MicrostockGroup

Just got my first sale on Alamy. I have 20-something images there for a bit over a year now so I wasn't very active in uploading. I know I'm still far from reaching payout but it felt good anyway

Congratulations!

I still have squat, but have only been there a month.

Congratulations Goldenangel!  Feels good when you make a large sale there

I just had my first $5.00 sale at Alamy, of which I get $2.  It was through one of their distribution partnerships.  I didn't even know you COULD get such small sales on Alamy.  Feels like micro to me...

Congrats on that second sale! 

You can opt out of "Novel Use" sales -- I did.

How long have you been on Alamy?

Congrats, GA!  It feels good to receive a decent payment for a photo, isn't it?

KB . . . Thanks for the info.  I new "Novel Use" would go at a reduced price but was suprised at the 50 cent return.  I will use your suggestion if there arn't better results. 

KONE . . .  my Alamy port. is around 70% unique.

Good for you. :-)
After a year, over 550 images and four small-value sales, I'm disappointed. Though because of the incredibly bad weather we had last year, my shooting plans were frequently truncated: I'd hoped to have about 2000 online by now.

Thanks, Oldhand. I figured you're there since several years. I only sold RF so far, but I'm looking to increase my RM part of my portfolio there.

As I read interesting comments on this thread, I can add my experience with Alamy: I have 7 sales from 2008 when I start with Alamy, 2 RM and 4 RF and 1 NovelUse, so the gross is 630$.
I have now 1000 images, half RF, with not too many problems for quality check.
I think Alamy is more RM oriented but for my experience there are more traffic in RF than RM, sales and zooms said it, so I don't know how to best assets my strategy. Ah...the sales are all without zooms.....can you imagine a buyer who buy without zooming the image? Having zooms increase your rank, my RM portfolio is good quality but with  0 or little zooms, so I can't imagine how can i sell my pictures not showing them....

The same happened to me, the image I sold there didn't get any zooms and in fact it did not appear in that list of searches.  I guess it was purchased through a 3rd party or through Alamy's inside service.

My Click through rate (CTR) is consistently higher than the Alamy average, and has been since I put a lot of keywording work in 6 months ago. Since then the sales have increased noticeably (along with zooms etc). I take your point, if a pic in unique then it will appear at the top of the page, but none of mine are particularly. The net result of an increased CTR has been my images appear on the first pages of relevant searches, an IMHO has led to increased sales.

I created a Pseudonym for all new pics and edited the keywords to a minimum using their search terms etc. Next step was to go through the older pics and re-keyword them. For me it was a useful exercise.

Regarding Zooms, a lot of searching is done in house. Alamy will contact say a newspaper every week and ask what subjects they are looking for, say for a sunday travel supplement. Alamy resarchers will then sort a lightbox of relevant pics, which will not show as having zooms. That's just the tip of the iceberg, as they are proactive in choosing the pics for clients. (keep's them happy!)

My advice for anyone selling pics there would be to keep keywords brief and relevant. Having a CTR higher than average, even slightly, gives you a greater chance of selling. Any advantage has to be good, and who know's, you might get some large price sales. For the record every one of my sales has had zoom's.

Oldhand

I just hate the Alamy keywording and search system. I can see how bad it must be with your name. I've been caught out with my name being part of a search (e.g. Queen Elizabeth, as my pseudonym is my real name, and it was a photo of a statue of Queen Victoria. Another one was on a search for someone called Elizabeth House, and I had a house in a photo. They say we have to check our keywording carefully; I check all of mine that come up in either of the two instances you relate and can't see how I can improve them. The system has to change, but I'm guessing with the number of images they have, it's not going to change.
Buyers must hate it, if they do their own searching, but I guess it keeps the researchers in a job.
It just seems so primitive not to be able to signify and separate keyword expressions as you exemplify above.