How many images are needed to start making sales?

[Doug McLean]

How many images are needed on Alamy to start making sales?

 

So far I haven't had a single sale, but on every other stock site I'm on I was make daily or at least weakly sales with the same number of images.

 

[Steve F]

Hi Doug,

How long is a piece of string...? No, but seriously, the conventional wisdom with Alamy is that you make less sales here, but that the commission and fee is generally higher than with e.g. microstock agencies. It used to be reckoned that you would make on average 1 sale per month per 1000 images here. I'm not sure how much either of these suppositions holds true now as microstock prices seem to be dragging the whole industry down and Alamy has just recently passed 200 million images for sale. Bearing in mind the size of the catalogue, your 279 pictures is pretty small peanuts! Anyway, welcome and good luck.

Steve

Edited May 29, 2020 by Steve F

[Doug McLean]

Thanks, I'll work on uploading the rest of my photos, I'll see how I do once I have a couple thousand.

 

Thanks,

Doug

[Gnans]

3 hours ago, Steve F said:

1 sale per month per 1000 images

Doug, I kind of see that pattern which Steve has mentioned above. With Alamy from what I learned on the forum and experience is that 

• Quality selective image
• People doing things
• Accurate caption and keywords

helps to sell. I see good amount of sell-able pictures in your portfolio. Keep it growing.

 

[John Mitchell]

This is not in any way a comment on the quality of your work, but something to keep in mind is that Alamy is primarily an editorial agency. Consequently, just uploading scads of images that do well on the micros won't necessarily result in licenses here. It's a good idea to be selective for Alamy. Best of luck.

 

P.S. It looks as if you might be based in Saint John, NB. Very nice city. I've been there several times,

Edited May 29, 2020 by John Mitchell

[sooth]

19 hours ago, Doug McLean said:

How many images are needed on Alamy to start making sales?

 

So far I haven't had a single sale, but on every other stock site I'm on I was make daily or at least weakly sales with the same number of images.

 

it's not the number of images that will sell images, it's the type of content that will sell images matched to the buyers that buy them.

 

   the photo buyers are different and also more selective here.

 

 

Edited May 29, 2020 by sooth

[Doug McLean]

Thanks everyone, I am now uploading all my editorial photos, I hope to have most of them done by the end of next month.

 

[meanderingemu]

23 hours ago, Gnans said:

Doug, I kind of see that pattern which Steve has mentioned above. With Alamy from what I learned on the forum and experience is that 

• Quality selective image
• People doing things
• Accurate caption and keywords

helps to sell. I see good amount of sell-able pictures in your portfolio. Keep it growing.

 

 

i would add subject matter and number of subjects even more.

 

25 images, even quality from a same subject or over covered matter will not have the same impact as the 3 images of something with appeal, even of lesser quality.  

 

in addition i would add that you have no idea that you have had no sales.  The reporting lag for individually licensed images vs part of subscription packs is extremely longer.  For example i licensed my first image within a month here, but didn't have any sales report for over 2.5 months....     

[Doug McLean]

1 hour ago, meanderingemu said:

in addition i would add that you have no idea that you have had no sales.  The reporting lag for individually licensed images vs part of subscription packs is extremely longer.  For example i licensed my first image within a month here, but didn't have any sales report for over 2.5 months....     

 

Ah, ok, I didn't know that, I guess I assumed that I would know if I sold something the same day, like on other sites.

[spacecadet]

You can't expect to have sales reported within weeks of joining, but in the long run another reason may be that your images are available on microstock sites.

Why would anyone pay tens of dollars here when they can buy the same images for cents there? You're competing with yourself at a lower price point.

Incidentally unreleased images shouldn't be listed as RF.

[meanderingemu]

@Doug McLean as someone mentioned above, keywording and caption is really the main way to get someone to your image.

 

I'm looking at your image 2BW0XH1, which is a nice  portrait of a female performer, but you don't identify the artist, which i assume is the main reason someone would licence this image.  Shouldn't be too hard to find through schedules and timing.  

[geogphotos]

You should start getting a decent income with about 1.35 million images, but it will quickly go downhill from there. 

[John Morrison]

14 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

You should start getting a decent income with about 1.35 million images, but it will quickly go downhill from there. 

 

Ian is being uncharacteristically modest. Thanks to my Alamy portfolio I now live in a castle...

[Cal]

19 hours ago, spacecadet said:

 

Incidentally unreleased images shouldn't be listed as RF.

 

Why not? Alamy allows you to list RF images as containing property/people without a release, I'd have thought if it was a legal issue the control panel would prevent it. I'm very careful with RF as it is but have started experimenting with the odd image of a certain "type" as I get the feeling some images won't sell unless set as RF.

Edited May 31, 2020 by Cal

[spacecadet]

49 minutes ago, Cal said:

Why not?

Because those are Alamy's rules. It's your responsibility to list correctly. If you don't you could be legally liable.

It can't be prevented technically- you self-declare that an image doesn't need releases, so Alamy has no way of knowing if that's true.

From the submission guidelines:

"If images contain people or property they need to have the right releases to be sold for commercial use."

 

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/understanding-stock-image-licensing/?section=6

 

 

[Doug McLean]

52 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Because those are Alamy's rules. It's your responsibility to list correctly. If you don't you could be legally liable.

It can't be prevented technically- you self-declare that an image doesn't need releases, so Alamy has no way of knowing if that's true.

From the submission guidelines:

"If images contain people or property they need to have the right releases to be sold for commercial use."

 

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/understanding-stock-image-licensing/?section=6

 

 

But nothing says that only commercial can be RF. Why can't RF be editorial? Lots of places buy my RF editorials on other sites, including news, blogs, etc.

[spacecadet]

1 hour ago, Doug McLean said:

But nothing says that only commercial can be RF. Why can't RF be editorial? Lots of places buy my RF editorials on other sites, including news, blogs, etc.

Well, apparently most contributors seem to follow the rules because most unreleased images on Alamy are marked as RM- for one thing, incorrectly annotating images is a breach of contract- so you'll have to ask Alamy that question if you want to do otherwise.

You may well do differently elsewhere, but that doesn't mean you can do the same on Alamy.

[Doug McLean]

2 hours ago, spacecadet said:

Well, apparently most contributors seem to follow the rules because most unreleased images on Alamy are marked as RM- for one thing, incorrectly annotating images is a breach of contract- so you'll have to ask Alamy that question if you want to do otherwise.

You may well do differently elsewhere, but that doesn't mean you can do the same on Alamy.

 

The Alamy Terms and Conditions at  https://www.alamy.com/terms/us.aspx mentions royalty free editorial licenses in several places, so clearly editorial images do not need to be rights managed.

 

 

[spacecadet]

There has been a lot of discussion around licence types for unreleased images here over the years, and that's not my understanding or that of many long-term contributors here, but please yourself. I'll continue to stick to the contract.

You've quoted from the buyer contract. I'm not going to quote from the contributor contract but correct annotation and full information are conditions.

I still don't see many unreleased images marked as RF. I have precisely 16 out of over 10,000, and those only because they have sold so the licence type can't be changed. I put them up as RF incorrectly years ago.

I'd need a very good reason to do things differently from contributors who have been submitting here for years.

Edited May 31, 2020 by spacecadet

[M.Chapman]

Isn’t it possible to tick Editorial only and RF these days on Alamy? I’ve never done it, but would that achieve the protection required?  I see that when selecting RM or RF Alamy now call it Royalty Free (Recommended), which tends to lead folks down that path too...

 

Mark

Edited May 31, 2020 by M.Chapman

[spacecadet]

2 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

Isn’t it possible to tick Editorial only and RF these days on Alamy?

 

Mark

Yes it is. In fact I have an editorial restriction on my (incorrectly) RF images.

But OP has specifically marked his unreleased images as RF, which no-one else seems to do. This must be something that has passed me by.

 

[Steve F]

15 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

It's not my understanding or that of many long-term contributors here, but please yourself. I'll continue to stick to the contract.

BTW that's the buyer's, not the contributor contract. I'm not going to quote from it but correct annotation and full information are conditions. I still don't see many unreleased images marked as RF.

 

I thought this would be an easy one to clear up. However, after reading around a bit, I'm also finding it somewhat confusing, and it doesn't seem to be clear in Alamy's guidance as to whether you can have royalty free editorial images. I also can't see where it says you can't.

 

This website defines royalty free images as either editorial or commercial:

https://www.stockphotoguides.com/use/royalty-free/what-are-royalty-free-images

 

RF editorial is more unusual though and perhaps confusing to clients who use the Alamy definition of royalty free:

"RF stands for Royalty Free. Customers pay a one–off fee to use the image with no restrictions on how they use it, or how long they use it for." Perhaps this definition needs updating.

 

I prefer RM anyway though, so...!!

Steve

Edited May 31, 2020 by Steve F

[meanderingemu]

5 hours ago, Doug McLean said:

But nothing says that only commercial can be RF. Why can't RF be editorial? Lots of places buy my RF editorials on other sites, including news, blogs, etc.

 

 

Alamy is just the agent, You are responsible for what you sell in the image. So if you licensed something You are at risk.  If you are comfortable with what you are representing, this is up to you, it's all about your risk tolerance.  (note this would be the same with any agent you use btw, in fact based on some case reviews Alamy seems much better for defending interest of their contributors)   

Edited May 31, 2020 by meanderingemu

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, spacecadet said:

Yes it is. In fact I have an editorial restriction on my (incorrectly) RF images.

But OP has specifically marked his unreleased images as RF, which no-one else seems to do. This must be something that has passed me by.

 

 

I think this changed when Alamy added the option to tick "Editorial Only" on RF images. There's a even a tick box filter option on the search results page now to "Show Editorial RF" images.

The buyer contract seems to provide the necessary clauses to cover this.

 

Section 3.1 (Which applies to all image licence types)

3.1.12 Not all of Alamy’s Image(s)/Footage have Releases. It is your responsibility to check that all necessary Releases have been secured (see clause 7.3 below).

 

Section 7.3

You [the image purchaser] must satisfy yourself that all Releases as may be required for Reproduction of the Image(s)/Footage have been secured and are appropriate for your intended use. You are solely responsible for obtaining all such Releases and the Licence is conditional in each case on your obtaining them. If you are unsure as to whether any Releases are needed for your Image(s)/Footage usage, then it is your responsibility to consult with relevant parties. You shall not rely upon any representation or warranty given by Alamy employees or representatives save as set out in this Agreement.

 

So I think there's some protection from the buyers contract, even if the contributor sets RF without ticking Editorial Only, providing the contributor doesn't claim they have releases, when they don't.

 

I couldn't spot any specific restrictions on RF/RM in the contributor's contract, other than these;

 

2.1 You must assign the licence types available on the website to each Image you submit, and must ensure that you understand the implications of each licence type(s) you select.

 

4.6 Where you have indicated that a Model Release, Property Release or any other release of a third party right including without limitation any copyright, trade mark or other intellectual property right, is available. the release must (a) be legally binding and (b) (except as otherwise notified to Alamy via the website or, with the agreement of Alamy, via email) authorise all uses of the Images anywhere in the world including without limitation uses in relation to sensitive issues; you must make the release(s) available to Alamy if so requested.

 

4.10 You will ensure that all Metadata including without limitation captions, keywording, descriptions and Pseudonyms, rights management or other information pertaining to the Images is and will remain accurate and factually correct and does not infringe the copyright or other rights of any third party, and are not defamatory or pornographic.

 

Irrespective of the above, I tend to use RM if the images contain people or property.

 

Mark

 

 

Edited May 31, 2020 by M.Chapman

[M.Chapman]

8 hours ago, Doug McLean said:

Why can't RF be editorial?

 

They can, and there's no problem with that. 

The risk of having unreleased images as RF is they might get used commercially.

So IMHO it's best to sell unreleased images as RM, or as RF with Editorial only restriction set. (Even though the Buyer's contract may give some protection, it's probably better to be safe than sorry...)

 

Mark

Edited May 31, 2020 by M.Chapman