Well I have been with Alamy a few months and I have so far had 2 sales and they were in the first 2 months. I know they are meant to be slower sales but as you have to do a lot more keyboard work when submitting I am wondering if it is worth investing so much time 

Your call.
I didn't have a sale for about eight months when I started and I still submit there. No one can make this decision other than you. I've only had one fastish sale, and that was my highest sale value; other than that, it can take years, and I certainly can't discern any pattern in what sells.
You'd have to work out what you could be doing with the time you're uploading to Alamy. If you can use it more productively making images which would sell elsewhere, go ahead. If you upload at 2 a.m. when otherwise you'd be playing Candy Crush or watching TV, where's the harm? OTOH, if you're spending time/money making files specially for Alamy, it's probably not worth it at your sales rate.
At the time, I told you Alamy is definitely a case of 'patience, poppet'. James said in his last video that they licensed 'about 360,000 images' out of about 30 million in 2012, so that's the ballpark we're in.

I like your pictures Herg. But you have fewer than 350 from what I can see and all of them (I think) RF. So presumably all of these pictures are also available much less expensive at other sites (I do not know if that is an issue and there is no way of measuring). You need more pictures.

But again - I really like your pictures. You have a nice style IMO. And some of your incidental in the garden and farming stuff etc has a good authentic feel about it which should be current. But I think you need to do much much more of what you are doing best. More farming including the incidental details which show the human activity, more real produce in situ. More local. More community.

Thanks. Appreciate the comments. I would have a lot more to upload but since I got Lightroom I am going through all my files again and editing before submitting as my old submissions were edited on inferior software which now look naff.

And still no sales despite constant uploading.

Alamy's customers are for the most part looking for editorial content. You have uploaded appx 70 new pictures. Nice pictures. You now have 423 - a lot of which are textures and close-ups.

Keep at it. Think about the potential story - e.g. the who, why, when, where, what and how. How useable are your pictures - how likely are they to be topical from a publishing perspective ? How often are those stories going to come up. I wouldn't bother with bits of wall etc unless there is a very specific aspect which would relate to a story - e.g. geographical, geological, environmental ...

You might need to adjust your expectations a little too. Over time any picture might get chosen - but it is unlikely to happen instantly unless you have the best pictures of something which is suddenly topical.

Thanks. I see what you are saying which is helpful but I did upload an editorial photo but I don't have a model release so it can't go any further. They didn't give me the option of it being editorial unless I missed something. I don't think I would be too bothered if it wasn't for the time taken with each file. If it was a quick as SS or Dreamstime, the latter letting you use templates from previous files it would be so much less hassle.

Not understanding you about model release etc with respect to editorial. No matter.

Anyhow - it's the use which is typically editorial - there is no specific option to select (except in the restrictions which you can apply - and that is a different matter). Provided you choose RM were appropriate to their rules.

The point I am making is that with Alamy you probably want to think more about pictures which would potentially illustrate a topical thing - or which are perhaps about a specific place.

You might want to look at your workflow as you move forward. So if you are uploading say 10 pics from a specific shooting - upload them all together and use the batch processor rather than adding the metadata one file at a time.

I was averaging a tad over 2 sales a month there with around 700 images, then in late summer it slowed to a crawl - no sales for 4 months -  I was really frustrated - and now I've had 2 sales in just over a week - it's a very different place than the micros where I get multiple sales daily with ports of 150-190 images.

While I do sell a fair number of RF images there that are similar to what I sell on the micros, that's probably because about half of my micro port is travel which is traditionally a good seller on Alamy - I've also sold concept images there but nearly all of these - despite the fact that they could be used for advertising, have been used editorially - that's Alamy's primary customer base.

The few backgrounds and such I uploaded there early on have sold a couple of times over the years but only as "novel use" (i.e. their version of micro) - while they've sold countless times on the micros making me far more.

RPI on Alamy is much lower than on the micros (maybe 1/5th) so you have to decide for yourself whether it's worth the time. I started with Alamy and have always preferred the RM model to RF so I keep my hand in there despite the frustration that a slow month there means no sales - a concept inconceivable on the micros. Coming from a micro background, I'm guessing, it's hard for you to wrap your head around that - now that I've become more involved in the micros I see my patience level dropping so I understand - but then I think about my return per image on Alamy and realize that one well-priced sale can earn me as much or more than I'd earn with 100 sales on one of the micros, so I've stuck with them.

Two sales early on with under 400 images sounds like you've got the right stuff for them so I'd stay with it but only you can decide if it's worth your time. Good luck!

My RPI on Alamy is similar to my RPI on DT.   There is more effort involved in wading through their caption/keyword system, that's all.

I would be happy with �120 a month Mantis but it still must hurt dropping down from what you had.

4 dollar net in 6 months.

Quote from: Ron on January 07, 2014, 05:44

4 dollar net in 6 months.

From how many images? I seem to make about 25c per image per year (it was better than that earlier on).

488

Quote from: Herg on January 07, 2014, 01:34

Well some weeks on and still no sales...

Last week I sold 2 files... With 1200 files in PF. One file a month is normal.

Last month I sold 4. None so far this year. I have pulled a few recently and also done some re-arranging between pseudonyms. I currently have only about 600 again but am planning to upload many more in 2014. Very pleased with Alamy in general.

Giving my work away for almost free is not that satisfying
Besides, I rather like RM than RF. Just that easy - it's not only money in here

I dont understand why people are so happy with Alamy, my RPI on Alamy is below 1 dollar, the RPI on SS is above 3 dollar. If you do the number crunching, it turns out that for many people Alamy is not performing well at all. The idea of getting more $$ per sale is distracting from the fact that they dont sell a lot.

The pictures which I am selling RM at Alamy would be unlikely to sell regularly. Therefore they do not make sense at microstock prices. Microstock pricing makes sense for pictures which will sell many times. Pictures which will sell fewer times only make sense if they potentially sell for more. Whist the RPI is lower at Alamy the average sale earns very much more. Another reason I am happy with Alamy is that I like them. That matters to me.