Sale for a Pittance

[Futterwithtrees]

I have had another sale for a pittance. NU Editorial and Website use in perpetuity. $1.21 total. This is definitely not the Alamy I thought i was signing up to those years ago. I am genuinely beginning to think that Alamy is not worth the extra effort

[Joseph Clemson]

Had it been microstock it would very likely have been $0.35 or so with unlimited use thereafter, and no option to sell it as RM which at least gives the possibility of a repeat sale.

 

I still like my bread buttered on the Alamy side, even if the butter is increasingly like margarine.

[Avpics]

27 minutes ago, Joseph Clemson said:

Had it been microstock it would very likely have been $0.35 or so with unlimited use thereafter, and no option to sell it as RM which at least gives the possibility of a repeat sale.

 

I still like my bread buttered on the Alamy side, even if the butter is increasingly like margarine.

+1. It's the market which is changing, and Alamy are just a small part of that but being with them can still bring the $$$ sales - unlike those MS agencies

[Sally]

57 minutes ago, Futterwithtrees said:

I have had another sale for a pittance. NU Editorial and Website use in perpetuity. $1.21 total. This is definitely not the Alamy I thought i was signing up to those years ago. I am genuinely beginning to think that Alamy is not worth the extra effort

Opt out of NU use next April, then.

[CarloBo]

Do not forget what have been the latest changes at Alamy,  they first allowed RF editorial and then cut our commissions by 20%.

Now look at their main competitor (S****K), they have 290M of RF photos  both editorial and creative available at  subscription rates and pay photogrphers 25 cent a download.

Can you see a pattern there?

Yeah you can still hit some decent sales here, i also had a 9k sale few months ago on G, but I believe RM is dead.

 

[Ed Rooney]

All my Alamy images are editorial, RM, and exclusive . . . and I do OK with sales and with prices.

[Cryptoprocta]

5 hours ago, Futterwithtrees said:

I have had another sale for a pittance. NU Editorial and Website use in perpetuity. $1.21 total. This is definitely not the Alamy I thought i was signing up to those years ago. I am genuinely beginning to think that Alamy is not worth the extra effort

I earn at least 2x on my (one) micro site than on Alamy (in ten years, only one month earned me more on Alamy), and made a big mistake uploading only to Alamy for 2.5 years, (though to be fair my Alamy port only overtook the micro numbers last year [different files on each, RM here, RF there]) ; however the pie is being extremely thinly sliced everywhere now, sales and average rpd have shot down there as well as here (though my biggest individual sales there match my biggest sales here, I haven't netted over $100 here for years) and it's probably better not to have all your assets in one basket. If one or other goes belly up, I at least have a foothold in the other site.

I try to tell myself that maybe there is a reasonable proportion of Alamy buyers who don't buy from (my) micro, even though the evidence suggests otherwise (looking at acknowledgements which often show that many buyers buy from a spread of sources). But if it was the case, I could say I was earning 50% more by selling to different buyers here.

I've never been in NU, but have had a sale netting me 66c via a distributor.

 

[Pearl]

I opted out of NU last April as I hadn't signed up for those pathetic prices. No regrets so far.

 

Pearl

[Alex Ramsay]

32 minutes ago, Ed Rooney said:

All my Alamy images are editorial, RM, and exclusive . . . and I do OK with sales and with prices.

 

Same here, with no NU and no personal use - doing OK

Alex

[spacecadet]

I've had one of these, but it's only my second ever NU as such, so I'll stay put. The first one was in 2011 and was for less.

Rough with the smooth. Well, rough with the merely bumpy, but hey ho.

 

[NYCat]

When I sold two of those to that website I decided to leave NU because those sales were NOT for a novel use. I'm surprised that anybody is surprised by that license as a number of us discussed this situation on the forum. If you are in Novel Use you may wind up supplying that website and having your image on their app forever.

 

Paulette

[spacecadet]

3 hours ago, NYCat said:

When I sold two of those to that website I decided to leave NU because those sales were NOT for a novel use. I'm surprised that anybody is surprised by that license as a number of us discussed this situation on the forum. If you are in Novel Use you may wind up supplying that website and having your image on their app forever.

 

Paulette

I don't know the site- care to let us know?

[regen]

Whilst  am sure nobody likes these very low priced sales they would become a little more palatable for me if 1. they were not accompanied by such generous conditions and 2. Alamy were capable of detecting and then recovering reasonable recompense for mis use having only given a file size commensurate with the end use in the first place!

[Bill Brooks]

I notice that the sale of a NU image is often followed quickly or preceded by a $$ sale of the same image. I have had 3 (6) such sales just last week.

I wonder if the NU and $$ sales are connected? When I did photo research I would sometimes ask photographers to split the total agreed price between two invoices, as the money had to come from two different accounts.

 

So if you do not sign up for NU, do you forego any related $$ sale?
 

[NYCat]

2 hours ago, spacecadet said:

I don't know the site- care to let us know?

 

https://theculturetrip.com   Looking at in now it seems they are picking up a lot of free images as well as from Alamy.

 

Paulette

[John Mitchell]

8 hours ago, Cryptoprocta said:

I earn at least 2x on my (one) micro site than on Alamy (in ten years, only one month earned me more on Alamy), and made a big mistake uploading only to Alamy for 2.5 years, (though to be fair my Alamy port only overtook the micro numbers last year [different files on each, RM here, RF there]) ; however the pie is being extremely thinly sliced everywhere now, sales and average rpd have shot down there as well as here (though my biggest individual sales there match my biggest sales here, I haven't netted over $100 here for years) and it's probably better not to have all your assets in one basket. If one or other goes belly up, I at least have a foothold in the other site.

I try to tell myself that maybe there is a reasonable proportion of Alamy buyers who don't buy from (my) micro, even though the evidence suggests otherwise (looking at acknowledgements which often show that many buyers buy from a spread of sources). But if it was the case, I could say I was earning 50% more by selling to different buyers here.

I've never been in NU, but have had a sale netting me 66c via a distributor.

 

 

Recently, I've run across a number of Canadian secondary school textbooks and retail picture books with Alamy images, and the researchers definitely shopped around at different agencies (both traditional ones and MS). Using a variety of sources seems fairly common if a publisher is going to need a lot of images. This was the case back in film days as well.

[Colblimp]

I'm opted out of NU and PU.  I've had $$$ prices regularly month on month, so the good fees are still there.  Keep the faith, my friend! 😁

[Marianne]

My microstock portfolios are about 25-30% the size of my portfolio on Alamy and they nearly always beat what I make here - nevertheless, I upload much more here knowing that I can earn more on one sale, yet my best earner was a microstock license (one year exclusive) for $750 ($325 to me), ironically an image rejected everywhere else, hence left exclusive at the one site that took it, and which has gone on to earn me hundreds more - and I've had others for $80 or so - two different micro sites - so it's not all peanuts, but those 38 cent micro subscriptions do hurt, even if they can add up to a tidy sum. My best license here was $450, back when I got 50% so $225 to me, but I've had many more $$$ licenses here than I've ever had on the micros. And I like being able to license some files as RM. 

 

I just don't understand how Alamy manages to license our work for $$$ while at the same time licensing images - sometimes the exact same ones - for such a pittance. That's the real head scratcher. My first $250 license many years ago was from the same shoot as one licensed a week later by Alamy for under $1.00 back when NU started (this was a studio concept image, so the shots were fairly similar) . I have a few that have gone for $250 or thereabouts here and then for $6-30 a month or so later. And RM shots where it was in a book twice so I got 

$$$ for a cover or full page and then low $$ for inside, but then the book came out a few years later in a new edition and when I asked Alamy about it they said notwithstanding the "single use" in the license I saw, that the client could use it in subsequent editions (4 at last count), so that's discouraging, but it's no different elsewhere with G licensing images for pennies. I have one is a book that S sold earning me a $26 "extended license" it's at 9 subsequent editions, so Alamy's (pseudo)RM license has still earned me more. 

 

It's a conundrum, deciding how to make the most with your work and also feeling like you're not being ripped off. I like that $$$ licenses are possible and while I don't see them monthly, I see them often enough that when I get close to despairing that I won't see another, one pops up. 

 

 

[Cryptoprocta]

10 minutes ago, Marianne said:

I just don't understand how Alamy manages to license our work for $$$ while at the same time licensing images - sometimes the exact same ones - for such a pittance.

Alamy and many of the others. It always depends on what the buyers have managed to negotiate. It's a buyers' market, and many (not all) buyers will 'satisfice' if they can't get exactly what they want. Just like on Alamy, some buyers only look at the first 100 images in a search, but others will look at several thousand images.

[Chuck Nacke]

20 hours ago, Joseph Clemson said:

Had it been microstock it would very likely have been $0.35 or so with unlimited use thereafter, and no option to sell it as RM which at least gives the possibility of a repeat sale.

 

I still like my bread buttered on the Alamy side, even if the butter is increasingly like margarine.

+1. Don't use or eat "margarine" but I am with Joseph on Alamy.

 

I will add that if you do not like "micro prices" don't take "micro pictures."  pretty simple.

 

Chuck

[John Mitchell]

Not simple at all really. An image that licenses for $1.21 can license for $$$ on another occasion. Image content isn't usually the main factor when it comes to pricing. Best thing to do is opt out of NU when you can.

[Cryptoprocta]

1 hour ago, Chuck Nacke said:

I will add that is you do not like "micro prices" don't take "micro pictures."  pretty simple.

Alamy has officially stated it's not the quality or rarity of the image but the discount the buyer has negotiated which determines prices.

One national newspaper pays near-micro prices for Live News.

[Chuck Nacke]

Elizabeth,

 

I do not care what Alamy says.  From my experience, it is about the image and the IPTC info.

I have an image on Alamy that has licensed every other month for over three years.  As of

13/07/2019 I have zooms of images created from 1980 to 2019 (Zooms are not licenses).

I will add that many of my images that were licensed for very small fees have been licensed

for very good fees shortly after.

 

As all know I am a fan of Alamy, for no other reason then having decades of contributing to

agencies or libraries that were not as good for the photographer as Alamy.  I still have images

with a few of them.

 

I do agree that I would like to see Alamy set a bottom line for the license of certain images,

but that is not going to happen.  

 

Chuck

[Cryptoprocta]

On 13/07/2019 at 06:01, Chuck Nacke said:

Elizabeth,

 

I do not care what Alamy says.  From my experience, it is about the image and the IPTC info.

I have an image on Alamy that has licensed every other month for over three years.  As of

13/07/2019 I have zooms of images created from 1980 to 2019 (Zooms are not licenses).

I will add that many of my images that were licensed for very small fees have been licensed

for very good fees shortly after.

 

As all know I am a fan of Alamy, for no other reason then having decades of contributing to

agencies or libraries that were not as good for the photographer as Alamy.  I still have images

with a few of them.

 

I do agree that I would like to see Alamy set a bottom line for the license of certain images,

but that is not going to happen.  

 

Chuck

All that does is add weight to my theory that US sales are relatively greater in volume and value than a lot of other content, an anecdotal and unscientific hypothesis clearly borne out in my own portfolio, where I have <4% US content which punches well above its weight in both sales numbers and $$$. Nothing different about the image quality, including my best Alamy sale from years back, where I can only imagine a buyer with no bargaining power needed that one exact image.

 

That's not surprising, there are many more image buyers in the US than the UK, and many publications there have much greater print runs than European publications, so should be paying more.

 

Nothing at all to do with quality or rarity of image. I had a photo of a minor UK celebrity, the only one of him on Alamy taken in the past 20+ years (one more has been added since) sell for c$6 gross. NO, it was worse, it was $4.25 gross to a German website. Do you honestly imagine the buyer phoning Alamy and saying, "That image looks 'micro' to me, I'm only going to pay $6"? (Good luck to him with that, there are no pics of him on the three big micros, which is as far as I looked.) BTW, until about four years ago (not now) the image quality requirement on micros was far higher than on Alamy.

 

You should bear in mind that Alamy knocked us all down from 60% from 50% "to fund the US office", which they say has "exceeded our expectations", so you are benefitting proportionately better from that sacrifice everyone was forced to make. I bet there are many contributors who don't even have 4% US content.

[John Mitchell]

8 hours ago, Cryptoprocta said:

All that does is add weight to my theory that US sales are relatively greater in volume and value than a lot of other content, an anecdotal and unscientific hypothesis clearly borne out in my own portfolio, where I have <4% US content which punches well above its weight in both sales numbers and $$$. Nothing different about the image quality, including my best Alamy sale from years back, where I can only imagine a buyer with no bargaining power needed that one exact image.

 

That's not surprising, there are many more image buyers in the US than the UK, and many publications there have much greater print runs than European publications, so should be paying more.

 

Nothing at all to do with quality or rarity of image. I had a photo of a minor UK celebrity, the only one of him on Alamy taken in the past 20+ years (one more has been added since) sell for c$6 gross. Do you honestly imagine the buyer phoning Alamy and saying, "That image looks 'micro' to me, I'm only going to pay $6"? (Good luck to him with that, there are no pics of him on the three big micros, which is as far as I looked.) BTW, until about four years ago (not now) the image quality requirement on micros was far higher than on Alamy.

 

You should bear in mind that Alamy knocked us all down from 60% from 50% "to fund the US office", which they say has "exceeded our expectations", so you are benefitting proportionately better from that sacrifice everyone was forced to make. I bet there are many contributors who don't even have 4% US content.

 

Coincidentally, I too have only about 4% US content, even though I live right next door. I enjoy travelling south, but the US is very expensive for Canadians due to the unfavourable (for us) exchange rate. My US sales are almost all from my Latin American and Canadian images. I license very few US-specific images in the USA. That said, the US always has been the best place -- price-wise and volume-wise -- to sell images of all kinds. I would think that most contributors, wherever they're located,  are benefiting from Alamy's greater US presence.