How was your February?

[wiskerke]

5 hours ago, Reimar said:

wiskerke said: He didn't say it was a good income. It was just as bad as his income here.

 

But with a smaller port, and in a much shorter period of time.

 

 

It's still per month.

If his portfolio has the same size it has on Alamy and his sales remain at the level they are now, his net on that MS will be 19.50 per month.

Now suppose that's to double, so it will be $39 per month. Plus the $10 from Alamy...

I rest my case.

 

wim

[Cryptoprocta]

1 hour ago, wiskerke said:

 

It's still per month.

If his portfolio has the same size it has on Alamy and his sales remain at the level they are now, his net on that MS will be 19.50 per month.

Now suppose that's to double, so it will be $39 per month. Plus the $10 from Alamy...

I rest my case.

 

wim

I have no idea where you're getting these figures. Dutch arithmetic must be vastly different to Scottish arithmetic. He said, " I had 13 sales for $305 and one refund, so really $258.  That amounts to $111 net.  Having started with a MS site mid December, I'm still a few thousand away from getting my whole port up, but already I have about the same net monthly income there ($104). "

I'm not sure, actually, what your point was. Brasilnut was pointing out (tongue in cheek) that many of the hardened anti-MSers would consider these facts to be blasphemy (as they don't believe they are true).

 

[John Mitchell]

2 hours ago, Colin Woods said:

 

I would like to know if Alamy are fighting tooth and claw to negotiate the best price, or if they hardly negotiate at all and accept the buyers offers. I was concerned to read in a post a month or so back when (I think) our John Mitchell said, when negotiating his own prices directly with a client, he normally gets what he asks for. Does that mean that Alamy only ask these low prices that we are seeing more often? 

 

Yes, that was me. Problem is no one -- except time-wasters -- contacts me directly these days.

 

 

[wiskerke]

1 hour ago, wiskerke said:

 

It's still per month.

If his portfolio has the same size it has on Alamy and his sales remain at the level they are now, his net on that MS will be 19.50 per month.

Now suppose that's to double, so it will be $39 per month. Plus the $10 from Alamy...

I rest my case.

 

wim

 

27 minutes ago, Cryptoprocta said:

I have no idea where you're getting these figures. Dutch arithmetic must be vastly different to Scottish arithmetic. He said, " I had 13 sales for $305 and one refund, so really $258.  That amounts to $111 net.  Having started with a MS site mid December, I'm still a few thousand away from getting my whole port up, but already I have about the same net monthly income there ($104). "

I'm not sure, actually, what your point was. Brasilnut was pointing out (tongue in cheek) that many of the hardened anti-MSers would consider these facts to be blasphemy (as they don't believe they are true).

 

 

Strike all those numbers: I had the posts confused. The mixed-up forum didn't help. I thought Brasilnut quoted Kevin there.

Ahh which he did, but now the discussion is about Reimar's numbers. Sorry missed that turn.

So actually for Reimar it's not too bad:  he may well make a lot more from his 11389 images.

Say he makes $300 on Alamy on an average month and is able to double that on that MS, it would be $ 900 net. Certainly not bad. Is that a net RPI of 0.95? Well that's the good old $1 per image per year.

 

wim

[Chuck Nacke]

6 hours ago, Colin Woods said:

 

I would like to know if Alamy are fighting tooth and claw to negotiate the best price, or if they hardly negotiate at all and accept the buyers offers. I was concerned to read in a post a month or so back when (I think) our John Mitchell said, when negotiating his own prices directly with a client, he normally gets what he asks for. Does that mean that Alamy only ask these low prices that we are seeing more often? 

Colin,

 

I will tell you and all that in my own opinion the answer to the above question is NO not in most situations, unless the image is something really rare or in very high demand, and even then I doubt Alamy works like the "Good Old Fashioned" photo agents did, but I do not know.  I might be a good idea for Alamy to tell us all what they do to negotiate on our and their behalves. Please all keep in mind that what I wrote was not complaining.  It was meant to quietly remind Alamy that in my opinion they are letting images go for too small of a fee.  In the 00's when I started with Alamy my average license for a image with Alamy was over $400.  Now that Alamy is pushing to represent material exclusively I think it is up to Alamy to negotiate higher licenses.  It is also up to contributors to create images worth higher fees and images with better caption and keyword information. 

 

Chuck

[vpics]

I had an exclusive use request yesterday which might net me 2000 EUR. It may never happen, but still: how many MS pics would you have to sell in order to reach this amount?

[Steven Gillis]

Another dreadful month of low value sales.

[Hellonearth]

1 hour ago, vpics said:

I had an exclusive use request yesterday which might net me 2000 EUR. It may never happen, but still: how many MS pics would you have to sell in order to reach this amount?

Well good for you but equally how frequent are these requests?  I imagine that there is more chance of selling 2000 euro worth of microstock than there is of receiving one of these requests. However, as you have over 61000 images, you can perhaps give us a good idea by telling us how many of these requests have you had in the last 5 years.

 

[vpics]

31 minutes ago, Hellonearth said:

Well good for you but equally how frequent are these requests?  I imagine that there is more chance of selling 2000 euro worth of microstock than there is of receiving one of these requests. However, as you have over 61000 images, you can perhaps give us a good idea by telling us how many of these requests have you had in the last 5 years.

 

About half a dozen. 

[Hellonearth]

4 minutes ago, vpics said:

About half a dozen. 

So that equates to 1 per year per 10,000 images assuming the requests were all fulfilled. In value that would be 6 x 2000 euro = 12,000 Euro.

 

A certain well-known microstocker Steve Heap earned 36,000 USD last year from approx 10,000 images on MS. 6 times that would be 216,000 USD per year or 1,080.000 USD over 5 years.

 

Food for thought?

 

Kevin

[Cryptoprocta]

8 hours ago, wiskerke said:

Strike all those numbers: I had the posts confused. The mixed-up forum didn't help. I thought Brasilnut quoted Kevin there.

Ah, that explaints it! And I agree about the forum, sometimes I think I've lost my mind trying to follow threads which appear and disappear, or individual posts appear and disappear.

[vpics]

1 hour ago, Hellonearth said:

So that equates to 1 per year per 10,000 images assuming the requests were all fulfilled. In value that would be 6 x 2000 euro = 12,000 Euro.

 

A certain well-known microstocker Steve Heap earned 36,000 USD last year from approx 10,000 images on MS. 6 times that would be 216,000 USD per year or 1,080.000 USD over 5 years.

 

Food for thought?

 

Kevin

Maths isn't your strong point, is it? 

Look at the question you asked. 

[andremichel]

41 minutes ago, vpics said:

Maths isn't your strong point, is it? 

Look at the question you asked. 

I think she gets more like 1 per year from 50000 images not 10000.

I expect Steve Heap is exceptional and he achieves those numbers by submitting to maybe 10 or more libraries including Alamy. 

 

Correction: 29 libraries and pod sites! Exhausted just thinking about it. 

 

Edit :  what I find really shocking is his alamy sales numbers. 

[wiskerke]

3 hours ago, andremichel said:

I expect Steve Heap is exceptional and he achieves those numbers by submitting to maybe 10 or more libraries including Alamy. 

 

Correction: 29 libraries and pod sites! Exhausted just thinking about it. 

 

Edit :  what I find really shocking is his alamy sales numbers. 

 

Maybe the micros actually are a different market?

 

wim

[Bill Kuta]

I had 5 for $416 gross, a good month for me. 

[andremichel]

10 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

 

Maybe the micros actually are a different market?

 

wim

 

His results would suggest that those that do well on MS may not do well on Alamy. For a similar number of images, in January he made $1000 net on the Tier 1 MS library, but only $12 net on Alamy. I don't know whether vice versa is also true. 

[Hellonearth]

8 hours ago, Hellonearth said:

So that equates to 1 per year per 10,000 images assuming the requests were all fulfilled. In value that would be 6 x 2000 euro = 12,000 Euro.

 

A certain well-known microstocker Steve Heap earned 36,000 USD last year from approx 10,000 images on MS. 6 times that would be 216,000 USD per year or 1,080.000 USD over 5 years.

 

Food for thought?

 

Kevin

`

 

6 hours ago, vpics said:

Maths isn't your strong point, is it? 

Look at the question you asked. 

Tactfully, I  apologise for the mistake in the first sentence but I do not believe it invalidated my point which is open to debate.

 

[vpics]

58 minutes ago, Hellonearth said:

`

 

Tactfully, I  apologise for the mistake in the first sentence but I do not believe it invalidated my point which is open to debate.

 

No worries. 

 

However, one of the first things I was told when I started out in stock photography: take all declarations of (fabulous) sales with a grain of salt. 

We don't have many photographers boasting about their sales on Alamy and those on the forum are all very genuine about their ups and downs. 

But, to be honest, I rather have one $100 sale than 400 poxy little ones. 

[John Mitchell]

3 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

Maybe the micros actually are a different market?

 

wim

 

That's probably true to some extent, but it appears that microstock has made some real inroads into editorial photography during the past few years. I imagine the trend is likely to continue.

[Bill Brooks]

14 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

Now that Alamy is pushing to represent material exclusively I think it is up to Alamy to negotiate higher licenses. 

Chuck

 

To pick up on Chuck's thought. Maybe Alamy will now use the, exclusive to Alamy, part of the Alamy collection to negotiate higher license fees for exclusive images. The non exclusive to Alamy images could be Alamy priced low like the MS they actually are.

 

Create two Alamy collections. One low priced MS, and one higher priced exclusive.

 

This pricing approach would fit in with Alamy's high touch bespoke service, yet retain a low priced MS alternative if the client insisted on it.

[Marianne]

I have done my best to keep my two portfolios separate, and only have 100-300 photos on four of those other sites. I was going to remove them and just stick with Alamy but my RPI on those other sites is still over $1 per image per site (and it went down a lot this year) - at one time it was as high as $5 per image on each of two of them and around $3 on the others - so I kept images there. I haven't added new files in a few years other than the occasional illustration - most of them are from 2008-2010 - but I have added new ones here. I hate the thought of getting a 38 cent download (or even a $26-28 extended license) for an image that could sell here for hundreds (I have netted as much as $120 per download on that site - I get close to 40% - and as much as $375 net for a one year exclusive on another, but mostly it's 38 cents-$16). Watching prices plunge here this year leaves me feeling confused about my decision to concentrate all my efforts here. 

 

My experience in terms of what sells is interesting. I have about 100 photos that are on both and I put them in a separate pseudonym here. They do not include images that I thought were my best, but more average ones, and it is my highest CTR pseudonym on Alamy and includes my best sellers on all four of the micros, so for me, there are images that sell on both, although I also believe that there are many times when they were zoomed on Alamy and licensed elsewhere. I also have images that do well here that I don't think would sell on the micros (I haven't tried) and I have images on the micros that sell very well that I would not upload here. It's a different market but there is overlap and I could add a few thousand to both Alamy and the micros that would sell on both. I've done well with editorial on one of those sites, even though I uploaded my best from various editorial events here to live news, not there - but perhaps because I'm based in the US. Live News is great because they get reviewed immediately - the micros will put editorial into the regular feed and they won't get online fast enough. Secondary editorial sells on both. Better on Alamy. 

 

I'm still uploading most of my work here, even though I would probably earn more elsewhere, because I also license images directly for $$$ and don't feel comfortable putting those on a site that licenses them so often for so little - here one might go for $10 once but not 100 times or more. It still freaks me out when I see Alamy license an image for $450 one day and that same image for $10 another day. I also sell a lot of my travel photos as fine art, for mid-high $$$ and seeing Alamy license them here for PU for $19.99 is killing me, because I followed their lead and let several be RF (they are also on another nonexclusive macrostock site that requires RF) so I can't restrict that use and as a result, have many sitting my hard drive that are only on a POD site, where they are selling. I wish Alamy would allow you to restrict PU use even on RF, because it cuts into fine art sales. I turned down an invitation to another macrostock site because they were going to put my images on a POD site for about half of what I charge on that same site. 

 

I wonder if thinking of my photos as precious images rather than a commodity is keeping me from making real $$$$ with theItm. If I had uploaded 1000 or 10,000 images on each site in the days when I could earn $3-5/image RPI per site, well, too late now, but it makes me think...Am I cutting off my nose to spite my face? Micro has been a reality since 2008 when I first heard of stock and even Alamy is following their lead. The best thing here though, is being able to license images as RM, and that will always keep me here for certain images. I probably have 800 images that are only on Alamy, but I'm not going to tie them up as exclusive, unless they have a client who is seeking exclusivity. 

[Marianne]

37 minutes ago, Bill Brooks said:

 

To pick up on Chuck's thought. Maybe Alamy will now use the, exclusive to Alamy, part of the Alamy collection to negotiate higher license fees for exclusive images. The non exclusive to Alamy images could be Alamy priced low like the MS they actually are.

 

Create two Alamy collections. One low priced MS, and one higher priced exclusive.

 

This pricing approach would fit in with Alamy's high touch bespoke service, yet retain a low priced MS alternative if the client insisted on it.

 

If they did this I would certainly put a large selection of my images here as exclusive. I think it's a great idea. Perhaps we should all get together and send a letter to Alamy suggesting this. Anyone know how to set up an online petition we can all sign? Seriously, this could be  game-changer. Maybe it's time for them to do this and perhaps even edit/curate that part of the collection. 

[John Mitchell]

42 minutes ago, Bill Brooks said:

 

To pick up on Chuck's thought. Maybe Alamy will now use the, exclusive to Alamy, part of the Alamy collection to negotiate higher license fees for exclusive images. The non exclusive to Alamy images could be Alamy priced low like the MS they actually are.

 

Create two Alamy collections. One low priced MS, and one higher priced exclusive.

 

This pricing approach would fit in with Alamy's high touch bespoke service, yet retain a low priced MS alternative if the client insisted on it.

 

Hmmm... Most of my non-exclusive images are RM, and I wouldn't want them to be sold for even lower prices because of their status. The new 40% commission is bad enough. At some point, I'll probably try to reel some of my non-exclusive RM images back in, but I'm not sure how easy that would be these days.

 

That said, I think that Alamy should be considering doing something along the lines of what you suggest for RF micro-ish images, but at better prices than MS. If they don't, millions of images are just going to continue gathering dust on the shelves. Hopefully, participation in any "scheme" like the one you mention would be on a voluntary opt in/out, image-by-image basis, though.

[Cryptoprocta]

On 01/03/2019 at 14:17, Steve F said:

Zooms abysmal, but 7 sales for $126 gross. Doesn't seem too bad (or amazing) to me, but then I haven't been around long enough to remember the good old days (prices)!

 

I'm wondering what people are selling to get 3 figure sums....?

Live News, or sales to the US (larger print runs). And, presumably random others.

[Marianne]

37 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Hmmm... Most of my non-exclusive images are RM, and I wouldn't want them to be sold for even lower prices because of their status. The new 40% commission is bad enough. At some point, I'll probably try to reel some of my non-exclusive RM images back in, but I'm not sure how easy that would be these days.

 

That said, I think that Alamy should be considering doing something along the lines of what you suggest for RF micro-ish images, but at better prices than MS. If they don't, millions of images are just going to continue gathering dust on the shelves. Hopefully, participation in any "scheme" like the one you mention would be on a voluntary opt in/out, image-by-image basis, though.

 

I like the idea of a higher-priced exclusive group of images. I don't think Chuck suggested micro prices, just the usual Alamy mid-to-lower prices we're seeing now.

 

I think Alamy has to realize that thanks to their unique non-edited collection, they have a lot of unique images that you can't find anywhere else and that people are willing to pay for those images. I've licensed work myself from my site from out of the way places - e.g. small towns that are suddenly getting "hot" - and spoken to web designers who said that my photos were the only good ones they could find from that location. Alamy needs to take advantage of that. Those are the kinds of images I keep only on Alamy. For example, Alamy licensed one of mine for $250 from a town near a very popular beach community that does not have a beach front like the others, so it is not as well represented as its neighbors whose photos number in the thousands. They licensed 4 more from that little town for $75-$100+ and I bet they could have gotten $250 for each of them too, because there isn't much competition. These are images that I would not put on the micros because they won't sell that often and when they do, I don't want it to be for a few dollars. 

 

I have a lot of images however that could be exclusive (because they are on other boutique macro or midstock sites) that I have not put on micros (although they would do well there) because I expect Alamy to get significantly better prices for them, so I don't want to see non-exclusive images fall into some micro-like category, especially without micro volume and without immediate payment. Is Alamy really going to chase down a $10 unpaid use? It's bad enough to get $10 for an image that could be earning me hundreds each year elsewhere, or even a few hundred here if price was negotiated better, and then have to wait 60 days to be paid.

 

I've been a big Alamy supporter but I'm starting to feel very disillusioned.