Any reason to hope...?

[ernest]

Since some months, I see a clear price decrease of the images. Do you see any reason ( even a slight one) to hope this tendency will be reversed ? Myself, I think there will be no turning back.

[Colblimp]

Of course there's hope, bit of a silly post.  Many contribs are achieving $$$ sales regularly, be positive!

[ernest]

 

45 minutes ago, Colblimp said:

Of course there's hope, bit of a silly post.  Many contribs are achieving $$$ sales regularly, be positive!

 

Asking about the future of stock photography to stock contributors is a silly question !? Hard to understand...After all, if the question is silly, DON'T ANSWER unless you are silly yourself.

[Inchiquin]

Average fee per licence this year has gone up for me by  over 50% from last year.

 

Alan

[IanDavidson]

25 minutes ago, ernest said:

 

 

Asking about the future of stock photography to stock contributors is a silly question !? Hard to understand...After all, if the question is silly, DON'T ANSWER unless you are silly yourself.

Steady on.  Colblimp is a respected contributor and has sale levels that most of us would give our right arm for. (Metaphorically speaking) hardly silly.  

 

Stock photography is, in economic terms, an imperfect but highly competitive market.  To answer your question would require a full Market analysis and the public market data is simply not available to carry out such an analysis.  As I have noted before I suspect that the 80/20 rule applies and that 80% of Alamy revenues comes from and goes to 20% of contributors.  

 

There is some work (not particularly quantitive)  that indicates a potential trend for increased image usage but against that is the well documented massive increase in supply  such that some may consider the market to have a trend towards saturation   The image market is highly segmented and if the correct niche can be identified temporary monopolies may exist, but not for any length of time and with high elasticity of supply..

Edited May 11, 2019 by IanDavidson
Typo

[John Mitchell]

3 hours ago, Inchiquin said:

Average fee per licence this year has gone up for me by  over 50% from last year.

 

Alan

 

Average price per license has been holding steady for me since 2017:

 

2017 -- $49

2018 -- $48

2019 -- $48 so far

 

P.S. What I'm finding is that even with the lower prices I'm still getting enough high $$ and $$$ sales to keep the average price up. Hopefully this trend will continue.

 

 

Edited May 11, 2019 by John Mitchell

[Michael Ventura]

Going back to 2015, I am finding the prices sliding south, but the volume of sales have gone up a bit to help keep the income steady.

 

Average price per license (gross) 

 

2015 -- $64

2016 -- $66

2017 -- $57

2018 -- $57

2019 -- $48 so far

 

And to put things in perspective, the overall average price per license since I started with Alamy in 2005 is $85

In 2007 (the first year with significant sales) the average for me was $163 per license.

 

 

Edited May 11, 2019 by Michael Ventura

[John Mitchell]

deleted

Edited May 11, 2019 by John Mitchell

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, Michael Ventura said:

Going back to 2015, I am finding the prices sliding south, but the volume of sales have gone up a bit to help keep the income steady.

 

Average price per license (gross) 

 

2015 -- $64

2016 -- $66

2017 -- $57

2018 -- $57

2019 -- $48 so far

 

And to put things in perspective, the overall average price per license since I started with Alamy in 2005 is $85

In 2007 (the first year with significant sales) the average for me was $163 per license.

 

 

 

Interesting. My average price in 2016 was $58, now it's $48 like yours. It was $89 back in 2014 and $124 way back in 2009. 🤨

 

Any reason to hope? No hope that prices will go back up to those of the "good old days" IMO. But there is hope that sales volume will eventually increase to help make up for lower prices now that Alamy can offer a lot of its images as "exclusive". Hope is a double-edged sword, though.

Edited May 11, 2019 by John Mitchell

[Marb]

For me I see prices and sales falling and as well as more and more uncleared tiny sales, mainly from China.

[dustydingo]

10 hours ago, David Pimborough said:

 

It was never a silly question and to be honest the problem with certain contributors reporting $$$ sales is it always seems to be the

same contributors getting $$$ sales.

 

So why is it a problem that according to you it "always seems to be the same contributors getting $$$ sales"?

 

DD

[andremichel]

2017 -- $32

2018 -- $28

2019 -- $22 so far

[Cryptoprocta]

On 11/05/2019 at 14:00, ernest said:

Since some months, I see a clear price decrease of the images. Do you see any reason ( even a slight one) to hope this tendency will be reversed ? Myself, I think there will be no turning back.

Nope: currently c52% of last year's sales, but c30% of the cash.

[andremichel]

On 11/05/2019 at 14:00, ernest said:

Since some months, I see a clear price decrease of the images. Do you see any reason ( even a slight one) to hope this tendency will be reversed ? Myself, I think there will be no turning back.

Some years ago I thought we may reach a point where worsening prices and total revenues earned would drastically reduce supply of new images thus supporting prices. If it was no longer cost effective to produce stock then many would stop. This hasn't happened to a significant level. Too many hobbyists who ignore financial costs and happy to give their time for free or pros who have already discounted costs as part of other work. 

Edited May 13, 2019 by andremichel

[dustydingo]

11 hours ago, David Pimborough said:

 

Not according to me Sheldon just according to the monthly "How was your April, May, June July etc" threads.

 

 

Be that as it may, the thrust of my question remains unanswered: why is it a problem that it always seems to be the same contributors getting $$$ sales?

 

DD

Edited May 13, 2019 by dustydingo
punctuation

[Mr Standfast]

There's not much you can do about the economic forces that drive prices. Hoping for a change upwards may help but I'm going to try and build a bigger more diverse portfolio while I'm waiting.

[spacecadet]

On 12/05/2019 at 08:41, Marb said:

 mainly from China.

Interesting, I've never had a sale to China.

[BobD]

2009 - $109

2010 - $88

2011 - $73

2012 - $52

2015 - $27

2016 - $30

2017 - $26

2018 - $27

2019 - $17

I had hoped that 2017-2018 saw the bottoming out of the market, but that was rather optimistic. It seems to me that Alamy are using the extra gained from the non exclusive  sales to cut prices even further.

Sadly it is no longer worth my time and effort to upload more images.

 

 

 

Edited May 13, 2019 by BobD

[John Mitchell]

9 hours ago, spacecadet said:

Interesting, I've never had a sale to China.

 

I get very few, only one last year (a travel image) for about $30. I imagine that micro-shopping is very popular in China.

[wiskerke]

Some earlier lists of averages in these topics:

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/3924-sales-prices-comparison/

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/7625-big-editorial-sales/

(There have been more.)

 

2005 - $195
2006 - $179
2007 - $425
2008 - $136
2009 - $124
2010 - $ 68
2011 - $ 80
2012 - $ 65
2013 - $ 68
2014 - $ 55
2015 - $ 59
2016 - $ 48
2017 - $ 46
2018 - $ 44
2019 - $ 40.3 - so far.

- all gross.

Nothing wrong with falling averages if the total keeps getting higher. Which sadly for me has not always been the case: 2016 was my best year; 2017 a bit lower; 2018 slightly higher again.

Year total figures are in the various how was your year threads.

 

wim

[John Mitchell]

5 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

Some earlier lists of averages in these topics:

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/3924-sales-prices-comparison/

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/7625-big-editorial-sales/

(There have been more.)

 

2005 - $195
2006 - $179
2007 - $425
2008 - $136
2009 - $124
2010 - $ 68
2011 - $ 80
2012 - $ 65
2013 - $ 68
2014 - $ 55
2015 - $ 59
2016 - $ 48
2017 - $ 46
2018 - $ 44
2019 - $ 40.3 - so far.

- all gross.

Nothing wrong with falling averages if the total keeps getting higher. Which sadly for me has not always been the case: 2016 was my best year; 2017 a bit lower; 2018 slightly higher again.

Year total figures are in the various how was your year threads.

 

wim

 

If I draw lines of best fit (to compensate for ups and downs) on my sales and revenue graphs, the trend has been upward for yearly sales numbers and downward  for yearly income since 2012 -- i.e. overall the two graphs are heading in opposite directions. Only a big increase in sales numbers could even things out.

[Bryan]

2009  $360 - but only 2 sales!

2010  $143

2011  $86

2012  $42

2013  $56

2014  $33

2015  $34

2016  $30

2017 $33

2018  $31

2019 $29

 

Can't recall when I joined the Newspaper scheme, that probably boosted sales but significantly reduced average value.

 

Downward trend. 2017 best year for revenue.

Edited May 13, 2019 by Bryan

[wiskerke]

I am in all schemes and distributors, but just do not have a lot of sales to UK newspapers and their websites. Lack of appropriate content probably.

(Not sure if the opposite is a possible solution: stop making newspaper content and start making images with higher production value.)

My guess is that some of those bulk deals really drive the average down. And bulk deals on distributors doubly so. However those sales can be viewed as extra. Cherries on cake, albeit very small cherries. Remember they do help improving rank.

 

wim

[Marianne]

 

2009 -   only 1 sale  $38 to a Russian mag

2010    - $88 

2011  - $30 (lots of NU sales)

2012 -  $30 (lots of NU sales), 

2013 -  $45 (lots of NU sales)

2014 -  $37 (lots of NU sales) 

2015 - $64  (despite some very low $4-6 newspaper scheme and similar sales, prices picked up and this was my best year for revenue, nearly triple the year before)

2016 - $70  (small drop in revenue, small drop in sales volume, but pretty close to 2015)

2017- $61  (more sales, so revenue increased slightly over 2016 despite RPI dropping, even closer to 2015)

2018 - $34 (this is the first year that even though sales volume increased, my overall income from Alamy dropped, substantially (by 36%), not surprising since RPI dropped by 45% ) 

2019 - $45 (sales volume is down, and as this is gross revenue, with the commission drop, it's worse than it looks, but starting to get some sales from that phone app, a couple in the past month with around 60 photos). 

I'm in all the schemes too Wim. I get some travel sales to UK newspapers (both images taken in the US and from a trip to Scotland back in 2007, also had a lifestyle photo on the cover of one of the Sunday magazines).  Meanwhile, this was my last newspaper sale here  taken a few miles from my house ($11.25) :

Looking for more cherries elsewhere - gotta fill that bowl  - but I can't complain, last May it was licensed to an Educational magazine for $125, and $10.22 to another UK newspaper. I sold a sign warning about coyotes too. And a highway sign last week. Boring stuff sells  😎 But I still prefer taking travel and nature shots. Glad they sell too. 

 

 

 

Edited May 15, 2019 by Marianne

[Mr Standfast]

I'm to ashamed to type in my numbers but I've noticed something about 2016. There's a small blip. Same with most of the above.

 

Any ideas?