It's official- 50% for exclusive - (JW response video to commission change)

[Broad Norfolk]

I appreciate that this may not work for everybody, but thanks Alamy, it fits in with my work process.

[andremichel]

29 minutes ago, Tony said:

 

All my images here on Alamy are exclusive, apart from 6, I don't tout the same images on microstock sites, etc. I regard that as being loyal.

 

If they are the leftovers after your other agencies have had first pick then you simply have a different approach to non exclusives. You are no more or less loyal than non exclusives.  

 

For the last 20 years Alamy has operated as a non exclusive library. Given the low returns here many have tried to maximise returns by submitting their images elsewhere. Yes was all within the rules we signed up to. Now suddenly we get penalised. 

 

I don't know why you have to bring microstock into the argument. Yes Alamy has actively courted microstockers, but many long term alamy contributors who are now not exclusive do not submit to microstock. 

[Steve Valentia]

For those who suggested ( @spacecadet ) or thought that Contributor Services may be able to help with checking the "exclusive to Alamy" box, especially for large numbers of images; here's the reply I got to my request this morning:

You can mark your images as exclusive by ticking the 'only available on Alamy' box under the 'optional' tab in the image manager.  You can do this in batches by selecting multiple submissions in the left hand column using the 'shift' key and then ticking 'select all passed'.

 

 

[spacecadet]

32 minutes ago, Steve Valentia said:

For those who suggested ( @spacecadet ) or thought that Contributor Services may be able to help with checking the "exclusive to Alamy" box, especially for large numbers of images; here's the reply I got to my request this morning:

You can mark your images as exclusive by ticking the 'only available on Alamy' box under the 'optional' tab in the image manager.  You can do this in batches by selecting multiple submissions in the left hand column using the 'shift' key and then ticking 'select all passed'

 

Email received on October 3rd. I can't be the only one who got it. Of course then it didn't much matter, but I did it anyway. Now I only need to do it myself for new subs.

Are your images only available for sale on Alamy? If your images aren't available for sale* elsewhere, let us know by marking them as 'only available on Alamy' in the 'optional' tab of the Alamy Image Manager (AIM).  If you'd like all images in your collection to be marked as exclusive, just reply with the word 'ALL' and we'll do the hard work for you. Take me to AIM *if your images are displayed on your own site & social media platforms etc but aren't available for sale elsewhere you can still mark them as exclusive.

[Julie Edwards]

The UK Press Gazette quoted The BPPA’s open letter to Alamy’s CEO in their piece about his video signalling his intention to reduce the photographers percentage of royalties to 40%. This morning the UKPG asked us to provide a response to James West’s latest video where he offers to keep the 50% split for exclusive content. 

 

You can read the reply here: https://thebppa.com/alamy-a-follow-up/

 

 

[Starsphinx]

8 minutes ago, Julie Edwards said:

The UK Press Gazette quoted The BPPA’s open letter to Alamy’s CEO in their piece about his video signalling his intention to reduce the photographers percentage of royalties to 40%. This morning the UKPG asked us to provide a response to James West’s latest video where he offers to keep the 50% split for exclusive content. 

 

You can read the reply here: https://thebppa.com/alamy-a-follow-up/

 

 

Ouch - but I totally agree with what they have written

 

[Steve Valentia]

 

 

36 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Email received on October 3rd. I can't be the only one who got it. Of course then it didn't much matter, but I did it anyway. Now I only need to do it myself for new subs.

 

I got it. I replied to it. Nothing happened. I've been with Alamy since 2004 and totally loyal (not that it's done me much good). Not only am I struggling to re-keyword thousands of images that had more than 50 key words (prior to the new AIM) and many of those had totally useless ones - owing to me being stupid enough to employ a key wording service recommended by Alamy, some years ago - I now have to take time to tick the "exclusive" box on 7000 images.

 

I'm doing the exclusive box batching by year. When I right-click all of the individual boxes on the left, I'm then given several batches of images, each batch needs to have a "select all passed" box checked before I can click and save the check box. I have, on average, 100 of these per year (which totals around 1400 check boxes plus the same number of left hand boxes - those can be done with a shift click, but not the check boxes. I'm currently up to 2015. This could be a long day.
 

[Martin P Wilson]

I will not be going exclusive, simply not worth the effort. 40% of next to nothing is not so different from 50%. The reverted commission will not compensate me adequately for the time involved. After next week I will be pursuing other, more rewarding, activities in place of Alamy.I may just let my Alamy portfolio rot on the vine, most of it anyway. I regard general stock as effectively dead.

 

My gross income for 2018 is my lowest since I joined by an (un)comfortable margin; nett is even worse since I was on 60 or 70% back then. Even my first part-year gross was higher.

 

So no real incentive to stay let alone do any work on my portfolio; the exclusive thing is cynical in my view., I suspect most (especially inactive) contributors will not or cannot make their images exckusive (including many serious full-time professionals) so most of the Alamy library will be at 40%. That has to be the case otherwise Alamy will not get what it wanted from the commission cut; prices for exclusive are not going to go up - it is just not important for most uses. It is simply a sop to try and damp down the criticism; I agree with the NPPA view.

[Doc]

As someone who has always sold his images exclusively on Alamy, I am obviously pleased with this result.

 

Three points I would make regarding this issue

 

1. If Alamy are going to do this then they must NOT alter the search engine to return non-exclusive images first to maximise their profits

 

2. They should make a new tab in the Search Engine specifically labelled "Alamy Exclusive" to make it easier for buyers to look for images they know are not available elsewhere

 

3. We as contributors must not game the system by labelling our images as exclusive when they are not, and Alamy needs to put in a mechanism to police this or the system will fall apart rapidly

 

Kumar

 

[Tony]

3 hours ago, andremichel said:

If they are the leftovers after your other agencies have had first pick then you simply have a different approach to non exclusives. You are no more or less loyal than non exclusives.  

I don't have to explain myself to you but you seem to find it hard to understand, so I'll try again...

 

I do not let the other agencies have first picks, as I've said what I produce for them is a completely different sort of imagery that would not make for good general stock.

 

I'm loyal to Alamy in as much that I don't tout the same images I have here on multiple sites, that's all I'm saying.

 

As regard being loyal to Alamy to the point of making quality fresh images, I stopped going out of my way to do that a long time ago, just the occasional shoot if it comes my way. It's no longer worth the effort for the merger rewards.

 

Elsewhere, I've just received royalty payments of over £3,000 net for just 6 images, that's a years worth of sales here.

 

Now do you understand?

 

[spacecadet]

2 hours ago, Steve Valentia said:

 

 

 

I got it. I replied to it. Nothing happened. I've been with Alamy since 2004 and totally loyal (not that it's done me much good). Not only am I struggling to re-keyword thousands of images that had more than 50 key words (prior to the new AIM) and many of those had totally useless ones - owing to me being stupid enough to employ a key wording service recommended by Alamy, some years ago - I now have to take time to tick the "exclusive" box on 7000 images.

 

I'm doing the exclusive box batching by year. When I right-click all of the individual boxes on the left, I'm then given several batches of images, each batch needs to have a "select all passed" box checked before I can click and save the check box. I have, on average, 100 of these per year (which totals around 1400 check boxes plus the same number of left hand boxes - those can be done with a shift click, but not the check boxes. I'm currently up to 2015. This could be a long day.
 

That's too bad. You could ask again.

If you do it yourself you can do it by year.When doing it on batches, if you watch out for a blue dot in the "exclusive" box it means you've missed some.

 

[Tony]

7 minutes ago, Doc said:

As someone who has always sold his images exclusively on Alamy, I am obviously pleased with this result.

 

Three points I would make regarding this issue

 

1. If Alamy are going to do this then they must NOT alter the search engine to return non-exclusive images first to maximise their profits

 

2. They should make a new tab in the Search Engine specifically labelled "Alamy Exclusive" to make it easier for buyers to look for images they know are not available elsewhere

 

3. We as contributors must not game the system by labelling our images as exclusive when they are not, and Alamy needs to put in a mechanism to police this or the system will fall apart rapidly

 

Kumar

 

Hear hear

[Steve Valentia]

15 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

That's too bad. You could ask again.

If you do it yourself you can do it by year.When doing it on batches, if you watch out for a blue dot in the "exclusive" box it means you've missed some.

 

 

Thanks, as I said, I asked about 2 hours ago; to do it again would be bordering on pushy and I'm too polite for that. I'm doing it by year (one year has over 2000 images in it). I've discovered that AIM will only change 500 images max at a time.

 

So, a tip for others, is to watch the total selected image number tot up, on the top LH side of the page. If it get over 500, deselect some of the submission in the LH column, until you have less than 500 images.

 

I'm currently up to 2007. 5 years to go!

[Steve Valentia]

23 minutes ago, Doc said:

They should make a new tab in the Search Engine specifically labelled "Alamy Exclusive" to make it easier for buyers to look for images they know are not available elsewhere

 

3. We as contributors must not game the system by labelling our images as exclusive when they are not, and Alamy needs to put in a mechanism to police this or the system will fall apart rapidly.

 

They made their own bed and they should lie in it. Personally, I think Alamy owe its loyal contributors (and that's not necessarily everyone) more than a "gamed" system. A good start would be to let us see where our images are being published. Tied to this, the right to show this to DACS without having to cough up 50% (or maybe even 40%) of an income to which Alamy don't even have a legitimate claim.

[Keith Douglas]

34 minutes ago, Doc said:

As someone who has always sold his images exclusively on Alamy, I am obviously pleased with this result.

 

Three points I would make regarding this issue

 

1. If Alamy are going to do this then they must NOT alter the search engine to return non-exclusive images first to maximise their profits

 

2. They should make a new tab in the Search Engine specifically labelled "Alamy Exclusive" to make it easier for buyers to look for images they know are not available elsewhere

 

3. We as contributors must not game the system by labelling our images as exclusive when they are not, and Alamy needs to put in a mechanism to police this or the system will fall apart rapidly

 

Kumar

 

Me too - exclusive as far as stock is concerned until the commission issue blew up, but it was a wake up call to me and I won't be quite so exclusive in the future. My degree of exclusivity is going to come down to the direction that Alamy takes and how that translates to (hopefully) increased revenue for contributors. Can/will they exploit the exclusivity amongst customers? And will they enable contributors to specify minimum licence fees for their exclusive images, for example?

 

I don't think that Alamy will alter the search engine to give preference in the searches to non-exclusive images. Non-exclusive images may lead to a sale but not necessarily through Alamy. Secondly It would damage Alamy's reputation if they were seen to be saying "the best images for you are the ones that you can get from elsewhere". Thirdly, it's a pretty easy thing for contributors to check - just modify a few images between exclusive / non-exclusive, wait a day or two and and see where they move in the search results!

 

From a contributor perspective, and with 99.9% of my images exclusive to Alamy, I like the idea of the Alamy Exclusive tab. BUT, my main question is what's in it for the Customer? Is it going to improve their experience, get them to an image they want quicker, be more accurate etc. I think something can be built on it for the Customer but it needs those underlying reasons why it's good for the Customer if it's going to work.

 

Keith

[Starsphinx]

18 minutes ago, Steve Valentia said:

 

They made their own bed and they should lie in it. Personally, I think Alamy owe its loyal contributors (and that's not necessarily everyone) more than a "gamed" system. A good start would be to let us see where our images are being published. Tied to this, the right to show this to DACS without having to cough up 50% (or maybe even 40%) of an income to which Alamy don't even have a legitimate claim.

I have started a thread for non-commission changes that need making - you might want to add suggestions there.  I figure if there is a single thread with lots of contibutions it might help focus Alamy a little bit on areas that they are weak in.

[spacecadet]

44 minutes ago, Steve Valentia said:

 

Thanks, as I said, I asked about 2 hours ago; to do it again would be bordering on pushy and I'm too polite for that. I'm doing it by year (one year has over 2000 images in it). I've discovered that AIM will only change 500 images max at a time.

 

 

Yes, I just divided your port by 14 and thought you might get away with it. I thought I'd discovered a wheeze yesterday, but it turns out I'd already had it done by MS and forgotten about it.

You can select more than 500 images with the drag tool, but it's not very efficient.

LOL

[Julie Edwards]

Reading this now "I'm alright Jack" seems to spring to mind.... and thats a shame, but explains an awful lot about the industry now (and no i am not pointing fingers at any individual)..

[Ollie]

I don't understand why so many are rushing to designate their images as exclusive to Alamy before we have seen the new contract language.  That will be announced in January and will not take effect for 45 days thereafter.  Until then the current contract applies, i.e., we get 50% of sales proceeds for all images, exclusive or non-exclusive, except where sub-agents are involved.

[photocatseyes]

As regard being loyal to Alamy to the point of making quality fresh images, I stopped going out of my way to do that a long time ago, just the occasional shoot if it comes my way. It's no longer worth the effort for the merger rewards.

 

Elsewhere, I've just received royalty payments of over £3,000 net for just 6 images, that's a years worth of sales here.

 

Now do you understand?

 

Edited 3 hours ago by Tony

 

 

Yes, I understand. I wished I could for once have sales for 3000 dollar. I also hear it when you say that going truly out of your way to shoot for Alamy is not worth it anymore, or so it seems. Not when you get paid $1.65 or $3 for an image. We sadly enough do not get 50% or more from our images. Over the last year my payment was far closer to 20-30% by the time distribution and distributor have gotten the lion share of my work. Totally discouraging... 

[Steve Valentia]

31 minutes ago, Ollie said:

I don't understand why so many are rushing to designate their images as exclusive to Alamy before we have seen the new contract language.  That will be announced in January and will not take effect for 45 days thereafter.  Until then the current contract applies, i.e., we get 50% of sales proceeds for all images, exclusive or non-exclusive, except where sub-agents are involved.

 

I have 4 reasons for doing it right away.

1. I had some spare time on my hands right now (the lull before Christmas - less emails and hands-on work (magazine articles done, etc).

2. Leaving it until next year may mean I get caught up with teaching, assignments and stock shooting.

3. I'm old and close to senile (which actually only literally means being over 65), so it could slip my mind if I wait too long.

4. ...I can't remember what the 4th reason is.

[Starsphinx]

1 minute ago, JeffGreenberg said:

 

Forget it Jake.  Its Alamy.

The Outrage has seen its apotheosis & dissipation.

What remains are pronouncements of loyalty & seasonal wishes.

The Revolution has been muted, handled, & quelled...

Always the optimist

 

[Archoptical]

Sorry what?  I make all my images exclusive to Alamy and in return they give me the nothing extra at all?  I can see the benefit to Alamy, but struggling a bit to see the reward for the photographer (save for the removal of a threat to cut commission).

[Graham]

For what it is worth, I think this is a positive response by Alamy to the criticisms raised.  Bearing in mind that the number of people commenting in these forums is likely to be a very small proportion indeed of Alamy's total contributor base, I think it is positive that they have been prepared to listen and act, even if not in a way that entirely pleases everybody.

 

Graham

[Chuck Nacke]

You all know or should know, it is about images and then it is about the split.

Make great images and you call the shots and the percentages.  Make pictures

of your garden and you take what you can get, unless you make really exceptional

images of your really exceptional garden.....

 

It's Martini time.....

 

Chuck Nacke