MicrostockGroup

The full details are here on the Alamy blog

Essentially is gives the ability to upload breaking news shots and have the live very quickly.  Some of the images will be 'pushed' to agencies so they can use them quickly. 

Alamy is still one of my favorite agencies and indeed the first crowd-sourced stock model.  AND... they still pay their photographers 60%  woo yeah. 

I've applied for the scheme.  If I get accepted, I will be leaving Demotix and uploading all newsworthy to Alamy.  This is a terrific opportunity and I think they have the resources and backing to give Getty and Corbis a run for the money.  They have had some excellent talent join the agency in the last few months.

Since both agencies are rights-managed and non-exclusive (with Demotix offering an exclusive option), you're free to send your images to both Alamy and Demotix, so why not submit to both? 

I'm not submitting to Alamy's news program yet, but I sold some editorial over the last year (when I started submitting my older images to the general collection).  Three sales out of about 70 images, which I consider pretty good.

Thanks for that - yes, I guess there's no harm in uploading to both.... So long as there is some action and your Alamy sales sound good to me!

 

I'm submitting to both Demotix and the Alamy News Scheme.  Works fine for me.  No sales yet but not too bad for adding to your editorial portfolio.

I'm in a one (major) newspaper town and they refuse to buy from freelancers or stringers.  I have licensed various editorial photos through Alamy but only after they've been there for a while and only to national publications in the U.S.

I've noticed that some of my Demotix images have made their way to the Corbis main site.  I'm not big on Demotix mostly because their upload process is the worst.  Extremely slow, buggy, and not user friendly at all.  Alamy with FTP is very seamless to me.

i don't know where these two agencies are going regarding news/editorial.
never had a single sale on Demotix so far and same on Alamy with a few news pics i tried a long time ago.

let's face, the biggest news publishers probably dont even look at the photo streams coming from demotix or alamy, they're more than happy with their usual suppliers like AP/AFP/Reuters and their local freelancers.

Corbis probably takes some Demotix pics as archive.

From an editorial newsworthy perspective, Alamy gives me a much higher return than the micros.  I no longer submit editorial images to the micros for that reason.

I tried the Alamy News Upload process yesterday for some images of the Space Shuttle over Washington DC: http://www.backyardsilver.com/2012/04/space-shuttle-discovery-over-washington-dc/

The upload was great - it bypasses the normal QC (where I have some images sitting in the "long term failed" queue!), and you get to keyword them and put the normal release information into the file. That moves them to "Ready for sale." I finished that around 5pm EST yesterday. I thought they would then quickly move into the main database and be available for sale - no such luck. I checked just now and they are in the same state, and not visible in the main database against typical search terms.

Did I miss a step here? It seems strange to have rapid bypassing of QC and then sit for 24 hours waiting to be available for sale.

Steve

Phew - thank goodness. I have had a great run of successful uploads to Alamy and I thought I knew what sort of images they rejected for QC. Perhaps I will be OK!

Steve

While images are in LIVE NEWS, they won't turn up in regular searches. (They have to be out of Live News feed a while to show up in regular searches.)

For ex -  I also uploaded news photos last night, and within a few minutes, they were visible when one clicked on the "Live News" live link at upper left of Alamy's main page. (They're still there now, but probably will age out soon.)

I also created a Lightbox for that set of photos, and can send it, etc, but when hovering over (or clicking on) an image, "image is not available" appears. I'm guessing that's because an image is available for purchase only through Live News the entire time it's on the Live News Feed.

 * BTW, being a space buff, I vividly remember seeing Space Shuttle photos on Live News Feed recently - they probably were yours!

Hope this helps. - Ann

Congrats on selling the prints on smugmug!

I must not have been paying attention - I didn't know there was all this confusion around!

When I look at "My Alamy", I have two upload links, one for Upload Stock Images, one for Upload News Images. I don't recall signing up for news, although with all the pressure of the microstock business perhaps I have forgotten! I certainly didn't have to do anything differently.

When I took my Space Shuttle images, I thought there would be an opportunity if I got them for sale quickly, and so I used an account I already have with Demotix to upload them with a short caption to their site, and I tried this Upload News Images from Alamy. Upload was as normal - a web based page to select files and get them to the site. I then checked "Track Submissions" and after 15 minutes or so, I saw that a message there that they had bypassed QC and were now in Manage Images. I went to that page, and added in some main keywords in the normal Alamy style, and filled in the MR and Property release page and saved the files.

My misunderstanding was that I expected to see them in the main database, but it appears they go straight to a "News section" of the site for 48 hours and then move to the main database after that. In fact, they are now visible in normal Alamy searches.

Lessons I learned afterwards:

You need to fully populate the Title, Description, Keywords and "Headline" fields in your image before uploading. I didn't know about the Headline one - it isn't in the default Lightroom fields and you can find it under IPTC. In Alamy, the headline for a group of shots of the same subject should be the same so that they all appear together. In my case, the Alamy team added this for me as it was missing from my uploads.

I am not sure that you need to "Manage Images" before they go on sale in News. I have a feeling that they go straight from the upload queue into the News section using the information in the file. I can't prove this now, but next time I will check before I add different keywords etc. to the file.

Sales are still few and far between! I sold no licenses on Alamy or Demotix (although I was on their "front page") and my only earnings from the shots were the 8 prints from Smugmug that earned about $35 profit.

Steve

Thanks Both. The original plan (maybe aptly called scheme) was people applied for acceptance to the news upload area, based on your collection and the editors approval. I shoot racing and live news and was rejected, so I thought, fine, I'm back to trying to sell news a week after it happens. 

Now I'm reading that there's a second direct upload and it's open for all contributors. Great idea Alamy!

So when I get something or next time I upload, I'll look and see.

Thanks for the tips on populating all the data fields, which is opposite of what I do for normal Alamy, where I upload nothing and add all the data, after files are accepted.