On Alamy forum one guy opened thread where shared his last sale - 12k $ for 2 licenses. After few minutes later the thread was gone... Is Alamy hiring something?

This month I have $12 in sales on Alamy, before my cut. $12k? That would be nice. This is another site affected by crowdsourcing.....well, all of them are except the sites like Stocksy who don't let in just anyone. But for most of us we can thank all those advertisers/bloggers over the years who tell people that they can make money with their pictures. Remember, everyone who owns a camera IS a photographer!!

I�m start upload my vectors to alamy, with the new ftp is easy, I'm curious, How are sale in alamy? on vector side?

Mantis, was it 2010 yr when things (income) changed?

On their forum you can clearly see that 2010 for almost everyone was the last period when people got good income. After 2010 and again in 2012 it got down a lot (even 50% less). Worth to read there to see what happened then.
It won't get better anymore. In next two-three years we can expect to see 100 mlns images in Alamy gallery crossed. You know what it means for us, right?
Who wants to bet?


And about sales. I still get them regularly, just worrying thing is that they didn't increase with my gallery growing (3-4 times bigger since I got that sales level).

it would be easy to dismiss Alamy's management and their sales force as clueless but on the other side considering they survived the switch to digital, the internet, microstock, and much more ... you know so many other agencies went bust including the big ones like Jupiter, it's a miracle Alamy is still in biz if we think how much everything changed and how much the industry became less profitable in just a few years.

said that, doubling their archive year on year won't make Alamy's profits increase too much but it will soon kill the sales of most of their contributors and it's just a matter of time before we reach the point of non return.

agencies know VERY WELL that for a contributor to make steady sales he must have at least xxx photos on sale and the whole archive must maximum yyy photos .. it's math ! they know it, but they won't care as this doesn't clash with THEIR sales !

but a domino effect will come, it's only a matter of when, not of IF.
people will upload only as soon as it's profitable, simple as that, and this is true for any other micro agency as well.

citizen journalism failed because the money is just not there, once photographers can't make money with stock the same result will be achieved ... and look at Beatport, iTunes, PODs, and much more, same logic, same trends .. i mean even Walmart killed the market and forced small shops to close down ... this is the future for pretty much anything sold digitally in one way or another.

i understand that nowadays people dont want to OWN things but want the ACCESS to digital things.
it's OK ... i get it !
but ... where . the money is coming from in this scenario ? i can't play live gigs with my editorial photos, either someone pays for it or i'm done with it ...

I think the problem is Alamy has found a niche, which seems to be editorial. The problem is they have dragged about 30 million non-editorial images along for the ride.

it's a niche and it seems they've no idea how to grow their market outside of this niche, they've tried everything including video and news and mobile but with little success.

flooding their archive with random images will just devalue their whole collection and sandbox many good editorial photos that would otherwise sell but this was their policy since the start so now it's too late to make radical changes.

their real issue is they're neither fish nor flesh, just a huge dump of 30-40 millions unedited images and sooner or later it will backfire.

I sold a picture on 04 March 2015 ( my net income 87,5$).
When can I expect to receive the money?

Thanks !!

Whenever.
Look on your My Alamy page, and under the overview tab you'll have a message saying:
"Current Cleared Balance: $XX   We'll pay you once your balance is over $75."
Which means that you'll be paid at the beginning of the month after your cleared balance is over $75. It depends on the deal your buyer got how long it will take them to clear. Could be instant, could be months; sometimes they default.
Or if your message indicates that your Cleared Balance is already over $75, it will say you'll get paid on the 1st of May, which may not mean literally the first of May, probably the next UK banking day.

Quote from: ShadySue on April 21, 2015, 03:39

Quote from: Sebalos on April 21, 2015, 03:29

I sold a picture on 04 March 2015 ( my net income 87,5$).
When can I expect to receive the money?

Thanks !!

Whenever.
Look on your My Alamy page, and under the overview tab you'll have a message saying:
"Current Cleared Balance: $XX   We'll pay you once your balance is over $75."
Which means that you'll be paid at the beginning of the month after your cleared balance is over $75. It depends on the deal your buyer got how long it will take them to clear. Could be instant, could be months; sometimes they default.
Or if your message indicates that your Cleared Balance is already over $75, it will say you'll get paid on the 1st of May, which may not mean literally the first of May, probably the next UK banking day.

Thx.

My Cleared Balance is 0 unfortunately. It's been more than 45 days but I will be patient 

I usually give them a nudge after six months.

Quote from: pkphotos on April 20, 2015, 20:05

I think the RPD could be as little as 10 cents and there would still be people out there eager to upload like there was no tomorrow.

For the record
MY APRIL 2015

- 0 sales so far (had multiple sales a month for several years now)
- 18 zooms at about 0.40 CTR
- 7000 images
- Page 1 of BHZ
- Recently received the 'you're a top 500' contributor email
- Alamy is by far my worst performing agency in regards 'return per image per year'

I think the problem is Alamy has found a niche, which seems to be editorial. The problem is they have dragged about 30 million non-editorial images along for the ride.

I split my portfolios and the non-editorial microstock portfolio does much better with less images than my editorial portfolio.  They are middle tier here in the poll and i suspect most of the people doing that poll are selling their non-editorial microstock images with alamy.  Like any other site, some people will do better with them than others.  I don't sell much with FT while others say they are one of the best.

I have a small micro portfolio of about 120 images spread over all the usual micro sites. They return me a very decent $15 approx return per image a year for all agencies combined. Most of them are on Alamy as micro and sales are non existent.

My overall sales at Alamy have historically been better than 1 sale per thousand photos a month that has been stated a general guideline in the past. I'm in the top 500 contributors at Alamy for the time being. My return per image is around 40 cents per image a year. My next worst agency is around three dollars. Alamy just don't have the business model in my opinion.

I usually average $200-400 per month (my share) on Alamy.  So far not a single sale in April. WhatTF is going on there?

Congrats to you Mantis.  I am glad somebody is having a good month.