MicrostockGroup

I was reading somewhere in someone's blog that rights managed license sell more than RF, however the return per image is lower, as the usage is very restricted.

Are some RM licenses as low as micro prices...is that true?

So is that true that the Royalty Free return per image is higher and generates more sales, because it has less rescritions?

Probably because Alamy lists their RM as Editorial "L" for licensed, but it's really just RM. And yes you could have an image RF Editorial however that's unusual, and usually Editorial is RM. Don't ask me, but all things are possible, even if not common.

To answer the same question in a slightly different way than Sue.

It used to be a rule of thumb that RF brought in less than the Editorial on Alamy. It seems to have leveled out in the last two years, but until they produce the stats, I can't say, and it's only a guess.

There was that whole fiasco with "novel use" and then discounts for newspapers recently and some hangover about subscription rates offered to some preferred clients. But the offshoot is that RM/L and Editorial have been dropping in price and RF has been all over, but the two are meeting in the middle. That's according to people who sell more than I do, of both types, on Alamy.

My answer to the question, if asked for an opinion at the present time would be that both are bringing in about the same average returns, but depending on the content and materials, your sales could vary. I put up a shot RF that I thought might get some multiple downloads and compensate for the common nature of it. Sold for the same as my Editorial book covers, and I don't know who bought it or where it went.

For that reason alone, I'm thinking of asking them to make the whole collection of my photos, except the one that sold, into Licensed! If there's no price difference I might as well know who has it and what use?

I personally consider anything that has sold RF as out in the wild and it will always be impossible to track or account for who has it, where they bought it (if they did) or whether they should be giving photo credit. At least with RM there seem to be some more restrictions and better accounting. If the assumption about value by license is true and they are the same, I might as well know what happens to my images?

But can you get from Alamy the information about whom did they license the image to? In the report, they only show the usage.

They don't tell you 'who' has bought it, only the industry sector.

If you divide those figures into each other, you find that they made 9,739 RF sales in Q1 of 09, and 39,059 RM sales. I'm pretty sure they were boasting more than six million files back then, which suggests one sale for each 370 files online per month. I'm getting less than half that but most of mine are RF and their market tilts towards RM - newspapers and book publishers. It also helps to have British-related content as they have quite a few deals with UK newspaper companies.

I would say that RM offers the best prospects there, but that doesn't mean simply shooting images that would do for RF and marketing them as RM (though you can if you like, and being cheaper they will probably outsell similar RF images there), it means shooting the sort of stuff that will appeal to British newspapers and book publishers.

Just had to post this update from Alamy. Hey about time and my compliments to them. I bet they got tired of the questions and confusion.

As you may have noticed, we have recently made the following changes to licencing terms throughout the contributor pages of our website and in Manage Images;

    * “L” or “Licenced” has now been replaced with “Rights Managed”

The reasons for doing this were to have consistency with what our customers see, for example RM or RF images. We felt having the term “Licenced” and “Rights Managed” was confusing as it means exactly the same thing. “Rights Managed” is also a standardised industry term.

    * “Licenced Rights Protected” or “RP” will now be referred to as “Rights Managed – Exclusive” or “RM-E”

The term “Rights Protected” has been changed because it sounds slightly misleading, we feel “Rights Managed – Exclusive” is more straight forward and self explanatory.

    * “Royalty Free” or “RF” will stay as it is