How was your April 2019?

[Gina Kelly]

Thanks John, that is helpful actually. It's a good reminder for me that where I live is "travel" for someone else, and to look at/shoot from that perspective.

[cksisson]

Only one for April. I'm starting to get discouraged, but I know I have to just keep my head down and keep shooting, keep editing, keep uploading. 

 

I am committed to making this work. But man, my bank account looks like a crime scene lately. 

[Jansos]

Slow start but picked up towards the end of the month. 31 sales for $601 gross. Highest $189, quite a few $$ and a few single digits $. 

[John Mitchell]

10 hours ago, David Pimborough said:

 

I wonder if there is a correlation too but in terms of certain contributors getting pushed by Alamy and having favourable rates negotiated for sales (judging by the high values being posted here).

 

In the meantime 8 sales $77 gross most of those were poor distributor sales/ Editorial Website, Bulk discount, flat rate per image. nett $33.

 

This 40% royalty malarkey is really hurting.

 

Prices are all over the place.  I don't know why they even bother putting up prices on the sales site as it seems anything goes

 

 

 

Exclusivity does give an Alamy a leveraging tool for negotiation. That's the main idea, isn't it?

 

 

[Bill Brooks]

1 hour ago, cksisson said:

Only one for April. I'm starting to get discouraged, but I know I have to just keep my head down and keep shooting, keep editing, keep uploading. 

 

I am committed to making this work. But man, my bank account looks like a crime scene lately. 

 

Keep going, your good photography of locations people and culture of the US South East means you will do better than most here. You are doing most things right.

 

I always try to start the caption off with the most important tag, as it is my theory that the Alamy search looks for tags near the front of the caption as well as looking at the super tags (super keywords)

 

For instance You wrote "Master Mike, a double-rig shrimp boat, is docked along the bank in Bayou La Batre, Alabama." - Image ID: T63HR7"

I would write "Shrimp boat double-rig named Master Mike, at Bayou La Batre, Alabama." - Image ID: T63HR7

 

You wrote "A statue of Jesus stands with open arms on the grounds of St. Margaret Catholic Church, April 20, 2014, in Bayou La Batre, Alabama." - Image ID: T63HTE

I would write "Jesus Christ statue with open arms at St. Margaret Catholic Church, in Bayou La Batre, Alabama." - Image ID: T63HTE

 

My captions are not written for publication, but rather written for searches.

 

If you do a series of images on one subject start all captions off with the same words, if possible. That way your entire image series should appear together in the "Similar stock images" section on your image download page.

 

Check out the download page for your image T3CE66. Notice with the same caption you have a good showing amongst the "Similar stock images". However you need more tags and supertags, as well as the caption for this image. One cannot search stock photos by caption alone. You need tags as well. Particularly a super tag; laughing gull, and the scientific name a super tag; Leucophaeus atricilla. 

[cksisson]

2 minutes ago, Bill Brooks said:

My captions are not written for publication, but rather written for searches.

 

This is a good point — thanks for the advice and encouragement. I thought all my photos were tagged, but I will go back and check the laughing gull image. I thought Alamy largely ignored captions in favor of tags, so I just left them in publication form. Must amend that. 

 

A little encouragement goes a long way, and I do appreciate it. I'll work on my captions this weekend. Thanks!

[Bill Brooks]

17 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Exclusivity does give an Alamy a leveraging tool for negotiation. That's the main idea, isn't it?

 

 

Yes, hopefully Alamy will use image exclusivity as a way to increase the price, and attract clients to the site.

[John Mitchell]

43 minutes ago, Bill Brooks said:

 

Yes, hopefully Alamy will use image exclusivity as a way to increase the price, and attract clients to the site.

 

Yes, that would be nice. Of six $$$ licenses that I've had since the commission change, five were of exclusive images. However, that isn't necessarily significant because about 90% of my images are exclusive to Alamy. Haven't checked the high $$ ones since the change.

[andremichel]

1 hour ago, David Pimborough said:

 

I didn't say anything about exclusivity I commented on the matter that prices are all over the place and the pointlessness of even having prices on the sales site as they never seem to stick with them.,

 

As to exclusivity there is no where on the sales site for buyers to actually see if an image is exclusive or not so QED exclusivity is not a leveraging tool.

 

Which is a failure on Alamy's part they should be highlighting it not keeping it a secret.

Whether advertising the fact is a good idea depends on what % of the collection is exclusive. If majority is non exclusive they risk sinking prices further for the majority. 

[Reimar]

4 hours ago, andremichel said:

Whether advertising the fact is a good idea depends on what % of the collection is exclusive. If majority is non exclusive they risk sinking prices further for the majority. 

Plus, advertising exclusivity will cut into their profit (50% versus 60%)

[John Mitchell]

5 hours ago, andremichel said:

Whether advertising the fact is a good idea depends on what % of the collection is exclusive. If majority is non exclusive they risk sinking prices further for the majority. 

 

Also, offering images as "exclusive" these days seems risky to me given that agencies have extensive distributor networks. The fact that Alamy's exclusivity is essentially based on an honour system doesn't help matters either. Perhaps Alamy would be safer using exclusivity as a behind-the-scenes bargaining tool rather than advertising it.

[AlbertSnapper]

Not great....

 

5 for $226 gross.

 

But better than a slap in the face with a wet kipper.

 

Not in NU or PU.

[MizBrown]

One sale, but for almost twice what any single earlier sale was for.  Given where I am, I need to look for things I have access to that others might not have.  This includes local fish, apparently.

[Cryptoprocta]

11 sales, but a net total of only $40.86, i.e. average of $3.71 net.

All exclusive.

[BobD]

10 hours ago, Cryptoprocta said:

11 sales, but a net total of only $40.86, i.e. average of $3.71 net.

All exclusive.

 

 This is just plain ridiculous, You may expect the odd licence at this price but not an average of 11 sales.

[andremichel]

22 hours ago, BobD said:

 

 This is just plain ridiculous, You may expect the odd licence at this price but not an average of 11 sales.

These are microstock prices without the subscription model. If a buyer wanted to license an image on microstock without being tied into a subscription package tying them in for a period of time for a number of downloads, then the gross value is pretty similar to this. 

Edited May 7, 2019 by andremichel