AlexH

Or you could try darktable....similar to Lightroom without the cost 😉

John Mint is a good option, very user friendly for anyone switching from Windows. There is also I believe a lightweight version which is ideal if your netbook specs are on the lowside. Lightweight Linux distros really breath new life into old machines that are effectively obsolete if you trying running Win10 on them.

I know it won't be an option for many wedded to LR etc, but worth mentioning as an option for those running Windows 7 facing the need to go to 10 is the idea of using Linux as your OS. There are many very user friendly distributions now and these will bring older Win7 era hardware that will struggle to run Windows 10 back to life as they're much less demanding operating systems. Equally a refurb spec that will just run Win10 adequately will be a speedy machine running something like Linux Mint.

Thanks Guys for the further comments. To clarify I wouldn't literally close down and go, that would be fairly pointless. It is more a choice of leaving it dormant with perhaps the odd sporadic upload when I had something, or rolling up my sleeves and putting the effort in to up my game and make significant new contributions. I'm feeling like I've had enough constructive feedback here from you all (thank you) to want to pursue the second option! Time permitting, it it is my preference to continue with positive efforts, but I don't want to flog the proverbial dead horse either! Re the keywording advice David, thank you I'm sure you're right I am probably often light on keywords. I do struggle sometimes to come up with many but also here at Alamy over several years I have adopted quite a minimal approach due to not wanting to appear in too many generic or irrelevant searches and damage CTR/search ranking etc. I may have taken that caution too far perhaps!

Thanks for the thoughts Bryan and John. That's helpful. Food for thought!

https://bit.ly/2YXhj8Y Hello all So end of year time for a little reflection. I've never had particularly good results here but have generally been used to steady improvements year on year as long as I kept my end of the bargain up with reasonably regular submissions. 2019 has however been dismal for me. Sales volume just about on a par with 2015, revenue however needs a late boost to even equal 2008. So the natural question, is it worth me continuing to put much effort into adding to my collection here? The previous two years were also poor, so trend is not good. To help me answer this question I wonder if any fellow contributors may have any insight or observations on my current collection? Many thanks in advance Happy Christmas! Alex

It is not just trust. Unfortunately the stark reality of my experience in recent years is that the prices and volume Alamy are achieving just doesn't warrant exclusivity for images I can place elsewhere with a reasonable expectation of returns. The more esoteric shots that find a home, and ocassionly sales, on Alamy will end up being by default exclusive. I'm hoping for a fairly painless way of going through existing shots to set their status!

Stock is, and I think always has been, ebbs and flows, wheels within cycles and other such unpredicatabilities. Good luck working out patterns or trends to follow! That said there will be some models and/or agencies that will suit some depending on the work they typically produce. The microstock agencies transformed the industry, there is little point bemoaning it now. We're now at a point that the term 'microstock' doesn't really properly describe the place of the bigger players amongst them (top 3). While they are known for their tiny per image returns that's not what they all about any longer. My only four figure sale in recent years was achieved by the micro James referred to as a Tier 1 agency. Even without this individual sale the volume they achieve means the returns there per image have probably been better than here. Its not a perfect comparison because they are different portfolios of images, but it certainly inclines me to focus more where the sales are being made daily. Like many have said I too find slipping below that 50/50 split a bit of a barrier, but at the end of the day I'm primarily focused on actual returns into my bank account and experience tells me that isn't always achieved by the agency offering the biggest cut! As a side note consider Getty, I've seen a few pondering them. Don't imagine you can simply shift your Alamy collection over to them; its a whole different curated kettle of fish. I'd guesstimate at best 10% of a many typical contributors Alamy ports might interest Getty. But here's the thing, that 10% might make more on Getty even on a measly 20% royalty!

I may have missed it, but I'd be interested to see some sort of official response to this question.

Playing with this new feature has been fun and interesting trawling back through older images which has stimulated thought on what to shoot going forward and some keyword tweaking. No bad thing! However I agree with others who have wondered aloud how exactly it will help with sales. I guess most of us are here because we don't deal directly with buyers much, if at all. So it will be interesting to see if Alamy use these portfolios to find and promote images and with any luck boost sales! https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/alexhinds

Thanks for that Jason, good insight.

OK, so Spacecadet thought this might provide a useful starting point for some comparison. . . Looking at my last year on the sales summary page, United Kingdom, editorial, newspaper uses accounted for; 16% of the volume of my sales and 24% of my total sales $. Anyone IN the scheme have figures to compare?

Thanks Spacecadet for your insight. I claim no particular wisdom on this but one or two of my shots seem to find their way to the pic editors desk on a semi regular basis and I've never been in the scheme. I think I'm staying out for now, but it's a personal decision and I'm by no way implying being in the scheme isn't a good idea for others. I could well be blasting off a footfull of toes . .. . .

Did a tiny bit of leg work and found the answer myself . . . "RM (including RM - E) images remain as rights managed and can only be used once for the following uses by a newspaper: Print only, web only, web and print combined "

Does the newspaper scheme allow users to to re-use the same image multiple times once they've taken it through the scheme?