Author Topic: Shutterstock, Istockphoto and shall I go into Alamy? (Read 9941 times)

ruzgar344 · « **on:** November 20, 2016, 21:19 »

Hi folks,
I am selling stocks for more than 4 years and I don't upload very much. My total photos would be 600 in Shutterstock and like 500 in iStockphoto in this period my earnings are $750 and $250 respectively.
But believe me in the last 2 years I have not uploaded anything. Now I would like to be more active, make new photoshoots and upload.
To say the truth, I can sell 30 to 50 photos from Shutterstock per month which doesn't bring a lot profit.

A friend of mine told me to upload to Alamy. I don't know which way to go, what to do.
Can you please help me and throw a light to my way?
Shall I only upload to Shutterstock or shall I also go with Alamy too or any other sites?

Many thanks and kind regards,
Alp

Justanotherphotographer · « **Reply #1 on:** November 21, 2016, 02:44 »

Doesn't hurt to be on more sites if you are selling RF. I would start uploading to all the top and middle tier sites on the right of this page except istock, depositphotos and bigstock. These three will take sales from the other sites and pay a lot less per download.

sharpshot · « **Reply #2 on:** November 21, 2016, 04:52 »

I think Alamy are one of the best places to sell. There's no silly rejections, they sell new images and sometimes you can earn more from 1 sale than an entire month on most of the microsotck sites. Don't expect much from the first year, it isn't an instant gratification site.

JoeClemson · « **Reply #3 on:** November 21, 2016, 06:10 »

It is true that Alamy is one of the best places to sell, if you upload the right images. Run-of-the-mill microstock images will sell from time to time but they are not Alamy's strong point. Explore Alamy and see what sells there - they have lots of tools for analysing views and sales. Mostly they excel in editorial, both soft editorial and live news. They are especially strong in the UK but do sell images worldwide.

Sharpshot is right to say there are no silly rejections, but that is because most submissions are not inspected - they expect the photographer to be professional in their work and only submit acceptable images. They use a sampling system for their quality control where only one or two images per batch are inspected. However, if you do fall foul of their quality control it can really hurt as they will put your upload queue on hold for a month and then fail all images currently in the queue. Most contributors soon learn to self-inspect their uploads thoroughly before submission.

With 500 images in your portfolio you could hope to sell maybe one every two or three months, assuming you are putting up well composed images and do not have a lot of similars. The royalties for each sale however are likely to be many times greater than microstock. I sill have microstock portfolios but it is several years since I shot new stuff for any of them, as far as still images are concerned I prefer to shoot specifically for Alamy .

Alamy is not microstock (even though their prices are slowly being dragged down by microstock competition). Take the time to learn how Alamy works, don't expect instant results, be professional in your work and uploading there will reward you.

ruzgar344 · « **Reply #4 on:** November 21, 2016, 11:22 »

Quote from: JoeClemson on November 21, 2016, 06:10

It is true that Alamy is one of the best places to sell, if you upload the right images. Run-of-the-mill microstock images will sell from time to time but they are not Alamy's strong point. Explore Alamy and see what sells there - they have lots of tools for analysing views and sales. Mostly they excel in editorial, both soft editorial and live news. They are especially strong in the UK but do sell images worldwide.

Sharpshot is right to say there are no silly rejections, but that is because most submissions are not inspected - they expect the photographer to be professional in their work and only submit acceptable images. They use a sampling system for their quality control where only one or two images per batch are inspected. However, if you do fall foul of their quality control it can really hurt as they will put your upload queue on hold for a month and then fail all images currently in the queue. Most contributors soon learn to self-inspect their uploads thoroughly before submission.

With 500 images in your portfolio you could hope to sell maybe one every two or three months, assuming you are putting up well composed images and do not have a lot of similars. The royalties for each sale however are likely to be many times greater than microstock. I sill have microstock portfolios but it is several years since I shot new stuff for any of them, as far as still images are concerned I prefer to shoot specifically for Alamy .

Alamy is not microstock (even though their prices are slowly being dragged down by microstock competition). Take the time to learn how Alamy works, don't expect instant results, be professional in your work and uploading there will reward you.

It means a lot to me!

Thank you so much, you are so kind. I will now go ahead and start uploading to Alamy.
You threw a light on my way, thank you!!!

ruzgar344 · « **Reply #5 on:** November 21, 2016, 11:22 »

Quote from: sharpshot on November 21, 2016, 04:52

I think Alamy are one of the best places to sell. There's no silly rejections, they sell new images and sometimes you can earn more from 1 sale than an entire month on most of the microsotck sites. Don't expect much from the first year, it isn't an instant gratification site.

Thank you sharpshoot! I will start with Alamy

Giveme5 · « **Reply #6 on:** November 21, 2016, 16:09 »

For sure upload to Alamy. Depending on what you have it is possible to make more money with them than you make with SS or iStock. I know some folks that make thousands per month there!

dpimborough · « **Reply #7 on:** November 21, 2016, 17:43 »

Quote from: ruzgar344 on November 21, 2016, 11:22

Quote from: sharpshot on November 21, 2016, 04:52
I think Alamy are one of the best places to sell. There's no silly rejections, they sell new images and sometimes you can earn more from 1 sale than an entire month on most of the microsotck sites. Don't expect much from the first year, it isn't an instant gratification site.

Thank you sharpshoot! I will start with Alamy

And what ever you do don't spam your keywords with irrelevant stuff.

Some microstockers do that but they ain't professional

Brasilnut · « **Reply #8 on:** November 21, 2016, 19:16 »

I got extremely frustrated with Alamy for a while, this was when I uploaded 800 images and had none licensed after a year. Suddenly I got images licensed on the same week, each for $34 and $32 respectively. This gave me some more motivations to upload and now I have a portfolio of 1250.

In my opinion, it appears that Licensees are getting smarter. I'm getting a lot of looks one some images which then end up being licensed regularly on Shutterstock,

Perhaps they they see the same image on both Alamy and Shutterstock, and will go license it off Shutterstock as it's probably cheaper. So, I'm also getting smarter and thinking to be more selective on which sites I choose to upload. Alamy appears to be more suited to RM editorial and higher-end stock (RM).

Brasilnut
www.arotenberg.photoshelter.com

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Author Topic: Shutterstock, Istockphoto and shall I go into Alamy? (Read 9941 times)

ruzgar344

Justanotherphotographer

sharpshot

JoeClemson

ruzgar344

ruzgar344

Giveme5

dpimborough

Brasilnut

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