MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: ribtoks on October 26, 2021, 05:44
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Hello folks
Just published an Alamy review over in Xpiks blog: https://xpiksapp.com/blog/alamy-review/ (https://xpiksapp.com/blog/alamy-review/)
What was your experience with Alamy? I'd also be genuinely interested if there's anything missing in the blogpost. Please let me know!
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Hello folks
Just published an Alamy review over in Xpiks blog: https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/14814-ridiculous-payment-rates/?ct=1635245410 (https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/14814-ridiculous-payment-rates/?ct=1635245410)
What was your experience with Alamy? I'd also be genuinely interested if there's anything missing in the blogpost. Please let me know!
When I look at the forum of Alamy, people complain about payments even under 0.10 cents!! and they have no idea how that works exactly. Forum: https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/14814-ridiculous-payment-rates/?ct=1635245410 (ftp://discussion.alamy.com/topic/14814-ridiculous-payment-rates/?ct=1635245410)
I am a small earner and will go in 2022 to 20 percent (Silver). In fact, it's no longer worth it for me.
(Silver: After 1 year selling with us – or from July 2022 for existing contributors – you’ll move to Silver and a 20% commission rate if you’ve sold less than $250 gross on Alamy in the previous 12 months. Hitting $250 gross sales immediately moves you back up to Gold.)
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? I'd also be genuinely interested if there's anything missing in the blogpost. Please let me know!
You're missing that Alamy is not the agency with the highest comissions in the indusry. I had commissions as low as 0.2$ with them, so even lower than the Shutterstock minimum and these small comissions for a few cents or few dollars are becoming more and more common.
Yes, big sales can happen, but so can they on other agencies as well.
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I quit Alamy back in February '21 after not having one sale for 12 months and the last commission was around $3.
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Alamy is a shadow of its former self.
You get commisions as low as 10 cents and the occasional big sale is less frequent thant the occasional big sale on SS, for example. And sales in general are less frequent than what it use to be.
You are are two years too late with your article. ;)
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I had commissions as low as 0.2$ with them, so even lower than the Shutterstock minimum and these small comissions for a few cents or few dollars are becoming more and more common.
Just curious, what were those commissions before? And are you still uploading?
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You get commisions as low as 10 cents and the occasional big sale is less frequent thant the occasional big sale on SS, for example. And sales in general are less frequent than what it use to be.
What content are you talking about here? RF/RM, editorial/news, photo/illustration?
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You get commisions as low as 10 cents and the occasional big sale is less frequent thant the occasional big sale on SS, for example. And sales in general are less frequent than what it use to be.
What content are you talking about here? RF/RM, editorial/news, photo/illustration?
RF photos.
And believe me, I know what I'm talking about.
Looking at your sales graph, I can say that I make several times more than you, with a fraction of your port size.
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Big sales do get reported from Alamy (but remember, most people quote gross on their forum, unless they state otherwise), but it's a long time since I had a three-figure sale there, even gross. My biggest single sales for the past several years, as well as my highest overall annual and monthly sales for ever have been via iStock - even nowadays when iS is for me a small fraction of its former earnings. Different port on both, RM on Alamy. Some tiny-value RM sales on Alamy which are only slightly different from RF uses (maybe limited to 30 years, or 'web use only' - in fact as some of these sales would need ELs on iS, I'd earn more there.
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Your piece reads like PR from Alamy, not a review from a contributor's point of view.
I've been with them for a long time and will easily keep the Gold royalty rate, but Alamy (for me) is not only a shadow of its former self but a minor income producer. Admittedly I'm miffed this month that I started to see the sales that were 21 cents gross royalty - 8 cents for me! Even the "big" sales are now more likely to be $19.99 (gross sale). Whereas once the large sales were (gross) $250 or so, the last time I saw one of those was in May.
As far as I can see the acquisition by PA has done nothing for sales volume.
It is misleading to say that sales are posted in real time - a customer download and use doesn't count as a sale, so you can (and I have) founded uses of my images that weren't yet shown as sales. It's only when the customer reports the use to Alamy (or a contributor chases them up to find out why a use of an image, credited to Alamy, hasn't shown up in the sales list) that it's a sale and posted. And they also have a policy (as I found out when chasing up a sale that hadn't cleared after 6 months or so) that they don't pay contributors until an invoice is fully paid by the client, so for the "large" customers, that can mean really long delays in contributors receiving their money.
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You are not mentioning some of the minuses:
- you can only opt out in April out of Distributor sales
- A refund is not just a rare occurrence. It happens quite often, usually with high value sales.
- you can't opt out of Affiliate sales (are you an affiliate?)
- Distributor sales can sometimes be reported after 6 months (what's up with "the sale that is posted in your Dashboard in real-time" mention ??? )
- Alamy waits for the clients to report their downloads, and I once found that they completely missed one of my sales. There were probably also other.
- If you want a list of all the downloads of your photos, to see what sale has not appeared in your sales report, they can't provide it
- When Alamy changed the commission structure, if one of your sales was reported with delay, after the new commission went into effect, even if the download and use by the client happened before the change, you only received the reduced commission. When asked about this, they said that a purchase is not considered made when the client is downloading or even using the photo ???
Maybe I forgot some of the other issues...but the sales there have been very low in the past months (or maybe they just haven't recognized them as sales yet!), so I stopped caring about it as you certainly can't get anywhere with their contributor support.
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Yeah, that is not what one would normally call a review.
From my perspective, Alamy has both pros and cons, which I won't go over. I've been there since 2006. I joined SS and AS two years ago with the same portfolio. While Alamy does remain my highest earner of the three, it's pretty close. AS is next highest with only 9000 rather than 12000 images. SS has been falling off and is the least profitable.
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As others have said above - Alamy is a shadow of its former self (as are SS and IS and pretty much every other place).
When I started their claim to have the highest commissions in the industry might have been true at 60% of often pretty good prices. Then 50% (40% with distributor sales) now 40% and as low as <24% for distributor sales - and soon the silver contributors will really get screwed. Fortunately I have enough sales that I won't fall to that point.
I already have more sales this year than all last year, but significantly less income both gross and especially my take. Those sub $2 (gross) sales really don't add up much.
If you wanted to be write a more useful article you could explain how Alamy search works, and how their odd reporting of sales and accounting works. I am not sure anyone knows how the search really works though, and this includes the people that run it.
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Even if they would give 90% then still 90% of nothing is still nothing. I, personally, have better "luck" with Adobe Stock (especially), SS and iStock. Alamy is the same to me as Dreamstime. Nothing ever happens (but in your dreams :))
I would assume both will dissapear shortly unless they sell really different photo's then I have submitted to them.
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Please update your blog with such examples of "high comissions":
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Just curious here, you say: "it takes up to a year to see your first sale".
Why is that? Your photo is worth while or it's not. Why should it take one year waiting time to see your first sale? I have my best sales within the first month for new photo's and then some pictures will keep on selling.
But in which world would the logic be that the same photo with Alamy does not get sold in the first year and then starts selling?
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Their 'chasing up' of undeclared sales is patchy at best, and you can wait months - even when it's an established client with an 'account manager' - and often needs repeated chasing up on your part, and you can lose out, e.g.:
1. Their current sale price is less than would have been the case when the photo was bought. Client pays lower price.
The client has gained by trying to cheat. Instead, they should be charged the full 'rack rate', especially repeat offenders.
2. The client 'disappears' over the six months or more they have in credit and the money never comes.
3. The image was used when your rate was 50%, but not chased up, and even if you chased it up while your rate was still 50%, you'll still only get 40% if the payment is made after the date your rate changed.
4. Refunds can be made at least 18 months after the sale was made. Probably more.
5. You'd think misuses would be easier to chase up with RM files, but not, it seems, at Alamy. :(
All the above have happened to me. I'm sure others can pitch in with other disadvantages.
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Your piece reads like PR from Alamy, not a review from a contributor's point of view.
Agree 100% It looks like it was written by a shill rather than any kind of independent review. A true review would cover the negatives as well. Plus I'm not sure it's correct. Doesn't Canva pay 35%? That might work out to be higher than at Alamy. A more balanced treatment would give your review more credibility.
My last sale there was for $245, netting me $83, but those are few and far between. Still worth submitting there at least occasionally but that would change if I dropped below Gold. I haven't experienced the really low-value sales so far. After the SS debacle, I was planning to go all in on Alamy with exclusive content RM - at least then could be happy with higher returns for rare sales (which I can do since my income doesn't depend on stock). However, they then took away any incentive to be exclusive so dropped that idea.
If you want more history of Alamy, I believe commissions there started at 60% for us, then went to 50% and now 40% - you should mention that in your history section. The main problem at Alamy has always been a low volume of sales. Of course they promised volume would increase with each commission cut but that panned out as well as it has at every other agency. Most contributors I suspect are neutral on Alamy - happy with the higher rates (even though significantly decreased from in the recent past) but hard to get excited with the low sales volumes.
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Just curious here, you say: "it takes up to a year to see your first sale".
Why is that? Your photo is worth while or it's not. Why should it take one year waiting time to see your first sale? I have my best sales within the first month for new photo's and then some pictures will keep on selling.
But in which world would the logic be that the same photo with Alamy does not get sold in the first year and then starts selling?
You don't get told about sales for at least six weeks, except for personal use, as far as I know and have been told. I don't sell Live News, but they have a wait of some weeks, but are more likely to have them seen & reported on publication.
You can't believe anything you read, and neither can I!
On Friday I had a photo zoomed and sold, and it was for an editorial website, so the above was duff gen. ::)
I've had very few 'relatively fast notices of sales' from Alamy, i.e. hearing of them within a year of upload, even of files which went on to get repeat sales.
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If you wanted to be write a more useful article you could explain how Alamy search works,
Pick me, pick me!
Any word or phrase in the caption or keywords can be combined with any other word or phrase in the caption or keywords and appear in a search.
Individual words can be taken from one comma-separated phrase and added to any other word from any other phrase. How high random word/phrase combinations appear in a search depends on the size of the search and the algorithm which is in use at the time.
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I know for sure of 2 images that I found by chance on websites for which I never saw any money, respectively were never displayed as download.
When I wanted to investigate the matter after a few months, the websites were no longer findable.
Since the images are hard to find anyway, the number of unpaid images is probably much higher.
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If I fall to Silver level in July 2022 I'll delete my portfolio immediately!
How the other agencies combined are making gross sales for hundreds of thousands in 12 months with the same portfolio, but Alamy can't?!
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Certainly true that Alamy has one of the highest commissions in the industry, but suffice to say that they have one of the lowest sales volumes.
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6 sales today 2 bucks apiece ::)
Thats all I can say :(
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I also think the OP missed how Alamy has transitioned from more of a mid stock company to micro stock. What has changed are royalties....and how low they sell content for….they have gone down the toilet. What hasn't changed is the low sales volume. So looking at that combination alone gives you the high level "now and then" comparison. They've taken commissions from 60% to 40% (less if through a distributor) and my guess is that they will come out with another adjustment to 30%. Why? Because they can and the industry proves it.
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Certainly true that Alamy has one of the highest commissions in the industry, but suffice to say that they have one of the lowest sales volumes.
Certainly not (anymore)!
10 cents commissions are far from being "one of the highest commissions in the industry".
Between 2013 and 2020, Alamy use to account for 5% of my total revenue.
In 2021, it dropped down to 2.5%, which is in line with 123RF (2.4%), DP (2.6%), and slightly better than DT (2.1%).
That's an out-of-touch self-promoting article.
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Certainly true that Alamy has one of the highest commissions in the industry, but suffice to say that they have one of the lowest sales volumes.
There you have it, plain and simple, without all the gory details.
If I fall to Silver level in July 2022 I'll delete my portfolio immediately!
How the other agencies combined are making gross sales for hundreds of thousands in 12 months with the same portfolio, but Alamy can't?!
Go look? I see I'm already over the $250 threshold for next year. (if I understand that right, gross sales) And I set the year to be from July 1st 2021, I don't recall what date Alamy is using, as "last year". https://www.alamy.com/alamycontributorreports/Reports.aspx?Rep=0&r2checked=True&drpval=12&netType=1&sdate=01-Jul-2020&edate=27-Oct-2021 (https://www.alamy.com/alamycontributorreports/Reports.aspx?Rep=0&r2checked=True&drpval=12&netType=1&sdate=01-Jul-2020&edate=27-Oct-2021)
Something that hasn't been pointed out, and I don't know if it's worth mention? Alamy is not Microstock, what they usually get licensed for us, isn't the same as the majority of Microstock sites do. Yes there's some of that, but it's a different market. Since the beginning of time for me, which is roughly 2009 on Alamy, I have sold one food photo and two illustrations. Everything else is Location, Travel Scenic or personalities such as sports.
My best selling image on SS with 2,600 downloads and my best selling on Adobe 152 downloads, since Adobe bought the place and I signed up, have never sold once on Alamy. And just a side note, I've never had any image sell two times on Alamy. Just not the same from what I see. Others may have different results.
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Certainly true that Alamy has one of the highest commissions in the industry, but suffice to say that they have one of the lowest sales volumes.
Certainly not (anymore)!
10 cents commissions are far from being "one of the highest commissions in the industry".
Between 2013 and 2020, Alamy use to account for 5% of my total revenue.
In 2021, it dropped down to 2.5%, which is in line with 123RF (2.4%), DP (2.6%), and slightly better than DT (2.1%).
That's an out-of-touch self-promoting article.
Highest Commission Percentages, but right, 40% of nothing is still nothing. And 40% of a quarter is pretty slim. What was the use? I don't want to get anything like yours, but my worst was the latest DL: "Usage: Editorial, Editorial Website, 10 year, Worldwide, single article with archival right in perpituty" $3 and I got $1.20 for a website. If that's the future, I'll be at 20% in 2023 = and gone?
Wow, what's a quarter DL license get, besides your dime, a thumbnail view? ;)
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With the influx of sales at nanostock prices waiting for them to clear for months is completely unacceptable. I have several that are still uncleared after 7 months!
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Certainly true that Alamy has one of the highest commissions in the industry, but suffice to say that they have one of the lowest sales volumes.
Certainly not (anymore)!
10 cents commissions are far from being "one of the highest commissions in the industry".
Between 2013 and 2020, Alamy use to account for 5% of my total revenue.
In 2021, it dropped down to 2.5%, which is in line with 123RF (2.4%), DP (2.6%), and slightly better than DT (2.1%).
That's an out-of-touch self-promoting article.
Highest Commission Percentages, but right, 40% of nothing is still nothing. And 40% of a quarter is pretty slim. What was the use? I don't want to get anything like yours, but my worst was the latest DL: "Usage: Editorial, Editorial Website, 10 year, Worldwide, single article with archival right in perpituty" $3 and I got $1.20 for a website. If that's the future, I'll be at 20% in 2023 = and gone?
Wow, what's a quarter DL license get, besides your dime, a thumbnail view? ;)
The title of this thread is bragging about "the highest comissions in the industry", not about "percentages".
Those 10 cents sales I had are not just for thumbnails, but full size downloads for worldwide, single use across website and/or digital publication such as E-book or PDF, any size, any placement, in perpetuity.
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Certainly true that Alamy has one of the highest commissions in the industry, but suffice to say that they have one of the lowest sales volumes.
Certainly not (anymore)!
10 cents commissions are far from being "one of the highest commissions in the industry".
Between 2013 and 2020, Alamy use to account for 5% of my total revenue.
In 2021, it dropped down to 2.5%, which is in line with 123RF (2.4%), DP (2.6%), and slightly better than DT (2.1%).
That's an out-of-touch self-promoting article.
Highest Commission Percentages, but right, 40% of nothing is still nothing. And 40% of a quarter is pretty slim. What was the use? I don't want to get anything like yours, but my worst was the latest DL: "Usage: Editorial, Editorial Website, 10 year, Worldwide, single article with archival right in perpituty" $3 and I got $1.20 for a website. If that's the future, I'll be at 20% in 2023 = and gone?
Wow, what's a quarter DL license get, besides your dime, a thumbnail view? ;)
The title of this thread is bragging about "the highest comissions in the industry", not about "percentages".
Those 10 cents sales I had are not just for thumbnails, but full size downloads for worldwide, single use across website and/or digital publication such as E-book or PDF, any size, any placement, in perpetuity.
Yeah, you're right. I was looking at who you quoted, not the title.
So take it from what I wrote as a better way to say it, IMHO, but I still agree with you, 40% of nothing, is still nothing.
Alamy is among the Highest Commission Percentages.
Certainly not highest commissions or highest paying per month. And I hate to speak into the future about a current situation, but in July for many people, they will be getting 20% or less. And then those people will be making half of whatever, at reduced prices, at the same time.
10 cents commissions are far from being "one of the highest commissions in the industry".
Right
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My average earned on Alamy is about $10/net vs average of 70cents on the micros. Unfortunately volumes aren't 10+x though.
I like Alamy, have had some huge sales, although the lack of consistency is a problem.
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Agree with previous posters. Even Alamy's own Marketing dept couldn't do better.
Just adding that "Alamy contributor payout is the highest in the industry with contributors receiving 40%"
is incorrect.
Can think of two agencies that return 50% for non-exclusive content.
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What is http://www.crissycarter.com/? (http://www.crissycarter.com/?) The sign up link in the Alamy aticle leads to http://www.crissycarter.com/contributor-signup.html (http://www.crissycarter.com/contributor-signup.html)
EDIT: didn't want to click it in case it lead to a virus, but braved it, seems to be a spoof of the Alamy website in Chinese?
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Good point.
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"Revenue at PA Media Group in 2020 was up by a quarter on the year before despite challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. ...
... The group put the increase in revenues partly down to its acquisition of Alamy in February of last year, which took it into the stock imagery market for the first time. "
NB: that was even before their commission cuts, but not good enough for the greedy b*stards.
https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/pa-media-revenue-up-quarter-in-2020-after-alamy-buyout-despite-covid-19/ (https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/pa-media-revenue-up-quarter-in-2020-after-alamy-buyout-despite-covid-19/)
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What is [url]http://www.crissycarter.com/?[/url] ([url]http://www.crissycarter.com/?[/url]) The sign up link in the Alamy aticle leads to [url]http://www.crissycarter.com/contributor-signup.html[/url] ([url]http://www.crissycarter.com/contributor-signup.html[/url])
EDIT: didn't want to click it in case it lead to a virus, but braved it, seems to be a spoof of the Alamy website in Chinese?
Or trolling for IDs and Passwords? Very strange.
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You are not mentioning some of the minuses:
- you can only opt out in April out of Distributor sales
- A refund is not just a rare occurrence. It happens quite often, usually with high value sales.
- you can't opt out of Affiliate sales (are you an affiliate?)
- Distributor sales can sometimes be reported after 6 months (what's up with "the sale that is posted in your Dashboard in real-time" mention ??? )
- Alamy waits for the clients to report their downloads, and I once found that they completely missed one of my sales. There were probably also other.
- If you want a list of all the downloads of your photos, to see what sale has not appeared in your sales report, they can't provide it
- When Alamy changed the commission structure, if one of your sales was reported with delay, after the new commission went into effect, even if the download and use by the client happened before the change, you only received the reduced commission. When asked about this, they said that a purchase is not considered made when the client is downloading or even using the photo ???
Maybe I forgot some of the other issues...but the sales there have been very low in the past months (or maybe they just haven't recognized them as sales yet!), so I stopped caring about it as you certainly can't get anywhere with their contributor support.
Thank you for this! I updated the blogpost with almost all of these items that were also confirmed by other contributors.
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The title of this thread is bragging about "the highest comissions in the industry", not about "percentages".
Yep, we meant "percentages". Sorry for the confusion!
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What is [url]http://www.crissycarter.com/?[/url] ([url]http://www.crissycarter.com/?[/url]) The sign up link in the Alamy aticle leads to [url]http://www.crissycarter.com/contributor-signup.html[/url] ([url]http://www.crissycarter.com/contributor-signup.html[/url])
Whoops, that was some scammy website with HTTP-only (no encryption for username/password) that got there by mistake. The link is fixed now.
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A good title can be: Alamy review: the highest comissions in industry en the lowest amount of downloads result in nothing :)
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What is [url]http://www.crissycarter.com/?[/url] ([url]http://www.crissycarter.com/?[/url]) The sign up link in the Alamy aticle leads to [url]http://www.crissycarter.com/contributor-signup.html[/url] ([url]http://www.crissycarter.com/contributor-signup.html[/url])
Whoops, that was some scammy website with HTTP-only (no encryption for username/password) that got there by mistake. The link is fixed now.
Weird. So was your website hacked? I think people deserve to know how tight your security is as you also offer other products that may involve users inputting account information. Also hope not too many people followed the link and had all their information stolen before you spotted it!!!!!!
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Weird. So was your website hacked? I think people deserve to know how tight your security is
No, the website was not hacked. It's a static website that "cannot be hacked" (in your understanding of that word) and has no user data in any case.
The problem with the link was that this is a guest post and I copied text with a link without following it first. In general I check all the links before posting, but this one I somehow forgot to click. Anyways it's my fault that I did not double check before posting. Good that it was spotted.
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What is [url]http://www.crissycarter.com/?[/url] ([url]http://www.crissycarter.com/?[/url]) The sign up link in the Alamy aticle leads to [url]http://www.crissycarter.com/contributor-signup.html[/url] ([url]http://www.crissycarter.com/contributor-signup.html[/url])
Whoops, that was some scammy website with HTTP-only (no encryption for username/password) that got there by mistake. The link is fixed now.
Weird. So was your website hacked? I think people deserve to know how tight your security is as you also offer other products that may involve users inputting account information. Also hope not too many people followed the link and had all their information stolen before you spotted it!!!!!!
But crissycarter.com is hacked? I took the time to write to her.
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I took the time to write to her.
Very noble of you.
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Pete is noble 8)
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Pete is noble 8)
So are rotting grapes, that make fine wines? :o