The sales have stopped abruptly

[Mauro C]

Hello everybody!

 

I've been on Alamy since March 2018 and I have made 6-7 decent sales a year in the first two years, so these were my expectations about the potential of my portfolio. The problem is that this year my latest sale dates back to the beginning of April and then I've not seen a single sale in more than 7 months! The numbers of zooms hasn't changed significantly over the last year (just a very slight decrease). So I'm beginning to think that there might be some kind of issue, because this complete lack of sales over so long a period seems too strange to me. What do you suggest? Thank you in advance!

 

https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/115468.html

[Marianne]

This has been an unusual year. I had no sales at all between March and July, then it picked up a little in August and then so far this month I've had 6 sales, so you never know.

 

Like you, most of my images are travel oriented, although for me it's mostly US-based travel. 

 

With a recent upswing of cases in the US, my recent sales have still included tourist destinations in the US (as opposed to cities where, for example, they might be used to illustrate a place where cases are on the rise). Recent sales also include a couple of landscapes and one of a university.

 

Alamy has always been for me the kind of agency where sales aren't entirely consistent (I have fewer than 1500 images), and this year has been unusual and as others have said, while in the past Alamy has been an excellent place to license travel images, this year that has not been the case due to Covid.

[Betty LaRue]

I have no idea whether buyers search for number of people, because I really don’t use All of Alamy. I would imagine some do.  In case they do search for number of people, I include that. Well, I fill out everything optional. But if a buyer uses, “gardening, one person” I want my image to come up higher in the search rather than what just using “gardening” in the tags. Although “one man gardening” could be part of the caption. Mine are usually more precise...”young woman trimming a rose bush” or “senior man mowing a lawn”...and so on. 
Actually, I always try to put in the tags the number of people so that should cover it, unless the optional number of people is what is searched when people use a drop down. Hmm, don’t see a drop-down. I could have sworn there used to be a drop-down where you could select the number of people. I must not be seeing it if it’s there.

Found it.

 

Edited November 28, 2020 by Betty LaRue

[meanderingemu]

20 hours ago, Cal said:

 

Absolutely, otherwise anyone who doesn't fill out the optional field (and I suspect there are lots) would be leaving themselves up to potential financial ruin. It would be absolute madness to have an optional field in its default state behave in any other way. The data that Harry mentions is likely an anomaly of how this default state of these fields is stored as data, I am happy enough that images annotated this way go on sale with both their property and person releases marked as none.

 

 

 

I tried explaining what I mean and to be honest I bored myself... I'd be largely repeating what I've already said 2 or 3 times. What I will say is earlier on I did take the time to annotate each image fully - I have around 300 images marked as without property and about 350 marked as with, all unreleased. The images "without" property are all birds on water, isolated generic objects where I've rubbed off the logos and a few landscapes, where any buildings are entirely indistinguishable dots in the background or at night... covered by the "cityscapes/unrecognisable property" clause. Starting from around the 600th image I rarely bothered. I still do if it's dead obvious (ie coke can on isolated background).

 

Either way, precisely 0 images in my port have property releases regardless of their property status, so anyone using them and selling them commercially sure isn't getting a release from me anyway.

 

 

 

OK thanks, so no Competitive advantage, potential impact if some of the info from optional gets used in searched, have to assume info as to Image with People, without people is taken from somewhere, for something that adds seconds to process, (highlight all images, Property=Yes, Waiver=No, than change the 15% than have no property when i add info as to no people)

[meanderingemu]

8 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

I have no idea whether buyers search for number of people, because I really don’t use All of Alamy. I would imagine some do.  In case they do search for number of people, I include that. Well, I fill out everything optional. But if a buyer uses, “gardening, one person” I want my image to come up higher in the search rather than what just using “gardening” in the tags. Although “one man gardening” could be part of the caption. Mine are usually more precise...”young woman trimming a rose bush” or “senior man mowing a lawn”...and so on. 
Actually, I always try to put in the tags the number of people so that should cover it, unless the optional number of people is what is searched when people use a drop down. Hmm, don’t see a drop-down. I could have sworn there used to be a drop-down where you could select the number of people. I must not be seeing it if it’s there.

Found it.

 

 

my 2 zooms Thursday are for searches "Images with people", assumed it was from pull down