Hi everyone, I started uploading to Alamy a couple of months ago. I have had 6 sales with 155 mages. Their keywording is a real pain or else I would have more up...

I have opted OUT of the "additional revenue options"
 - Distribution, Novel Use, UK Newspaper Scheme

My question is, is it worth it to be opted in? Is there some scary fine print I don't know about? FYI, I have opted out of SS extended licenses because I refuse to earn $12 or less for an EL.

Any suggestions? Do you earn pennies for opting in?

Different newspapers seem to have different deals, presumably based on how many files theylicense, so your cut can vary from small to tiny.
They seem to effectively be a subscription, so your cut with the same paper can vary from month to month, presumably as a proportion of all the pics they licensed.
On the upside, if your files are RM, you can earn your little proportion several times, so you can end up with more than you would have if you'd been selling RF.

Some (most?) of the papers seem to be able to get unwatermarked pics 'on spec', use them, and report them at their leisure.
One particular UK Tory Tabloid has been notorious for many years for using/reusing pics and not reporting them. Sadly, Alamy's policy seems not to be to penalise them for this, which is ludicrous, as their prices are the lowest I've experienced there. I've had payments after two years for a lot less than they'd have had to pay had they reported and paid at the time of use.
Currently, I'm still awaiting payment for over 20 uses of one particular image over two of their websites, which I had to fill in a tedious form for Alamy to report it (after they had confirmed to me that they were unreported uses) in very early January and I'm still waiting, which I find pretty much unacceptable.

OTOH, newspapers in the scheme apparently/allegedly only see opted in pics when they search, so you could be losing out. Though presumably they'd consider searching all files if they couldn't find a file they really needed.

You can only decide for yourself - as I keep saying, we all have different tolerance levels. If you have UK content, your sales could go up a bit, but your RPD will almost certainly go down; but these might have been sales you wouldn't otherwise have got.

I'm out of Novel Use. It was supposed to be closing, but seems to be continuing, and reports are of NU sales which don't seem very 'novel' unless they are new buyers (?)

I'm in distribution, but you only get 30%, though sometimes of larger value sales. I'm not at all sure whether buyers from distributors would buy from Alamy if the files weren't on the distributors' sites - I don't think (correct me if I'm wrong) that the Alamy site is translated to other languages.

Quote from: angelawaye on September 06, 2016, 12:42

Hi everyone, I started uploading to Alamy a couple of months ago. I have had 6 sales with 155 mages. Their keywording is a real pain or else I would have more up...

Six sales from less than 200 images in only two months is an astonishing rate of sales for Alamy. ...

That's true. I had over 700 before I got my first sale.

You need to be opted in for distribution. They have a large network of partners. You will get 30 percent. It is still higher percentage then you would get from many micros. Upload to Alamy and have your photos on many others on the same time. It is like a free distributor.

So Upload to Alamy and images will appear on:

1. Alamy itself.
2. On around 100 other agencies
3. Google search engine.