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Author Topic: Alamy- Any success??  (Read 75234 times)

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« Reply #25 on: July 30, 2015, 11:55 »
0
There is no such thing as success on Alamy. Hopefully you are making your photo money elsewhere and the photos you have on Alamy are the ones you don't have a home for. If you can cover the upload, description and keyword time through sales then you are doing OK. Alamy cannot fund a trip especially now with the ridiculous image numbers 30% of which are similars


« Reply #26 on: July 30, 2015, 14:59 »
+16
There is no such thing as success on Alamy.

Speak for yourself.   Some of us do pretty good on Alamy.

Tryingmybest

  • Stand up for what is right
« Reply #27 on: July 30, 2015, 16:07 »
+1
I say be patient. Keep waiting. I'm an illustrator and I only send them JPG files. Their EPS process is too much of a hassle. It's an easy submission process. Sales are steady, but slow. I have a little over 4.5K over there.

« Reply #28 on: July 31, 2015, 01:54 »
0
I don't know how well vectors sell there overall but I don't do many illustrations and I have sold a reasonable amount with them.

« Reply #29 on: July 31, 2015, 05:36 »
+13
There is no such thing as success on Alamy.


Definitely not true :)

One example: http://www.alamy.com/blog/selling-stock-photos-online-with-alamy-250k-and-counting

Some do better than others, that's true, but we've paid out over $140million to photographers since we began, with many photographers getting healthy payouts month after month.

Cheers

Alamy


gpgibson

« Reply #30 on: July 31, 2015, 08:12 »
+4
Well I have fantastic success on Alamy this month alone 4K+ sterling no complaints here  :D

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #31 on: July 31, 2015, 08:30 »
+3
Well I have fantastic success on Alamy this month alone 4K+ sterling no complaints here  :D
It's all relative.
Some might think that 4k from 556,781 files was a very poor return.
OTOH, it's better than the zero you get from files on your HD.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2015, 10:20 by ShadySue »

ACS

« Reply #32 on: July 31, 2015, 10:47 »
0
I am an old but small player (7 years ~ 1100 files). In my case it didn't worth for the extra effort.

« Reply #33 on: August 01, 2015, 08:13 »
0
This week Ive made only one sell, but is was a very good price. So this agency moved to place 2.! on my agencies. Ive currently only 200 images online there.

amazing and congrats, I wish you got a good number here :)

« Reply #34 on: August 01, 2015, 08:31 »
+1
There is no such thing as success on Alamy.


Definitely not true :)

One example: http://www.alamy.com/blog/selling-stock-photos-online-with-alamy-250k-and-counting

Some do better than others, that's true, but we've paid out over $140million to photographers since we began, with many photographers getting healthy payouts month after month.

Cheers

Alamy


One off successes do not represent the population. If you randomly sampled the population of Alamy contributors I think you would see completely different story, more like mediocracy at best. Sure, some do better than others, but those are the exception, not the rule.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #35 on: August 01, 2015, 09:06 »
0
There is no such thing as success on Alamy.


Definitely not true :)

One example: http://www.alamy.com/blog/selling-stock-photos-online-with-alamy-250k-and-counting

Some do better than others, that's true, but we've paid out over $140million to photographers since we began, with many photographers getting healthy payouts month after month.

Cheers

Alamy


One off successes do not represent the population. If you randomly sampled the population of Alamy contributors I think you would see completely different story, more like mediocracy at best. Sure, some do better than others, but those are the exception, not the rule.

Even one success proves that there is such a thing.
Neverthless, I agree that the pie is sliced very finely there, and most of the people who report good sales have really huge ports. Even their RPI is probably pretty low.
However, there is obviously a high percentage of Alamy members who never post their figures, good or bad.

« Reply #36 on: August 01, 2015, 18:01 »
+3
There is no such thing as success on Alamy.


Definitely not true :)

One example: http://www.alamy.com/blog/selling-stock-photos-online-with-alamy-250k-and-counting

Some do better than others, that's true, but we've paid out over $140million to photographers since we began, with many photographers getting healthy payouts month after month.

Cheers

Alamy


One off successes do not represent the population. If you randomly sampled the population of Alamy contributors I think you would see completely different story, more like mediocracy at best. Sure, some do better than others, but those are the exception, not the rule.

If you look in their forum, there's quite a lot of people doing reasonably well with alamy.  When I was earning very little, that gave me the motivation to carry on uploading and now its starting to pay off.

« Reply #37 on: August 04, 2015, 19:33 »
0
From the Alamy blog interview with Keith Morris, the example Alamy provided on this forum: "After selling $250k worth of stock photography online with Alamy recently" Keith has 27,000 files and that $250,000 in sales is total sales, based on the sentence in quotes, not his percentage after Alamy takes out their cut. After taking out Alamy's cut wouldn't Keith's average return per image per year be around 50 cents?  That doesn't sound that great to me. My percentage on Alamy isn't that much lower than Keith's and my images are mediocre at best. (By the way, I think Keith's images are pretty good, definitely has some beautiful stuff, this is not meant to disparage Keith in any way.)

I have fared much better on istock alone than on Alamy. I submit to Alamy, but I've never had great success relative to the micros collectively or istock and Shutter Stock alone. My RPI is best with Getty but I have less than 200 images with them. My sales with Alamy mirror the micro stock poll results to the right.

Though I was wrong about the duplicate keywords (although I'm sure that information was correct many years ago) I think it still holds true that your images and pseudonym needs time to percolate up in the search results, however I wouldn't expect anything too great from Alamy.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #38 on: August 04, 2015, 20:22 »
0
^^ to be bang up to date, KM's sales for July were 57 sales from a port of 23602 images (earnings not shared).


« Reply #39 on: August 04, 2015, 21:25 »
+1
I Joined Alamy since March 2014, just 146 photos online because no sales then I stop uploading, yesterday suddenly got one sales, earned $18.18 after deduct 50% royalty($36).  :o

« Reply #40 on: August 05, 2015, 00:20 »
+1
I sold images there with 175$ and it is nice when you see that, but it happens very rarely.

« Reply #41 on: August 05, 2015, 06:37 »
+3
From the Alamy blog interview with Keith Morris, the example Alamy provided on this forum: "After selling $250k worth of stock photography online with Alamy recently" Keith has 27,000 files and that $250,000 in sales is total sales, based on the sentence in quotes, not his percentage after Alamy takes out their cut. After taking out Alamy's cut wouldn't Keith's average return per image per year be around 50 cents?  That doesn't sound that great to me. My percentage on Alamy isn't that much lower than Keith's and my images are mediocre at best. (By the way, I think Keith's images are pretty good, definitely has some beautiful stuff, this is not meant to disparage Keith in any way.)

I have fared much better on istock alone than on Alamy. I submit to Alamy, but I've never had great success relative to the micros collectively or istock and Shutter Stock alone. My RPI is best with Getty but I have less than 200 images with them. My sales with Alamy mirror the micro stock poll results to the right.

Though I was wrong about the duplicate keywords (although I'm sure that information was correct many years ago) I think it still holds true that your images and pseudonym needs time to percolate up in the search results, however I wouldn't expect anything too great from Alamy.
You have to factor in that alamy don't reject on non-technical grounds, other sites might reject half of those images for things like similars or LCV.  Perhaps he could make more money with the microstock sites but I find uploading editorial and the sort of images that no longer sell on the micros to just alamy saves time and its great to have a source of income that isn't microstock.

« Reply #42 on: August 05, 2015, 10:48 »
0
Quote
You have to factor in that alamy don't reject on non-technical grounds, other sites might reject half of those images for things like similars or LCV.  Perhaps he could make more money with the micro stock sites but I find uploading editorial and the sort of images that no longer sell on the micros to just alamy saves time and its great to have a source of income that isn't microstock.

That is a good point. Probably the only place to upload unrealesed people shots (other than celebs) and make some money from them. I upload everything I have on the micros to Alamy along with images that were rejected by the micros or is editorial. Fortunately I have a pretty high acceptance rate on the micros so I really don't factor that. Roughly about 13% of my sales on Alamy are from images that are not available on the micros, mostly landscapes that I decided to license as RM. So the vast majority of my sales on Alamy are the same images that are on the micros. But I do mostly commercial / conceptual still life, very different than KM's images, he has a TON of unreleased people shots, so it's probably apple to oranges here.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #43 on: August 05, 2015, 11:59 »
+1
For a while, I was doing better with editorial pics sold on iStock, and indeed what little I'm still selling there as credit sales is predominatly editorial images uploaded in 2011 (not since!).
However, Alamy has been picking up a bit for me, and currently my August sales and $$ are better there than iS. This morning I got a repeat sale in, a great advantage of RM. I've got one particular file which has resold several times, each resale for a small amount, but adding up to a decent total. I wonder how many micro/RF buyers tot up all uses to make sure an EL isn't needed for cumulative prints.
On the downside, in July, I got a small value distributor sale, reported as used on June 1st. I googled it and it was legitimately used much earlier, and several copies of the article, in various online locations and various languages were already up dating back to April. Not sure how to chase them up with DCMA irrelevant (neither Alamy, I, nor the offenders being in the US) and the language barrier ... Thinking about it.  ::)

« Reply #44 on: August 27, 2015, 13:06 »
0
Wooouhuuuu!!!. First sale on Alamy after 11 months since I first registered and started uploading. This must be some kind of miracle, I already gave up on alamy.

30$, but I don't know if this is Net or Gross.

Ok I got it, its gross, 15$ net.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2015, 13:15 by Dumc »

« Reply #45 on: August 27, 2015, 13:24 »
0
I agree Alamy sales are picking up, but still far behind IS. But I have a lot more images on IS.

I wonder if you have more images on IS or Alamy.

For a while, I was doing better with editorial pics sold on iStock, and indeed what little I'm still selling there as credit sales is predominatly editorial images uploaded in 2011 (not since!).
However, Alamy has been picking up a bit for me, and currently my August sales and $$ are better there than iS. This morning I got a repeat sale in, a great advantage of RM. I've got one particular file which has resold several times, each resale for a small amount, but adding up to a decent total. I wonder how many micro/RF buyers tot up all uses to make sure an EL isn't needed for cumulative prints.
On the downside, in July, I got a small value distributor sale, reported as used on June 1st. I googled it and it was legitimately used much earlier, and several copies of the article, in various online locations and various languages were already up dating back to April. Not sure how to chase them up with DCMA irrelevant (neither Alamy, I, nor the offenders being in the US) and the language barrier ... Thinking about it.  ::)

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #46 on: August 27, 2015, 15:28 »
0
I have more images on iStock (3857 vs 2808 on Alamy), and have been with iS for longer. The files are different, and all RM on Alamy, obviously, so it's not a direct comparison.

However, this slight uptick on Alamy (from a very low base) is only the past three months, and I can't see any pattern in my sales (so that I could try to build on them), they just seem to be what people happen to need.

The downward slope on iStock has been going on for much longer.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2015, 15:54 by ShadySue »

« Reply #47 on: August 27, 2015, 15:52 »
0
I also had a few sales on Alamy in the last month, after selling nothing for several months.  Maybe they've implemented some sort of rotation, to try and encourage contributors who have given up.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #48 on: August 27, 2015, 15:55 »
0
I also had a few sales on Alamy in the last month, after selling nothing for several months.  Maybe they've implemented some sort of rotation, to try and encourage contributors who have given up.
It's quite possible. I've seen my files faring well in the relevant search - actually better than BHZ would suggest.

« Reply #49 on: August 27, 2015, 16:11 »
0
Alamy has really picked up for me this year. With 750 photos online, I've had a string of sales the last six months anywhere from $70-400 per license with half to me. Last year I had fairly consistent sales but most were around $35-70 ($17.50-35 to me) so the higher prices are good to see. Perhaps there is a lot more call for RM images to help differentiate from the micro images that are all over the place and a lot of my portfolio is RM, so not on the micros, I also have a fair number of RF files on Alamy that are not on the micros either - the overlap is mainly studio concept shots which do better on the micros but ok on Alamy. Most of my licenses are travel and some editorial, with a few of my concept images that are similar to what I have on the micros selling from time to time, generally for lower prices.

I've had photos that are similar on both Alamy and the micros zoomed on Alamy and purchased on the micros which is why for the most part my portfolios are different, but with a few overlapping images that have sold on both. My guess is that about half their clients look for the cheapest image, and the rest don't bother, but having the same portfolio on both will probably affect your sales. I was at a meeting in NY years ago where one of the speakers (a buyer) said his company looked on Alamy first but checked fotolia before purchasing to see if they could get the same image for less, and as I mentioned I have seen zooms on Alamy purchased on fotolia in the past.

I've also noticed more of my files showing up on page one in searches and landing in the "Creative" collection and I'm guessing that as they go through and pull images into "Creative" this is making a difference.

Had hoped to upload a lot to Stockimo, their iPhone app, but despite upgrading my IOS and insuring that all my settings are set the way they advised, deleting and re-uploading the app, I have not been able to get the app to work and am disappointed that after their first suggestion didn't work customer service seems to have given up on me or perhaps they are just super slow in responding, Generally their customer service people are prompt and helpful.
 
« Last Edit: August 27, 2015, 16:16 by wordplanet »


 

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