This is insulting

[Ilanphoto]

Alamy Licensed my RF Image yesterday for all of 0.15$ my net was 0.05$
Five cents? That is lower the the lowest Shutterstock fees 
I would like to be able to set a minimum license fee on my images please 

 

[Marianne]

I feel your pain, but don't give up. I've had royalty free sales in $$$ in the past few months, so it's more likely a distributor issue than the fact it's royalty free. Just know to expect a huge price variation. And pray the $$$ sales don't get refunded. It's a frustrating market. Maybe easier to walk away when you're new to the market. For those of us who've been doing this for over a decade, it's hard to walk away. 

 

 

Edited May 3, 2021 by Marianne

[ChrisC]

3 hours ago, Ilanphoto said:

Alamy Licensed my RF Image yesterday for all of 0.15$ my net was 0.05$
Five cents? That is lower the the lowest Shutterstock fees 
I would like to be able to set a minimum license fee on my images please 

 

Shocking!

[Keith Turrill]

I have never had a royalty free sale on Alamy and only use RF for images without persons or real property that I don't think would have a high monetary value.

 

[John Mitchell]

On 10/04/2021 at 03:14, David Pimborough said:

 

You can't set a minimum price.

 

However you can remove yourself from distribution sales and also Novel Use which is where a lot of these low value sales come from

 

I had a $$$ distributor sale (Germany) show up yesterday. Rare event, but it shows that they aren't always low.

[John Mitchell]

13 hours ago, David Pimborough said:

 

Just as rare as hens teeth and rocking horse poop 🤣

 

That's a colourful way of putting it. Have to say that I was pleasantly surprised, especially since German distributor sales are usually low IME.

[Betty LaRue]

On 20/04/2021 at 12:36, Keith Turrill said:

I have never had a royalty free sale on Alamy and only use RF for images without persons or real property that I don't think would have a high monetary value.

 

I’ve had 6 RF licenses in the last 12 months and one was for $240.

48 in total, but I only began offering RF the past few years, and they are a small percent of my whole. There a a handful of $200 plus sales and quite a few high $$.

Edited April 22, 2021 by Betty LaRue

[Philip Game]

I can go one worse than the OP (Ilanphoto), albeit not with Alamy but with that very large - and ugly - stock library on the other side of the Atlantic.  Although I have officially removed the last of my images some months ago, yesterday they remitted 15 cents US currency, which apparently represents a string of individual sales at $0.01 and even $0.00 (??) each.  Give me Alamy any day!

Edited April 23, 2021 by Philip Game

[Nigel Roberson]

The stock site model is flawed from the start. We give Alamy our images for free. They sell them at whatever they consider "fair" and take 50% of the money.

Ignore the prices we see on the Alamy pages because most customers get discounts.

Its a business based on magnitude. If (and ive no idea how many images they sell, too lazy to look) they sell 1,000,000 images for $10 and keep half its $5,000,000 for Alamy and $5 each for the photographer who sells one image.

They have no regard for the cost of production and post production.

In addition they license to newspapers who then re sell their copy and its associated images. The Guardian paid $8 for an image from my archive collection. The story was on their website and 5 others. I pointed out these sites to Alamy and they said its not their problem. I wrote to The Guardian, no reply.

So, my $4 was dilutes by 6 publishers. $0.66 (£0.48) per use.

If it were a snap from a phone who cares but it was from the British Grand Prix in 1986, shot on film, stored and cataloged for 35 yeras and required scanning and load of retouching.

I really think ive had enough of this.

 

[Steve F]

8 minutes ago, Nigel Roberson said:

The stock site model is flawed from the start. We give Alamy our images for free. They sell them at whatever they consider "fair" and take 50% of the money.

Ignore the prices we see on the Alamy pages because most customers get discounts.

Its a business based on magnitude. If (and ive no idea how many images they sell, too lazy to look) they sell 1,000,000 images for $10 and keep half its $5,000,000 for Alamy and $5 each for the photographer who sells one image.

They have no regard for the cost of production and post production.

In addition they license to newspapers who then re sell their copy and its associated images. The Guardian paid $8 for an image from my archive collection. The story was on their website and 5 others. I pointed out these sites to Alamy and they said its not their problem. I wrote to The Guardian, no reply.

So, my $4 was dilutes by 6 publishers. $0.66 (£0.48) per use.

If it were a snap from a phone who cares but it was from the British Grand Prix in 1986, shot on film, stored and cataloged for 35 yeras and required scanning and load of retouching.

I really think ive had enough of this.

 

 

What is your alternative proposal to the stock model?

[Colin Woods]

29 minutes ago, Nigel Roberson said:

The stock site model is flawed from the start. We give Alamy our images for free. They sell them at whatever they consider "fair" and take 50% of the money.

That is what an agency is for. They do all the marketing and selling, I do all the shooting and keywording. We split the money. Where is the flaw?

 

30 minutes ago, Nigel Roberson said:

They have no regard for the cost of production and post production.

Why should they? - its the suppliers problem to get their costs down.

 

The value of photos has dropped like a rock in the last ten years due (in my opinion) the enormous numbers of people ready to accept cents as a fair price for an image. Alamy did not create this situation and they are victims of it as much as we are. They would be more than happy to charge (and get) $1000 fees regularly like they did 15-20 years ago.

[Colin Woods]

39 minutes ago, Nigel Roberson said:

The stock site model is flawed from the start. We give Alamy our images for free. They sell them at whatever they consider "fair" and take 50% of the money.

This was the same when it was slides that we sent off.

[John Mitchell]

The alternative to submitting to stock agencies has always been licensing images on your own. Problem is that it doesn't work any longer (not for me anyway), so there really isn't a viable alternative for most of us. The good news is that big agencies like Alamy have far greater reach and a bigger client base than any individual photographer could possibly have. Walking away from it all means walking off alone into the sunset these days.

Edited May 1, 2021 by John Mitchell

[MizBrown]

36 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

Walking away from it all means walking off alone into the sunset these days.

 

A book I read back when said that taking photos was a minor part of being a successful commercial photographer.  The really important parts were sales, client management, and accounting.

 

Friend of mine who'd been a photo major in school and then a wedding and Bar Mitzvah photographer said that the two places where he felt it was was possible to make a living these days were fashion and combat photography.  Fashion strikes me as requiring a huge amount of hustle and specialized knowledge, and combat photography requires special gear plus being too young to understand mortality.

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, MizBrown said:

 

A book I read back when said that taking photos was a minor part of being a successful commercial photographer.  The really important parts were sales, client management, and accounting.

 

Friend of mine who'd been a photo major in school and then a wedding and Bar Mitzvah photographer said that the two places where he felt it was was possible to make a living these days were fashion and combat photography.  Fashion strikes me as requiring a huge amount of hustle and specialized knowledge, and combat photography requires special gear plus being too young to understand mortality.

 

I was thinking primarily of so-called "secondary editorial" photography -- i.e. the kind of images most forum members submit to Alamy. It used to be possible to market those on your own. I did OK in the 90's, up until the early 2000's before the big Web-based agencies, RF, microstock, etc.  really took off. I did have some good sales through my PhotoShelter website later than that. However, nada since 2017. I think I understand mortality now, though. 😁

Edited May 1, 2021 by John Mitchell

[Autumn Sky]

I had one of these in Jan;  0.25 gross, 0.15 deduction - 0.10 net.  For a moment I thought I was on SS instead of Alamy

 

IMHO Alamy is not root of the problem.  It is HARD to compete in market where competitors give images almost for free via large subscription packages, and that drags everyone else down.  Thing with Alamy is that you can still get decent $$ or $$$ sale, which is impossible elsewhere.   I make occasional independent sale through personal Zenfolio site,  but these are few and far in between. 

[Colin Woods]

4 hours ago, Autumn Sky said:

competitors give images almost for free

Or actually free like Unsplash and the like.

[John Mitchell]

7 minutes ago, David Pimborough said:

 

I guess walking away alone in to the sunset would be preferable to running with the herd for pennies and credit.

 

How long before the remaining decent agencies go the way of the Dodo from 60 to 50 to 40% to subscriptions before being gobbled up

by the giant snake oil salesmen in NYC or Seattle?

 

 

Best not to think too much about such things...

 

 

[Steve F]

17 hours ago, David Pimborough said:

 

 

I'd say give up and walk away from it all 😪

 

That would leave me with a lot of expensive and useless glass! 😝 There is still success to be had (depending on your definition of success...)

[Autumn Sky]

5 hours ago, Steve F said:

 

That would leave me with a lot of expensive and useless glass! 😝 There is still success to be had (depending on your definition of success...)

yeah.  Anyone looking for significant source of income from stock today is up for tough, not to say impossible task.  IMHO best is just to enjoy photography, and consider success if stock pays for that expensive glass

[geogphotos]

I strongly suggest that most of you give up immediately and delete all your photos - especially after checking if I have any of the same places or subjects.

 

Thank you. 😙

[John Mitchell]

9 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

I strongly suggest that most of you give up immediately and delete all your photos - especially after checking if I have any of the same places or subjects.

 

Thank you. 😙

 

You first... 😎

[geogphotos]

16 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

You first... 😎

 

 

You do the first 8471 and I'll follow.😄

Edited May 2, 2021 by geogphotos

[MizBrown]

Any number of people have expensive gear for music, arts, photography that don't make them the cost of the gear back.  And a lot of the photos that people think are unique aren't, and a fair chunk of photos are mislabeled -- falcons and owls as Harris Hawks.  Sometimes, perhaps, photos may be licensed because they don't look like all the other well-made photos of something on a white background.   But there's no way to guess what an photo editor or art director will decide is the photo they need. 

 

The only thing that sort of bothers me these days is feeling like Alamy is Anglo-centric -- and understanding why but not sure I would be better off in the US.  Or if Alamy could make more money expanding into Asia and Africa and the rest of the Americas.  Maybe?   Maybe not? 

[gvallee]

1 hour ago, MizBrown said:

Any number of people have expensive gear for music, arts, photography that don't make them the cost of the gear back.  And a lot of the photos that people think are unique aren't, and a fair chunk of photos are mislabeled -- falcons and owls as Harris Hawks.  Sometimes, perhaps, photos may be licensed because they don't look like all the other well-made photos of something on a white background.   But there's no way to guess what an photo editor or art director will decide is the photo they need. 

 

The only thing that sort of bothers me these days is feeling like Alamy is Anglo-centric -- and understanding why but not sure I would be better off in the US.  Or if Alamy could make more money expanding into Asia and Africa and the rest of the Americas.  Maybe?   Maybe not? 

 

Oi! What about Australia? LOL!

[MizBrown]

31 minutes ago, gvallee said:

 

Oi! What about Australia? LOL!

Part of the Anglo world.  Everyone speaks English there, don't they?   And you've got the critters that require serious airline travel for the rest of us to photograph.   But half the world's population lives in Asia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriepieris_circle, also https://www.cntraveler.com/story/more-than-half-the-worlds-population-lives-inside-this-circle.

 

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by MizBrown
another more graphic url