MicrostockGroup

best places to sell Editorial RM?

Yes, alamy is the best place for it

For anyone beginning to submit Editorial images to agencies - Start with macro as opposed to micro agencies.

Because of editorial use limitations and micro's price structure, it's virtually impossible to earn reasonable money for editorial images - including strong ones that are unique and/or could be used broadly over long period of time.

I wish I had known from the start about Alamy RM editorial. Just checked the overall earnings of editorial images I submitted to micros a few years ago - $36 for my top editorial at one micro, $25 for top one at the other. And, of course, once image sells as RF, it can never be RM.

(I realize original post was about RM editorial.)

...yes, image already bought as RF then called RM is a bit like saying a stray mutt, however lovable, is pedigreed

I was surprised when a person mentioned recently that they sell the same images as RF on istock and RM on alamy.  I don't blame people doing it if alamy let them but it does make me wonder about the future of alamy.  Are buyers going to like it when they pay for a restricted license with RM and then see the same image sold at a fraction of the price as RF?  I do like alamy but I wish they would open a separate microstock collection and ban microstock RF being sold as RM.

I agree with Shady Sue. Alamy doesn't allow selling images as RM on their site if images have already sold as RF, and contributors who purposely do it have incomprehensibly decided to break the rule, and risk the consequences if found out.

(In my experience, they seem to care very much about what license an image has. For ex, they don't even want related images sold under different licenses. I sold an image as RF elsewhere, and when I submitted a related image (first time submitting it anywhere; different orientation, model doing something quite different, but images clearly were same time/place/model) Alamy Customer Support agreed that 2nd image should be RF.)

I was pretty sure too but I was told they did agree to this.  The person told me they thought the rule that RF images can't be sold as RM applies to only images on the alamy site.  If you sell RF on other sites, there is nothing to stop you selling the same images as RM on alamy.  Seems crazy to me and I wouldn't do it but that's what I was informed.  I wasn't going to mention this, as obviously anyone exclusive on istock might think its a good idea to sell the same images as RM on alamy but people have talked about this before and I wish alamy would tighten their terms to stop this happening.  All they have to say is that you can't sell any image as RM if it has been sold as RF anywhere before.

^Sorry I thought RM meant something more, guess I'll go read the terms.

They already have sorted it out. The L (traditional) license does not provide any guarantees about former usage, only their RM license has that sort of restriction.

Also, traditional licenses are not more expensive than RF licenses, they are much cheaper. The reason for this is the same as the reason why it is cheaper to buy a bottle of milk for use today than it is to buy a lifetime supply of milk.

The micro model vastly undervalues the RF license and I'm pretty sure the micros are only RF because it would have been impossibly expensive to monitor whether images were being reused (or maybe it was just a designers dirty little desire to pay once and have forever). I hadn't thought of it before but it would really make more sense to sell anything at the micros that is going to Alamy on the L license, as that would reduce the price disparity between Alamy and Micro RF.

BTW, the micros are all RM as well, they are "royalty-free rights-managed" to be precise. Why? Because they place a list of restrictions on the permitted use and that means they are managing the rights.

Are you selling a lot at Alamy?

My port is tiny, but sales are promising. For ex, I've probably earned more on A than combined, all-time total on my now-former ports on IS + F.

That's impressive. I earned more on IS last month than I have on 18 months on Alamy (RM). That said, I'm working on my Alamy port rather than my IS port.

Very simply. The right to sell "exclusive usage" in a license is only ONE right. That one can no longer be managed but there are plenty of other rights that can be assigned.

What do you call Alamy's L license? It does not offer exclusive usage. It just prices (manages) the license according to type and duration of use. It is partially rights managed (just the same as the micros partially manage their libraries)

The buyer of an L license knows nothing about where or how that photo is being used, so why does the agency need to manage the history? It doesn't even try. When it makes a sale it doesn't contact you to ensure that the image is not for sale on another RM site, as it would have to do with a managed history image. I'm not sure but I think Getty's "rights ready" concept is similar: buy for a specified use but no guarantee of exclusive usage.

Fully RM images should be exclusive to one agent.