Didn't notice this was new in Nov 2012, I must not be getting the news feed or I just missed it? Thanks!

http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2012/11/15/5260.aspx

It appears that the buyers can see where something has been used or licensed before. I don't see where we can or ever did for RF?

The RF I've sold, list my file and the download size, nothing else?

30 MB
6750 x 1530 pixels
1 MB compressed

Can you explain the what size question? I may be missing it, but mine just show the file size, and nothing about the use size?

So today's new Alamy experience was an Alamy iQ sale. Royalty free, listed like this "Royalty-free  Usage: iQ sale: Corporate Package Use � Internal use and external non-advertising use". The gross was $76.72 & alamy took their 40%

So with an iQ sale, I apparently don't see any information about what size was purchased, so it's hard to say if this was a huge discount on a $365 sale or a small discount on a $95 sale. Has anyone else had an iQ sale on a royalty free image? I tried searching Alamy's forums but got a "runtime error" page. Is there any way (other than writing to support) to find out what size they got for $76.72?

I watched that video yesterday too - that's all I know about iQ other than a largely uninformative video for contributors on the subject. View it here if you have time to kill.

For RF, I can see that it would be useful to know that your company had already bought that item, so even if you don't have to pay for new uses, knowing that you already own it is helpful if the site wouldn't already tell you that. As far as keeping track of things you owned via other means, it sounds a bit like iTunes and building a cloud library that includes physical CDs you own. In that case you don't upload anything; they just note ownership. In the Alamy case, I can't see uploading images from my company to their site so that other divisions can download and use them, but perhaps that's what they're offering?

On the size question, what I see for a typical (not Novel Use) RF sale is the size the customer purchased as well as the price they paid. I've been looking to see how those prices matched up - or didn't - to the prices shown on the site. For the iQ sale, that size information was missing.

And on a different subject entirely, I had a sale yesterday where the price paid was higher than the list price for the size - $55.78 for a 450 x 300 pixel sale that "lists" for $49. If they'd like to do that with a $365 sale, that'd be fine with me

But I shouldn't complain too much - for December, Alamy comes in above BigStock and CanStock in the middle tier (unless there's another sale, 123rf is above them)

What is an iQ sale?

I got one today, RM, very wide usage and even any size, for just US$73.

What is an iQ sale?

I got one today, RM, very wide usage and even any size, for just US$73.

I got one too today. For $ 75.62

AIUI, though I could be wrong, an iQ sale would be a repeat use for a company so it would be discounted.
Though I've had very wide use and timescale qute a bit lower than that price, not IQ.

It's bad, but still better than having to join hundreds of small local agencies or distributors worldwide not to mention it would be impossible and time consuming and that it could take forever and that they could ask keywording in their own language.

As bad as it looks, it's still better than nothing.

Prices are going down everywhere for editorial because there's a real crisis in the print business.
Last i've heard yesterday was the Herald Tribune changing name and being soon sold as "NYT International Edition", this is a very bad sign of the times, it smell of last straw of desperation before closing the HT altogether and it's just a matter of time.

...they can't even be bothered to tell you how much you made on a sale (you need to substract their commission from the total; I assume they're hoping you won't notice the actual money in your pocket and focus on the gross number.

Only just now (literally, I was looking to see if I was over $175 to get a payment due tomorrow) I noticed a Net Revenue link in My Alamy, which has a 'due' column which tells you what you got - only for cleared sales.
As I just noticed it, I don't know how long that link has been there - I always subtracted the commissions from the total; though when it's a direct sale, nowadays it's the same as their split.

To round out the month, I received a distributor sale today - $26.46 for a 1580 x 1053 that "lists" for $190.

$26.46 was the gross. The distributor gets 40% off the top - $10.58 - and then Alamy and I split the rest, leaving me with $7.94

It doesn't list the distributor, so I have no way of knowing if this is just some Alamy subsidiary - which would then allow them to keep 70% of the total. If you ask Alamy will they tell you which distributor sold this image?

I want to like Alamy, but they take forever for sales to clear, their payout is $250 even though they're selling more and more cheaply, the discounting is massive and they can't even be bothered to tell you how much you made on a sale (you need to substract their commission from the total; I assume they're hoping you won't notice the actual money in your pocket and focus on the gross number.

Hi there,

Sorry to read about your frustration with Alamy - I'd just like to clarify a few points raised:

>> "I have no way of knowing if this is just some Alamy subsidiary - which would then allow them to keep 70% of the total"

All distributor sales are third party, meaning that the split goes 40% to distributor, 30% to Alamy, 30% to photographer. There are no exceptions to this with distributor sales.

>> "they take forever for sales to clear"

Unlike other agencies/portals, we report sales in real time. This means that you can see exactly when the sale was made and an invoice raised to the customer. A sale will clear when we have received payment from the customer and 45 days has passed since the time of invoice. A sale will take 45 days as this gives us a chance to offer a refund period to the customer, but also protect us against credit card fraud. Some invoices take longer than 45 days to clear if a customer doesn't pay on time. If this happens, our credit control team work around the clock to secure payment. Most other agencies only report the sale to you when the money is in their hands, making it appear as though their sales clear much quicker. The reality is that the timescales will be very similar to ours.

>>"their payout is $250"

Our payout threshold has been $175 for quite some time now.

>> " they can't even be bothered to tell you how much you made on a sale"

I can only presume that you are looking at the "summary of images sold" only. There are two sections of the site within "My Alamy" (that have always been available) that give you the full breakdown of your sales: Balance of Account and Net Revenue. If you look in Net Revenue, you can produce a report that breaks down everything from the image ref (Alamy ref and your ref), to the commission split, the price, the date of invoice and the date cleared etc. You can export all this and download to excel if you wish for your records.

Many thanks

James Allsworth
Content Executive

Alamy

Quote from: jsnover on February 27, 2013, 21:16

To round out the month, I received a distributor sale today - $26.46 for a 1580 x 1053 that "lists" for $190.

$26.46 was the gross. The distributor gets 40% off the top - $10.58 - and then Alamy and I split the rest, leaving me with $7.94

It doesn't list the distributor, so I have no way of knowing if this is just some Alamy subsidiary - which would then allow them to keep 70% of the total. If you ask Alamy will they tell you which distributor sold this image?

...

Hi there,

Sorry to read about your frustration with Alamy - I'd just like to clarify a few points raised:

>> "I have no way of knowing if this is just some Alamy subsidiary - which would then allow them to keep 70% of the total"

All distributor sales are third party, meaning that the split goes 40% to distributor, 30% to Alamy, 30% to photographer. There are no exceptions to this with distributor sales.

......

Many thanks

James Allsworth
Content Executive

Alamy

Why does the third party distributor get a bigger cut than the artist?

[Why does the third party distributor get a bigger cut than the artist?

Good point! I can imagine (putting words into Alamy's mouth) that they'd say this is the contract they have with distributors. Fair enough, but over the last several years, Alamy's commission has changed from 30% to 40% to (now) 50% and all of the change has come out of the contributor's hide.

Alamy revised the contract with contributors, with notice, and they can do the same with distributors. I think that the distributor should get a maximum of 25% of the gross - and if they want more money, sell more licenses.

I just went back to check and my first Alamy sale in 2007 had a commission for Alamy of 30% - I'm not making up numbers for rhetorical effect...

Quote from: jsnover on March 05, 2013, 15:46

Quote from: Poncke on March 05, 2013, 13:27

[Why does the third party distributor get a bigger cut than the artist?

Good point! I can imagine (putting words into Alamy's mouth) that they'd say this is the contract they have with distributors. Fair enough, but over the last several years, Alamy's commission has changed from 30% to 40% to (now) 50% and all of the change has come out of the contributor's hide.

Alamy revised the contract with contributors, with notice, and they can do the same with distributors. I think that the distributor should get a maximum of 25% of the gross - and if they want more money, sell more licenses.

I just went back to check and my first Alamy sale in 2007 had a commission for Alamy of 30% - I'm not making up numbers for rhetorical effect...

The commission on your first sale was actually 35% to Alamy in total. Our commission split back then (2007) was 65% to the photographer. It will be seen in your balance of account as 30% to Alamy then you will also see an account fee that is an additional 5% that takes the total to 35.

In order to be able to work with third party distributors, we have to negotiate the best deals possible and 40% is standard across the industry. Yes, it could be viewed as unfortunate that the distributor gets more than the artist but again, this is not an unusual trend in the industry. Indeed, I could mention many agencies that take more than the artist for direct sales, not even third party.

The pricing can be lower in these markets than what you would see in your primary markets but we also see very high value sales also.

It's also worth baring in mind that if you are not comfortable with the third party additional revenue opportunities you can opt out during the month of April.

Best wishes

James

And I will be doing this in a HEARTBEAT!!

Quote from: Alamy on March 06, 2013, 04:29

...Yes, it could be viewed as unfortunate that the distributor gets more than the artist but again, this is not an unusual trend in the industry. Indeed, I could mention many agencies that take more than the artist for direct sales, not even third party.
...

Thanks for the response. Regarding the other agencies taking more than 50% of direct sales, that's true, although some of us are slowly shedding them unless there's some really good reason to keep the agency. The big "bribe" to contributors for lousy splits is such a high volume of sales that the monthly total from our portfolios is high. When the volume of sales is low, as it is in Alamy's case, it makes it really hard to justify. Shutterstock and (before I left them) iStock make much more per month from my portfolio than Alamy does.

I guess I'll go see about opting out of third party deals and Novel Use (got one of those the other day and I thought they were going away/gone).

Your volume of sales on Alamy is dependent on your competition, style of content and keywording. It's true that for your style of content, volume of sales will likely be lower than what you would expect on high volume/subscription based micro sites but high volume is still possible on Alamy and of course our average price will be much higher. Ultimately Alamy will work better for some photographers rather than others, but it's part of the reason we remain committed to being non-exclusive and not tying our contributors into lengthy, restrictive contracts. Alamy won't be for *everyone* but most photographers should at least be using Alamy as an additional source of income, part of a wider network of distributors for their work.

Thinking specifically of the distribution scheme, although you will sometimes see lower value sales compared to that of your primary territories, it does account for around 20% of Alamy's total sales and we will often see 4 figure, sometimes 5 figure, individual sales come in via distribution. If you want your images to reach clients in countries Alamy doesn't currently target directly then we would always recommend opting in. Of course we understand though that this will not be for everyone, which is why you have the option to opt out should you wish.

Best wishes

James