M.Chapman Posted February 15, 2019 Share Posted February 15, 2019 22 hours ago, riccarbi said: True, yet such a situation also depends on photographers uploading to Alamy a gazillion pictures - many of which were arguably not their best ones - just to have the largest port possible. That has caused an "oversupply" of pictures on Alamy which, as one could expect, is leading to lower prices, on average. Now Alamy has two possible strategies. On the one hand, they can go on increasing the number of photos as much as possible in order to compensate their dropping median value, with a view to secure their overall income (thus, reducing their difference from a Microstock agency) OR, on the other hand, they can focus more on artistic and technical quality, as well as on providing the clients with photos with original subjects, reducing the number of images available on Alamy, for example by tightening QC and artistic/creative standards. It looks like they are preferring the first scenario, which can be (possibly) acceptable for Alamy, but much less acceptable for us, because we'll reach a point in which the time spent for editing and keywording an image will be paid peanuts and not worth the effort, from an economic point of view. Personally I think they should follow the second scenario. If Alamy continue to participate in a "race to the bottom" I fear they will loose to the established players who are already massively better at handling their larger image collections and higher volumes of low value sales than Alamy's (creaking?) systems. You only have to look at the turnover per image to see how far behind the major MS players Alamy is. Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riccarbi Posted February 15, 2019 Share Posted February 15, 2019 49 minutes ago, M.Chapman said: Personally I think they should follow the second scenario. Mark 1 I totally agree. Let's be honest, who cares about 65,437 photos of the Big Ben, 76,740 of the Eiffel Tower, 641,177 of a cat, and 1,211,607 (!) pictures of a dog? That's not providing more choice to the customer, it's only making Alamy a messy place where it's hard (and will be progressively harder) to find what you are looking for... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted February 15, 2019 Share Posted February 15, 2019 3 hours ago, riccarbi said: I totally agree. Let's be honest, who cares about 65,437 photos of the Big Ben, 76,740 of the Eiffel Tower, 641,177 of a cat, and 1,211,607 (!) pictures of a dog? That's not providing more choice to the customer, it's only making Alamy a messy place where it's hard (and will be progressively harder) to find what you are looking for... Yes, but maybe the buyer could /would be more precise than 'cat' or 'dog'. Seems that after the first overwhelming result, they'd either pick something from the first few pages, or narrow down their search. Also we know that larger customers contact Alamy directly to provde them with a curated search. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted February 15, 2019 Share Posted February 15, 2019 On 12/02/2019 at 07:56, Colblimp said: You bother because of the $175 sales and no other agency that I'm aware of matches up to Alamy. In what way "matches up"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted February 15, 2019 Share Posted February 15, 2019 Meanwhile, these are my sales for this month. NB: I'm not in NU: Country: Worldwide Usage: Editorial Media: Editorial website Industry sector: Media, design & publishing Image Size: Any size Start: 11 February 2019 End: 11 February 2024 $9.38 net Country: Worldwide Usage: Presentation or newsletters, Use in a presentation/talk (eg,Powerpoint and Keynote) or in an editorial newsletter. Start: 11 February 2019 End: 11 February 2024 $6.25 net REFUNDED (on 13th, not rebought) Country: India Usage: Editorial Media: Magazine - print, digital and electronic Print run: up to 10,000 Placement: Inside Image Size: 1 page Start: 01 January 2019 End: 01 January 2024 (distributor: $4.01 net) and 2 of: Country: Worldwide ; Usage: Commercial electronic ; Media: Website, app and social media ; Industry Sector: Entertainment & Leisure ; Start: 01-December-2018 ; End: 01-December-2023 ; Duration in perpetuity Each $2.50 net Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted February 15, 2019 Share Posted February 15, 2019 Obviously everyone's experience differs. My average price per image is still in the mid-$$ range. I guess a lot depends on who licenses your images -- mainly books and magazines for me, although the highest ($$$) so far this month is for museum display. So not micro pricing yet... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riccarbi Posted February 16, 2019 Share Posted February 16, 2019 12 hours ago, John Mitchell said: Obviously everyone's experience differs. My average price per image is still in the mid-$$ range. I guess a lot depends on who licenses your images -- mainly books and magazines for me, although the highest ($$$) so far this month is for museum display. So not micro pricing yet... I'm not saying you can't make money on Alamy. To be honest, I have been pretty happy with Alamy, so far. I did some math and, currently, an hour spent to edit and keywording an image (not counting the time required for shooting that picture, something I do for other reasons than selling it) could pay me about $35 within ten years. In 2018, I sold 30 photos with a small port of 600 images (now it's a bit larger) with an average CTR of 1,15. I can't complain about that. Yet, apart from a $205 sale, I got a lot of low-value sales in 2018, and my average (gross) revenue per image sold dropped from $47 in 2017 to $33 in 2018. I don't have much information, admittedly, but, based on other contributors' experience, it seems that prices are quickly dropping in this market. Therefore my calculation on how much posting a photo on Alamy actually will pay me can be overestimated. If in the future it will drop under $10 per hour of work, publishing new images on Alamy (or on other online stock agencies) won't worth the effort, unfortunately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Normspics Posted February 16, 2019 Share Posted February 16, 2019 Alamy have a valuable resource of editorial images that traditionally micros didn’t represent, slowly microstock is entering this area as it is a market waiting to be tapped by them. If you look at a typical microstock site editorial images are a small niche of their overall library, so Alamy are way ahead in this market. Also the hoops you have to jump through with a large microstock site wanting a newsworthy and typical dateline editorial title makes submitting to them unappealing to me as not all editorial images are newsworthy. Alamy need to understand the value to their non news editorial library and how vast it is in comparison to the micros and stand firm on prices, at least charging a higher price. Microstock does not at the moment have the quantity of non news editorial because it is still relatively new to them so buyers of these images won’t find them or find enough choices, so competitive prices isn’t the issue it’s the availability and the agency who have the inventory needs confidence to stand firm on prices. The future is lower prices as these microstock sites build a larger non news editorial collection but for now Alamy is the leader here, so please price accordingly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Posted February 19, 2019 Share Posted February 19, 2019 I had one also in January. Very disappointing when I look at the rights that were given. Country: Worldwide Usage: Editorial Media: Editorial website Industry sector: Travel & tourism Image Size: Any size Start: 11 February 2019 End: 11 February 2024 NU Editorial website and app multiple use, in perpetuity Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYCat Posted February 19, 2019 Share Posted February 19, 2019 1 hour ago, Richard said: I had one also in January. Very disappointing when I look at the rights that were given. Country: Worldwide Usage: Editorial Media: Editorial website Industry sector: Travel & tourism Image Size: Any size Start: 11 February 2019 End: 11 February 2024 NU Editorial website and app multiple use, in perpetuity This looks like the same Novel Use sale a lot of us have had. I have had two. I do not consider this a novel use and will opt out in April. Paulette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FCUM Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 Whilst I had a fantastic year last year for the size of my port, with some great sales and a huge increase in sales and revenue. This year has started off very disappointing. So far this month, Ive had 9 images licensed, for a combined net value to me of less than $50. 2 of those were PU and Id love to know why someone would buy a photo of the inside of an EasyJet plane for personal use! The highest of those sales was for $25 for an internal decor. Now what I dont understand is why this value is so low. I work for a print business and I regularly buy images from Alamy to print custom wallpapers for clients and they cost me £205 for every image. How then, does someone obtain one of mine for such a low figure for the exact same licence and use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Valentia Posted February 24, 2019 Share Posted February 24, 2019 1 hour ago, FCUM said: Whilst I had a fantastic year last year for the size of my port, with some great sales and a huge increase in sales and revenue. This year has started off very disappointing. So far this month, Ive had 9 images licensed, for a combined net value to me of less than $50. 2 of those were PU and Id love to know why someone would buy a photo of the inside of an EasyJet plane for personal use! The highest of those sales was for $25 for an internal decor. Now what I dont understand is why this value is so low. I work for a print business and I regularly buy images from Alamy to print custom wallpapers for clients and they cost me £205 for every image. How then, does someone obtain one of mine for such a low figure for the exact same licence and use? I would echo your first paragraph, to some extent. Last year was my best ever with Alamy (in 14 years), with my highest number of image sales and my highest total revenue. Not "fantastic" - I've just bought an old Honda 50 as a treat, and not paid for a house as one member did - but encouraging. So far, this year, I've had 3 sales, totalling $48, 2 for $5 each (UK newspapers with 2M+ print runs, on the newspaper "discount scheme") and one for $38, for a German travel brochure. A generally bad start, reflecting some of the years when I sold 15 or 20 images in 12 months. I may have had more sales, but I've opted out of PU some time ago. Like you, I have no idea why anyone would buy some top class images I've sold for next-to-nothing, and which cost a lot to get, for personal use. Then, again, I probably do. Why Alamy charge some peanuts and others a much higher fee for the same image is only a question they can answer. The question of why they are not being fairer to contributors with consistently higher rates is another. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arno Posted February 26, 2019 Share Posted February 26, 2019 I opted out of NU already in 2010, and I still get these peanut sales. 3$, 5$, 6$... With vague descriptions like "Flat rate per image, bulk discount" or "Revenue Share"... I wonder if there are still stock agencies out there that AREN'T microstock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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