The Journey to getting 99+ faves on Flickr

Hey guys! Today I want to share with you all two things. One, my progress on getting closer to 99+ faves on my Flickr photos. And two, a nifty little script that I found online that allows you to see who isn’t following you on Flickr, but that you are following.

Part I. My Journey

I started my Flickr account in 2010 so that I could

1. host the ads that I created for the Hair Fair bandanas and
2. be with my Second Life peers (before I was using photobucket).

Back then people used Flickr pretty much the way it was intended – to showcase their photos. I didn’t really care about views or faves. But it was nice when I got a couple of faves, along with some comments.

In November 2013 (almost 2 years ago on the nose), I commented about my photo faves on Flickr. “I don’t think my photos are good enough to be a picture pleaser – I probably would have more faves on Flickr lol. Last time I checked 5 faves was the highest that I had. “

Later that month was when I started linking my photos to Flickr as an attempt to increase my views, because I think by then people were starting to pay attention to Flickr. Plus, I didn’t have to use up space on my blog by hosting the photo. Sometimes what I do is to have one main photo on Flickr, and then upload the other photos to WordPress.

I think this photo was the first one to get 30 faves without a meme or other blogger challenge supporting it. I like it because it’s a pure fashion piece with a plain background.

And currently these are the top 3 photos on Flickr with the most faves:

1. Cigarettes before dinner

2. I come bearing gifts

3. Grocery shopping @ LIFE

I like all 3 of them. The first one is probably the most stylized decor that I have taken a picture of, but as you see, it’s just me on location at the event. I love lingerie, so I enjoyed taking that second photo. But my favorite is of me grocery shopping. I’m in jeans and heels, my favorite go-to fashion combination. And I’m shopping for food ^^ If you don’t know this about me by now, then that means you don’t read enough of my posts :P

How did I get to 80+ faves? Well, the one with the most faves (the cigarettes one) I added to 163 groups. Crazy, right? And for that particular photo, I went back and added it to more groups as I found them through other Flickr members. Some people have added them to over 200 groups. I’ll tell you – it’s tricky at times to pay attention to where to add your photos. If I don’t remember whether it’s feasible to add my photo to a group, I won’t add it. Others will, and it may not be relevant. So don’t get yourself  banned from a Flickr group because you are adding your photos to the wrong groups.

I think the most important thing in getting faves and views is finding active people on Flickr. Not so much as whether they have an account on Flickr and regularly upload pictures, but those who take the time to view and fave pictures. Of course, you in turn should do the same, and leave comments as you see fit as well.

Part II. How I found the Flickr script for non-reciprocal contacts

From my observations, I think it’s easier to get 99+ faves if you have at least 3k active people following you. with that said, sometimes when you follow someone back, that person unfollows you. So you may not know who isn’t following you. Why is knowing this important?

According to these two Flickr forum posts,the maximum number of non-reciprocal contacts that you can have is 3,000.  So once you follow around 4-5k people, this could very well have an impact on how many more people you can follow. Yet, Flickr does not give us a feasible way of knowing who is not following us.

ETA: I did see another forum post that stated that Flickr raised the limit to 100,00 non-reciprocal contacts. But considering that people were still showing concern even with that high of a limit, I decided to keep the first statement that I made.

I did some research online, and came across this Flickr post. It mentions a Greasemonkey script for this purpose, but that no longer worked. In the post, Thomas Leuthard (creator of the script) gives the updated version for everyone to use. I am happy to say when I downloaded Greasemonkey and installed the updated script, that it works (in Firefox)! On the original post, Thomas said that the script did not work in Chrome. I have not seen any confirmation that the updated script is compatible with Chrome, so let me know in comments whether it works or not. Also, read Thomas’ e-book about Flickr – there is a wealth of information that can benefit anyone.

How I installed the script

1. Downloaded the Greasemonkey addon for Firefox
2. Installed the original script
3. Edited the script with the updated version

What your page should look like – the red denotes those
who you are following, but who are not following you

I am not saying to unfollow everyone who does not follow you. I have a number of content creators as Flickr contacts who do not follow me, as well as some talented photographers. But at least now you have some control over how many non-reciprocal contacts you have. Also, you have a way to get rid of people who only follow you to get followed, and then automatically remove you.

Once I started to utilize Flickr more for my blogging, getting to 99+ faves has always been a major goal of mine. Hopefully, by this time next year I will have met my goal, and can share with you all a new one ^^