I have had no sales at all in Alamy and looking at what buyers searched for I can understand why as the engine picks out any word  in the list  which is ludicrous  eg.Penguin - and a pic of a beach  with NO penguin as  there was a mention of penguin island  in it. Veterinarian and 2 pics of a brown horse came up. Very disappointed and does not come anywhere near Shutterstock which I have been on since Feb 2013 and sell pics every day despite only a small port of 2,500.I can't be bothered uploading to Alamy any more  as it is so  disappointing.

Yeah, there is a real problem with Alamy's search engine, but the 'relevant' results are better than they were a year ago, so some progress.

But actually, SS has a similar problem. My usual example is Blue Whale, where at both SS and Alamy, many photos near the top of the search have any sort of whale, or 'whale shark', with 'blue' referring to the water or sky.

Trying Penguin Island on SS, you get lots of photos of penguins on random islands, or on bergy bits or growlers.

Alamy has a different set of buyers, and what sells on micro doesn't tend to sell on Alamy, though there are always differences between ports. James himself (CEO or such) said they sold <400,000 files last year, out of however many million. Even though their prices are getting lower all the time (there are exceptions), they're still considerably higher than SS subs. SS relies on making images which will sell multiple times. Alamy is more for the less usual files, with fewer sales. However, there will come a time when the huge discounts they offer to buyers, regardless of image, will make it less worthwhile to submit there.

Everyone has their 'breaking point' for any particular site.

Alamy has 41 million images

Alamy has 41 million images

Yes, but I don't know how many they had last year. It's expanding at a terrifying rate.

Sue - I'm astonished by the proportion of US sales.

And the actual number sold was c360,000.
Also, 60% of Alamy's direct sales are to the USA.
http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2013/10/03/5475.aspx
(the above two stats are both in the first two minutes).

Are non direct sales only distributor sales or does that include the deals with newspapers and so on?  Maybe they will cut us another 5% to pay for the underperforming UK office?  I would think with 60% of the sales the US office could pay for itself.

For a while, it was looking like Alamy might be a good performer for me, but it's not looking good these days.  One sale last month, and the amount certainly wasn't anything to write home about.   

I just did a comparison of my income this year compared to last year.  Last year I averaged $243 (my share) per month.  This year my average take home is $120 per month.  They are the puppy mill of images and it will only get worse.

Fewer sales than last year - only had one for $79 this month for a travel image, RF ($39 to me) - they were looking good late last year, early this year but then sales fell off a cliff. Right now I'm at 50% of what I made in 2013. Worth it for the occasional $250 sale but my average license there is far less than that. I'm getting many more zooms than usual including many on my RM images, so hopeful some decent sales will turn up before the end of the year. I have 700 files online there - haven't added much new this year - last year I had monthly sales, not this year.

The nice thing is, they've dropped their payout threshold down to $75 - the not so nice thing is, it used to be $250, then $200, then $175 ...  so you can see how drastically prices are dropping.

They are nice people to deal with and a good place for offbeat images - I also tend to get one or more repeat sales after an image has sold for the first time since it moves it up in the search, so hopeful that things will pick up for year's end as the image I sold recently is of a popular vacation spot.

Mantis, was just wondering how many images do you have on Alamy?

just over 3000