1. 60c or less
2. The sky can be the limit
3. Who knows, it varies wildly. Most money seems to accrue from US sales or for some people via Live News. I Think they say that the average sale is  $35 gross.
4. You get 50% of the same value rather than 40% (for direct sales).

1. 60c or less
2. The sky can be the limit
3. Who knows, it varies wildly. Most money seems to accrue from US sales or for some people via Live News. I Think they say that the average sale is  $35 gross.
4. You get 50% of the same value rather than 40% (for direct sales).

Thanks.  By 60c do you mean 60 cents USD ($0.60)?

Let me ask you this?  What stock site do you earn the most from?  So far for me, it is SS hands down.  But most of my images go for $0.25 on SS, so it takes a lot of sales to make anything.  I was hoping to make higher commissions on Alamy, but I am not sure how long it really takes to start getting sales on there, and what kind of quantity you have to have. 

Let me ask you this?  What stock site do you earn the most from?  So far for me, it is SS hands down.  But most of my images go for $0.25 on SS, so it takes a lot of sales to make anything.  I was hoping to make higher commissions on Alamy, but I am not sure how long it really takes to start getting sales on there, and what kind of quantity you have to have.

How big is the collection you are considering putting onto Alamy exclusively? Are they nature shots?

.

1. What is the lowest amount I will make off a single image sale on Alamy? <$1
2. What is the most I will make off a single image sale? Realistically >$300+ net
3. What is the average amount I will make off of a single image sale? I'm at about $20 net
4. What is the benefit of making images "Exclusive" to alamy? Other than the extra 20% revenue, none.

Muito obrigado!

Quote from: ShadySue on February 28, 2019, 06:08

Alamy doesn't sell well for me on wildlife/nature, as opposed to iS, where these topics sell more or less in parallel with its percentage in my port. You can check in Alamy Measures, where for one species I have pics of, I (alone) sold more in a year on iS than there were recorded searches on Alamy (No idea what percentage of searches are 'recorded'.)

As my name implies, I shoot nature.  I try to focus on rare to extremely rare, but I will shoot anything.  I did not know Alamy was an exclusive style.  I was under the impression that alamy was a Macro-Stock site, where quality standards were higher than micro, sales were fewer, but commissions were a lot higher than on micro sites like SS.

Alamy is at best midstock, quality standards were considerably lower than e.g. iS used to be (do iS have any quality standards nowadays?). Anything can sell there, but their main focus is editorial sales.

Have you tried any of the specialist nature agencies? They are likely to serve you far better, but the ones I see selling (meaning I see their credits in publications here) have a large quantity requirement both for initial submission and ongoing submissions - and they mostly only want subjects they haven't got loads of coverage already, so you could meet their needs. Maybe where you live, other agencies dominate and don't have these requirements. If your subjects are rare, that could mean low supply, but almost certainly also low demand. That's no good for you selling on micros or even Alamy, where it's not the quality or rareness of the image which control the price, but the discount the buyer has negotiated.

All you can do is experiment and see what/where works for you, at this stage of the game. Also you need to be in it for the long haul. Maybe no-one will want a pic of a Lesser-striped Sputelijk for five years. No-one else has the same portfolio as you, and people may be ahead of you in the pecking order (search positioning), so really, no-one can tell you what will work for your port, starting recently. Suck it and see! Good luck!

Have you tried any of the specialist nature agencies?

I am new to this whole stock image thing and was not aware that there were such things as agencies that specialize in nature photos.   I got into stock images kind of by accident.  It all started with me trying to improve the SEO ranking of my own travel website where I share my images and videos.  After discovering that a key to good website ranking SEO is TEXT, not images (search engines are dumb and do not know what images are unless you tell them), I decided to create individual educational pages about the nature photographs I have taken in my travels. Thus boosting the TEXT content on my site and improving the SEO ( just FYI. This worked like a charm for my sites SEO) Basically, did what you suggested (add the story behind the photo), but on my own website. 

Like everyone else, I need to make a little money for all my hard work, so I thought about selling my images directly off my site. My site earns money through affiliate marketing, But since I was investing so much effort into individual images and giving them their own page, I thought, "What the heck! Why not try to sell the image?"  But selling images directly gets complicated REAL fast, so I decided that I would let a stock agency like SS sell them and just link to them from my website.  But then I was just getting $0.25 a photo and that led me to start looking to at how to earn more and I learned about Macro-stock.  Unfortunately, my older photos were taken with older equipment that did not meet the standards for sites like Alamy. So I upgraded my equipment to make sure my new photos are up to snuff with the higher quality standards of macro sites; for new photos at least.   

So, as you can see, it has been a stepping stone sequence of events.  Each step opening up new areas and challenges.  Had I known where this would all lead me, I would have never stared, but now I am too invested to drop it, and in spite of everything, I am seeing some return for my efforts, so I am encouraged that with time and lots of learning, it will be worth it in the end.

At the end of the day, I love world travel and nature photography.  I want to keep doing it as long as I can, but I need funds to keep me going.  You know that person that said, "Find a way to make money at what you love to do and you will never work a day in your life".  Yeah well, they were an idiot.  I love what I am doing but this whole stock image thing is a truckload of WORK!  LOL!