Thinking of going exclusive - am I crackers?

[AlexG]

22 hours ago, Cal said:

 

I would say RM still makes sense if you value the image and don't want, say, a newspaper buying it and then using it frequently thereafter on articles. On the other hand I suspect some types of images will only ever sell well when set as RF, but I'd never set something I was very very proud of (or that was a rare thing to have an image of) as RF - it's like giving your work away.

 

3 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I believe it's called "magical thinking" (on my part). 🙈

 

Thanks a lot for your inputs! 😃

[Marianne]

I contribute to two other RM agencies but until about mid-2019 Alamy did much better for my RM images than they did (small European boutique agencies with a 50% split, but 50% of very little isn't worth it), so I have a some RM images here that are exclusive, but due to Alamy's poor returns on personal use licenses, compared to the $200+ I generally receive per sale on POD sItes, I prefer to have some of my RF images that sell well on my POD sites on a micro (not ss) which, while sale prices are low, does not cannibalize my POD sales, which earn me several times what I make on Alamy yearly. I'm sure I'm losing sales here as a result, but I make a lot more POD sales, so it's not worth the risk. With so few outlets for RM work, it's a tough choice but more of my work is RF so I have options. 

 

Having options is important to me. I worry about having all my eggs in one basket, and so that's another reason going completely exclusive would never work for me. However, now that ss has pulled a fast one, I will probably add many more of my editorial RF images here and make them exclusive. As an American, I found splitting my editorial images between Alamy and ss gave me a much better return (usu better on ss, actually, but I've had some $250-450 editorial sales here which beat anything I'd make on ss). American travel images sell well for me here, but general news and soft news do (I should say, did) better elsewhere. Now Alamy is my best option for editorial, other than direct licensing, which is permitted by the "exclusivity" clause.

 

Alamy generally treats us pretty well and they are great to deal with. The other A is also quite supportive of their contributors, and sales there are growing well, but I rarely make more than 99 cents for a download, my best single download there this year was $20, for a photo of a brick wall. They sell a lot more backgrounds and traditionally stocky type stuff, the kind of images I rarely sell here but if your work is more travel, landscape and editorial, then going exclusive here might make sense for you. Some things to consider. Good luck!

[chris_rabe]

Well, it's just gone a year more or less since I started doing this in earnest (trying to sell photos)

 

I have made some mess (still cleaning up), and experimented with different avenues of sales, and I am thinking I'll be going exclusive with Alamy again. It will just be so much easier to manage. 

 

MS just isn't worth the effort for money I get. I recently pulled out of Shutterstock, and once I get to my next payouts on two others, I will be removing myself from them too.

 

Ok, I do have two other agencies I will submit stuff to, but they are more boutique, and any images on those will need to be exclusive to them anyway.

 

And of course, I will continue to sell certain images on POD sites.

 

I do have a question though - if an image has sold on another MS site, and I remove it there, can I still mark it as exclusive? Or does the fact that it has already sold somewhere else preclude me from that?

[geogphotos]

36 minutes ago, chris_rabe said:

 

 

I do have a question though - if an image has sold on another MS site, and I remove it there, can I still mark it as exclusive? Or does the fact that it has already sold somewhere else preclude me from that?

 

 

A very good question. As far as I know 'exclusive' simply means only on sale at Alamy at present. If a client wants actual exclusive use Alamy has to contact us to find out if that is a possibility - even if the image is marked as exclusive on Alamy it doesn't necessarily mean that it could be offered exclusively! 

 

It doesn't happen at all often in my experience. 

Edited June 22, 2020 by geogphotos

[spacecadet]

10 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

A very good question. As far as I know 'exclusive' simply means only on sale at Alamy at present. If a client wants actual exclusive use Alamy has to contact us to find out if that is a possibility - even if the image is marked as exclusive on Alamy it doesn't necessarily mean that it could be offered exclusively! 

 

It doesn't happen at all often in my experience. 

+1.

"Exclusive" refers only to availability for licensing. It's a light switch you can turn on and off as often as you like.

[Malcolm Park]

52 minutes ago, chris_rabe said:

I do have a question though - if an image has sold on another MS site, and I remove it there, can I still mark it as exclusive? Or does the fact that it has already sold somewhere else preclude me from that?

 

I asked this question recently to Alamy, as a result of removing  several thousand images from another site which decided to drop RM. This is the information I received from Alamy:  images (around 60) with geographic, date and industry specific, licences attached to them (by this other company) cannot be labelled on Alamy as exclusive until these licences run out. All the other images which had sold but without specific usages (around 1000) can now be labelled on Alamy as exclusive.

[chris_rabe]

2 minutes ago, Malcolm Park said:

 

I asked this question recently to Alamy, as a result of removing  several thousand images from another site which decided to drop RM. This is the information I received from Alamy:  images (around 60) with geographic, date and industry specific, licences attached to them (by this other company) cannot be labelled on Alamy as exclusive until these licences run out. All the other images which had sold but without specific usages (around 1000) can now be labelled on Alamy as exclusive.

 

Thanks. These would all be RF images, so don't think that would be an issue.

 

And if Alamy can continue to sell RF images at similar prices to my last three sales, I'm quite happy sticking to RF  

[geogphotos]

1 hour ago, Malcolm Park said:

 

I asked this question recently to Alamy, as a result of removing  several thousand images from another site which decided to drop RM. This is the information I received from Alamy:  images (around 60) with geographic, date and industry specific, licences attached to them (by this other company) cannot be labelled on Alamy as exclusive until these licences run out. All the other images which had sold but without specific usages (around 1000) can now be labelled on Alamy as exclusive.

 

That does surprise me. 

 

It also seems a nonsense that RF images that have been sold possibly hundreds of times on micros can be switched to Alamy as exclusive RM.

 

I think I'd go back and argue my case over these 60 images if I was you Malcolm. You are potentially losing commission for images which are only on sale on Alamy - that doesn't seem right.

Edited June 22, 2020 by geogphotos

[M.Chapman]

2 hours ago, Malcolm Park said:

 

I asked this question recently to Alamy, as a result of removing  several thousand images from another site which decided to drop RM. This is the information I received from Alamy:  images (around 60) with geographic, date and industry specific, licences attached to them (by this other company) cannot be labelled on Alamy as exclusive until these licences run out. All the other images which had sold but without specific usages (around 1000) can now be labelled on Alamy as exclusive.

 

That's got to be incorrect. Have Alamy confused themselves over the definition of "exclusive" (as used in the contributor contract, AIM, and in setting commission rates which basically means this image is currently only available for licensing from Alamy),  with offering an exclusive use of image to only one client/application?

 

Mark

Edited June 22, 2020 by M.Chapman

[Malcolm Park]

Anyone at Alamy care to comment on the above?

[chris_rabe]

1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

 

It also seems a nonsense that RF images that have been sold possibly hundreds of times on micros can be switched to Alamy as exclusive RM.

 

 

 

Not sure if that was directed at me, but I'm not intending to set images to RM that have been listed on MS sites - if it's RF, it stays RF. 

[geogphotos]

17 minutes ago, chris_rabe said:

 

Not sure if that was directed at me, but I'm not intending to set images to RM that have been listed on MS sites - if it's RF, it stays RF. 

 

 

No it wasn't directed at you at all. It was a reply to Malcolm. 

[chris_rabe]

22 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

No it wasn't directed at you at all. It was a reply to Malcolm. 

 

I was wondering, but I didn't see him mention changing from RF to RM. Anyway, just ignore me

 

[M.Chapman]

2 hours ago, geogphotos said:

It also seems a nonsense that RF images that have been sold possibly hundreds of times on micros can be switched to Alamy as exclusive RM.

 

Is it significantly worse than offering the same image at very different price points on different sites? (as allowed by Alamy)

RM and RF defines the (rapproximate*) terms of the licence on offer from a given vendor for a given price. The customer whether they want to pay a certain amount of money for the licence terms on offer. If there's a different licence available at a different price elsewhere, then they are welcome to buy that instead if that licence better suits their needs. 

*With the emergence of the "hybrid" RM/RF terms that sometimes appear on Alamy's licence (multiple use, in perpetuity etc.), could one argue that Alamy sometimes sells RM images as RF anyway?

 

Or have I misunderstood?

 

Mark

Edited June 22, 2020 by M.Chapman

[geogphotos]

34 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Is it significantly worse than offering the same image at very different price points on different sites? (as allowed by Alamy)

RM and RF defines the (rapproximate*) terms of the licence on offer from a given vendor for a given price. The customer whether they want to pay a certain amount of money for the licence terms on offer. If there's a different licence available at a different price elsewhere, then they are welcome to buy that instead if that licence better suits their needs. 

*With the emergence of the "hybrid" RM/RF terms that sometimes appear on Alamy's licence (multiple use, in perpetuity etc.), could one argue that Alamy sometimes sells RM images as RF anyway?

 

Or have I misunderstood?

 

Mark

 

My point was that if Malcolm's RM images with unexpired licence now removed from Getty cannot be exclusive on Alamy then how can any image that has been licensed as RF - because RF licences do not expire. It doesn't make any sense.

 

I think that you are right that somebody at Alamy has got their wires crossed and has given Malcolm the wrong information. 

Edited June 22, 2020 by geogphotos

[geogphotos]

Not sure if this pro or anti. Four sales today, three of them non-ex.

 

Total to me of $9.55 for all four. 

 

The thing is that the reduction from 50% to 40% works out to be worse even than that because it isn't as though the sales are evenly split. The non-Exs have been selected by an editor, they are likely to sell more. Admittedly it hardly matters in this case.

 

Don't think I'll bother checking the exchange rate. Just as well I have my stock of elderberry wine to turn to in times of need 😊 - because that costs virtually nothing and $9.55 won't buy much as my day's earnings!

Edited June 23, 2020 by geogphotos