I made some sales last year, and got excited.  But it seemed to go completely dead starting around October.   Then this month, I started getting lots of 'zooms' - but no sales until today  (I actually just made a small sale. )   So I've been pretty discouraged, but maybe things are changing.

Well , some days ago i start this topic so i will put an upgrade. Last year Alamy provide me a sale that bring more money and more value compared to all stock agencies i submit...Now i will provide an upgrade  to this topic showing how much Alamy is valious. My last Alamy RF license :


   Alamy ref   Your ref   Pseudonym   Date purchased / refunded   Licence   Details   Amount
   CY1JPJ    dinheiro01   Bruno Monico   18 February 2013   Royalty-free   54 MB
5315 x 3543 pixels
2 MB compressed
$ 292.00
Total sales    $292.00

Today was a good day. I must say that agencies like this one must be supported by all of us. This agencies bring us value.

PS: the image i sold here was refused in all microstock agencies. Distorted pixels, don�t have value, issues in edition..all bad........This is one of my best images , i love this image and appears that this image have a little bit value to someone. Thanks Alamy!

For clarity for those who aren't familiar with the way Alamy reports sales, is the $292 the amount you got, or did you get 50% of that, or 30% of that if it was a distributor sale?
Many people report the full Alamy image price (gross), rather than the amount they themselves got (net) which can be a surprise to those who are used to micros only telling you the amount you got, not the amount the buyer paid.
Anyway even if it was $146 to you or $87.60, it's still better than you were likely to get on most micros, so congrats. 

I got the 50% . It was $146 commission . I report the total amount because i think is good to everyone , special some people that don�t know Alamy see the prices they use to sell our images. It was a 54mb tiff download and RF license , not RM . Today i�m happy, i beat my commission record . 

If you have anything that needs a release, a model or any visible property, you need to say you either have a property release, or you dont. If you dont, it has to be RM, and you can only sell RM if its not sold as RF elsewhere. FOr example, if you have a photo of a barn selling without release as RF on the micros, you cannot put it on Alamy as RF because on Alamy everything needs a release. YOu cant offer it as RM either because you are selling it as RF already. Just read the Alamy website to get familiar because Alamy is completely different cup of tea.

If you have anything that needs a release, a model or any visible property, you need to say you either have a property release, or you dont. If you dont, it has to be RM, and you can only sell RM if its not sold as RF elsewhere. FOr example, if you have a photo of a barn selling without release as RF on the micros, you cannot put it on Alamy as RF because on Alamy everything needs a release. YOu cant offer it as RM either because you are selling it as RF already. Just read the Alamy website to get familiar because Alamy is completely different cup of tea.

Thank you so much, I appreciate ur help!

Also at Alamy RF if you a picture with body parts, it needs a model release otherwise you have to sell it as RM

Or even people who are mushy pixels in the background. And you have to identify them as 'people'.
(Though a month or two back, I got an email saying that the number of people I counted on some of my Alamy pics was wrong and they'd corrected them. Their totals were wrong on most of them, according to Alamy's own guidelines, and this was said by others on the forum at the time, but no clarification was offered.)

Quote from: Poncke on April 10, 2013, 17:37

If you have anything that needs a release, a model or any visible property, you need to say you either have a property release, or you dont. If you dont, it has to be RM, and you can only sell RM if its not sold as RF elsewhere. FOr example, if you have a photo of a barn selling without release as RF on the micros, you cannot put it on Alamy as RF because on Alamy everything needs a release. YOu cant offer it as RM either because you are selling it as RF already. Just read the Alamy website to get familiar because Alamy is completely different cup of tea.

I don't think this is correct - the question from Alamy is not whether there is any property, but any property that requires a release.  That is a big difference.  I think any kind of public property is OK, just not property that would require a release, and AFAIK they leave it to the photographer to decide.  The rules for people are much more strict but for property you can put them RF without a release provided it isn't private.  Or at least that's my interpretation and I am not alone because there are tons of RF pictures of buildings and other property on Alamy with no releases.

YOu are right, but the problem with that is, we dont know what needs a release or not. We are not copyright lawyers, you cant expect a photographer to know the laws, in every single country of the world. And their people rule is the stupidest in the business.

You cant sell the same photo as RF and RM
A photo with someone on a laptop and no logos is ok for micros. But on Alamy that needs a property release. But you dont have the property release, so the image will then become RM. But you cant sell it as RM because you already sell it as RF, hence you cannot submit that photo to Alamy.

But if you have a landscape without houses and people, you can sell it on Alamy as RF.

Quote from: Poncke on April 11, 2013, 10:28

...the problem with that is, we dont know what needs a release or not. We are not copyright lawyers, you cant expect a photographer to know the laws, in every single country of the world.

But it's the same for every main agency. You have to know whether any property needs a release or not. Although they are inspected, we'd no doubt share any blame if someone made a case against one of our images being used commercially without a PR. iS has some weasel words to cover such an eventuality, and I'd guess they all have the same if you dig enough.

I have said this before, if that was the case, we have to pull 90% of stock images. Every photo of a person with a laptop or phone, even with logos cloned out, needs to be pulled. Same goes for all images with sunglasses. Almost everything. Photos of a couple of chairs on the beach, same thing. Its everything. In fact, you cant even shoot a home interior. I have an interior shot of my parents home, with PR for the house, but the furniture is basically not their design. So in reality, I cannot sell that photo as RF then. Yet there are millions of home interior photos on the micros as RF