I've fallen off the cliff!

[losdemas]

4 minutes ago, riccarbi said:

I am aware that to define concepts such as "quality" and "saleability" could be quite difficult and, possibly, futile. Furthermore, many, like you and me, have sold photos that "I would have never thought I could really sell". Again, no "quality-team" can really tell what photos will be sold and what will be not. What I'm talking about is some sort of "self-restraint" attitude by us contributors.
To have 10K photos on Alamy, only 3K of which you know are really unique, instead than only having the best ones, leads to a marginally higher number of sales, I suspect. Yet, the contributor has spent a lot of time downloading, developing, converting, keywording, and uploading a so large number of pictures. Maybe just to sell a couple of those 7K "extra photos" in one month for ten bucks overall. Is it really worth the effort?

You're right, riccarbi. But as you say, 'is it really worth the effort'? *and* how many have the ability to get it right?! Some here, including notable forum contributors, have done very well by substantially trimming their portfolios and being very selective with new uploads. That combined with careful captioning and tagging, *and* keeping an eye on what sells *and* careful attention to the searches on AofA has paid dividends for them. I seriously doubt my ability to do this well!

[Russell]

3 hours ago, riccarbi said:

I'm pretty sure that a "sustainable growth" strategy for both Alamy and us, as contributors, might be to reduce the number of photographs available on Alamy

 

I think that the volume of images available on Alamy has very little to do with us individual contributors. Alamy boast of 95,000 contributors. I would love to know how many of them are active, how many are agencies, and how many are individuals.

 

I suspect that the bulk of the (now) 193 million portfolio consists of agency bulk load, poorly captioned and keyworded with many similars.

 

The problem for individual contributors is that their images are but saplings in the forest.

[John Walker]

All is not lost. 

 

Some small sales have come through.

Zooms are up by two

My CTR is at .86

Cleared Sales are moving up slowly but still need another $4 to clear the payment threshold. (I'm usually way above that)

 

 

And there's still a day to go!

Edited February 28, 2020 by John Walker

[AlbertSnapper]

4 minutes ago, John Walker said:

 

And there's still a day to go!

 

Two days to go !

 

Don't forget it's a leap year !

 

Ok Saturdays don't bring many sales, but we live in hope (we have to doing this).

 

 

 

 

[John Morrison]

There's an old adage in business that "Half the money you spend on advertising is wasted. You just don't know which half". It's the same with stock: I know that some of my pix will be repeat sellers, while others (including some of my favourites) will probably never sell at all. However, this knowledge isn't available to me at the moment I press the shutter; it's always hindsight. If I had a way of knowing which pix would never sell... I wouldn't bother taking them!  😀

[meanderingemu]

2 hours ago, riccarbi said:

I am aware that to define concepts such as "quality" and "saleability" could be quite difficult and, possibly, futile. Furthermore, many, like you and me, have sold photos that "I would have never thought I could really sell". Again, no "quality-team" can really tell what photos will be sold and what will be not. What I'm talking about is some sort of "self-restraint" attitude by us contributors.
To have 10K photos on Alamy, you know only 3K of which are really unique, instead than only having the best ones, leads to a marginally higher number of sales, I suspect. Yet, the contributor has spent a lot of time downloading, developing, converting, keywording, and uploading a so large number of pictures. Maybe just to sell a couple of those 7K "extra photos" in one month for ten bucks overall. Is it really worth the effort?

 

 

also i'm curious if saleability is only on the photographer.  Yes i upload some images that are marginal because of their location. First i have no information from Alamy in which country they are active, either directly or through distribution networks.  I was in Zagreb for the Advent Market (Mainly because i had run out of Schengen time, welcome UK people) when i chanced on campaigning gathering signatures from 2nd tier presidential candidates for the the upcoming elections .  So yes i uploaded 10 images that were unlikely to sell if Alamy has no local interest buyers, but is that on me?

[John Walker]

26 minutes ago, AlbertSnapper said:

 

Two days to go !

 

Don't forget it's a leap year !

 

Ok Saturdays don't bring many sales, but we live in hope (we have to doing this).

 

 

 

 

 

Strange how you lose track when you're retired.  I had no idea it was a leap year!  Good chance of moving over the payment threshold

[Marb]

 Not a single Feb sale. Absolute waste of time making exclusive images available here when they sit gathering dust when they can be earning on other sites.

 

 

Edited February 27, 2020 by Marb

[spacecadet]

BME for volume I think, best for revenue for at least a year.

[Marb]

28 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

BME for volume I think, best for revenue for at least a year.

 

Gives us some hope then.

[Allan Bell]

3 hours ago, John Morrison said:

If I had a way of knowing which pix would never sell... I wouldn't bother taking them!  😀

 

That would be just about all of mine.

 

Allan

 

[MDM]

1 hour ago, Marb said:

Utterly utterly utterly tragic. Not a single Feb sale. Absolute waste of time making exclusive images available here when they sit gathering dust when they can be earning on other sites.

 

 

 

If making no sales on Alamy with a port of 2312 images is utterly utterly utterly tragic,  I hope nothing really bad ever happens to you like falling off an actual cliff. 

 

 I have had many months without sales over the time I have been a contributor and I would go as far as disappointing myself. I guess you are not feeding the family on your Alamy earnings but apologies for making light of your predicament if you are starving because of lack of sales here. If your situation is really utterly utterly utterly tragic because of this then I am sure there are a few of us here, myself included, who would send you a donation to get you through hard times.

 

You know there is no requirement to have your images as exclusive and 20% of very little is just a little less than very litte anyway so maybe you should make them non-exclusive and blow the dust off them. 

 

[John Morrison]

2 hours ago, Marb said:

Utterly utterly utterly tragic.

 

Yeah, some perspective required. “If I got a paper cut, that’s a tragedy. If you fell down an open manhole and died, that's comedy” (Woody Allen)…

 

Your posts are utterly, utterly, utterly pessimist. If uploading pix to Alamy is such a waste of time... then stop!

[sb photos]

3 hours ago, Marb said:

Utterly utterly utterly tragic. Not a single Feb sale. Absolute waste of time making exclusive images available here when they sit gathering dust when they can be earning on other sites.

 

 

 

It's not he end of the month yet, and I've had sales notified on the last day, so all isn't lost. Thankfully 5 came through today, was surprised as I was only expecting 3 that I knew about.

[MizBrown]

I seem to sell occasionally and unpredictably, but things I take that are not covered by a hundred or more other photographers tend to get decent prices, one only a few dollars short of $200, one over $100 but not paid for since April (contributor relations said they were working on it), one for around $80.   Basically, if people aren't selling here, it's on them to find out how to do better or figure that they're better off elsewhere.   I'd like to make at least $100 net a month, but it's on me to take those photographs.

[Marb]

On 27/02/2020 at 18:02, sb photos said:

 

It's not he end of the month yet, and I've had sales notified on the last day, so all isn't lost. Thankfully 5 came through today, was surprised as I was only expecting 3 that I knew about.

Well nothing came through for me for Feb and March is looking  to be much the same. A huge slump compared to previous months.

 

And why on earth can I not find the Alamy forum link on the site ? Every time I have to Google it to sign in.

[CAROL SAUNDERS]

14 minutes ago, Marb said:

 

 

And why on earth can I not find the Alamy forum link on the site ? Every time I have to Google it to sign in.

 

I have the forum bookmarked, it's much easier, try it......😉

 

Carol

[MDM]

11 minutes ago, Marb said:

Well nothing came through for me for Feb and March is looking  to be much the same. A huge slump compared to previous months.

 

And why on earth can I not find the Alamy forum link on the site ? Every time I have to Google it to sign in.

 

Because you are not looking in the right place - bottom of the contributor page - large button bottom left

 

But it is much easier to save the forum link as a favourite or bookmark (terminology depends on what browser you are using).

[riccarbi]

On 27/02/2020 at 14:15, meanderingemu said:

 

 

also i'm curious if saleability is only on the photographer.  Yes i upload some images that are marginal because of their location. First i have no information from Alamy in which country they are active, either directly or through distribution networks.  I was in Zagreb for the Advent Market (Mainly because i had run out of Schengen time, welcome UK people) when i chanced on campaigning gathering signatures from 2nd tier presidential candidates for the the upcoming elections .  So yes i uploaded 10 images that were unlikely to sell if Alamy has no local interest buyers, but is that on me?

Is that on us photographers? Yes and no. 
To upload the millionth picture of the Eiffel Tower means that that picture will never be sold ; it will just contribute to Alamy's becoming progressively clogged by millions of pictures nobody will ever see and, consequently, buy.
Similarly, if I upload the photo of my livingroom, nobody will ever buy it, because nobody gives a damn about my livingroom (except me and, possibly, my mum) even if there is only a single picture of it.
Yet, there is another case. Your pictures about Croatian elections are of an interest and potentially saleable, of course, but probably only in Croatia and a few other countries. I have many intresting photos of small Italian historical towns, yet I always sell almost exclusively those I made in Venice, Milan, and Rome, and mostly to UK clients.
 That's why I insist that Alamy should keep on becoming more international and attract customers from as many countries as possible.
A humble suggestion could be, for example, to let international contributors to keyword their image also in their native language (in a separate box) and then automatically generate a human-translated version of Alamy in that specific language.

Edited March 5, 2020 by riccarbi

[John Mitchell]

It's only the 5th of March, so not really time to panic just yet. However, March has started off very slowly for me with zero sales and only three zooms so far. I can't help think that we're beginning to see the effects of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) on the global economy, which no doubt impact stock photography.

Edited March 5, 2020 by John Mitchell

[MDM]

13 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

It's only the 5th of March, so not really time to panic just yet. However, March has started off very slowly for me with zero sales and only three zooms so far. I can't help think that we're beginning to see the effects of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) on the global economy, which no doubt impact stock photography.

 

No doubt it will impact on many areas of life. We are moving into a period of uncharted territory. It is only a matter of time before we have forum members posting that they have contracted it and how long after that will it be before we hear of someone dying from it. This is not scaremongering. It is a real possibility and to quote our Marb once again will be truly utterly utterly utterly tragic. 

[John Mitchell]

28 minutes ago, MDM said:

 

No doubt it will impact on many areas of life. We are moving into a period of uncharted territory. It is only a matter of time before we have forum members posting that they have contracted it and how long after that will it be before we hear of someone dying from it. This is not scaremongering. It is a real possibility and to quote our Marb once again will be truly utterly utterly utterly tragic. 

 

Hopefully you're wrong about forum members. Let's keep our fingers crossed. However, it's impossible to predict where things are headed. The travel industry is already taking a heavy hit, which ironically will be good for the planet with fewer jets flying around. Also, air pollution in China is reportedly at an all-time low due to less traffic on the streets of big cities and less travel in general. It's a topsy-turvy world out there...

 

Canada seems well-prepared for COVID-19, but the situation in many other places is very worrisome. For instance, outbreaks the Seattle area just south of Vancouver are especially worrying.

[Shergar]

1 hour ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Hopefully you're wrong about forum members. Let's keep our fingers crossed. However, it's impossible to predict where things are headed. The travel industry is already taking a heavy hit, which ironically will be good for the planet with fewer jets flying around. Also, air pollution in China is reportedly at an all-time low due to less traffic on the streets of big cities and less travel in general. It's a topsy-turvy world out there...

 

Canada seems well-prepared for COVID-19, but the situation in many other places is very worrisome. For instance, outbreaks the Seattle area just south of Vancouver are especially worrying.

Im not worried yet as I have survived the Stella Artois the Heineken the Guinness the John Smiths and the Budweiser virus, sometimes 2 or 3 times a week.

[meanderingemu]

1 minute ago, Shergar said:

Im not worried yet as I have survived the Stella Artois the Heineken the Guinness the John Smiths and the Budweiser virus, sometimes 2 or 3 times a week.

 

 

wait until you get Labatt-50, probably on par with Covid-19

[John Mitchell]

6 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

wait until you get Labatt-50, probably on par with Covid-19

 

That and Molson Canadian (if it hasn't been stamped out).

Edited March 5, 2020 by John Mitchell