New Low

[Reimar]

It happened.  I've had low sales but this is a record.  It's even RM.  Hopefully not a sign of things to come.  I've got enough of these at that other place:

 

Country: Worldwide ; Usage: Editorial ;  Media: Editorial website ;  Start: 17-February-2021 ; End: 17-November-2021 ;

   Additional Details: Single use across website and/or digital publication such as E-book or PDF, any size, any placement, in perpetuity.

 

How much you ask?  $0.25 and $0.10 to me.

Edited February 17, 2021 by Reimar

[geogphotos]

19 minutes ago, Reimar said:

It happened.  I've had low sales but this is a record.  It's even RM.  Hopefully not a sign of things to come.  I've got enough of these at that other place:

 

Country: Worldwide ; Usage: Editorial ;  Media: Editorial website ;  Start: 17-February-2021 ; End: 17-November-2021 ;

   Additional Details: Single use across website and/or digital publication such as E-book or PDF, any size, any placement, in perpetuity.

 

How much you ask?  $0.25 and $0.10 to me.

 

 

The impact of micro stock. 

[Gina Kelly]

I had one of those recently - it stung. Sorry it's happened to you.

[meanderingemu]

i think the new low is actually @Alamy still not addressing these, after multiple requests for clarification on the Forum. 

[Reimar]

Wow.  Another identical $0.10 RM sale just popped in for another image.  Now I'm starting to feel picked on.

[Colblimp]

This is appalling and not acceptable.  I think an explanation from @Alamy as to how it arrived at that pricing is in order. 😡

[geogphotos]

52 minutes ago, Reimar said:

Wow.  Another identical $0.10 RM sale just popped in for another image.  Now I'm starting to feel picked on.

 

 

Micro stock works on volume. Celebrate.🤪

Edited February 17, 2021 by geogphotos

[John Mitchell]

56 minutes ago, Reimar said:

Wow.  Another identical $0.10 RM sale just popped in for another image.  Now I'm starting to feel picked on.

 

Are they both similar subject matter?

[Reimar]

41 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Are they both similar subject matter?

Yes.  Shots from Puerto Vallarta.

[John Mitchell]

8 minutes ago, Reimar said:

Yes.  Shots from Puerto Vallarta.

 

Probably a travel website then. Any luck tracking them down?

[Reimar]

Just now, John Mitchell said:

 

Probably a travel website then. Any luck tracking them down?

I've never had much luck tracking my images and for a dime each I won't be bothered.

[John Mitchell]

14 minutes ago, Reimar said:

I've never had much luck tracking my images and for a dime each I won't be bothered.

 

Don't blame you. It would be interesting to know who the culprit is, though. At least you had a nice trip to sunny PV. 🏖️

[geogphotos]

Quite likely part of a slide show embedded in a webpage travel report. Nobody is paying to visit that website, everybody wants to see pictures. 

 

There are plenty of competitors offering the same sort of images at very low fees. It is not hard to imagine that client contacting Alamy saying that they are ready to buy but want the same prices as they are paying elsewhere. Unfortunately it is where we are.

Edited February 17, 2021 by geogphotos

[Gina Kelly]

Interesting! My 10 cent sale was also a pic of Puerto Vallarta.

[losdemas]

4 hours ago, Reimar said:

It happened.  I've had low sales but this is a record.  It's even RM.  Hopefully not a sign of things to come.  I've got enough of these at that other place:

 

Country: Worldwide ; Usage: Editorial ;  Media: Editorial website ;  Start: 17-February-2021 ; End: 17-November-2021 ;

   Additional Details: Single use across website and/or digital publication such as E-book or PDF, any size, any placement, in perpetuity.

 

How much you ask?  $0.25 and $0.10 to me.

I'm a little confused as to why you have received two red arrows for this. Someone wanting to shoot the messenger?

[mickfly]

1 minute ago, losdemas said:

I'm a little confused as to why you have received two red arrows for this. Someone wanting to shoot the messenger?

I was looking for an angry emoji, could't find one so clicked the sad one... the red might have been a sign of anger at the situation, not the poster.

[Reimar]

1 minute ago, losdemas said:

I'm a little confused as to why you have received two red arrows for this. Someone wanting to shoot the messenger?

I was thinking the same, but optimistically assumed the red arrows were in support of my negative experience.

[Reimar]

5 minutes ago, David Pimborough said:

I smell the scent of "exciting news" coming on the breeze 😕

You mean like a "new earning opportunity"?  Right.  Let's hope we get spared that.

[JaniMarkus Hasa]

I think Alamy really need to think what's their competitive advantage. 

[losdemas]

6 hours ago, mickfly said:

I was looking for an angry emoji, could't find one so clicked the sad one... the red might have been a sign of anger at the situation, not the poster.

 

6 hours ago, Reimar said:

I was thinking the same, but optimistically assumed the red arrows were in support of my negative experience.

 

You're probably right - I hope so. My glass is always half empty - but at least that means that I never run out of wine (I know that it's going to be half empty, so I always have a spare bottle)! 😉😂

Edited February 18, 2021 by losdemas

[Panthera tigris]

Interesting. If Alamy accept thats the value in certain situations you can correctly or incorrectly assume that their value assessment is based on quantities. Could it become a new regular thing? 

[Alamy]

Hi All

 

This is a license via our novel use scheme, an optional scheme which falls outside of our normal licensing.

 

The images in the novel use pool give our sales team the freedom to explore different schemes and trials, with a variety of price points and licenses. These include, but are not limited to trials with new customers, prototypes/proof of concept, and high volume low unit price licences.

 

If you decide you don’t want to be part of the Novel Use Scheme anymore you can opt out every April by following the ‘Novel use’ link under Additional Revenue Options on your contributor dashboard.

 

Thanks,

Alamy

[Michael Ventura]

I never opted in, thank goodness.

[meanderingemu]

2 hours ago, Alamy said:

Hi All

 

This is a license via our novel use scheme, an optional scheme which falls outside of our normal licensing.

 

The images in the novel use pool give our sales team the freedom to explore different schemes and trials, with a variety of price points and licenses. These include, but are not limited to trials with new customers, prototypes/proof of concept, and high volume low unit price licences.

 

If you decide you don’t want to be part of the Novel Use Scheme anymore you can opt out every April by following the ‘Novel use’ link under Additional Revenue Options on your contributor dashboard.

 

Thanks,

Alamy

 

 

does the licencing specify what the novel use was?

[geogphotos]

James West, former Alamy CEO back in 2008. Odd to reflect on how much Getty has changed since then. Much of what James said back then is still relevant for Alamy AND there is an opt out. Also how Alamy's average editorial fee has plummeted - but we all know that. 

 

 

"Recently, Alamy's blog has been filled with negative comments relative to Alamy's Novel Use Scheme introduced last month. Alamy's CEO James West recently told the British Journal of Photography, "People are saying that we introduced microstock but gave it another name. My definition of microstock is royalty-free images at a low price.  ... These users would never have the money to spend on more expensive images. We chose 60p because it represents one dollar in the U.S."

 

 

The concept of selling pictures for low prices is difficult for traditional stock photographers to accept, particularly because an increasing number of their customers are using microstock images for commercial projects. The fees microstock charges for such uses range from 1/10^th to 1/50^th and less of the fees normally charged to use an RM image. Clearly, there are market realities photographers selling into the traditional market must accept.

 

 

1. The number of images needed by the traditional print market is declining, for reasons that have nothing to do with microstock.  To a large extent, the decline is occurring simply because the Internet exists, and former print customers are finding more ways to use digital instead of print.

 

 

2. The number of images available for a declining number of customers to choose from is growing at a rapid pace. There is no way to stop growth. This, coupled with the decline in demand, reduces the odds that any image, no matter how high the quality, will be licensed for a print project.

 

 

3.  Looking ahead, it appears likely that more ways will be found to use digital and the Internet for communication and marketing and that there will be a continuing decline in the need for print.

 

 

The only solution for photographers is to make every effort to find new markets, while protect their existing market, given the limits of microstock sellers. The problem with microstock is that it sells images for textbooks, magazines, brochures, print ads and billboards for these same low prices. Alamy's low prices are only for blogs, social networking sites and certain educational uses. All other uses are still priced at Alamy's regular prices.

 

 

The good news is that there are new markets out there. There are huge volumes of customers who want pictures, but they can't afford to pay much. This is much more a "consumer market" than a commercial one, but this consumer market may have the potential to be even larger, in actual dollars spent, than the existing commercial one.

 

 

Some of these new markets will not develop into anything. Some will take much longer to develop than others. Photographers cannot ignore new ideas and new markets.

 

 

Let's get back to Novel Use. It is designed to protect existing commercial markets, while exploring new consumer ones to see if they can add significant revenue on top of the commercial revenue already coming in. It won't be easy because Alamy will be reaching out to a new customer base. The micropayment sites already have a tremendous lead in this category. But the micropayment sites have also proved that there is a growing consumer base who will only buy images at very low prices.

 

 

Consider that iStockphoto sold 17,550,000 images in 2007, while GettyImages sold 500,000. And iStock's customer base is growing rapidly; Getty's is declining. The average sale price of an iStock image was $4.10. Thirty-five times that number would be $143.50, not equivalent to Getty's average price of $500 per sale, but climbing. Alamy's average price for an editorial use last quarter was $126.00."