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Alamy getting higher licensing fees than most


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For some time now i have experienced lower fees for my work from other suppliers,  today i received a record all time low of 02 and 29 cents = 31 cents for 2 RM images,  the images were sold as a print on demand to a  calendar company in Germany.

 

The images were supplied by a well known broker agency.

 

I have often seen here contributors complaining about low fees with Alamy,  personally i have found Alamy very reasonable over the years,  i am sure that Alamy would never license images where the contributor would receive a measly few cents.

 

Any positive thoughts?

 

Paul.

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Alamy tends to get middle of the road to low fees. Never hear of them getting any of the real big fees (five figures ones) any more but likewise they rarely sink a s low as the fees from other places. Mind you, those other places also can be the ones with the very big fees.

 

Some of Alamy's big media deals are less than some specialists but it's really a curate's egg with all places, including Alamy.

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I'm currently with five agencies.  I've seen lots of complaints about Alamy, but they continue to get the highest prices for me of any of those that have my material, which consists of editorial images of Third World cultures.  (I've recently joined two new ones and have no sales history so far, so this bears watching.) It's been a few months since I've done any calculations but in late summer Alamy was averaging about $75 per sale of my material.  Three-quarters of those sales were direct, so I got 50%.  The remaining 1/4, naturally, only produced 30% for me, since they were through sub-agents.  Not great, but still better than double what the other two are getting.

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My average license from Alamy this year is $75 as well, and this included my averaging in the $4-6 piddly sales that I've gotten or the average would have been higher. In 2013-2014 my average sale on Alamy was in the $35-45 range, so this uptick is encouraging. Aside from a few of the sub-$10 distributor sales, all the rest have been direct, so I'm getting 50%. There are some agencies where I'm earning more overall but Alamy has done better for me this year than in the past. 

 

2/3rds of my licenses have been Rights Managed and while those account for all the sub-$10 licenses (mostly in the newspaper scheme), average RM licenses are actually a tad higher than RF. This breakdown also follows my portfolio, of which 32% of my images are RF. As I add more work to new sites that show promise such as 500px, I've been choosing RF for more of my photos, but keeping the rarer ones as RM. 

 

58% of my licenses were editorial this year and the rest were commercial. Interestingly, some buyers decided to use editorial shots in commercial projects and vice versa. 

 

I've gotten higher average licenses from direct licensing, and even a few standout high fees from agencies that usually license images for far less than Alamy, but I'm encouraged by the increase I've seen this year on Alamy after watching average prices drop for a few years. 

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I haven't noticed this trend.  My highest gross fee this year is $175.  All my high value sales, editorial and commercial ($300 and above) have been elsewhere.  Nothing spectacular, though: highest just over $1k

 

Not that I sell much here, so that could be a partial explanation.

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Agree with Geoff. Alamy is in the middle. Where Alamy gets $180 from US textbook publishers, specialists routinely get $250-550 (gross). On the other hand, subscription deals that UK media gets from majors routinely bring 0.20 - 0.30 GPB to the contributor.

GI

 

That sounds about right for US textbook sales. Alamy is somewhere in the middle.

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