Just got my first sale on Alamy. I have 20-something images there for a bit over a year now so I wasn't very active in uploading. I know I'm still far from reaching payout but it felt good anyway

Congratulations!

I still have squat, but have only been there a month.

Congratulations Goldenangel!  Feels good when you make a large sale there

I just had my first $5.00 sale at Alamy, of which I get $2.  It was through one of their distribution partnerships.  I didn't even know you COULD get such small sales on Alamy.  Feels like micro to me...

Quote from: lisafx on March 31, 2010, 12:24

Congratulations Goldenangel!  Feels good when you make a large sale there

I just had my first $5.00 sale at Alamy, of which I get $2.  It was through one of their distribution partnerships.  I didn't even know you COULD get such small sales on Alamy.  Feels like micro to me...

I have good news and bad news about how low a sale can be.  I had my first sale a few months ago for "Novel Use" giving me a super total of 50 cent!  The good news is last week I had my second sale for $491 with my take at $196.

yes, I am happy.

Congrats on that second sale! 

You can opt out of "Novel Use" sales -- I did.

For me Alamy has been steadily increasing with aound $400 on average per month as my cut. Put's it on a par with SS. Worth the effort

Oldhand

How long have you been on Alamy?

Congrats, GA!  It feels good to receive a decent payment for a photo, isn't it?

Quote from: etienjones on March 31, 2010, 13:16

Quote from: lisafx on March 31, 2010, 12:24

Congratulations Goldenangel!  Feels good when you make a large sale there

I just had my first $5.00 sale at Alamy, of which I get $2.  It was through one of their distribution partnerships.  I didn't even know you COULD get such small sales on Alamy.  Feels like micro to me...

I have good news and bad news about how low a sale can be.  I had my first sale a few months ago for "Novel Use" giving me a super total of 50 cent!  The good news is last week I had my second sale for $491 with my take at $196.

yes, I am happy.

Question for both of you:

Is your portfolio the same on both Alamy and Microstock, or do you have different images on each?

Kone

KB . . . Thanks for the info.  I new "Novel Use" would go at a reduced price but was suprised at the 50 cent return.  I will use your suggestion if there arn't better results. 

KONE . . .  my Alamy port. is around 70% unique.

Just got my first sale on Alamy. I have 20-something images there for a bit over a year now so I wasn't very active in uploading. I know I'm still far from reaching payout but it felt good anyway

Good for you. :-)
After a year, over 550 images and four small-value sales, I'm disappointed. Though because of the incredibly bad weather we had last year, my shooting plans were frequently truncated: I'd hoped to have about 2000 online by now.

Quote from: Xalanx on March 31, 2010, 16:18

Quote from: Oldhand on March 31, 2010, 16:10

For me Alamy has been steadily increasing with aound $400 on average per month as my cut. Put's it on a par with SS. Worth the effort

Oldhand

How long have you been on Alamy?

Hi there - I have been there for four years, but struggled a lot with Quality control at first due to older equipment. I sorted the problems out, and have been actively uploading for the last year with around 2000 pics on a RM portfolio (very diverse, in my opinion mediocre material).

Very sporadic sales at first, every couple of months for circa $200, however it is now consisent. Sold four March for $200, sold three in Feb for $1000. It averages around $400 net for me every month.

Rgds

Oldhand

Thanks, Oldhand. I figured you're there since several years. I only sold RF so far, but I'm looking to increase my RM part of my portfolio there.

As I read interesting comments on this thread, I can add my experience with Alamy: I have 7 sales from 2008 when I start with Alamy, 2 RM and 4 RF and 1 NovelUse, so the gross is 630$.
I have now 1000 images, half RF, with not too many problems for quality check.
I think Alamy is more RM oriented but for my experience there are more traffic in RF than RM, sales and zooms said it, so I don't know how to best assets my strategy. Ah...the sales are all without zooms.....can you imagine a buyer who buy without zooming the image? Having zooms increase your rank, my RM portfolio is good quality but with  0 or little zooms, so I can't imagine how can i sell my pictures not showing them....

The same happened to me, the image I sold there didn't get any zooms and in fact it did not appear in that list of searches.  I guess it was purchased through a 3rd party or through Alamy's inside service.

Quote from: madelaide on April 05, 2010, 08:45

The same happened to me, the image I sold there didn't get any zooms and in fact it did not appear in that list of searches.  I guess it was purchased through a 3rd party or through Alamy's inside service.

+1 more


I also don't worry about Alamy rank and all that. People are looking for photos and if I have something that they want, that isn't the same as 3,000 other similar photos, it will sell. Some folks get all obsessed about no zoom or no view registered and worry about their rank. Good somewhat unique photos sell!

Lets say that half my views and zooms are not recorded. Well then about half of everyone else's views and zooms aren't being registered either, so we are all on the same system. Level playing field, I'm not worried that someone is getting ahead of me because of some silly measures system that doesn't work all the time.

My Click through rate (CTR) is consistently higher than the Alamy average, and has been since I put a lot of keywording work in 6 months ago. Since then the sales have increased noticeably (along with zooms etc). I take your point, if a pic in unique then it will appear at the top of the page, but none of mine are particularly. The net result of an increased CTR has been my images appear on the first pages of relevant searches, an IMHO has led to increased sales.

I created a Pseudonym for all new pics and edited the keywords to a minimum using their search terms etc. Next step was to go through the older pics and re-keyword them. For me it was a useful exercise.

Regarding Zooms, a lot of searching is done in house. Alamy will contact say a newspaper every week and ask what subjects they are looking for, say for a sunday travel supplement. Alamy resarchers will then sort a lightbox of relevant pics, which will not show as having zooms. That's just the tip of the iceberg, as they are proactive in choosing the pics for clients. (keep's them happy!)

My advice for anyone selling pics there would be to keep keywords brief and relevant. Having a CTR higher than average, even slightly, gives you a greater chance of selling. Any advantage has to be good, and who know's, you might get some large price sales. For the record every one of my sales has had zoom's.

Oldhand

My problem with CTR is that keywords are found in the wrong place.  One problem is my name, "Adelaide", I get hits for any search related to the city in Australia. Someone looking for "adelaide cityscape" may see a photo of London.     Also there were the expressions in quotation marks, searches are reading individual words in an expression.  Like someone searching for "American Airlines" and finding an image that has "Varig Airlines" and "Latin American" in the keywords. 

I just hate the Alamy keywording and search system. I can see how bad it must be with your name. I've been caught out with my name being part of a search (e.g. Queen Elizabeth, as my pseudonym is my real name, and it was a photo of a statue of Queen Victoria. Another one was on a search for someone called Elizabeth House, and I had a house in a photo. They say we have to check our keywording carefully; I check all of mine that come up in either of the two instances you relate and can't see how I can improve them. The system has to change, but I'm guessing with the number of images they have, it's not going to change.
Buyers must hate it, if they do their own searching, but I guess it keeps the researchers in a job.
It just seems so primitive not to be able to signify and separate keyword expressions as you exemplify above.