MicrostockGroup

It seems also Alamy is struggling to make ends meet ... some contributors with huge portfolios are reporting falling incomes up to 50% compared to last year despite having greatly increased their portfolios.

http://alamy.com/forums/default.aspx?g=posts&t=12031




"The quantity of my images on Alamy has increased by 40%. The number of sales (allowing that one or two may pop up today) is up 28%. My income has however gone down by 14% and the average price per sold image has decreased by 33%. "



"Increased my quantity by approx 20%
Sales increased by approx 28%
Income from sales almost identical to last year........RUNNING TO STAND STILL springs to mind."



"Number of licenses sold: +40%
Total sales income (GROSS): -23%
Total sales income (NET): -24%
Average licence price (GROSS): -45%
Average licence price (NET): -46% (more distributor sales with low value)

So, despite a huge increase in the amount of licenses sold, my income has dropped. And the average license price is in free-fall being in 2011 just 33% of what it was in 2008. A +-66% drop. "



"On average in 2008 (10K images online) I was getting a net unit price of £40-00 per editorial sale. In 2011, my average net unit price is £20-00."

I've had a BME at Alamy this month.  It was due mostly to a large number of 35.00 sales.   I am sure that this would be upsetting to one of the Alamy contributors who were seeing several hundred dollars per sale, but for me, considering it is my micro portfolio, I am content to get the higher volume and lower prices (not novel use prices, just sub $100 sales).  End result was very good in my case. 

Hey, I had half-a-dozen $35 sales, all on the same day at the start of the month. It sounds like some big project.

Alamy is holding up very well and of course the 60% royalty level is very reasonable.

Don't know if you are 100% right about "landscape, scenics, travel" being the ones selling the best. My own experience is 2nd hand editorial, which is also reportedly being the best selling segment. However, all areas are very well represented, the competition is fierce and keywording is crucial, not too many and not too few!

Take a look at his portfolio....

http://www.alamy.com/search/searchresults.aspx?CreativeOn=1&qt=Richard+Wareham&all=1&creative=&adv=1&dtfr=&dtTo=&et=0x000000000000000000000&ag=0&vp=0&loc=0&lic=6&lic=1&hc=&selectdate=1&txtdtfr=&txtdtto=&size=0xFF&ot=1&ot=2&ot=4&ot=8&archive=1&chckarchive=1&aqt=&epqt=&oqt=&nqt=

He's an editorial shooter with most of the images being sports and celebrities.  Both are tough markets to break into and the celebrity market has recently become the latest area with a flood of images.  Being sports or newsworthy, a lot of his stuff has a shorter shelf life than traditional commercial stock.

I really don't know much about Alamy, but it seems to me, that the majority of ppl, at least on MSG, are selling photos as RM. I can understand that most of those are selling editorial and why they choose RM (lots of them are exclusive at IS), what I want to know is why? Is RF not selling well enough for mid/macro stock prices? Is it better to sell them at micros? If you do, you probably won't sell as much on Alamy. And also, many ppl in the "your plans for 2012" thread are saying they'll focus more on RM (which of course don't necessarily mean at Alamy, since a lot of them are at Getty)

Can't speak for anyone else, but my Alamy port is entirely RF - the same images I have in micro.  Doing very well there.  As I posted above, most of my sales are not the big dollar sales, but a lot of <$100 sales add up to decent money.

In the last year my largest sale at Alamy was $419, and I got 60% of that, so nice.   Only 11% of my total number of sales were >$100 though, and most of those were in the $100-$250 range. 

my port at Alamy is mostly RM but i definitely see a decline in RM sales and a rise in RF sales.

i would not be surprised if soon alamy will start selling "editorial RF" as well, i've the frightening feeling that buyers are getting more and more tired of RM as a whole, no matter if in most of the cases RM is cheaper than RF !

they simply don't want to mess anymore with all the RM limitations.

secondly, alamy can have all the milllion photos they like but if we talk about travel stock i see more and more excellent photos sold for a pittance on the micros, how long before buyers will notice that they can get "good enough" imagery for 300% less or more at IS, SS, DT, FT ?

 

My last December was also my BME in alamy.

Still, averaging about 20 sales per month the income per image is very low compared to what it used to be. So low that, like other people reported, I ended up earning less than when I sold less images.

The problem is that most of the sales are below Micro prices, because alamy's license would require an extended license in Micro. And even then, alamy's license allows more usages than any EL in Micro.

Alamy is selling images cheaper than any Micro I'm in, if we exclude the subscriptions. I have almost a hundred sales below $28 and a lot for $3 or $4 (my cut).

So, I cannot agree with your view that these images could sell for less just because they are in Micro. The license given to the client is the key, and in that sense we a losing a lot in alamy for some sales.

That's true. I've got about 50 sales under $10 (gross), being half of them about $3 (gross). In these latest I get $1.85 / $1.90 per sale.

And being the RM images included in the deal is just awful. Some of the RM licenses given to clients are so broad in spectrum and duration that they basically RF.

And I'm not even in the NU program.

Novel Use
http://www.alamy.com/contributor/help/additional-revenue-opportunities.asp

I specifically avoided the NU program for the low price, I guess we can enable it now anyway?