Has ticking "exclusive to Alamy" boosted sales?

[John Mitchell]

7 hours ago, Ed Rooney said:

A "Hobby business"? I agree with that.

 

I do stock photography for physical, mental, and creative reasons. I do need that extra income now but I don't do it for the money. The game I play is submitting only common-access, editorial RM images to Alamy. All those images are Alamy exclusive. I know I could make more money if I did Live News but I can't and I won't do that at this point in my life. I'll add that I trust Alamy and I do not trust those other agencies. 

 

Edo

 

Basically a hobby job for me too at this point. However,  I really do need the extra income -- I currently have two hobby jobs and could be looking for a third one soon. 🧐

[Ed Rooney]

7 hours ago, geogphotos said:

Edo

 

I think that the sculpture of sleeping homeless person is Christ - notice the cuts in the feet:

 

Jesus the Homeless, is a bronze sculpture by Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz 

 

There's about 100 copies around the world. I have the Madrid one.

 

Here is the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeless_Jesus

 

Is this 'your' one "In April 2019 a statue was installed in the Gardens of Church of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas, Liverpool"?

 

 

Oh! Thanks a lot, Ian. There was no information. I asked two people in the park but they didn't know. And yes, it was right at the entrance to a church.

[geogphotos]

1 hour ago, John Mitchell said:

 

 I can see exclusivity boosting sales in the case of  buyers who shop around at different agencies to get the lowest price. If a customer finds an image here that they like and it isn't available elsewhere, then they will have to license it through Alamy. How often this actually happens is another question, though.

 

 

Doesn't the buyer just say something like:  'If you sting me on this one that I can't find anywhere else be in no doubt that when I can I will shop elsewhere' or 'This is what I usually pay and if you can match it I will stop looking for an alternative'.

 

But if Alamy is using exclusivity to leverage fees then we really do need to be told that.

[M.Chapman]

2 hours ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

Doesn't the buyer just say something like:  'If you sting me on this one that I can't find anywhere else be in no doubt that when I can I will shop elsewhere' or 'This is what I usually pay and if you can match it I will stop looking for an alternative'.

 

But if Alamy is using exclusivity to leverage fees then we really do need to be told that.

 

I was told in discussions with Alamy at the NEC Show earlier this year that some customers ask for images that are exclusive to Alamy and that Alamy can now provide them with customised search results to achieve this. But it puzzles me why Alamy haven't added a filter (tick box) to the search options to allow any customer to see only images that are exclusive. Maybe Alamy don't trust the accuracy of the "exclusive to Alamy" tick box? That wouldn't be a surprise given some of the inaccurate tagging and captioning there is within the collection. So it leaves me feeling that the exclusivity exercise probably hasn't been a great success. Alamy lost some contributors altogether and have extra admin. It also added admin for contributors with little effect on their sales and has cut their commission on image sales that aren't exclusive. It penalised news contributors who can't afford to be exclusive to Alamy.  I await Alamy's 2018 annual report (probably due in Sept/Oct) with interest.

 

In my case the commission cut caused me to experiment with another agency and I'm glad I did. Previously I was exclusive to Alamy and felt vulnerable, but I'm not now.

 

Mark

[geogphotos]

Exclusivity is not necessary for Alamy's business model. Over the last 15 or so years they have hoovered up as many images as they could get hold of from wherever they could find them on the basis that their customers want encyclopaedic coverage in one place. In the past they didn't even care if images were RF or RF micro elsewhere - they could be RM on Alamy. Okay they changed those rules eventually.  All Alamy has wanted is more and more pictures.

 

The entire business model has been about piling up more and more images no matter where they come from without any thought about anything else.

 

In my view it seems that charging contributors for non-exclusive content is opportunism and nothing else. Combine that with the short tenure of the CEO Andy Harding recruited from Mothercare and it doesn't seem great. Why didn't he stay? Why did James West have to come back from whatever else he was interested in ( the failure of Manything)?  

 

Of course we all want to love Alamy but they do make it hard. It is always such a one way relationship. No loyalty, no reward. You are just a contributor and are not genuinely valued. 

 

 

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, M.Chapman said:

 

I was told in discussions with Alamy at the NEC Show earlier this year that some customers ask for images that are exclusive to Alamy and that Alamy can now provide them with customised search results to achieve this. But it puzzles me why Alamy haven't added a filter (tick box) to the search options to allow any customer to see only images that are exclusive. Maybe Alamy don't trust the accuracy of the "exclusive to Alamy" tick box? That wouldn't be a surprise given some of the inaccurate tagging and captioning there is within the collection. So it leaves me feeling that the exclusivity exercise probably hasn't been a great success. Alamy lost some contributors altogether and have extra admin. It also added admin for contributors with little effect on their sales and has cut their commission on image sales that aren't exclusive. It penalised news contributors who can't afford to be exclusive to Alamy.  I await Alamy's 2018 annual report (probably due in Sept/Oct) with interest.

 

In my case the commission cut caused me to experiment with another agency and I'm glad I did. Previously I was exclusive to Alamy and felt vulnerable, but I'm not now.

 

Mark

 

Encouraging to hear from Alamy that they do get requests for exclusive images. Overall I think that offering an exclusive option was a good move, even if the motivations for doing so were mixed. I'm not surprised that Alamy doesn't advertise their exclusive images. It would be a risky thing to do for a number of reasons. I know of another big agency that offers contributors both non-exclusive and exclusive contracts, and they don't have an "exclusive" filter either.

[Marianne]

23 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I'm familiar with that micro. It's a different kind of exclusivity. In their case, the agency is offering the buyer exclusive use of your image for 1-3 years, which means you have to take it off the market for that period of time. Don't you also have to agree to possible "all rights" deals if you accept their extended licenses?

 

 

Just to set the record straight. That's not exactly how it works. Just like with Alamy's new exclusivity, and that of other sites that have a similar exclusive by image deal, you are paid much more for any download of an exclusive file regardless of use, you do not have to agree to any "all rights" sale (and if you do you can set the price at whatever you want), and if the image is used exclusively for a period of time you can decide whether or not to agree to it. I had only one exclusive use and it cost the buyer $750 for a one-year use of an image that had already been licensed before, I got $375 net (more than Id have likely earned from that file in a year - it was earning me about $150-200/year). I eventually earned $$$$ for that image, which still gets licensed often. I have earned $$$ for non-exclusive use of other "exclusive" images, including editorial use only ones. --- This is why I think that Alamy can take advantage of exclusivity and use it both for marketing, to negotiate more for images, and of course we get more for those "exclusive" images no matter whether or not the use is exclusive for the buyer. They are less likely to be all over the internet, a boon for buyers. 

 

Edited August 14, 2019 by Marianne
tried to add multi quote unsuccessfully so see below

[Marianne]

1 hour ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Encouraging to hear from Alamy that they do get requests for exclusive images. Overall I think that offering an exclusive option was a good move, even if the motivations for doing so were mixed. I'm not surprised that Alamy doesn't advertise their exclusive images. It would be a risky thing to do for a number of reasons. I know of another big agency that offers contributors both non-exclusive and exclusive contracts, and they don't have an "exclusive" filter either.

 

 

I agree. I don't think that Alamy needs to advertise the exclusive images. In fact, I agree that it could cause problems as there are many contributors, me included, even though I have now ticked "exclusive" for about 1/3rd of my files, who would not want to see their non-exclusive images disappear from the search. I have images that sell here often enough that also do well elsewhere and I'm sure that I'm not alone. It would hurt Alamy to hide those images. Better if buyers can ask when they want exclusivity, something they've been used to doing in the past.  

[John Mitchell]

43 minutes ago, Marianne said:

 

Just to set the record straight. That's not exactly how it works. Just like with Alamy's new exclusivity, and that of other sites that have a similar exclusive by image deal, you are paid much more for any download of an exclusive file regardless of use, you do not have to agree to any "all rights" sale (and if you do you can set the price at whatever you want), and if the image is used exclusively for a period of time you can decide whether or not to agree to it. I had only one exclusive use and it cost the buyer $750 for a one-year use of an image that had already been licensed before, I got $375 net (more than Id have likely earned from that file in a year - it was earning me about $150-200/year). I eventually earned $$$$ for that image, which still gets licensed often. I have earned $$$ for non-exclusive use of other "exclusive" images, including editorial use only ones. --- This is why I think that Alamy can take advantage of exclusivity and use it both for marketing, to negotiate more for images, and of course we get more for those "exclusive" images no matter whether or not the use is exclusive for the buyer. They are less likely to be all over the internet, a boon for buyers. 

 

 

Thanks for the clarification re that other agency. Hopefully Alamy has their thinking cap on. 🧙‍♂️

[John Mitchell]

Taking a closer look at my sales over the past few months, I'm seeing an increase in direct sales of exclusive images at decent prices; so I'm thinking that exclusivity -- in my case at least -- might be helping to boost sales. There's no way to tell for sure, of course.