Contemporary Dave

I've been with Alamy since January and have uploaded nearly 700 images, with a 100% pass rate. My QC rating is 3/3 stars. Out of curiosity, when - or how do you qualify for a 5 star QC rating?

Update: I contacted Alamy. They did say it was within the licence boundaries - apart from one, which I've received payment for ($3.00 whoopee!). I've since found 2 more possible infringements, which I've asked Alamy to look into.

It varies, but it ranges from 25 cents to $1.80 for me.

If you haven't heard, it's all kicked off over at Shutterstock. They've announced a new earnings structure, which can be seen here: https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/contributor-earnings-update To say it has gone down badly is the understatement of the century. Your percentage of earnings is now calculated on the number of downloads you have in a calendar year. It then gets worse. At the beginning of each and every year thereafter, ALL contributors are 'reset' to the lowest level of earnings, which is 15%. It's believed that your images will now sell for as little as 10 cents. After Alamy got acquired by the PA Media Group recently, let's just hope something similar doesn't happen here. But alas, I think it will only be a matter of time when changes will be made here.

I'm still a bit of a newbie to stock photography, so please forgive my ignorance. I recently sold a portrait of Monty Python's Graham Chapman through Alamy, which Alamy stated the following licence: "Usage: Editorial, Editorial Website, 10 year, Worldwide, single article with archival right in perpituty" The image subsequently appeared online in an article by daily-choices.com. I recently did another image search and it appears the same website has published the same photo again in different articles. Some of the articles have identical or very similar wording, but different URL's and article titles. See here: https://www.daily-choices.com/our-favorite-comedians-net-worth/29/?xcmg=1 https://www.daily-choices.com/celebrities-with-surprising-college-degrees/35/?xcmg=1 https://www.history-a2z.com/our-favorite-comedians-net-worth/29/?xcmg=1 Some have different domains, but looking at the design/layout, it's been done by the same people. See screengrab below. Would the above be classed as a 'single article' - or have they breached the licence? Any advice would be much appreciated.

I'm a newcomer to stock photography and I currently have a library of around 370 images on Alamy and I have made only one sale in the last 3 months. I know I have to add a hell of a lot more images before it starts to work for me. Most of my images are for sale as rights managed (upon recommendation from an experienced Alamy user). I also have about 250 images on Shutterstock (which I believe are royalty free) and I've made around 30 sales. I'm beginning to wonder if I have done the right thing by selling my images as rights managed. Do images sell better if they are marked as royalty free, or does it not really matter - as its all down the content and quality of your images?

Thanks for your comments y'all. Most helpful.

I'm a newcomer to stock libraries and have recently joined Alamy & Shutterstock. As it states in the rules, any shots I have submitted to Alamy with contain recognisable property with no release have been set to editorial use only. An example being this shot: https://tinyurl.com/ukxakq4. This shot was initially rejected by Shutterstock, because I had set the usage to Commercial and not editorial. Indeed, Shutterstock appear to be paranoid about this rule. When I look at other similar shots on Alamy, I've noticed that the majority of them have been set to commercial use, despite the author of the photo stating there is no property release. So hypothetically, if a photographer was to sell a photo that contained recognisable property for commercial purposes without a release and the property holder complains, who takes the rap? Is it the photographer or Alamy?

Most helpful - thank you.

I'm new to the stock photography world, so forgive me if this has been asked before. I'm lead to understand that if you submit the same photos to multiple stock libraries, you can save a lot of time adding keywords to each site by placing your keywords for that specific photo in the keywords tag box in Lightroom. Apparently, the stock site you are uploading that specific photo to will pick up the keywords and add them automatically, thus saving you a lot of time having to write them out again. I don't have Lightroom, but I have Adobe Bridge. Would the same thing work if you added the keywords in the keywords IPTC core section of Bridge?

I have 2/3 star rating and I'm still waiting for shots to be cleared (I have a 100% pass rate) that I submitted 3 days ago. ☹️

They came through about an hour or so ago - all passed!

Out of curiosity, how long is QC taking these days? The reason why I ask is that my first batch of around 75+ shots I uploaded all got cleared in less than a day. I uploaded a load more on Saturday and they are still in QC. I've had no QC fails and my QC rating is showing as 2 out of three stars.

Thanks for the heads up - it is actually a winch for a fishing boat, but I'll correct it. It must have accidentally been selected when doing another image. Out of interest, how do you read someone else's keywords?

Thanks Y'all. They've all appeared now. Must have been the server not updating.