Recently joined Alamy and got accepted at first try. I am a hobbyist but have been into microstock for some years now. I have checked the Forum but still have some questions:

Microstock pictures that are not editorial, do they really sell as RF on Alamy if also available at other sites? Is it worth the effort to upload?
Editorials that are not news but rather pictures from big cities etc, is it better to sell them exclusively as RM on Alamy or RF at Alamy and SS/DT etc?

Alamy is quite high in the poll. You who sell well there, is it from RM?

Thanks.

Congrats on your acceptance!

I sell both RM and RF on Alamy and don't really see much difference in price between the two, however, while I have a few similar images on both the micros and Alamy, most of my portfolio there is different than what I have on the micros.

I just wrote a series of articles that were published over the past few weeks specifically directed at people like you who are new to Alamy but who have been on the micros, and it includes examples of some of my moderate-sellers on there as well. You can find the articles here:

https://www.greatescapepublishing.com/articles/breakfast-stock-club/selling-stock-photos-alamy-part-1/

https://www.greatescapepublishing.com/articles/breakfast-stock-club/selling-stock-photos-alamy-part-2/

https://www.greatescapepublishing.com/articles/breakfast-stock-club/selling-stock-photos-alamy-part-3/

I hope you find them helpful. Your question was perfectly timed! 

EDIT:
As Shady Sue said, typing at the same time as I was, the jury's out on whether or not you should upload all your micro images to Alamy. I've lost sales because the images were on the micros and Alamy, and I've sweated it out worried about a refund when one of my photos that was on both the micros and Alamy went for $200 or above, so I keep my portfolios separate. But others swear it makes no difference. Ultimately you have to make a choice and not second-guess yourself. I wasted a lot of time trying to decide where to upload certain images and worrying I'd made the wrong choice, until I decided that I'd stop second-guessing myself.

Congrats! I don't do editorial but I hear they are good for that.

Alamy is my lowest earner ...

Congrats on your acceptance!

I sell both RM and RF on Alamy and don't really see much difference in price between the two, however, while I have a few similar images on both the micros and Alamy, most of my portfolio there is different than what I have on the micros.

I just wrote a series of articles that were published over the past few weeks specifically directed at people like you who are new to Alamy but who have been on the micros, and it includes examples of some of my moderate-sellers on there as well. You can find the articles here:

https://www.greatescapepublishing.com/articles/breakfast-stock-club/selling-stock-photos-alamy-part-1/

https://www.greatescapepublishing.com/articles/breakfast-stock-club/selling-stock-photos-alamy-part-2/

https://www.greatescapepublishing.com/articles/breakfast-stock-club/selling-stock-photos-alamy-part-3/

I hope you find them helpful. Your question was perfectly timed! 

EDIT:
As Shady Sue said, typing at the same time as I was, the jury's out on whether or not you should upload all your micro images to Alamy. I've lost sales because the images were on the micros and Alamy, and I've sweated it out worried about a refund when one of my photos that was on both the micros and Alamy went for $200 or above, so I keep my portfolios separate. But others swear it makes no difference. Ultimately you have to make a choice and not second-guess yourself. I wasted a lot of time trying to decide where to upload certain images and worrying I'd made the wrong choice, until I decided that I'd stop second-guessing myself.

Thank you, very interesting read, so perfectly timed! I have to think this over but I think I might upload my best editorials as RM to Alamy and see what happens. And maybe skip the backgrounds...Canva is my very best earner, and there I mostly sell backgrounds.

Congrats! I don't do editorial but I hear they are good for that.

Alamy is my lowest earner ...

Thanks!

I just wrote a series of articles that were published over the past few weeks specifically directed at people like you who are new to Alamy but who have been on the micros, and it includes examples of some of my moderate-sellers on there as well. You can find the articles here:

And thanks for the article links - I wasn't aware of Great Escape and will investigate further!

Thanks

steve

You might lose some sales from images that are on Alamy and the micros - that is they might sell for cents instead of $$. Of course if you just leave them on only the micros, they will never sell on Alamy

I think you can solve that conundrum mathematically: do 50%+ of buyers on Alamy go on to search the micros to see if they can find the same image cheaper? If not, then it's rational to assume that every Alamy sale lost by having your stuff on all sites will be offset by an Alamy sale gained. I think it's almost certain that a majority of Alamy buyers don't search all over the place to find a cheaper image - after all, we all agree that most people won't look beyond the first few pages of a search before deciding what image to buy, so the idea they will go trawling through the micros if they're prepared to use Alamy is pretty laughable.

Secondly, there seems to be some confusion. If you divide your images into micro and Alamy then you can only lose an Alamy sale if you put the Alamy collection into the micros, you cannot lose an Alamy sale by putting the micro collection on Alamy - because the sale you "lose" could not have happened if the micro image wasn't there.

Thirdly, if you keep your Alamy collection strictly on Alamy then you will lose the possibility of selling any of it on the micros. If the poll results on the right hand side mean anything, then the earnings potential of an image that is on Alamy must be much lower than the earnings potential of having an image on Shutterstock. If you select a particular picture then, of course, one brilliant sale on Alamy could dwarf any earnings it might get from the micros, but if you look at the overall earnings of 1,000 images then on the whole they will earn less on Alamy than they would on Shutterstock alone, let alone what that 1,000 would earn if spread across the top 6 micro sites. Trying to guess which image is going to be a shining star on Alamy is like trying to predict the winning number in a national lottery - it's just not going to happen - so you have to look at the broader averages to work out the best course.

Fourthly, is it worth uploading anywhere these days? If you take account of how much you're likely to earn, it would make more sense for most people to be flipping burgers at McD's. But this is much more fun than that.

Finally, you will get quite a lot of rejections from the micros - if you're doing well then different files will be rejected for various strange reasons   by the different agencies (if they all agree the lighting is rubbish or your horizon is tilted then I'm afraid the problem is you, not them) so the file inspections will cause you to have slightly different portfolios on different sites, but as long as you work doesn't have serious technical errors, like colour banding or sensor spots, Alamy will accept it all.

Anyway, I think I've demonstrated that the rational approach is to put everything everywhere - assuming you're happy to accept paltry returns for all your effort.

PS: if you want to minimise the possibility of Alamy buyers finding your work on the micros use a different alias for Alamy. That will stop them finding you by user name on the micros.

Quote from: pancaketom on February 14, 2018, 14:14

You might lose some sales from images that are on Alamy and the micros - that is they might sell for cents instead of $$. Of course if you just leave them on only the micros, they will never sell on Alamy

I think you can solve that conundrum mathematically: do 50%+ of buyers on Alamy go on to search the micros to see if they can find the same image cheaper? If not, then it's rational to assume that every Alamy sale lost by having your stuff on all sites will be offset by an Alamy sale gained. I think it's almost certain that a majority of Alamy buyers don't search all over the place to find a cheaper image - after all, we all agree that most people won't look beyond the first few pages of a search before deciding what image to buy, so the idea they will go trawling through the micros if they're prepared to use Alamy is pretty laughable.

Yet several magazines and websites use both Alamy and micros, and sometimes others too, as do many books.
So if someone only uses Alamy (I've never seen that, but they possibly exist), they won't go looking to see if a file they like is available on a micro (because buying one file at a Micro probably costs more than an Alamy bulk discount), they won't look at the micros.
However, if someone has an account at SS, Alamy and Getty (for example, which seems to be common), they will certainly check to see if a file is available on SS first.
But we can't know how often such a buyer satisfices with what they can get on SS, rather than pay (possibly) more on Alamy.

Years back, my biggest Alamy sale was of a subject which wasn't available elsewhere in its exact form; but 'similar enough for most purposes' was on iS (at least) at the time. Of course, I have no idea whether the buyer just needed that particular, exact image or whether they use Alamy only, for convenience. For example, Alamy has a file searching service, but presumably they don't repeatedly do it for search requesters who don't buy.

Interesting discussion.

As per my article (thanks Steve for adding the link), I've switched over to the RF and everywhere side for everything but the most 'premium' of images AND Live News.

Live News is something that nobody has mentioned on here and I think is important as an editorial photographer. Why would someone in their right mind submit a breaking news/time-sensitive image to micros is beyond me...by the time it goes through the approval process (many hours or days) and indexed it's old news.

I think Alamy Live News feed is brilliant and images are up for sale (RM) literally minutes after submitting. After a few days it goes into the normal stock archives. An argument can be made to duplicate such content everywhere after it is no longer live news and you've correctly changed it to RF on Alamy (and assuming there were no sales as RM).

I also submit Live News to Rex Features (RM) but they seem to be more picky about what they select than Alamy.

So rather than protecting your Alamy sale by  not using the micros, you end up missing out entirely - and as the figures show, all those 30-40c micro sales do add up in the long run.

Agreed. Not to mention the amount time spent sorting out images and second-guessing yourself which goes where and why.

BTW - a couple of days back I got $13 total from three sales on Alamy - is it really worth trying to protect that sort of value per sale by not supplying micros? On the same day one SS sale was for $10.

For Feb, my Dreamstime sales are beating Alamy, considering I have 5,500 images on Alamy and only 1,500 on DT I love Alamy but I'm finding sales on there so unreliable / sporadic
 

Quote from: Brasilnut on February 15, 2018, 05:46

I love Alamy but I'm finding sales on there so unreliable / sporadic

That's it in a nutshell, really.

Sadly, I gave to agree, but when most  Micros are competing directly with them, it's hardly surprising.

I license images from my own website directly to magazines, including publishers such as Time, Inc. (Coastal Living magazine) and Smithsonian. I also regularly license stock for calendars. If those images were on the micros, I think I would have a tough time licensing them for those uses. Some of these places also use micros, and if they could get my work there, why bother elsewhere? Many magazines that use both will pay $200-300 for a quarter page and that image will be right next to one they got for a subscription or perhaps a $100 EL of which we'll get $36 or less, so why give them the chance to get your photo for less? Here, I'm talking about the kind of travel images they are willing to pay more for, not concepts and backgrounds that do best on the micros and where the kind of money you can make on the micros will always top what you'd get for that kind of image on Alamy. 

I also sell fine art through galleries (and POD sites), to institutional buyers, and have been approached by a hotel, so keeping a large portion of my portfolio RM so I can control these sales is important - I'd be comfortable with high end RF since that doesn't impact my fine art sales.

If not for that, I might decide it was easier to just put everything everywhere, although I'm not sure the time and effort are worth it.

I think I'm the one that reported that I couldn't find any evidence of an Alamy buyer searching elsewhere (which is not the same thing as proving it!). Here is my latest set of analysis on the topic:

https://www.backyardsilver.com/2018/01/selling-image-alamy-agencies/

Alex also did some analysis and had a discussion with Alamy's content manager here:

https://brutallyhonestmicrostock.com/2018/02/06/do-alamy-buyers-search-elsewhere-answers-from-alamy/

The end result - I submit all my images to all sites now, but editorial and commercial and use RF on Alamy.

Steve

Thank you! Now I have got a lot of information from this thread, thank you all...but I have two more questions:
If you decide to only upload to Alamy, is it better as RM or as RF?
What about illustrations on Alamy?

Quote

I just wrote a series of articles that were published over the past few weeks specifically directed at people like you who are new to Alamy but who have been on the micros, and it includes examples of some of my moderate-sellers on there as well. You can find the articles here:

And thanks for the article links - I wasn't aware of Great Escape and will investigate further!

Thanks

steve

I clicked through Great Escape and you have to pay them to be a part of the operation. I stopped there. Sounds like another scam to send wannabes to micro while they make their profit off of the fee you pay them.  Really classic "anyone can do it and make good money."