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Author Topic: How are your RM files doing?  (Read 17288 times)

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« on: September 17, 2012, 11:10 »
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RM is a green field with still untapped potentials for microstockers. Some microstock sites are making an inroad into it. It is less competitive than RF files which are reaching saturation.

How are you fairing in RM?



Ed

« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2012, 11:24 »
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RM is a green field with still untapped potentials for microstockers. Some microstock sites are making an inroad into it. It is less competitive than RF files which are reaching saturation.

How are you fairing in RM?

Which microstock sites are "making an inroad"?  Which micros are licensing images on an RM basis?

Can you explain "untapped potential"?  RM has been around much longer than the RF and the Subscription RF model.

My RM portfolio is doing just fine.  Quite frankly, it is just as, if not more, competitive that RF at the micros.

« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2012, 11:30 »
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My RM portfolios isn't doing very well on alamy the past few months but the monthly sales thread shows that some people are doing nicely there.  Hopefully I'm just going through a dip and things will pick up.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #3 on: September 17, 2012, 11:48 »
0
My RM portfolios isn't doing very well on alamy the past few months but the monthly sales thread shows that some people are doing nicely there.  Hopefully I'm just going through a dip and things will pick up.

You do know that most of the people reporting good sales there have ports of around 10K or even more?

« Reply #4 on: September 17, 2012, 12:00 »
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At Alamy no. At Getty doing just fine. Portfolio of around 1500 images.

« Reply #5 on: September 17, 2012, 12:06 »
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My RM portfolios isn't doing very well on alamy the past few months but the monthly sales thread shows that some people are doing nicely there.  Hopefully I'm just going through a dip and things will pick up.

You do know that most of the people reporting good sales there have ports of around 10K or even more?
Yes, its not easy but at least its possible.  I will look at other sites for RM one day but I'm concentrating on them for now.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #6 on: September 17, 2012, 12:18 »
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My RM portfolios isn't doing very well on alamy the past few months but the monthly sales thread shows that some people are doing nicely there.  Hopefully I'm just going through a dip and things will pick up.

You do know that most of the people reporting good sales there have ports of around 10K or even more?
Yes, its not easy but at least its possible.  I will look at other sites for RM one day but I'm concentrating on them for now.

Oh indeed, me too. In fact within the past few days I had an Alamy sale which a friend pointed out iStock would have rejected for 'flat light', (even though it's within a high courtyard, therefore the best you could hope for is that the light isn't too harsh), yet someone was prepared to pay over $100 for it.
 :)

Poncke

« Reply #7 on: September 17, 2012, 15:05 »
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RM is a green field with still untapped potentials for microstockers. Some microstock sites are making an inroad into it. It is less competitive than RF files which are reaching saturation.

How are you fairing in RM?

Alamy has 30.000.000 photos online, thats hardly less competitive.

« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2012, 22:30 »
0
Among RM shooters few come as profitable as Jeff Greenberg in Alamy. He is probably one of the two top earners there.

I've found an interesting quote here:

Search Alamy for Jeff Greenberg.  His portfolio has over 78,000 images and counting...mostly street photography.  He's a frequent poster on their forums and openly shares his sales numbers (well over $100K per year in earnings from Alamy alone).

Looks like we may see more such productive RM shooters in microstock.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2012, 22:41 by Sion »

« Reply #9 on: September 17, 2012, 22:32 »
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You do know that most of the people reporting good sales there have ports of around 10K or even more?

In this days and age many of us have double of that figure.  :)

But not good sales. Just enough sales. A lot of hard work with diminishing earnings.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2012, 05:31 by Sion »

« Reply #10 on: September 17, 2012, 23:51 »
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I rarely uploaded to Alamy in the past three years. Still get sales, but the prices are much much lower, my income is 1/3 of what it was.

« Reply #11 on: September 18, 2012, 00:36 »
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Jeffs photography and travel is exactly what will sell at Alamy. Its tailormade for Alamy. I know of a medical photographer who left Alamy around 2008 because lack of sales. He then joined another Rm agency and for the last two years he is earning a small fortune.
I think with Rm its very important one actually picks the right agency, the agency that have the clients for specific photography.
My thoughts anyway.

grp_photo

« Reply #12 on: September 18, 2012, 00:51 »
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I think with Rm its very important one actually picks the right agency,
I think its very important one actually picks the right agency regardless of RM or RF. It still hurts me to see some stuff going to the micros which would do so much better at the right macro agency.

« Reply #13 on: September 18, 2012, 02:56 »
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I think with Rm its very important one actually picks the right agency,
I think its very important one actually picks the right agency regardless of RM or RF. It still hurts me to see some stuff going to the micros which would do so much better at the right macro agency.

Absoloutely. I have only been involved in micro for a couple of years so I cant really give an opinion on that but after ten years of shooting Rm and Rf material I do know that its much, much more demanding then micro. The editing process is a lot harder and especially with agencies such as Getty and Corbis. Its also very time consuming and its very seldom one can see any earnings in the first year.

« Reply #14 on: September 18, 2012, 05:33 »
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I rarely uploaded to Alamy in the past three years. Still get sales, but the prices are much much lower, my income is 1/3 of what it was.

I can concur 101% to that.

lisafx

« Reply #15 on: September 18, 2012, 12:05 »
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Absoloutely. I have only been involved in micro for a couple of years so I cant really give an opinion on that but after ten years of shooting Rm and Rf material I do know that its much, much more demanding then micro. The editing process is a lot harder and especially with agencies such as Getty and Corbis. Its also very time consuming and its very seldom one can see any earnings in the first year.

I don't sell RM, so I hadn't heard this.  I was under the impression that micro was much pickier about photo editing - noise, focus, contrast, etc.  Many RM pros were surprised to find they could not match the technical standards set by Istock, for example. 

Or are you talking about tighter editing of your collection - meaning only uploading one or two images from a shoot rather than the whole series? 

I am curious in what ways RM is much more demanding than micro. 

« Reply #16 on: September 18, 2012, 12:32 »
0

Absoloutely. I have only been involved in micro for a couple of years so I cant really give an opinion on that but after ten years of shooting Rm and Rf material I do know that its much, much more demanding then micro. The editing process is a lot harder and especially with agencies such as Getty and Corbis. Its also very time consuming and its very seldom one can see any earnings in the first year.

I don't sell RM, so I hadn't heard this.  I was under the impression that micro was much pickier about photo editing - noise, focus, contrast, etc.  Many RM pros were surprised to find they could not match the technical standards set by Istock, for example. 

Or are you talking about tighter editing of your collection - meaning only uploading one or two images from a shoot rather than the whole series? 

I am curious in what ways RM is much more demanding than micro.


Personally as an Rm photographer I would not join an agency like Alamy, too much into travel and landscapes and so on but thats me others might have differant experiences. Creative buyers consult the Rm industry for one purpose only and ready to pay extra money, rights and ofcourse something above the average or else they would ofcourse buy micro or even Rf.
A typical submission to say the Getty original collection is around fifty pictures and the reject percentage is around 80%, so its a very time consuming affair and takes years to build up. Editing for Rm is a lot harder then Rf.

As I said this is my own experience for what its worth. You do have a few Getty Rm photographers here, I recognize their names and style and maybe its worth asking for their opinions and then comparing them to mine.


lisafx

« Reply #17 on: September 18, 2012, 13:45 »
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Absoloutely. I have only been involved in micro for a couple of years so I cant really give an opinion on that but after ten years of shooting Rm and Rf material I do know that its much, much more demanding then micro. The editing process is a lot harder and especially with agencies such as Getty and Corbis. Its also very time consuming and its very seldom one can see any earnings in the first year.

I don't sell RM, so I hadn't heard this.  I was under the impression that micro was much pickier about photo editing - noise, focus, contrast, etc.  Many RM pros were surprised to find they could not match the technical standards set by Istock, for example. 

Or are you talking about tighter editing of your collection - meaning only uploading one or two images from a shoot rather than the whole series? 

I am curious in what ways RM is much more demanding than micro.


Personally as an Rm photographer I would not join an agency like Alamy, too much into travel and landscapes and so on but thats me others might have differant experiences. Creative buyers consult the Rm industry for one purpose only and ready to pay extra money, rights and ofcourse something above the average or else they would ofcourse buy micro or even Rf.
A typical submission to say the Getty original collection is around fifty pictures and the reject percentage is around 80%, so its a very time consuming affair and takes years to build up. Editing for Rm is a lot harder then Rf.

As I said this is my own experience for what its worth. You do have a few Getty Rm photographers here, I recognize their names and style and maybe its worth asking for their opinions and then comparing them to mine.

Thanks for taking the time to respond, but you didn't really answer my question.  I didn't say anything about Alamy, and wasn't asking for a comparison between Alamy and Getty. 

I was asking what do you mean when you say "Editing for Rm is a lot harder then Rf".  Do you mean Photoshop editing of individual images, or culling your shoots down to the right images to submit? 

Hopefully that is clearer because I can't think of a way to rephrase it any better :).

velocicarpo

« Reply #18 on: September 18, 2012, 14:59 »
+2

Absoloutely. I have only been involved in micro for a couple of years so I cant really give an opinion on that but after ten years of shooting Rm and Rf material I do know that its much, much more demanding then micro. The editing process is a lot harder and especially with agencies such as Getty and Corbis. Its also very time consuming and its very seldom one can see any earnings in the first year.

I don't sell RM, so I hadn't heard this.  I was under the impression that micro was much pickier about photo editing - noise, focus, contrast, etc.  Many RM pros were surprised to find they could not match the technical standards set by Istock, for example. 

Or are you talking about tighter editing of your collection - meaning only uploading one or two images from a shoot rather than the whole series? 

I am curious in what ways RM is much more demanding than micro.

Lisa, whats typical for the Micro world is all this technical quality thing of low Noise, even lightning etc. Macro comes from a world of film and has other values. The term Quality refers MUCH more to composition and originality in Macro than to Noise. At least this is my experience. Another thing is that many know "Macro" only from Alamy, and we all now that their approval standards are quite low.

"Editing" refers to "Selection of images". This is the hardest part of the Macro world.

1. Micro: produce a generic and possibly well known shot at best possible technical quality (noise, light, etc.) and then hope for sales. One shooting is prepared for 2 days and gives 60 uploads, 40 of them accepted.
2. Macro: Do original work. Know what you are doing. Be _really_ creative. Use 8 Shots of a entire shooting which was prepared for a entire week and get 2 accepted. 1 of them has Noise :D
« Last Edit: September 18, 2012, 15:07 by velocicarpo »

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #19 on: September 18, 2012, 16:50 »
0
I was asking what do you mean when you say "Editing for Rm is a lot harder then Rf".  Do you mean Photoshop editing of individual images, or culling your shoots down to the right images to submit? 
One thing I've heard with some of the more elite sites is that if they have one supplier supplying images in a niche, they won't take on another who works in the same broad area.

Ed

« Reply #20 on: September 18, 2012, 19:53 »
0
Lisa, whats typical for the Micro world is all this technical quality thing of low Noise, even lightning etc. Macro comes from a world of film and has other values. The term Quality refers MUCH more to composition and originality in Macro than to Noise. At least this is my experience. Another thing is that many know "Macro" only from Alamy, and we all now that their approval standards are quite low.

"Editing" refers to "Selection of images". This is the hardest part of the Macro world.

1. Micro: produce a generic and possibly well known shot at best possible technical quality (noise, light, etc.) and then hope for sales. One shooting is prepared for 2 days and gives 60 uploads, 40 of them accepted.
2. Macro: Do original work. Know what you are doing. Be _really_ creative. Use 8 Shots of a entire shooting which was prepared for a entire week and get 2 accepted. 1 of them has Noise :D

Agree with this 100%

I recently did a shoot with over $1,000 in overhead including models, makeup, and wardrobe (not to mention overhead associated with studio rental, my equipment, my time, etc.).  I walked away with 84 images...all of which I would not hesitate sending to the top tier micros spread out over a few months (as many people here do).

Alamy - 100% acceptance
Traditional agency a => all images rejected for "too much noise" (these would have made the micros no problem - there is no noise)
Traditional agency b => all images rejected (agency does not give reasons)
Traditional agency c => 18 of 83 images accepted - images not accepted were rejected for "not being marketable"

You get the point.

« Reply #21 on: September 19, 2012, 01:00 »
0

Absoloutely. I have only been involved in micro for a couple of years so I cant really give an opinion on that but after ten years of shooting Rm and Rf material I do know that its much, much more demanding then micro. The editing process is a lot harder and especially with agencies such as Getty and Corbis. Its also very time consuming and its very seldom one can see any earnings in the first year.

I don't sell RM, so I hadn't heard this.  I was under the impression that micro was much pickier about photo editing - noise, focus, contrast, etc.  Many RM pros were surprised to find they could not match the technical standards set by Istock, for example. 

Or are you talking about tighter editing of your collection - meaning only uploading one or two images from a shoot rather than the whole series? 

I am curious in what ways RM is much more demanding than micro.

I think the next couple of posters have summed it up. The technical aspects are important but not enough to reject a good conceptual image.
Lets put it this way after what I have seen in micro, 70% would never pass the doors to the Getty Rm or Corbis Rm, not because the images are bad but because they lack a message or not conveying the message propperly.
The only micro agency in my books at least who is actually trying to select and give potential buyers the very best is Graphical Leftovers, they seem to work pretty close to an Rm agency.

Also the reason they dont want too many similar portfolios is because they try to avoid too much copying which stands to reason considering the way it looks in micro, even in Rf.

Hope this helps a little bit.

« Reply #22 on: September 19, 2012, 01:09 »
0
Lisa, whats typical for the Micro world is all this technical quality thing of low Noise, even lightning etc. Macro comes from a world of film and has other values. The term Quality refers MUCH more to composition and originality in Macro than to Noise. At least this is my experience. Another thing is that many know "Macro" only from Alamy, and we all now that their approval standards are quite low.

"Editing" refers to "Selection of images". This is the hardest part of the Macro world.

1. Micro: produce a generic and possibly well known shot at best possible technical quality (noise, light, etc.) and then hope for sales. One shooting is prepared for 2 days and gives 60 uploads, 40 of them accepted.
2. Macro: Do original work. Know what you are doing. Be _really_ creative. Use 8 Shots of a entire shooting which was prepared for a entire week and get 2 accepted. 1 of them has Noise :D

Agree with this 100%

I recently did a shoot with over $1,000 in overhead including models, makeup, and wardrobe (not to mention overhead associated with studio rental, my equipment, my time, etc.).  I walked away with 84 images...all of which I would not hesitate sending to the top tier micros spread out over a few months (as many people here do).

Alamy - 100% acceptance
Traditional agency a => all images rejected for "too much noise" (these would have made the micros no problem - there is no noise)
Traditional agency b => all images rejected (agency does not give reasons)
Traditional agency c => 18 of 83 images accepted - images not accepted were rejected for "not being marketable"

You get the point.

I agree with this exept that Alamy tends to accept just about anything nowdays and for selling Rm, its not exactly your ideal agency. I dont work with Alamy but I know many who does and they hardly ever sell any Rm pictures.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2012, 15:25 by ClaridgeJ »

RT


« Reply #23 on: September 19, 2012, 16:04 »
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I dont work with Alamy but I know many who does and they hardly ever sell any Rm pictures.

I believe a lot of that depends on your location and your subject matter, I'm guessing the people you refer to are not from the UK or probably don't shoot much UK orientated stuff?
I've been with them from the start and have a good sized portfolio across various pseudonyms and I do very well there, and know many in similar situation, although to be fair I also know of lots of foreigners  ;) who don't.
Alamy are like any other agency (except they pay a fair commission and don't screw you at every opportunity) be it RM, RF or microstock, you just need to upload the correct content for their market, I think too many people are looking for the 'golden egg' but spend their time chasing the wrong goose.

« Reply #24 on: September 19, 2012, 16:24 »
0
I dont work with Alamy but I know many who does and they hardly ever sell any Rm pictures.

I believe a lot of that depends on your location and your subject matter, I'm guessing the people you refer to are not from the UK or probably don't shoot much UK orientated stuff?
I've been with them from the start and have a good sized portfolio across various pseudonyms and I do very well there, and know many in similar situation, although to be fair I also know of lots of foreigners  ;) who don't.
Alamy are like any other agency (except they pay a fair commission and don't screw you at every opportunity) be it RM, RF or microstock, you just need to upload the correct content for their market, I think too many people are looking for the 'golden egg' but spend their time chasing the wrong goose.

Thats what its all about. Uploading the right content to the right agency. I do know a few UK photographers who are shooting lots of lovely landcapes and scenery and they do very well at Alamy but then again isnt general scenery, travel some of their hallmarks.


 

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