Sales??

[Darryl]

Been looking through the forums, and it doesn't seem to be effecting anyone else, but heading into the last week of September, I may have my first month with no sales in over 2 years. The summer, as expected, has been a bit slow, but September is usually when things pick back up. Not really a question, just needed to vent a bit. 

[Avpics]

With apologies, but my September has already reached the value of most of the month's totals of the year. Only August and then last December are significantly higher. I guess it depends on subjects covered.

[IanDavidson]

As I have noted before, with nearly a hundred and seventy five million images and million(s) of sales a year: any one contributors sales or lack thereof is random, just noise.  

[andremichel]

15 hours ago, IanDavidson said:

As I have noted before, with nearly a hundred and seventy five million images and million(s) of sales a year: any one contributors sales or lack thereof is random, just noise.  

There is always some random noise but saying it is all due to noise is going too far. 

[VbFolly]

I'm also still waiting for my first sale this month. My sales do tend to go up and down quite a lot anyway, so I'm not too bothered. Since there is often a lag between images being used and sales being reported, I think the summer holiday season might be one reason.

[ernest]

1 hour ago, VbFolly said:

 My sales do tend to go up and down quite a lot anyway, 

 

 

June : 0 sales

August : best month ever...by far !!!

 

How to explain such irregularity ?

[Mr Standfast]

IMHO

 

As the market matured I adjusted my view, I give less credence now to individual licences and daily returns and think of my portfolio as a whole.

A rolling three or maybe six month average is a better indicator of the value of your portfolio than weekly snapshots, especially when licences seem to arrive in clumps and towards the end of month.

 

Anyway, September still has a week to go.

 

Patience...

 

 

[Darryl]

2 minutes ago, Mr Standfast said:

IMHO

 

As the market matured I adjusted my view, I give less credence now to individual licences and daily returns and think of my portfolio as a whole.

A rolling three or maybe six month average is a better indicator of the value of your portfolio than weekly snapshots, especially when licences seem to arrive in clumps and towards the end of month.

 

Anyway, September still has a week to go.

 

Patience...

 

 

Yes, looking forward to that last week. My other markets and outlets came back after the summer slump with a bang, so just a little disappointed. After a steady 12 year increase in revenue at Alamy, 2019 is disappointing as a whole. It's still a great outlet, so I'm hanging in.

Patience. I've heard of that. Not much experience with it. Is it any good?

[Mr Standfast]

30 minutes ago, Darryl said:

Patience. I've heard of that. Not much experience with it. Is it any good?

 

 

Wait and see...

 

😉

[IanDavidson]

14 hours ago, andremichel said:

There is always some random noise but saying it is all due to noise is going too far. 

Sorry, I disagree.  Alamy has about 175 million images.  I estimate, very much on the back of an envelope, that Alamy sells about a million images a year.  Any single contributor’s sales or lack thereof can have no statistical significance.  To see any trends on a single month would take a large sample.  

 

It it is like looking at the price movement on a single share transaction and believing it has a significant impact on the global stock market.  

 

6 hours ago, Mr Standfast said:

IMHO

 

As the market matured I adjusted my view, I give less credence now to individual licences and daily returns and think of my portfolio as a whole.

A rolling three or maybe six month average is a better indicator of the value of your portfolio than weekly snapshots, especially when licences seem to arrive in clumps and towards the end of month.

 

Anyway, September still has a week to go.

 

Patience...

 

 

 Mr Standfast is absolutely correct.  Rolling long term averages is about as good an approximation as you are going to get.  Even then the chances of an accurate forecast are probable about as good as a random guess,....

[dustydingo]

11 hours ago, ernest said:

 

 

June : 0 sales

August : best month ever...by far !!!

 

How to explain such irregularity ?

 

Hmmm . . . what about:

 

Each month hundreds (sometimes even thousands?) of different buyers (some repeat offenders, some new), looking for images of an almost infinite and constantly changing variety of subjects, for a constantly changing feast of different uses (some repeat offenders, some new), chosen from over 174,000,000 images, with over 100,000 images added every day.

 

Ian Davidson is totally spot on on this one.

 

DD

[Aaron]

I am going to chime in on this. I am new as well and I am trying to figure out what sells on here since this is mostly a editorial platform. A lot of photojournalism. I have gone through others portifilos and saw that mostly people are doing is photojournalism which I am thinking that is what sparks more interest and sales. But the thing is with, this country or state of Wisconsin. It seems we here in the US rather rely on people that work in the media not with stock sites. Because they don't want to be paying for someones work they don't know. I will keep uploading all the photos I have but if it gets to the point there is no sales. Than either I am doing something wrong or Alamy isn't for the US. Because they have contracted individuals that do all the work. Like the travel agencies I work for. They rather take all the photos, pay me, I have no ownership to them, my name isn't even placed anywhere and they do what they please with them. So in a since I don't even know if they are stock selling themselves or selling them directly. That is how it is done in Wisconsin. Bit messed up but at least I get paid.   

[sooth]

1 hour ago, Aaron said:

I am going to chime in on this. I am new as well and I am trying to figure out what sells on here since this is mostly a editorial platform. A lot of photojournalism. I have gone through others portifilos and saw that mostly people are doing is photojournalism which I am thinking that is what sparks more interest and sales.

 

buyers buy images that fit the project they are doing.  advertising, news, travel, etc.  you also have competition. the photographer with the better image, and better keywording will edge out the competition.  

 

> But the thing is with, this country or state of Wisconsin. It seems we here in the US rather rely on people that work in the media not with stock sites. Because they don't want to be paying for someones work they don't know.

 

some community newspapers have staff photographers or people they rely on that they know.  Stock sites exist to fill that need for a generic photo that can't be obtained quickly or cheaply enough through a photographer or agency.   a powerful equalizer has been google images which helps connect buyers with photos located at other places buyers might not have considered perusing, like alamy. 

 

> Than either I am doing something wrong or Alamy isn't for the US.

 

would you consider submitting your portfolio for a critique?  https://discussion.alamy.com/forum/18-portfolio-critique/

 

 

[dustydingo]

2 hours ago, Aaron said:

Than either I am doing something wrong or Alamy isn't for the US.

 

Okay, "wrong" is a strong word, but "could do better" is appropriate in some of your images.

 

For example, if I was a buyer looking for a vintage Stover engine, I'd find just one photo of a complete Stover on Alamy . . . but yours (which by the way is by far the better one IMO) would simply not be one of them due to the very vague, generic keywords you have attributed to your image of a Stover engine. There's only so much Alamy alone can do . . .

 

DD

[Doc]

last three months have been very substantially below average in terms of sales zooms and income - sudden drop from beginning of July

 

Kumar

[geogphotos]

The number of images grows far more quickly than the number of sales, and the average fee for each sale continues to fall.

 

This is unsustainable for the contributor. 

 

 

[Mr Standfast]

2 hours ago, Aaron said:

I am going to chime in on this. I am new as well and I am trying to figure out what sells on here since this is mostly a editorial platform. A lot of photojournalism. I have gone through others portifilos and saw that mostly people are doing is photojournalism which I am thinking that is what sparks more interest and sales. But the thing is with, this country or state of Wisconsin. It seems we here in the US rather rely on people that work in the media not with stock sites. Because they don't want to be paying for someones work they don't know. I will keep uploading all the photos I have but if it gets to the point there is no sales. Than either I am doing something wrong or Alamy isn't for the US. Because they have contracted individuals that do all the work. Like the travel agencies I work for. They rather take all the photos, pay me, I have no ownership to them, my name isn't even placed anywhere and they do what they please with them. So in a since I don't even know if they are stock selling themselves or selling them directly. That is how it is done in Wisconsin. Bit messed up but at least I get paid.   

 

Hello Aaron,

 

You've uploaded 4381 pictures in a month.

 

Getting captions and keywords right is not an easy task, and most of us have taken a while to get our heads around it.

 

Effective captions and keywords  takes time. Betty has already given you some hints.

 

You have set yourself a MASSIVE task. Take your time.

 

 

[AlbertSnapper]

7 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

The number of images grows far more quickly than the number of sales, and the average fee for each sale continues to fall.

 

This is unsustainable for the contributor. 

 

 

 

We are all doomed 😩

[george]

Aaron, I agree with what has already been mentioned regarding your keywords. You really do need to set some time aside and review what you have tagged. Just two images I have look at WW7XME, you have cathedral, Europe, Italy, temple etc etc, that is not what is in the image. the second one I looked at WW7MJ9, architecture, asian, praying, mythology ???? 
do the work now before you add another 1,000 images, its going to be a mammoth task. 

[geogphotos]

1 hour ago, AlbertSnapper said:

 

We are all doomed 😩

 

 

I disagree. We all need to think carefully about what we are doing rather than talk about being doomed.

 

 

[NYCat]

4 hours ago, Aaron said:

I am going to chime in on this. I am new as well and I am trying to figure out what sells on here since this is mostly a editorial platform. A lot of photojournalism. I have gone through others portifilos and saw that mostly people are doing is photojournalism which I am thinking that is what sparks more interest and sales. But the thing is with, this country or state of Wisconsin. It seems we here in the US rather rely on people that work in the media not with stock sites. Because they don't want to be paying for someones work they don't know. I will keep uploading all the photos I have but if it gets to the point there is no sales. Than either I am doing something wrong or Alamy isn't for the US. Because they have contracted individuals that do all the work. Like the travel agencies I work for. They rather take all the photos, pay me, I have no ownership to them, my name isn't even placed anywhere and they do what they please with them. So in a since I don't even know if they are stock selling themselves or selling them directly. That is how it is done in Wisconsin. Bit messed up but at least I get paid.   

 

I just took a quick look at your keywords and you are pretty much doomed if you keep on as you are. It looks like you just put a bunch of keywords on each image whether or not they describe that individual image. As far as sales are concerned I think keywords are what matters. It is pretty tedious work, in my opinion, but worth it if you are really serious about getting some sales.

 

Paulette

[Marianne]

6 hours ago, Aaron said:

I am going to chime in on this. I am new as well and I am trying to figure out what sells on here since this is mostly a editorial platform. A lot of photojournalism. I have gone through others portifilos and saw that mostly people are doing is photojournalism which I am thinking that is what sparks more interest and sales. But the thing is with, this country or state of Wisconsin. It seems we here in the US rather rely on people that work in the media not with stock sites. Because they don't want to be paying for someones work they don't know. I will keep uploading all the photos I have but if it gets to the point there is no sales. Than either I am doing something wrong or Alamy isn't for the US. Because they have contracted individuals that do all the work. Like the travel agencies I work for. They rather take all the photos, pay me, I have no ownership to them, my name isn't even placed anywhere and they do what they please with them. So in a since I don't even know if they are stock selling themselves or selling them directly. That is how it is done in Wisconsin. Bit messed up but at least I get paid.   

 

In my experience, US travel images sell here (from all over, East Coast, West Coast and Midwest) and a decent number of other US editorial images do too, so all is not lost.

 

Just noticed your captions on college soccer - they are women not girls - you've had other advice re: keywording.

 

Think about what a worldwide audience might be looking for, though sometimes you'd be surprised by how small town USA images sell to webmasters and others seeking images of those small towns that are not necessarily vacation hotspots. And one month is way too soon to know how you'll do. But go for quality over quantity. 

 

Good luck. 

[Aaron]

How are keywords being used? Are they for Alamy Search results or web search engines? 

[Cryptoprocta]

1 hour ago, Aaron said:

How are keywords being used? Are they for Alamy Search results or web search engines? 

Both.

But for the Alamy internal search, captions are currently extremely important.

[John Mitchell]

10 hours ago, Doc said:

last three months have been very substantially below average in terms of sales zooms and income - sudden drop from beginning of July

 

Kumar

 

Interesting. My sales and income have gone in the opposite direction -- i.e. significantly upward -- during the past three months. July and August were two of my BME and September is looking good (above average) as well. Strange how this works. There appears to be no rhyme or reason.