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How long before you sold your first stock photo?


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43 minutes ago, Mads Thomsen said:

Damn well okay...I'm young and still practicing always new things to learn...what type of photos did you sell the most of?

 

Mads, I think you'll find that Brasilnut was being a little, um, flippant. His original reply intended to convey that he sold his first image on Alamy after 6 months, when he had about 1,000 images uploaded.  Likewise, MandyD sold her first image on Alamy after about 6 weeks when she had about 300 images online.

 

EDIT: I probably had about 550 images online when I sold my first image here, which was about 9 months after I (properly) began to upload images here.

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It was easier to start years ago when the Alamy collection was considerably smaller. Now it is close to 150 mill. media files of which the larger part will be photos. You will be in for some hard work and a steep learning curve to establish yourself for regular sales.

 

A little bit more about the portfolio size when getting the first sale, but remember to check how long ago it was:

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/9632-the-size-of-your-portfolio-when-you-made-your-first-sale/

 

You can search the forum for threads giving valuable information. Also by using Google and include alamy forum in the search terms.

 

Listen to what John says - it is important: "Sorry to change the subject, but your images of buildings contain property, so they should be either RM or RF editorial use only." - and remember to tick the boxes about content in the optional section accordingly,

 

5-6 months before the first sale by the way - a few hundred images uploaded - fees were higher.

 

Niels

 

 

 

 

 

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 First sale at around 500 images. Can’t remember how long, but longer than most replying here because after failing a few times I got discouraged and quit uploading for a few months.  And I didn’t grasp what made good stock photos for longer than that.

Probably 10-12 months before I sold.

Betty

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After five months, with 174 images, which had been added 10-13 images at a time from March to August--of 2004, that is, when we were mailing in CD's containing TIF files of at least 48Mb each, which were produced from scans of slides, and possibly upsized. 

 

So things have changed a bit, and your results may vary. There's enormously more images to compete with, but at least you can add them more quickly and easily.

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11 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

 First sale at around 500 images. Can’t remember how long, but longer than most replying here because after failing a few times I got discouraged and quit uploading for a few months.  And I didn’t grasp what made good stock photos for longer than that.

Probably 10-12 months before I sold.

Betty

 

I think Almay should make you their poster girl and tell your story as a case study - I love how helpful and generous you are with advice and posts and it really helps that you did not always get things right the first time. Thank you.

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33 minutes ago, Starsphinx said:

I think Almay should make you their poster girl and tell your story as a case study - I love how helpful and generous you are with advice and posts and it really helps that you did not always get things right the first time. Thank you.

Thank you!  Nobody is perfect.  I’m not even close. 

What the new people have here is a forum of helpful people who are generous with advice. When I joined, there was a handful of regulars in the forum who pretty much would rip your skin off if you asked a newbie question, or one they felt you should have dug out the answer for yourself. I read nasty spats quite often.

As a result, I was terrified to post questions. I don’t have one of those personalities where I’m able to let it roll off my back. I have a history of ulcers. It took me a long time to glean the information that newbies can get now after a couple of posts.

Alamy, in its infinite wisdom, closed that forum down, and when it was reopened, there were some people that were never seen again.

To this day, I’m still saying, “Thank you, Alamy.”

Betty

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Back in 2008 my first sale was after 5 months and 600 images, but back then Alamy had 12.5 million images. they have 12x that amount now, so far more competition. However they probably sell multiple times the amount of images now compared with back then. 

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