Slow month?

[Marb]

Again, if Alamy made me sales that paid handsomley, or even sales at all I would be 100% here but I have to survive, pay a mortgage and bills so I can’t afford to sit it out here and hope for the magic sale to happen.  Micro is bread and butter and like I have said time and time again, often bags me single images sales much HIGHER than Alamy.

[Brasilnut]

Quote

 

Again, if Alamy made me sales that paid handsomley, or even sales at all I would be 100% here but I have to survive, pay a mortgage and bills so I can’t afford to sit it out here and hope for the magic sale to happen.  Micro is bread and butter and like I have said time and time again, often bags me single images sales much HIGHER than Alamy.

 

Marb,

I know it's frustrating to see images on Alamy sitting there for months/years/decades without even a zoom when they could at least be earning a few $ at micros. That's missing the point though imo.

 

I would encourage you try to see the bright sides of Alamy. With patience and a strong work ethic (such as keywording as per Alamy requirements), you'll be able to earn a nice amount to supplement your bread and butter MS amounts. Reading on this forum you see some guys on here getting 50 downloads/month with just a 10,000 image portfolio. If the average net amount on Alamy is about $25, we're talking about $1250 in your pocket. Then add $500 from MS and that's a nice living wage. In theory, Alamy can become your main source of income. At least that's how I look at it. I only had 3 small downloads in November so I'm far far far away from the above scenario but perhaps in November 2018 it's achievable.  

[Craig Yates]

4 hours ago, Marb said:

Again, if Alamy made me sales that paid handsomley, or even sales at all I would be 100% here but I have to survive, pay a mortgage and bills so I can’t afford to sit it out here and hope for the magic sale to happen.  Micro is bread and butter and like I have said time and time again, often bags me single images sales much HIGHER than Alamy.

 

 

Why don't you focus on the bread and butter instead of joining Alamy?

 

Craig.

[andremichel]

3 hours ago, Brasilnut said:

.Reading on this forum you see some guys on here getting 50 downloads/month with just a 10,000 image portfolio

Where did you get that from? 1 per month per 1000 appears common. 2+ per 1000 if you are highly accomplished e.g. red snapper with 104 sales from 47000 images. 5 per 1000, there may be some outstanding tightly edited collections achieving this but it would be a tiny minority of contributors.

 

Edit: I see doc achieved 3.8 sales per 1000 last month but that is exceptional not the norm.

[RedSnapper]

5 hours ago, Marb said:

if Alamy made me sales that paid handsomley, or even sales at all I would be 100% here but I have to survive, pay a mortgage and bills

 

I'm at the moment sitting in my house, that Alamy in effect has paid for. No mortgage anymore, thanks to paying it off with the income from my sales here. All my equipment, computers, car and studio, paid for from Alamy revenue

 

but it takes time......

 

km

[Brasilnut]

Quote

Where did you get that from? 1 per month per 1000 appears common. 2+ per 1000 if you are highly accomplished e.g. red snapper with 104 sales from 47000 images. 5 per 1000, there may be some outstanding tightly edited collections achieving this but it would be a tiny minority of contributors.

 

Ok, fair enough, I exaggerated. The point remains that there's good money to be made if one is patient and works hard.  

[MizBrown]

11 hours ago, Marb said:

Again, if Alamy made me sales that paid handsomley, or even sales at all I would be 100% here but I have to survive, pay a mortgage and bills so I can’t afford to sit it out here and hope for the magic sale to happen.  Micro is bread and butter and like I have said time and time again, often bags me single images sales much HIGHER than Alamy.

 

What I read when I first started out was that the best shots for stock photography and particularly at Alamy were people doing things, ideally, one person doing one thing.   I looked at four pages of your portfolio and you have maybe five or six shots with people in them.  I'm just beginning here and none of my three sales have been shots with people, but at least half the searches that had my photos as part of what were viewed were shots with people, and my last zoom was a "ginger girl" (unusual for Nicaragua, but exists and I got a model release, too).

If you do better at micro, then that is that.  Doing better here means taking photos that can illustrate something, generally a something with people.  Or something that's relatively rarely photographed (exotic weapons, fruit that doesn't make it to North American or European markets).  I stopped bothering to put Phalaenopsis hybrid photos in my portfolio because there were something like 10,000 or so photographs of Phalaenopsis orchids already at Alamy.   

[Marb]

6 hours ago, MizBrown said:

 

What I read when I first started out was that the best shots for stock photography and particularly at Alamy were people doing things, ideally, one person doing one thing.   I looked at four pages of your portfolio and you have maybe five or six shots with people in them.  I'm just beginning here and none of my three sales have been shots with people, but at least half the searches that had my photos as part of what were viewed were shots with people, and my last zoom was a "ginger girl" (unusual for Nicaragua, but exists and I got a model release, too).

If you do better at micro, then that is that.  Doing better here means taking photos that can illustrate something, generally a something with people.  Or something that's relatively rarely photographed (exotic weapons, fruit that doesn't make it to North American or European markets).  I stopped bothering to put Phalaenopsis hybrid photos in my portfolio because there were something like 10,000 or so photographs of Phalaenopsis orchids already at Alamy.   

I take onboard all comments here which I appreciate. Sorry that a few interpret my frustration as negativity, attacking Alamy or "trolling". On the contrary, I would LOVE to make a good living from my images but just find it frustrating that the editorial, exclusive images (seasonal especially) have not made any sales. I can go back to Nov 2015 when I made a sale of $389.63 for an image when I had a tiny port. In fact I had more sales with less images, and more money which is the point I have been trying to make. It seems the bigger my portfolio, the less and less sales. Just disappointed and quite frankly despondent. I like to try and find the niche, quirky images that haven't been covered. I will try and get more archival stuff uploaded from my student days 30+ years ago from my medium format film. Just could have done with a nice Christmas sale.

[RedSnapper]

8 minutes ago, Marb said:

 I like to try and find the niche, quirky images that haven't been covered.

 

 

And you've done some research to see if there's a demand for these? No point filling a gap if no-one wants them (sometimes gaps are there for a  reason...)

 

km

[Alex Ramsay]

14 hours ago, andremichel said:

Where did you get that from? 1 per month per 1000 appears common. 2+ per 1000 if you are highly accomplished e.g. red snapper with 104 sales from 47000 images. 5 per 1000, there may be some outstanding tightly edited collections achieving this but it would be a tiny minority of contributors.

 

Edit: I see doc achieved 3.8 sales per 1000 last month but that is exceptional not the norm.

My average is between 2 and 3 sales per 1000 per month, sometimes more (on 8000 images), and I am neither unusually accomplished nor a full-time stock photographer

 

Alex

[Marb]

1 hour ago, Alex Ramsay said:

My average is between 2 and 3 sales per 1000 per month, sometimes more (on 8000 images), and I am neither unusually accomplished nor a full-time stock photographer

 

Alex

I like your images Alex, they have a nice clean quality to them. I have to say that I never plan a shoot. I just go somewhere with my camera and walk around and see what I can find. I find (and I used to specialize as environmental portraiture as a student) people difficult to shoot. If I go to an event, like the  food festival this weekend, people look at you with suspicion and contempt when you have a camera. I don't feel comfortable photographing around people, and I certainly hate being photographed myself. Probably because I have become more reclusive since I work from home. Not really a social person anymore but I suppose I will have to overcome it somewhat. Having said that a very good camera phone may be the answer to getting candid images of events. A lot of photographers are doing this more. I do find changing lenses a real pain on an SLR.

 

Note*

 

Just discovered that Alamy has completely lost a lot of my supertags on my recently uploaded and tagged images. No wonder they are not getting found.