Kamira

This is interesting. https://brutallyhonestmicrostock.com/2018/02/06/do-alamy-buyers-search-elsewhere-answers-from-alamy/

Of course. That's true. But,.in general, you are not competing only with yourself. Unless your image is of an extremely specific subject (and then its market will be limited) you will be competing with thousands of images that might not be the same as yours but similar enough to be useful to illustrate the same concept.

Thanks. I'll give it more time.

Yes, I joined 11 years ago but I don't know why I never uploaded to Alamy until June 2020. Right after that other agency lowered their commissions.

Because I thought it was worth trying. Without uploading some of my files to Alamy I have no way of knowing if it works (for me) or not. There's an independent forum at Microstockgroup.com that's not affiliated to any agency. There's an annual poll there where people vote for the agencies that make.them.more money. Go and have a look. I was not the one who referred first to that other agency. My point is that if we were.going to talk about them we should make a fair comparison. Not all sales there are for 0.10 and so far I (can't speak for.others) feel it's a lot more probable to sell an image for $$$ there than here. I don't blame Alamy and I really would like their business model to prevail. I just don't see how that would be possible. And yes...when that other agency lowered the commissions they pay to their contributors I froze my portfolio for a while and thought about stop contributing. And then I started submitting to Alamy to try my luck. But as someone said in this thread...principles don't pay my bills and we are in the middle of a pandemic where most of.my other projects are not viable. How is the Alamy market different than the market of all those microstock agencies? What's their added value and how can they avoid competing with those agencies?

Not at all. I don't approve the way they make business although saying you are selling 100 images for $10 is an oversimplification of their system. In that other agency I've sold images for $$$ and also images for 0.10. But...despite the fact that that other agency is obviously taking advantage of their contributors it is also a fact that in that other agency I (and I suspect most people that sell here and there) sell several hundred times more images than I sell here. That leads to making in a day there what I make in several months here. But that's not the point. The point is that this whole stock industry is falling apart. There are lots of sites offering quality photos for free and every day there are thousands of people joining these agencies. Now almost everyone with a camera and cheap lights can make a "good enough for stock" photo and that saturates the market. All agencies ,including Alamy , that's fighting for the same market, will eventually reduce their commissions to a level where it won't be worth it to work for that kind of money.It is happening already.

That's the point. Alamy has to compete in the same market so it will eventually have to offer similar prices and similar commissions to microstock. And there are a gazillion sites offering images for free (free as in zero cost). Those are our real problem.

The race to the bottom started everywhere since a lot of sites started offering quality images for free. It's the culture of "working for exposure" instead of working for money. Besides now, with modern cameras, it's obviously easier to take an acceptable "good enough for stock" image. Image banks grow exponentially and demand can not grow at the same rate.

Yes...but that certain agency agency sells dozens of times more images than Alamy. At least in my case. And that certai angency also sells "On Demand" and " Single" images for prices similar to the "better" prices in Alamy I'm not saying that agency is great, it's not. But Alamy is getting so close to Microstock than they are practically indistinguishable. And Microstock sells way more. It's a race to the bottom

Thanks Cindy. I really appreciate your answer.

Hi Marianne Thanks so much for your help. I've had 35 sales.since I started uploading in June and 6870 views. My CTR right now is 0.51. I started in June so I didn't had 3K images all this time. Since I made the original post I've had three more sales but at really low prices considering the small number of sales. I mean...at other agencies the average income.per sale is lower than here but the number of sales compensates that by a wide margin. Again...thanks for your interest and tour really informative answer.

Thanks for your help Maria. Are you sure about the need to include plurals? The search engine should not need that. Someone also mentioned the search engine differentiates between upper and lowercase keywords. It shouldn't do that either.

Thanks Ed. I'll fix it.

Thanks Chuck. I really appreciate your point of view. However I still don't like the idea of being exclusive at any agency. I respect your experience but I've been doing this for 12 years and so far I've had great results. I don't know why but at the beginning I never uploaded to Alamy . In the few months since I began uploading here my income here is less than 1% than what I've made elsewhere. I can't be exclusive at Alamy with those numbers. I like Alamy's business model but the competition is fierce and.no agency (in my opinion) is safe. I prefer to have options I don't do current news . I saw your portfolio and is great. I love your work. My original question when I began this thread was why I was getting zooms but so few sales. My CTR is not bad. I have 33 zooms.now. Maybe the reason is people buy my images elsewhere. Maybe I have to wait a little longer to see the results. Thanks again for your help

But that's not stock photography. That's a tutorial for real state photography I was there with my family. I had the opportunity and I did it . Look, I'm not saying I'm a great, not even a good stock photographer. That's not the point. I'm just saying that the market is already saturated unless you find a very specific niche with a very small market. And I'm also saying that this industry is falling apart because of competition, the massification of digital photography, websites giving away free images etc. All that implies that agencies will continue cutting costs and our commissions as a result, making it harder and harder to invest time and money in taking photos that involve lots of planning , travel , special access, models etc. I'm not exclusive at Alamy.I've been doing stock for 12 years and that's what I see. Hopefully it will be different with Alamy In this case "new production - Oct 2020" he has the most common subjects ever. I can find thousands of similar photos. A soldier on a computer...,. A soldier hugging hs w.ife etc.