Quote from: wordplanet on February 25, 2022, 21:38

Quote from: Bauman on February 19, 2022, 10:06

Quote from: wordplanet on February 16, 2022, 22:34
Earnings on FAA last year blew away all my stock earnings by a mile

You are lucky with FAA. Because you signed up in 2010 and the FAA greatly favors the artists who signed up early. If we look at recent sales, 90% of them are made by artists registered before 2013-2014.

I have more than a thousand photos, but for their search engine I am practically invisible. I sold 9 prints in 2021, but 6 are from clients I personally referred to the FAA/Pixels from my website

With my 4 POD shops  I only made 4% of my total earnings with microstock. PODs for photographers basically is a waste of time. It is difficult for photographers to sell prints, perhaps for a painter or illustrator it is easier.

On all kinds of sites getting in earlier helps.

I re-enabled my port on ss last week after disgust at those 15 cent China sales on Alamy and more for pennies on Getty and my first license was an upload from 2010! I'm just sorry I uploaded most of my stock photos to Alamy rather than the micros back in the days (2008-2012?) when you could earn real money in microstock.

I remember when I joined Fine Art America in 2010, watching friends who joined in 2008 selling so much more than I did and wishing I'd joined sooner. Twelve years later, I'm now an old-timer there. But I still feel like I don't show up in searches as high as I'd like even for images that have been selling multiple times a year. I'm just glad most of my sales are prints, because otherwise I'd need to sell hundreds of puzzles LOL.

Keep selling on FAA and you will rise in the search ranks. From my understanding past sales are the best predictor of search rank and future sales there. Twelve years passes faster than you think. Although by then perhaps people will be licensing images for pennies to hang in a digital frame and you'll look back on the past year's sales with fondness. (I hope not - there's nothing like a beautiful photograph)

FAA's internal search is a chaotic mess - I'd call it broken.  There was a thread about this on their forum a couple of days ago.   Rampant keyword spamming, flooded with auto-generated similars - and big corporate sellers that go straight to the top of the results for searches that seem unrelated.   

Quote from: wordplanet on February 25, 2022, 21:38

On all kinds of sites getting in earlier helps.

I re-enabled my port on ss last week after disgust at those 15 cent China sales on Alamy and more for pennies on Getty and my first license was an upload from 2010! I'm just sorry I uploaded most of my stock photos to Alamy rather than the micros back in the days (2008-2012?) when you could earn real money in microstock.

I remember when I joined Fine Art America in 2010, watching friends who joined in 2008 selling so much more than I did and wishing I'd joined sooner. Twelve years later, I'm now an old-timer there. But I still feel like I don't show up in searches as high as I'd like even for images that have been selling multiple times a year. I'm just glad most of my sales are prints, because otherwise I'd need to sell hundreds of puzzles LOL.

Keep selling on FAA and you will rise in the search ranks. From my understanding past sales are the best predictor of search rank and future sales there. Twelve years passes faster than you think. Although by then perhaps people will be licensing images for pennies to hang in a digital frame and you'll look back on the past year's sales with fondness. (I hope not - there's nothing like a beautiful photograph)

Thanks Worldplanet.

I agree with you that even on microstock the photos uploaded many years ago still sell well. But on all microstock sites there is a rotation in the first pages also for new contents. If there are 100 photos on the first page, probably 20 spaces are dedicated to new content ... but not in FAA.

If you type Paris in the search field you get 123,000 artworks ... but only the first 2500 are seen (35 pages). Others are invisible. Maybe it would take at least 10 sales of an image to get into the search. There is no rotation and in addition to those that sell a lot, the images of the big agencies are also awarded: Getty Images, Cavan Images, Image Professionals, 1X, Estock Photo Decor ... and many of these are very bad photos.

In the other PODs webistes this does not happen.

I'm going to try to bring this back to the subject of Alamy?

Last year I had the most downloads ever. No I didn't have any of those 7c specials. This year, and I'm a bit ahead but feel kind of safe on this one, I have NO SALES for the first two months. Always a surprise when sales are rather even, spread out across the year, and now, nothing? Not one?

How will I make the quota so I get 40% when they have lowered prices and in June will drop me to 20%? I don't see anything encouraging going on there right now.

Same here. I am still waiting for my first Alamy sale of 2022. At least I haven't had anymore of those tiny micro sales from China and Germany since Christmas.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 26, 2022, 15:03
I'm going to try to bring this back to the subject of Alamy?

Last year I had the most downloads ever. No I didn't have any of those 7c specials. This year, and I'm a bit ahead but feel kind of safe on this one, I have NO SALES for the first two months. Always a surprise when sales are rather even, spread out across the year, and now, nothing? Not one?

How will I make the quota so I get 40% when they have lowered prices and in June will drop me to 20%? I don't see anything encouraging going on there right now.

Remember that your rolling year for calculating your next year's percentage is from 1 July last year, and it's $250 gross sales, so you will probably stay on 40% (barring any further squeezes they might impose  ) until July 2023, but after that, it's not so certain. It's particularly egrecious to make it a $$ amount of sales, when they control the price of each sale, and seem to be handing out huge discounts like sweeties.

Just had 6th February sale.  "Only" $20, but it brings monthly total over $200.  This never happened before in 4yrs I've been with them.  Port of ~2000 stills with 1-2 sales / month on average, but this month 6.  Things like this just make you feel good, not because of $ but because of work that got recognized.

Like someone said above, Alamy is hit and miss & it is easy to loose faith when you don't get anything for awhile.  My honest suggestion is to persist & not close your account;   just keep uploading high-end unique content & it will pay off eventually. 

Quote from: ShadySue on February 26, 2022, 20:03

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 26, 2022, 15:03
I'm going to try to bring this back to the subject of Alamy?

Last year I had the most downloads ever. No I didn't have any of those 7c specials. This year, and I'm a bit ahead but feel kind of safe on this one, I have NO SALES for the first two months. Always a surprise when sales are rather even, spread out across the year, and now, nothing? Not one?

How will I make the quota so I get 40% when they have lowered prices and in June will drop me to 20%? I don't see anything encouraging going on there right now.

Remember that your rolling year for calculating your next year's percentage is from 1 July last year, and it's $250 gross sales, so you will probably stay on 40% (barring any further squeezes they might impose  ) until July 2023, but after that, it's not so certain. It's particularly egrecious to make it a $$ amount of sales, when they control the price of each sale, and seem to be handing out huge discounts like sweeties.

Yes, to the rolling totals but in my case, no. Many of the better sales were early half of the year last year, which will roll over. And correct, they have reduced the prices, so even if I should suddenly get some sales, I won't make the minimum. That and selling for less, I'll also make less even at 40%

Things don't look very bright right now.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 27, 2022, 16:08

Quote from: ShadySue on February 26, 2022, 20:03

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 26, 2022, 15:03
I'm going to try to bring this back to the subject of Alamy?

Last year I had the most downloads ever. No I didn't have any of those 7c specials. This year, and I'm a bit ahead but feel kind of safe on this one, I have NO SALES for the first two months. Always a surprise when sales are rather even, spread out across the year, and now, nothing? Not one?

How will I make the quota so I get 40% when they have lowered prices and in June will drop me to 20%? I don't see anything encouraging going on there right now.

Remember that your rolling year for calculating your next year's percentage is from 1 July last year, and it's $250 gross sales, so you will probably stay on 40% (barring any further squeezes they might impose  ) until July 2023, but after that, it's not so certain. It's particularly egrecious to make it a $$ amount of sales, when they control the price of each sale, and seem to be handing out huge discounts like sweeties.

Yes, to the rolling totals but in my case, no. Many of the better sales were early half of the year last year, which will roll over. And correct, they have reduced the prices, so even if I should suddenly get some sales, I won't make the minimum. That and selling for less, I'll also make less even at 40%

Things don't look very bright right now.

Are you really sure?
I'm a low-volume seller there with low-value sales with a few low-medium sales occasionally, but I just summed my Jan-Feb gross on excel and the past two months alone have me at over $250 gross. Net, of course, is 

Quote from: ShadySue on February 27, 2022, 18:55

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 27, 2022, 16:08

Quote from: ShadySue on February 26, 2022, 20:03

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 26, 2022, 15:03
I'm going to try to bring this back to the subject of Alamy?

Last year I had the most downloads ever. No I didn't have any of those 7c specials. This year, and I'm a bit ahead but feel kind of safe on this one, I have NO SALES for the first two months. Always a surprise when sales are rather even, spread out across the year, and now, nothing? Not one?

How will I make the quota so I get 40% when they have lowered prices and in June will drop me to 20%? I don't see anything encouraging going on there right now.

Remember that your rolling year for calculating your next year's percentage is from 1 July last year, and it's $250 gross sales, so you will probably stay on 40% (barring any further squeezes they might impose  ) until July 2023, but after that, it's not so certain. It's particularly egrecious to make it a $$ amount of sales, when they control the price of each sale, and seem to be handing out huge discounts like sweeties.

Yes, to the rolling totals but in my case, no. Many of the better sales were early half of the year last year, which will roll over. And correct, they have reduced the prices, so even if I should suddenly get some sales, I won't make the minimum. That and selling for less, I'll also make less even at 40%

Things don't look very bright right now.

Are you really sure?
I'm a low-volume seller there with low-value sales with a few low-medium sales occasionally, but I just summed my Jan-Feb gross on excel and the past two months alone have me at over $250 gross. Net, of course, is 

Yes it's one of those mysteries. Best year for sales was last year, and enough income NET  to keep the 40% level, and suddenly, with more images and none removed, I've fallen into a dark pit of no sale. I'm not high volume, but I have some things that get sales, because they are unusual or topical. Of course one nice $250 download would be OK with me?

I'll wait and see, but this is kind of odd.

And 7th sale of Feb popped in on last day,  $75 gross



Which brings monthly total to $277 gross;  39.57 RPD gross, or 15.83 net.  Might be anomaly that will be hard to repeat, but for the first time in over a year someone has beaten AS in terms of monthly earnings

The $75 fairy must have been busy February 28th I received one too. My portfolio is now invisible, so I assume the download happened a while back and the invoice just happened today.

Shame the $250 fairy didn't visit!

Ann, yes most sales I had this month were zoomed at some point of time; it is known sometimes it takes awhile between  zoom/download and time when sale is posted (and then even more till sale is cleared;  but this is because Alamy model is different from traditional subscription based microstock)

btw I find Alamy "measures" tool quite useful, specially in term of keywords used for search

Alamy sales seem fairly random to me. So far this month I've got way more than last month (which was pretty bad - 2 sales for ~7.50 for me). This month they also refunded a sale from January for ~129 gross, but then re-bought it with the same terms for ~130. I have had plenty refunded and re-bought at the same price or lower over the years, but this might be the first that went up if even only a little bit, and they didn't even drop the percentage I got.

My click through rate was pretty high for most of Feb, so maybe there were sales that will show up later.

My sales this month - net amount:

0.45
0.10
0.76
0.06
0.08
0.03
0.03
0.11

TODAY I got ridiculous many cents income from ALAMY 

Total 27 sales and my earning is only $1.46 for ALL, many of those were 0.03 / 0.06

In the past, there were occasional cents income from ALAMY I'm still ok with that. But today is totally too much....

Quote from: kitleong on March 28, 2022, 17:12
TODAY I got ridiculous many cents income from ALAMY 

Total 27 sales and my earning is only $1.46 for ALL, many of those were 0.03 / 0.06

In the past, there were occasional cents income from ALAMY I'm still ok with that. But today is totally too much....

If you'd rather not have these tiny sales, consider opting out of Novel Use and perhaps out of some countries for distrubutor sales, depending onwhere your tiny sales are coming from  (often China). You'll be able to opt out of all or some distributor sales during the month of April (only).
Not sure about Novel Use, maybe the same or maybe you can opt out any time (?)

Quote from: ShadySue on March 28, 2022, 18:54

Quote from: kitleong on March 28, 2022, 17:12
TODAY I got ridiculous many cents income from ALAMY 

Total 27 sales and my earning is only $1.46 for ALL, many of those were 0.03 / 0.06

In the past, there were occasional cents income from ALAMY I'm still ok with that. But today is totally too much....

If you'd rather not have these tiny sales, consider opting out of Novel Use and perhaps out of some countries for distrubutor sales, depending onwhere your tiny sales are coming from  (often China). You'll be able to opt out of all or some distributor sales during the month of April (only).
Not sure about Novel Use, maybe the same or maybe you can opt out any time (?)

Many people who opted out say they are still getting these tiny sales.

This penny avalanche might not be Novel, but large subscription deal with someone.  After landing on single image, they went through whole port and picked up what they were interested in.

My Alamy experience this month is totally opposite:  (Gross amounts, 2K port size)

75.00
1850.00
14.75

And there we go again... 50 sales today for $0.12 each ($2.86 in my pocket)

In my stats Alamy has an overall RPD in 2022 of $0,41 at 61 sales, which makes it place No. 7 for RPD.
It is time to leave them now :-)

My RPD stats:
Adobe 1,06
Dreamstime 0,93
Istock 0,68
PantherMedia 0,58
WireStock 0,52
Deposit 0,42
Alamy 0,41
BigStock 0,38
Shutter 0,23

I got a raft of those sales the 28th,  Most were 12 cent distributor sales so I got 3 cents each. Some were downloaded more than once - which must mean the distributor sold it to more than one entity? One image 12 X - that one gross was $1.29 -36 -42 leaves me with a whopping .31 I think (for 12 sales?).  None of them list where the sale was, so I guess I need to opt out of distributor sales completely instead of just China and Russia or something like that. I have always been opted out of novel use.

Getting only 24% or whatever it works out to for low range sales means it probably won't make much difference to the bottom line.

My RPD is still probably around $9 for the month, although if you take out the refunded and rebought (for a $ more - go figure) image that would drop it down a lot.

Quote from: JustAnImage on March 29, 2022, 11:15
And there we go again... 50 sales today for $0.12 each ($2.86 in my pocket)

In my stats Alamy has an overall RPD in 2022 of $0,41 at 61 sales, which makes it place No. 7 for RPD.
It is time to leave them now :-)

My RPD stats:
Adobe 1,06
Dreamstime 0,93
Istock 0,68
PantherMedia 0,58
WireStock 0,52
Deposit 0,42
Alamy 0,41
BigStock 0,38
Shutter 0,23

Those downloads in the image, 14 of them are 1 time. Is that just for this report? Some show 4 times downloaded. It all looks like some big partner site that reported their first quarter uses.

No details on who and where, what kind of use?

Quote from: Uncle Pete on March 30, 2022, 17:02

Quote from: JustAnImage on March 29, 2022, 11:15
And there we go again... 50 sales today for $0.12 each ($2.86 in my pocket)

In my stats Alamy has an overall RPD in 2022 of $0,41 at 61 sales, which makes it place No. 7 for RPD.
It is time to leave them now :-)


Those downloads in the image, 14 of them are 1 time. Is that just for this report? Some show 4 times downloaded. It all looks like some big partner site that reported their first quarter uses.

No details on who and where, what kind of use?

It appears that the 3 cents/download fees are for a distributor in China, again.

Quote from: JustAnImage on March 29, 2022, 11:15
And there we go again... 50 sales today for $0.12 each ($2.86 in my pocket)

I have an impression that the buyer plans to resell them somewhere

Quote from: Unamas on March 30, 2022, 18:37

Quote from: JustAnImage on March 29, 2022, 11:15
And there we go again... 50 sales today for $0.12 each ($2.86 in my pocket)

I have an impression that the buyer plans to resell them somewhere

I think that's obvious and it's a big reason I closed my account.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on March 30, 2022, 17:02

Quote from: JustAnImage on March 29, 2022, 11:15
And there we go again... 50 sales today for $0.12 each ($2.86 in my pocket)

In my stats Alamy has an overall RPD in 2022 of $0,41 at 61 sales, which makes it place No. 7 for RPD.
It is time to leave them now :-)

Those downloads in the image, 14 of them are 1 time. Is that just for this report? Some show 4 times downloaded. It all looks like some big partner site that reported their first quarter uses.

No details on who and where, what kind of use?

@UnclePete:
I just checked all the $0.12 sales (times the amount bought) again and there is no additional information about the sales in any form.

Just what my screenshot shows in the original post...