Skyscraperfan

Changes made in the image manager seem to come into effect much quicker than the mentioned 48 hours. Yesterday evening after the video In unrestricted all may images and afterwards had a sale on the same day - so within less than four hours. It's nice that we can have sales again without selling our soul by accepting an unfair commission.

If "exclusive" just restricts the use on other stock agency websites, I could mark all of my images as exclusive. I hope we get further clarification. I have over 1200 photos on this website, which is a website for skyscraper fans, where you can also buy images: https://www.emporis.com

Are these similar? https://www.alamy.com/stockfoto-sony-center-berlin-10693676.html https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-sony-center-berlin-15571244.html

That's good news. It will be a lot of work though. I had restricted all my images to personal use after the first video and now I will take a look at each image and if it is exclusive at Alamy, I will unrestrict it and mark it as exclusive. I need an precise definition of "exclusive" though. Is it enough that an image is not available on any other stock agency? Some of my images of skyscrapers are also in a skyscraper database, which also allows you to buy images of skyscrapers. Does that count as a stock agency? I did not sell a single photo there for years anyway.

That's why I opted out of the distribution scheme when the commission for photographers in that scheme slipped below 50%. I think when I joined Alamy we needed $100 or even $150 before we got our money. I think that has to do with PayPal transaction costs.

I do not even have backups of many of the processed images. For a new agency I would have to start with the unprocessed RAW images again. That would not stop me from changing the agency though.

Actually I track quite a lot in my life. For example anything I have eaten since 2011. I did not care a lot about the stats at Alamy though, as long as I received my fair share of the sale price. I check quite often for new sales though, as I have many ideas what do to with that money.

My costs are tens of dollars per image and that does not even include the camera gear. The problem is that my subjects (skyscrapers) are far away from the place I live. So I already have the feeling that my images have to be more expensive because they were so expensive to produce. I would not suggest different prices for images though, but my high costs explain my unwillingness to accept another commission cut. Perhaps I should switch to taking macro shots of fruits and vegetables. I could even eat those after the photoshoot :-)

Where can I see that? Alamy only shows me data from this year? And the "Your Images" section is even more limited. Wasn't it possible to see old data there? Now you can only go back to "last month".

Doesn't the "Click Through Rate" already do quite a good job in that regard? The CTR punishes keyword spamming for example. If you use keywords that do not really describe the image, your image will appear in the results, but people will not click on it. The same happens with low quality photos. Avoiding duplicates also increases your CTR. My CTR usually is more than twice as high as the Alamy average. So it seems I might do something right.

If the algorithm just determines the ranking of the images in the search results, it is okay that the algorithm is hidden. However, when the algorithm is hidden, it makes no sense to reward somebody financially for getting a high rank determined by the algorithm. Just imagine a company which gives a bonus to its employees, but they have no idea why they got the bonus.

Actually some of my best selling images are among those I have already uploaded more than ten years ago. It would make no sense to me to upload photos just because we should upload a certain number of photos per year. If those photos are worse than my old photos, that would hurt my Alamy rank. The system you propose would just make me delete my old photos and upload the same photos again, just to get a better commission. A low commission for newbies is not the right thing, if you want to attract new photographers. Especially in the combination with exclusivity. I think Alamy had a program for students that even gave them 100% commission for a while. That's how you attract new photographers.

If we sell more, we already get more money. That should be incentive enough. If somebody sells photos for $1000, he gets $500. If somebody sells photos for $5000, he gets $2500. That's a big incentive for selling as much as possible. We do not need an extra punishment for those who sell less than others.

I still come back to my idea of just lending Alamy the remaining percents. 35% now and 15% plus interest in three years from now. Or 40% and 10% later. That would give Alamy some money to work with now.

Is exclusivity really a benefit for the customer? In Germany we have an evil airline called "Lufthansa". It is the biggest airline in the country and uses its power to mob some other airlines out of airports. For example it says "If you want Lufthansa to buy a certain number of slots at your airport, you can't allow Emirates to also make your airport their local hub!". It's a different kind of exclusivity of course, but for the customer, who wants to book a flight, such business practices are quite annoying. He would like to have both Emirates and Lufthansa at his airport to have some competition. In the stock image example it is the same principle. The exclusivity restricts the customer's ability to choose between competing agencies. At the same time exclusivity does not benefit any agencies, if most of the other agencies are also exclusive. It just means that every single agency has less images than without exclusivity. Imagine agency 1 had images A,B and C and agency 2 had images D,E and F. Wouldn't it be better for both if both could offer images A,B,C,D,E and F? Of course for the photographer exclusivity is also bad. So it looks like it's bad for all parties involved.