Questions about sales

[roman t]

Dear fellow Alamy contributors! Please allow me to ask some basic questions regarding sales on Alamy. The questions stem from my experience on Alamy being quite limited. My search of this forum was not fruitful, hence my seeking enlightenment in a new post.

 

1. I have been fortunate enough to collect a few sales. More than half of them did not register as zooms. As was informed, not all sales are zoomed. Can someone please explain the mechanics of such sale? 
2. How do I know who bought my photo? From some of the discussions I read on this forum I understood that some of you can tell who the buyer is. How?
3. How do I know if a sale is direct or if it is a distributor sale? And what is the significance of that?

 

 

Many thanks in advance.

[Martin Carlsson]

14 minutes ago, roman t said:

Dear fellow Alamy contributors! Please allow me to ask some basic questions regarding sales on Alamy. The questions stem from my experience on Alamy being quite limited. My search of this forum was not fruitful, hence my seeking enlightenment in a new post.

 

1. I have been fortunate enough to collect a few sales. More than half of them did not register as zooms. As was informed, not all sales are zoomed. Can someone please explain the mechanics of such sale? 
2. How do I know who bought my photo? From some of the discussions I read on this forum I understood that some of you can tell who the buyer is. How?
3. How do I know if a sale is direct or if it is a distributor sale? And what is the significance of that?

 

 

Many thanks in advance.

 

1) Only the activity of select customers register in the Alamy Measures. Much activity is not captured, hence why one can have a sale, without a zoom.

2) If you're selling rights-managed the larger number of detail can make it easier to track down the use. With RF you just don't know.

3) If it is direct you get to keep 50%. You'll see the calculations in "Account Balance" on the Alamy Dashboard - if it's via a distributor you'll see a line for "distributor commission" deduction.

[Matt Ashmore]

On 8/10/2017 at 13:16, roman t said:

1. I have been fortunate enough to collect a few sales. More than half of them did not register as zooms. As was informed, not all sales are zoomed. Can someone please explain the mechanics of such sale? 

 

The actions of only certain recognised buyers show up in Alamy Measures and therefore zooms. If you or I were to zoom one of your images, it wouldn't show up as a zoom in Alamy measures. So it's possible that the buyer might simply not be recognised by Alamy as a buyer who's actions are collected.

 

Another option is that they found the image using Google.

 

Or maybe the buyer zoomed without actually logging into Alamy first.

 

Or perhaps the buyer simply bought the picture without evening zooming it first.

 

On 8/10/2017 at 13:16, roman t said:

2. How do I know who bought my photo? From some of the discussions I read on this forum I understood that some of you can tell who the buyer is. How?

 

Short answer.. 90% of the time you don't. Sometimes you can find out using Google image search. Sometimes someone else spots your image in a publication and mentions it in one of the "images found" threads.

 

On 8/10/2017 at 13:16, roman t said:

How do I know if a sale is direct or if it is a distributor sale? And what is the significance of that?

 

You get less than 50% of the total sale price. So if you see you get 50% of the sale price, then it was a direct Alamy sale. If you get less than 50%, it was via a distributor.

[roman t]

Thank you Martin and Matthew for your replies.

 

So, this means that when a sales gets reported to you, it is too early to celebrate as it might turn out to be a distributor sale, right?

And what are the distributors? Do they resell the pictures? If yes, why can't the end recipients of the pictures buy them from Alamy? I find this confusing.

 

Having learnt what you guys have told me about the Alamy zooms, their system of calculating CTR seems, shall I say, disingenuous.  Only the touches by the chosen ones count while some other legitimate customers do not, yet we're ranked on CTR.  Strange and opposite of straightforward. 

[Martin Carlsson]

You'll have the info if it is a distributor or direct sale at the same time that you get the sales info - just check the "account balance". Alternatively and sometimes slightly ahead of the normal sales page; press Download Sales Report --> change date to span well into the future (end of the year) and then choose "date of invoice"

 

Distributors are used because they (should) have better reach in certain areas. You can opt out of distributor sales if you so wish. 

 

http://www.alamy.com/contactus/local-distributors.asp

[Bill Brooks]

49 minutes ago, roman t said:

Having learnt what you guys have told me about the Alamy zooms, their system of calculating CTR seems, shall I say, disingenuous.  Only the touches by the chosen ones count while some other legitimate customers do not, yet we're ranked on CTR.  Strange and opposite of straightforward. 

 

There are some Alamy photographers who try to game the system.

It would be simple for such a photographer to get an unregistered friend, or a robot, or himself, to zoom his own images thereby raising his CTR, at the expense of other photographers.

The CTR system, of only counting registered clients, is designed to protect most Alamy photographers.

[ChrisC]

1 hour ago, roman t said:

Thank you Martin and Matthew for your replies.

 

So, this means that when a sales gets reported to you, it is too early to celebrate as it might turn out to be a distributor sale, right?

And what are the distributors? Do they resell the pictures? If yes, why can't the end recipients of the pictures buy them from Alamy? I find this confusing.

 

Having learnt what you guys have told me about the Alamy zooms, their system of calculating CTR seems, shall I say, disingenuous.  Only the touches by the chosen ones count while some other legitimate customers do not, yet we're ranked on CTR.  Strange and opposite of straightforward. 

Sorry, It is confusing and I don't have enough knowledge to understand myself, but when I have time I look at the forums and try and learn.

 

On a negative point, the sale can also be cancelled the following month, like one of my recent ones and refunded, so until the account balance says cleared and has a little circle next to it, don't start spending your hard earned money :-)

[Cryptoprocta]

On 10/08/2017 at 13:16, roman t said:

2. How do I know who bought my photo? From some of the discussions I read on this forum I understood that some of you can tell who the buyer is. How?

As said above, a Google reverse image search (easiest from Chrome, though plug-ins are available).

Also try Googling 'Copyright Your Name'. Buyers don't have to credit you, but some do. Sometimes you can see your name on a credit page in Google Books, but can't actually see the photo in use.

You could also try Tineye. I find Google to be better, but I've seen reports that Tineye sometimes finds in-uses which Google misses.

[Cryptoprocta]

6 hours ago, roman t said:

And what are the distributors? Do they resell the pictures? If yes, why can't the end recipients of the pictures buy them from Alamy? I find this confusing.

Possibly could be a language and/or currency thing? Presumably a proportion of buyers prefer to search in their own language rather than English.

[roman t]

Thank you everyone for your insight and for taking the time to post in this thread.

[Bryan]

A slight twist on the zooms thing. Some of Alamy's biggest customers, including some UK newspapers, appear to be able to select their images without their zooms being recorded. I don't know why this is the case.

 

Maybe they have a different software setup to that which normal  mortals get to see? 

[Matt Ashmore]

32 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

Is it normal that I have 16 zooms but not one sale from these? Or should I try and look these up to see if they have indeed been used

 

If an image is zoomed today, it might show up as a sale several months later.

[Matt Ashmore]

2 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

ok I have 6 zooms for a certain festival 9 zooms total, no sales showing up!

 

When were the zooms? Today.. or 6 months ago?

[Matt Ashmore]

4 hours ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

Narrowed it down to 15th March

 

So 5 months ago. I do have an image that was zoomed 6 or 7 months ago that I know was used by the BBC 6 months ago which hasn't been reported yet. I contacted Contributor services about it and they said that the account manager is aware and working on it. So your zooms could be in a similar situation.. but you might just be unlucky.