Do you sell better with royalty free?

[lisah2006]

I know it's been asked before, but I haven't had a sale in more than a month and I did change some of my photos to Rights Managed so I'm wondering if that might be it. I have been submitting as much as I wanted to this summer. Hopefully I can make up for it in the next couple of months. Not sure the change but I'll keep tweaking things to figure it out. 

[Ed Rooney]

There are theories pro and con regarding RM vs. RF. I did a "test" about three years ago where I made all my food images RF. At the end of the year, I had just one small sale of tabletop food. Now all my images are RM and I've had three tabletop food sales so far this month. Does that prove anything? I don't believe it does. Bill Brooks in Toronto made all his images RF. Bill is a very good working pro. I'm a retired pro. 

 

The license type is just one factor in stock. I don't like RF or microstock. I shoot only common-access editorial stock. I concentrate on producing quality images. The rest is up to Alamy and the gods of chance. 

 

Edo

[John Mitchell]

Changing your images to RM probably isn't the culprit. Alamy doesn't really differentiate much between RM and RF. Custom, hybrid licenses seem to be their strong point. The few RF sales that I've had on Alamy don't look much different from RM ones when it comes to licensing terms. Also, the days of getting better prices for RF images are over. Microstock agencies have made sure of that.

Edited August 18, 2019 by John Mitchell

[Young]

I don’t think that RF sells better than RM.

Like John says RF images aren’t better price than RM these days.

My RF sales is only 5% of the whole sales. ( RF images is 10% of my whole photo collection, when it comes to number.)

Now I’m thinking of changing my RF to RM.

 

[GP Essex]

I just signed up with the forum today to look for answers to this question, I've sold 3 stock images so far this year, and 4 Live News, the latest stock sale was RF, and for very little $. Do people have any sort of distinction between what they'd sell as RF and RM? I have some of each at the moment, not sure if I should go all onto RM. I have everything listed as exclusive, and some of my subject matter is unique on Alamy, so I guess that would be better as RM?  
But the generic stock shots - billboards, corporate logos etc would they be better listed as RF? 

[Betty LaRue]

I changed a goodly number of mine to RF a few years ago. I do sell some, but I can’t say it increased sales. 

My criteria for RF is if it’s an image all or many can go out and get. I’d say most are common things like flora. There are exceptions...a plant that I don’t see much, or one I feel is better than average.  I might have those common-type images 50% each. But I don’t mix. In other words, two images of the same subject taken at the same time, I don’t make one RF and one RM. I think I read once that Alamy frowns on that, but not sure. 

What I am sure of is that Alamy doesn’t want you to make one for Alamy and one for MS. (Same shoot)

I do have a RF sale for Sept. Flora. And it was zoomed a couple of times in the last 10 days. I think it was zoomed, then the person kept searching, didn’t find anything better, and came back to it with a final zoom before buying.

Betty

[Allan Bell]

My images have always been RM so I can't help.

 

But because others are getting better sales than I am I wondering about changing if it can be proved beyond doubt that RF works better than RM.

 

Allan

 

[Marianne]

Before 2015, RF accounted for 80% of my three-figure licenses, i.e. sales for $100 or more (what we refer to here as $$$ sales), with the average price when just looking at $$$ sales being $216 for RF and $160 for RM. Beginning in 2015,  that percentage dropped to 50% of my three-figure licenses but the average sales price from 2015-2019 (looking at $$$ licenses only) stayed roughly the same, $212 for RF and went up slightly to $188 for RM. So, RF isn't the draw it once was, but it still commands decent prices. 

 

More recently, while 44% of my photos are RF, they account for half of this year's sales, so about what you'd expect. Even with some prices as low as $10, my average price for all RF images licensed this year is $110, while my average for RM is $40, despite the lowest being $25. 

 

RF has been turned on its head by the microstock industry and, in light of that, Alamy now provides hybrid licenses, so a client can effectively get an RF license for an RM image, but it is still worth considering for some images because, despite all that, RF can still command high prices. For a rare image, I'd go with RM, since there is always a chance for those coveted $$$$ (four-digit) licenses, especially if you've chosen to make the image exclusive to Alamy, but RF still has some benefits. 

 

If I could prohibit PU sales, I'd make many more of my images RF. 

 

 

Edited September 5, 2019 by Marianne

[Brian Yarvin]

During the past five years or so, I have seen no difference between my RF and RM revenues on Alamy. In Ed's case with the food images, I'd bet he'd have seen that same small sale either way given the same set of images

[Allan Bell]

12 hours ago, Marianne said:

Before 2015, RF accounted for 80% of my three-figure licenses, i.e. sales for $100 or more (what we refer to here as $$$ sales), with the average price when just looking at $$$ sales being $216 for RF and $160 for RM. Beginning in 2015,  that percentage dropped to 50% of my three-figure licenses but the average sales price from 2015-2019 (looking at $$$ licenses only) stayed roughly the same, $212 for RF and went up slightly to $188 for RM. So, RF isn't the draw it once was, but it still commands decent prices. 

 

More recently, while 44% of my photos are RF, they account for half of this year's sales, so about what you'd expect. Even with some prices as low as $10, my average price for all RF images licensed this year is $110, while my average for RM is $40, despite the lowest being $25. 

 

RF has been turned on its head by the microstock industry and, in light of that, Alamy now provides hybrid licenses, so a client can effectively get an RF license for an RM image, but it is still worth considering for some images because, despite all that, RF can still command high prices. For a rare image, I'd go with RM, since there is always a chance for those coveted $$$$ (four-digit) licenses, especially if you've chosen to make the image exclusive to Alamy, but RF still has some benefits. 

 

If I could prohibit PU sales, I'd make many more of my images RF. 

 

 

 

Why can you not prohibit PU sales? 

I put a stop on all PU some time ago.

 

Allan

 

Sorry should have said "Thank you for the information re RF/RM."🙂

 

ITMA

 

Edited September 6, 2019 by Allan Bell

[Marianne]

10 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

 

Why can you not prohibit PU sales? 

I put a stop on all PU some time ago.

 

Allan

 

Sorry should have said "Thank you for the information re RF/RM."🙂

 

ITMA

 

 

You can only prohibit PU sales on RM images.

Glad you found the info helpful. It's certainly possible and even probable that the sales would have happened whether the files were RM or RF, since many had hybrid licenses (RM files with 25 yr or unlimited duration - RF files with limited duration licenses akin to RM) but the pricing on the RF files does appear higher pretty consistently.

[Allan Bell]

12 hours ago, Marianne said:

 

You can only prohibit PU sales on RM images.

Glad you found the info helpful. It's certainly possible and even probable that the sales would have happened whether the files were RM or RF, since many had hybrid licenses (RM files with 25 yr or unlimited duration - RF files with limited duration licenses akin to RM) but the pricing on the RF files does appear higher pretty consistently.

 

Ah! Thank you.

As all my images are RM I did not know that RF were exempt from PU blocking.

 

Allan

 

[flavio massari]

Usually I set my common subject image as RF, and non-exclusive, selling it also in other agency;

 

if subject is uncommon or there are unreleased people, property or brands inside, set as RM, and sometime as exclusive.

 

I don't know how this impact the sales, but would be nice to know by Alamy official voice if  and how the searches are impacted by flagging RF vs RM