy the URL and paste it here.
  1. Click “Create,” and you’re done. You can now copy the Amazon Attribution tag and start using it in the wild.

Alternatives to Amazon Attribution

Amazon Attribution is an incredible tool, but unfortunately, it’s not available to everyone who sells on the platform. Luckily, there are several alternatives you can use instead.

Amazon Associates Tracking

Alternatives to Amazon Attribution - Amazon Associates Tracking

Amazon Associates tracking links were the most popular way to track external traffic to the store platform before Amazon Attribution. With Associates tracking links, you get paid a commission every time a customer converts.

Unfortunately, this tracking solution is nowhere near as in-depth as Amazon Attribution. You’ll only be able to see which items users bought, not their behavior on the site before conversion. Plus, Amazon Associates only get one tag. That means it can be hard to differentiate between traffic sources.

Pixelfy.me

Alternatives to Amazon Attribution - Pixelfy.me

Pixelfy.me is a URL shortener and tracker built specifically for Amazon sellers. You can create and track every kind of Amazon link, including Supreme, Brand, Canonical, Store Front, Add-to-Cart URLs, and many more.

Pixelfy.me can track almost everything apart from conversions. While that’s not as comprehensive as Amazon Attribution, Pixelfy.me does let you pixel users to retarget them in the future.

Amazon Super URL Tool

Alternatives to Amazon Attribution - Amazon Super URL Tool

The Amazon Super URL Tool is part of the AMZ Tracker suite of tools. It does not offer sellers more insight into the way users shop their store, but it can significantly improve the quality of inbound traffic and boost sales as a result.

The platform’s special URL shortener makes Amazon believe visitors have searched for specific keywords on Amazon instead of going directly to the listing. Amazon should rank your products higher for these keywords, as a result, which can lead to more sales.

Conclusion

Amazon Attribution is the best way to track how off-site traffic performs on the Amazon platform. If you run external marketing campaigns for your Amazon store and are serious about optimizing your Amazon store, then Amazon Attribution is a must.

Not only can you optimize your marketing campaigns, but you can also increase conversions, too.

Creating Attribution tags is easy. Just follow my advice above or contact my team if you want an Amazon marketing agency to do the work for you.

How many external marketing campaigns are you currently running to Amazon?