Quote from: angelawaye on January 22, 2017, 09:17

I'm entering Macro this year and very curious about what people have to say.

There are of course special circumstances and exceptions everywhere, but I would not buy a $1000 dollar coffeemaker when a similar thing of perhaps slightly inferior quality is sold for $25 everywhere.

The question is why the coffeemaker makers starting to sell their coffeemakers at $25 (or rather 25 cents) instead of $1000.

I am good at shooting travel photos but I am not going anywhere on holidays in the near future. When weather is bad I do food photography . However, the few travel photos I shot are selling well on microstock but no sale on Alamy.

You don't need to be a tourist yourself to shoot travel photos. Think of your own place as a travel destination for others.

Do food photos sell on Alamy? I have uploaded the same images I sell on microstock to Alamy but have not had one sale yet. My portfolio is small with about 220 images. I also uploaded editorial images but no sale. It seems such a waste of my time. I am doing perfectly fine on microstock even though I uploaded only 290 images so far.

There's probably nothing wrong with your images or what you're shooting, but 220 images is a tiny portfolio on Alamy. In order to have regular sales you'll need a few thousand images.

Given you think uploading on Alamy is a waste of time, how much do you make with 290 images on microstock? a few dollars a month? maybe less? isn't that a waste of time? remember, Alamy is not microstock. The sales volume is less, but the average price per image is much higher.

What are the steps that Alamy QC goes through?  I'm wondering if there is another stage between processing and awaiting QC. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

There's no stage between processing and QC.

Besides Google image search and tineye I think Pixsy should also be mentioned.

Quote from: stockastic on November 12, 2016, 16:49

Quote from: wordplanet on November 12, 2016, 13:52

Quote from: ShadySue on November 08, 2016, 06:51

Quote

Many say that for every 1000 files you get one sale?

Per day? Per month? Per year?
Many?
Someone posted on the October sales thread that they'd got a sale with a port of <50. It's just if you happen to have what a buyer needs. Generally different buyers from micro. My best selling genre on iS doesn't sell at all (for me) on Alamy (different images, obviously), which is a great pity.

The consensus on the Alamy forums is that, on average, people there get one sale per month per 1000 images. Some do better, some do worse. Just like comparing yourself to the averages in the poll here. I average more than one sale per month per 1000 images. Sorry I wasn't clear before.

Surprisingly, sales from my small portfolio are in rough agreement with that figure.   And I had to stop and reflect on this for a minute because producing 1,000 quality stock photos is a huge amount of work - unless they're dead simple, no-brainer shots.  And the return you can expect on that work is pitiful, even from an honest agency like Alamy.

Right and that's why people who quote downloads per thousand are not using their brains. No-brainer shots, no download shots and no number for downloads per unknown photos or 1000 common ordinary shots. There is no expected download per shot number when we are all different and so are our photos. Why do people insist on making up these statitistics with no value or meaning and promoting them?

I don't get 1 sale per month for each 1000 photos. Some people will get many more, if they have better pictures. Anything micro has never sold for me on Alamy. I think buyers are smart enough to search for a $10 download instead of $48 download for the same picture?

Yes, $20 is average now for a download on Alamy. And better words first that match the photo subject exact will get better sales. Views for a mismatch don't mean any sales ever.

I don't agree with your general objection that "1 sale per month per 1000 pictures" is a figure without value. For sure it is true that some people will have more and some will have less. Don't read "1 sale per 1000" as "1.00". It could easily be double or half that figure. The main benefit of this 1 per 1000 statement is that it shows newbies what they can expect. The forum is full of newbies who complain that they have no sales with a portfolio of 100 pictures.

Also, on a further note, your absolute statement that "$20 is average now on Alamy" is on the same level as "1 sale per 1000 images per month". How can you condemn one and promote another? The average sale price is depending on many factors, including if a contributor signed up for the UK newspaper deal (with very low payout rates), and of course, to which market their pictures appeal.


I don't believe this theory that pictures which are on micros don't sell on Alamy. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the microstock concept, and I'm not submitting to any such agency. But I repeatedly sell licenses for absolutely trivial images (e.g., banknotes) for three digit values on Alamy, although essentially the same images are available on micros. Apparently, not all customers compare prices.

Hi All,
I've about 600 images on alamy and I've received 2986 views - 6 zoom but never got any sale, Is it still keywords fault or just the Alamy slow sales?

Thanks!

6 zooms out of 3000 views equals a click thru ratio of only 0.2%, while the Alamy contributor average is usually around 0.6%. This means your pictures are thee times less likely to be clicked on than average.

This is a strong indicator that there's something wrong. Maybe you added too many irrelevant keywords, so your images show up in searches they shouldn't. Remember to keyword only what the image is of, not everything that's in the image. Or maybe your images just can't compete with other similar images on Alamy. Professional postprocessing is a must.

In the end, without a link to your Alamy portfolio, or without knowing your Alamy contributor name, it is impossible to tell what's wrong.

While I agree that it is probably not wise to have the same pictures on Alamy and on microstock agencies, I don't think this is the main problem in your case. After all, potential customers don't even click on your images to zoom them (I assume a customer zooms an image before trying to get it cheaper somewhere else).