A new personal low

[hotbrightsky]

Wow. This is a new low for me:

 

Country: Worldwide
Usage: Student Projects, For non-commercial use in projects such as dissertations, presentations or essays.
Industry sector: Education
Image Size: Any size
Start: 10 December 2018
Duration: In perpetuity

 

Price: $1.02

 

Can somebody explain how this rights-managed usage on those terms is allowed at this price, and who the likely customer is? Thanks.

[isphoto]

So students paying thousands in fees, gets to be subsidised by Alamy ! 

 

Also if this is for a dissertation why is the licence in perpetuity? And really, the fee if correct, goes beyond a joke, it will cost more for Alamy to raise the invoice and collect.

 

I had a tv production co onto me today for an image, they said they had no budget and wanted use for perpetuity. They got and agreed to a  good  three figure sum and a very limited duration license. All it takes is for someone to say no and go back with a realistic price/terms.

 

[Nick Hatton]

1 hour ago, hotbrightsky said:

Wow. This is a new low for me:

 

Country: Worldwide
Usage: Student Projects, For non-commercial use in projects such as dissertations, presentations or essays.
Industry sector: Education
Image Size: Any size
Start: 10 December 2018
Duration: In perpetuity

 

Price: $1.02

 

Can somebody explain how this rights-managed usage on those terms is allowed at this price, and who the likely customer is? Thanks.

I had a sale come in yesterday for exactly $1 !

[Avpics]

These are becoming quite common. After February our cut for these licences will be such that they'll need to go to three decimal places

[Barking]

Should there be a minimum of $1???? 

[hotbrightsky]

16 hours ago, isphoto said:

Also if this is for a dissertation why is the licence in perpetuity?

 

I don't allow any personal use licensing so this must be an institution or a publisher. It's not just one dissertation but potentially thousands.

 

Sometimes I suspect that Alamy staff must have a discretionary budget purely for the purposes of antagonising contributors.

[hotbrightsky]

17 hours ago, isphoto said:

So students paying thousands in fees, gets to be subsidised by Alamy ! 

 

 

You may be correct:

 

"This is a new licence aimed specifically at students and lecturers for student resources, and can only be purchased from an academic IP address."

 

So Alamy is effectively exploiting our images to undermine traditional educational publishers, one of the few existing markets for my photos. Nice work Alamy.

[MDM]

isphoto said:

So students paying thousands in fees, gets to be subsidised by Alamy ! 

 

Oh have mercy man! Pity the students of 2018. Students in England, for example, get massive loans to pay exorbitant fees, currently £9200 a year in England regardless whether they are doing medicine in a top university or media studies in the old local polytech. So they come out with massive debts and the vast vast majority are not getting subsidised by their parents and will most likely not even get a job related to whatever degree they did. If they actually buy a licence then that is good training.

 

1 hour ago, hotbrightsky said:

 

You may be correct:

 

"This is a new licence aimed specifically at students and lecturers for student resources, and can only be purchased from an academic IP address."

 

So Alamy is effectively exploiting our images to undermine traditional educational publishers, one of the few existing markets for my photos. Nice work Alamy.

 

 This has nothing to do with academic or educational publishers. If they wanted to cheat they can just buy presentation licences anyway.

[Marb]

19 hours ago, Avpics said:

These are becoming quite common. After February our cut for these licences will be such that they'll need to go to three decimal places

 

Yep, Alamy payments are getting so low that they will be doing a disservice to microstock. My incentive to upload here is getting less and less.

[Duncan_Andison]

4 minutes ago, Marb said:

 

Yep, Alamy payments are getting so low that they will be doing a disservice to microstock. My incentive to upload here is getting less and less.

 

Let's face it, to get that low at a Micro, the buyer would have to be on a very large subscription package!

[Avpics]

3 minutes ago, Marb said:

 

Yep, Alamy payments are getting so low that they will be doing a disservice to microstock. My incentive to upload here is getting less and less.

Yesterday I had three licences reported; $33, $111 and $15 (gross values). My next licence may well be $1 but I just have to accept that as an evil I have no control over if I want to stay in all the schemes that bring in earnings. Since the announcement of the 20% drop I've begun uploading to a couple of micro sites where $1 would be a high figure - that I find difficult to swallow but understand that is how micro works.

[Marb]

1 minute ago, Avpics said:

Yesterday I had three licences reported; $33, $111 and $15 (gross values). My next licence may well be $1 but I just have to accept that as an evil I have no control over if I want to stay in all the schemes that bring in earnings. Since the announcement of the 20% drop I've begun uploading to a couple of micro sites where $1 would be a high figure - that I find difficult to swallow but understand that is how micro works.

And lets not forget that micro makes a few sales per day so they do add up.

[Starsphinx]

I am beginning to wonder at if the distinction between micro and mid stock still exists - or needs to be redefined.  In the past 5 months since I joined I have had one sale at Alamy (mid stock) for a low single figure $ - of which I do not see a complete $.  At the same time on a third of the images, another place (microstock) has given me 2 sales - of which I do not know the gross but they are each netting me $2 (and odd cents).  The other place offers extended licences with various terms - and advertised pricing up to $5000 - as well as royalty free.  It does offer subscription purchasing which Alamy does not.  So besides the subscription can someone tell me what exactly the difference is - and why it matters if they are getting me more sales at higher prices than Alamy?

[Avpics]

4 minutes ago, Starsphinx said:

I am beginning to wonder at if the distinction between micro and mid stock still exists...

In my experience, very. Alamy brings in $$ and some $$$ with sometimes $, whilst micro brings in cents with the odd $. Just because larger figures are advertised to entice people onto micros doesn't mean they'll happen. Having said that, I'll let you know if I get one!

[Starsphinx]

2 minutes ago, Avpics said:

In my experience, very. Alamy brings in $$ and some $$$ with sometimes $, whilst micro brings in cents with the odd $. Just because larger figures are advertised to entice people onto micros doesn't mean they'll happen. Having said that, I'll let you know if I get one!

See this is where I get confused - because I am getting the $s there and only cents so far here.  Now there has not been enough time or size of ports to really assess, but so far I am definitely not seeing claimed microstock behaviour from the microstock place 
This probably means I am in for 12 months of 5cent sales which will teach me.

As I am new and my experience is absolutely not tying up with traditional wisdom I have to ask is traditional wisdom keeping up with market changes. 

[Avpics]

They're different markets, obviously with some overlap. Alamy being editorial will stand more chance of the TV, book and other higher end sales if you have those in your portfolio. No portfolio will be the same so which agency is best will depend on that. If you're taking images that do well on micro then you wouldn't expect to do so well on macro unless you can start to expand on editorial images.

[andremichel]

18 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

I am beginning to wonder at if the distinction between micro and mid stock still exists

It would be very interesting if a successful microstocker could honestly give us their average sales price over the last year. On Alamy taking the good and bad my average is $29 gross.

 

I am assuming that on MS it comes in alot lower. More like $3?  Am I wrong?

[MDM]

1 hour ago, andremichel said:

It would be very interesting if a successful microstocker could honestly give us their average sales price over the last year. On Alamy taking the good and bad my average is $29 gross.

 

I am assuming that on MS it comes in alot lower. More like $3?  Am I wrong?

 

A more meaningful number would be the average income from images that have sold as word has it that multiple sales of individual images are common on microstock (I wouldn't know personally as I have avoided microstock to date). So, if a particular image sells 10 or 100 times, then calculate the total revenue from that image and count that as 1 sale when calculating the average. 

[hotbrightsky]

21 hours ago, MDM said:

isphoto said:

 This has nothing to do with academic or educational publishers.

 

But of course it does. Schools and universities would typically source licensed images from textbooks and other materials for their students to re-use if necessary. Educational publishers would be forced to pay sensible prices to allow their customers to do that. Is Alamy now licensing our images directly to individual students for peanuts instead?

[Starsphinx]

I now have a small number of same images with 3 agencies including Alamy - a big tier one, a smaller one people insist is micro but which seems to offer similar extended licences to Alamy, and Alamy.  I will keep an eye on them and aft

2 hours ago, andremichel said:

It would be very interesting if a successful microstocker could honestly give us their average sales price over the last year. On Alamy taking the good and bad my average is $29 gross.

 

I am assuming that on MS it comes in alot lower. More like $3?  Am I wrong?

 

1 hour ago, MDM said:

 

A more meaningful number would be the average income from images that have sold as word has it that multiple sales of individual images are common on microstock (I wouldn't know personally as I have avoided microstock to date). So, if a particular image sells 10 or 100 times, then calculate the total revenue from that image and count that as 1 sale when calculating the average. 

I now have a small number of same images with 3 agencies including Alamy - a big tier one, a smaller one people insist is micro but which seems to offer similar extended licences to Alamy, and Alamy.  I will keep an eye on them and after a period of time will attempt to answer these questions - if the result is not that all 3 places produced $0 lol

[sb photos]

On 12/12/2018 at 16:40, hotbrightsky said:

Wow. This is a new low for me:

 

Country: Worldwide
Usage: Student Projects, For non-commercial use in projects such as dissertations, presentations or essays.
Industry sector: Education
Image Size: Any size
Start: 10 December 2018
Duration: In perpetuity

 

Price: $1.02

 

Can somebody explain how this rights-managed usage on those terms is allowed at this price, and who the likely customer is? Thanks.

 

Snap, same here. Same licence and $1.02, first ever that low. R5PA45, last shot as walking back to the car leaving Yarl's Wood IRC protest, so no real effort put into into it, but would have expected a student could have found more than $1.02.