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


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1 minute ago, BobD said:

this is going way off topic. Please in you want to discuss brexit start another thread.

Fair point. I'm all for staying on topic myself. Just slightly miffed that I'm broke, Alamy are paying peanuts and it's Christmas. That said, I've at least 4 other posts on topic in this thread alone in the last hour.

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This doesn't make a bit if difference for me.

 

My sales volume of Alamy vs others makes exclusivity not worthwhile for me.

 

All you exclusive peeps who are Woo-hooing at this change, you are still taking a hit because prices overall are going down, correct?

 

Sorry, not satisfied with this concession.

 

What would appease me is if existing contributors would have their current contracted 50 percent rate honored ("grandfathered in", as they say), and NEW contributors would have the NEWly reduced rate. This seems the proper way to roll in a change.... especially accompanied by a price drop overall.

 

Sorry, Alamy, I'm still shaking my head in disapproval.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Starsphinx said:

You might want to try extending your news services to beyond UK MSM.  Then you might pick up some of the facts like the transit agreement just announced, and statements from people other than Juncker and Verhofstadt making it clear there will be no grounding of UK flights, no blocking of medication or whatever we are supposed to be panicking about this week, no extensive customs delays etc.  A WTO rules or "no deal" Brexit is not going to cause mass mayhem - despite strong attempts to make it.

Oh and the petition that is smashing numbers demanding a WTO exit.  Over a quarter of a million signatures most of them within the past week when the threat of a second referendum became serious.

UK voters were asked to decide - UK voters decided Leave - it is happening, it will happen.  Oh and it will not be the total horror nightmare being made out.

Reported as OT and political.

I wish spouting drivel and cruelty to magic unicorns was against forum rules, but it's not.

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2 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Reported as OT and political.

I wish spouting drivel and cruelty to magic unicorns was against forum rules, but it's not.

Then I trust you have also reported the other posts on the subject as mine was not made in isolation.

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9 minutes ago, Starsphinx said:

Then I trust you have also reported the other posts on the subject as mine was not made in isolation.

Actually it was. Apart from a couple off-the-cuff yours was the first contentious post.

May I suggest you withdraw it before the thread is locked. Then you can go wherever you usually go to sound off go and spout in peace while the rest of us discuss the matter at issue.

Red arrow all you like, I'm averaging about 30 greenies a week just now. If you try really  hard you might slow that down for a bit, but I won't know it's you because I'll have ignored your posts.

BTW, I've reported this post myself.

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20 minutes ago, AngieK said:

 

 

What would appease me is if existing contributors would have their current contracted 50 percent rate honored ("grandfathered in", as they say), and NEW contributors would have the NEWly reduced rate. This seems the proper way to roll in a change.... especially accompanied by a price drop overall.

 

 

I agree totally. I suggest you find a way to get such a good suggestion to those who can make it happen. 

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1 minute ago, Steve Valentia said:

I agree totally. I suggest you find a way to get such a good suggestion to those who can make it happen. 

I doubt it is going to happen - it would be a far smaller total cut that the current "exclusive" idea where large numbers of current contributors will not get to keep the 50% by failing to tick the exclusive box either intentionally or because they have missed the emails.

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3 hours ago, Steve Valentia said:

 

Tell that to the money brokers who are deciding how much my pension (hard-earned over 40 years) is currently worth, when converted from Sterling to Euro (I now live in Ireland).  It's been dropping like a stone since Brexit was announced and the cack-handed handling of the leave is making it almost not worth having.

 

2 hours ago, MDM said:

 

Why did this get a red arrow - simple truth. 

 

Haha. Does my red arrow mean the red arrow slinger thinks the previous statement was a lie and that Sterling has not fallen in value by about 20-25% since June 23rd 2016? The relevance to photographers is that cameras and computers have increased very significantly in price coinciding with the fall in Sterling. The relevance here may be that any cut by Alamy could be counterbalanced by a drop in £ to $ but one would need to be selling an awful lot of images for a further drop in Sterling to be beneficial. In any case, that would be a very small-minded way of thinking as the real value of the £ in terms of what one can actually buy with it is likely to be a lot less if it continues to fall. 

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1 hour ago, Steve Valentia said:

I agree totally. I suggest you find a way to get such a good suggestion to those who can make it happen. 

Put it in the suggestions forum -

https://discussion.alamy.com/forum/11-alamy/

'Give us your suggestions and ideas for Alamy here. We promise to read everything posted if you promise to keep all posts constructive, deal?'

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I wanted to point out that the Brexit argument came from James West. He used Brexit as one reason for the commission cut.

We will not reach an agreement, if Brexit will happen, and maybe that is another topic, but I really wonder what negative effect it would have on sales. Are their customs in place for digital goods? I though that Alamy has offices in different countries to avoid that.

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6 hours ago, Steve Valentia said:

On the issue of marking images as "exclusive" (for those that are lagging behind on this, as I was), I've just got this 2nd email from Contributor services. The first one was extremely unhelpful, and this is the response to my "you have to be kidding me" reply.

 

We are planning on implementing a couple of new features that will make this task easier for you, one of which is a filter in AIM that will let you see images that aren’t marked exclusive. This will be released before the contract goes live, so you’ll be able to mark any that aren’t exclusive then.

 

 

I hope that Alamy isn't planning on taking away the ability to go back to non-exclusive if exclusive has been chosen for an individual image -- i.e. we need to be able to go back to non-exclusive if we decide to submit an exclusive image to another agency.

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5 hours ago, Skyscraperfan said:


With the highest prices I would lose more - at least per image.

 

Of course that is only hypothetical now, as all my images are exclusive at Alamy at the moment. However, if I find a better deal elsewhere (like 60%), I would upload the image there, untick the exclusivity box at Alamy and restrict my image at Alamy to personal use. Before the changes I would just have continued with an unrestricted, but unexclusive image here.

 

Hopefully, we'll still be able to untick the exclusivity box after the new contract takes effect.

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10 minutes ago, Skyscraperfan said:

I wanted to point out that the Brexit argument came from James West. He used Brexit as one reason for the commission cut.

We will not reach an agreement, if Brexit will happen, and maybe that is another topic, but I really wonder what negative effect it would have on sales. Are their customs in place for digital goods? I though that Alamy has offices in different countries to avoid that.

 

I think he was just jumping on the Brexit bandwagon, they have an office in Germany which will circumvent any possible supply issues which may, or may not happen upon the UK leaving the EU. The rest of the world will be completely unaffected.

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I would imagine whether you can untick exclusive will depend on whether an image has sold or not - if it has sold I cannot imagine Alamy letting it be changed to non-exclusive.  I know at another agency unticking exclusive is not possible - I don't know whether you can ask their staff to do it for you, as it's only a few old images I have there that I am not wanting to spread around anyway.

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53 minutes ago, Starsphinx said:

I would imagine whether you can untick exclusive will depend on whether an image has sold or not - if it has sold I cannot imagine Alamy letting it be changed to non-exclusive.

 

But that's the case now -- i.e. you can currently uncheck "Only available on Alamy" even if an image has sold.

 

To me, "Only available on Alamy" means Only Available on Alamy AT THE MOMENT (subject to change without notice), and I think it should stay that way.

 

As mentioned, really big can of worms in the making IMHO.

 

 

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9 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

But that's the case now -- i.e. you can currently uncheck "Only available on Alamy" even if an image has sold.

 

To me, "Only available on Alamy" means Only Available on Alamy AT THE MOMENT (subject to change without notice), and I think it should stay that way.

 

As mentioned, really big can of worms in the making IMHO.

 

 

The case now is clicking the exclusive button doesn't seem to do anything -  Alamy does not specifically push their exclusives, contributors don't get anything extra, it's been suggested that all it does achieve is making it slightly easier to press a misuse case.  Once the new contract comes in the images will be earning contributors more so theoretically to make up the difference in what they have to pay the contributor they are going to more aggressively market the images and possibly charge higher prices - and clients who are being asked to pay more are probably going to want some assurances that the exclusive they bought today won't be all over the place cheaper tomorrow just because someone unclicked a button (and if the button is that easy to unclick then it opens up another level of abuse - wait until an image sells for an acceptable price on Alamy untick the exclusive and put it on sale in more places to earn from the quantity as well as the quality.)

And it all comes back to we do not know any specifics and it is perfectly possible that the shiny new exclusive part of the contract is going to prove to less of a boon that people believe.

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1 hour ago, Starsphinx said:

I would imagine whether you can untick exclusive will depend on whether an image has sold or not - if it has sold I cannot imagine Alamy letting it be changed to non-exclusive.  I know at another agency unticking exclusive is not possible - I don't know whether you can ask their staff to do it for you, as it's only a few old images I have there that I am not wanting to spread around anyway.

 

Given the potential delay (sometimes months) between a customer choosing and downloading an image (perhaps based on the belief it can't be bought elsewhere) and the sale actually being declared/invoiced, this principle would be difficult to operate.

 

19 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

But that's the case now -- i.e. you can currently uncheck "Only available on Alamy" even if an image has sold.

To me, "Only available on Alamy" means Only Available on Alamy AT THE MOMENT (subject to change without notice), and I think it should stay that way.

As mentioned, really big can of worms in the making IMHO.

 

Agreed, especially about the big can of worms.

 

I can see their proposed 2 tier commission may actually cost Alamy more in admin and lost contributors and images than it generates in extra commission for them. I think they were pressurised into a response, and haven't really thought this one through.

 

Mark

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15 minutes ago, Starsphinx said:

The case now is clicking the exclusive button doesn't seem to do anything -  Alamy does not specifically push their exclusives, contributors don't get anything extra, it's been suggested that all it does achieve is making it slightly easier to press a misuse case.  Once the new contract comes in the images will be earning contributors more so theoretically to make up the difference in what they have to pay the contributor they are going to more aggressively market the images and possibly charge higher prices - and clients who are being asked to pay more are probably going to want some assurances that the exclusive they bought today won't be all over the place cheaper tomorrow just because someone unclicked a button (and if the button is that easy to unclick then it opens up another level of abuse - wait until an image sells for an acceptable price on Alamy untick the exclusive and put it on sale in more places to earn from the quantity as well as the quality.)

And it all comes back to we do not know any specifics and it is perfectly possible that the shiny new exclusive part of the contract is going to prove to less of a boon that people believe.

 

That's right. HUGE can o' worms quite possible. Stay tuned...

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8 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Given the potential delay (sometimes months) between a customer choosing and downloading an image (perhaps based on the belief it can't be bought elsewhere) and the sale actually being declared/invoiced, this principle would be difficult to operate.

 

 

Agreed, especially about the big can of worms.

 

I can see their proposed 2 tier commission may actually cost Alamy more in admin and lost contributors and images than it generates in extra commission for them. I think they were pressurised into a response, and haven't really thought this one through.

 

Mark

 

Yup.

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All my images on Alamy are RM, Rights Managed. Years ago I was told here (by a former contributor) that Alamy does not actually manage rights. Does anyone know if Alamy has a mechanism to prevent selling the same rights to two different customers?

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2 minutes ago, KevinS said:

All my images on Alamy are RM, Rights Managed. Years ago I was told here (by a former contributor) that Alamy does not actually manage rights. Does anyone know if Alamy has a mechanism to prevent selling the same rights to two different customers?

 

Rights Managed does not mean exclusive. It just means that the rights are defined like "1/4 page, circulation up to 50,000, worldwide, 5 years ....."

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