Contract Change 2021 - Official thread

[meanderingemu]

36 minutes ago, Tomtomtom said:

Thank you! But does that mean, when I cancel my contract - let’s say on the last day before the new contract starts - the next 45 days the selling runs under the old conditions or the new? 

it waves the requirement for 45 days, so your termination would be effective July 1.   

 

obviously problem arise since Alamy bases sales on date reported not date sold, that would be on you to challenge. 

[Flash68]

10 hours ago, LSP said:

Hi Alamy,

 

This may have been suggested earlier in the thread, I am in transit and don't have time to check.

 

Thanks for at least trying to be transparent about the changes.

 

Given that we (contributors) have no control over the price our photos are licensed for, and therefore no control over annual earnings - spectacular images can license for $3.00 or less - wouldn't it be fairer to gauge the platinum, gold, silver levels by NUMBER of sales per year for each contributor, rather than $$ gross earned?

 

This would be in Alamy's interests as it would at least provide contributors with an incentive to produce saleable images.

 

There is no way I can hit $25,000 gross per year if Alamy persists in licensing my images for a pittance.

 

Regards,

Suzanne

 

 

 

 

Good idea but that's assuming Alamy actually want to pay the higher commission. I suspect it's either set so unattainably high as a token gesture just to show they are not completely removing the current commission or just to appease their 'important' top contributors and the hell the rest of us.

[Tony ALS]

2 hours ago, Foreign Export said:

 

well said and once again you are clearly the type of photographer that Alamy/PA should be introducing strategies to motivate you further r- rather than quite the opposite

 

Thank you Martin. It's refreshing to find so many supportive people in these forums.

 

[MizBrown]

2 hours ago, Gordon Scammell said:

Had an email from Alamy yesterday asking if I would be willing to lift restrictions on an image a customer wanted to buy.  The image is marked as 'No model release' 'No property release'

 

I replied that I would consider it providing I was told what the licence price was.  I am certainly not going to put myself up for legal action for pennies - despite meaningless platitudes from Alamy saying the third party will do this and that regarding rights.  I was then told Alamy cannot divulge finances etc - which i understand.

 

I replied in view of the new contract changes I was not willing to go out of my way to help Alamy make a sale.  Of course I lose out.  But I only lose 40%.  Gave me a little frisson of pleasure to know that Alamy loses 60%.

 

Petty I know - but I'll take my contentment wherever I can.

 

I would suspect that anyone wanting a waiver of model and property releases would be a cheap advertising firm.  Getting signed model and property releases is non-trivial.  Hiring a photographer to do advertising photos with model releases is even more expensive.   I did a release on a selfie and it sold for a little over $1.  Talking people into signing releases (I have a few) requires explaining things and generally either paying the models or establishing trust, making prints for them, etc.   I'd expect that Alamy would get more for released photos than photos for editorial only, but apparently that's not the case, so no point in shooting released photos unless the payments cover time and hassle of getting the releases or hiring and paying models. 

[Christian Wilton]

Welcome to the machine.

[Flash68]

1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

I think you would be better off to accept the 40% and find other places to sell your images non-exclusively. 

 

I have a large batch being edited elsewhere right now. When I sent them in I requested that they edit hard and only take the very best so that the majority of images could be exclusive on Alamy.

 

I sent an urgent update yesterday saying please take as many as you can as it is 40% on Alamy whatever! 

 

 

That's my thought. I've spent nearly 20 years submitting solely for Alamy. I'm not going to remove my images overnight (and I'm sure Alamy are banking on most people not doing this too) but they will lose out. I'm staying exclusive right up to the 1st July to get the most I can from them then I'll go non-exclusive and sell wherever I can. I've also been keywording directly on Alamy so its time to download and start doing that locally. I'll also stay while I'm on Gold, if I'm downgraded to Silver though I'm gone - but by then I'll won't be reliant on Alamy anyay.

[Flash68]

1 hour ago, Thyrsis said:

I’ve just gone into Image Manager and selected ‘download your data’. An up to date excel file of all our keywords might be handy quite soon if we decide to place images elsewhere! We only have about 2000 images but folk with large portfolios will have a job on their hands.....

Me too - before they realise their mistake and remove it

[Stokie]

9 minutes ago, Flash68 said:

Me too - before they realise their mistake and remove it

Don't give them ideas!

 

John.

[Jill Morgan]

The "putting your eggs all in one basket" theory has its' downfalls, and now we are seeing it.  Although self-employed, those making their income from Alamy are in theory "working for Alamy" with none of the benefits of employment except a pay cut of 20%.

 

I have a friend who made a product for fishermen and sold to small stores across Canada and on his website.  He went to one of those events Walmart holds for new suppliers to see if he could sell to them.  They liked the product.  In his contract, there were revisions to the product plus package design that he had to make plus of course a cut in price to Walmart where he only made a small profit but of course would sell thousands to all the Walmart stores in Canada.  They assured him this product would be a great seller and looked forward to doing business with him.

 

Part of his contract was exclusivity to Walmart so he had to stop selling to the smaller stores and close his website. Also in his contract was the clause the Walmart had the right to return any unsold product at their discretion.  He worried about this part, but they continued to tell him how great his product was and it was a perfect fit for Walmart.  You can guess the rest.

 

He now has 10,000 of this product in his garage.  My brother-in-law, who sold him the webbing for the product, never got paid.  To resell this product he would have to repackage as Walmart is mentioned on the packaging.

 

When we only supply to one company, we are at their mercy.

 

Jill

 

 

 

[geogphotos]

Deja Vu all over again? 😁

 

 

"We recently sent an email regarding a change in the commission structure at Alamy where the commission contributors receive for direct sales will change from 50% to 40% in February 2019.

After careful review, and taking into consideration photographer feedback, we have come to the decision that images exclusive to Alamy will remain at 50%.

Our CEO James West has explained the exclusivity commission in further detail in a video which you can view, and leave comments on below."

Edited May 18, 2021 by geogphotos

[Martin P Wilson]

1 hour ago, Thyrsis said:

I’ve just gone into Image Manager and selected ‘download your data’. An up to date excel file of all our keywords might be handy quite soon if we decide to place images elsewhere! We only have about 2000 images but folk with large portfolios will have a job on their hands.....

 

I dowenloaded mine today, mainly as a banker; been meaning to do it for a while to do a batch update of older image keywoprds etc. Unfortunately no longer necessary. Fortunaterly I have always added metadata at the upload/selection time so it is associated with the opriginal raw file, most of the time anyway. That way ther metadata stays with all versions of the image I create, for libraries, web or the occasional client. It means that it is a one-off job, (apart from opccasional tweaks) that I can even do on my laptop when travelling or at an event, when I had a news distributor, and it is still fresh in my mind.

[Alan Beastall]

Just tried to 'download your data' in Image manager but getting this message. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong or have Alamy stopped this facility?

 

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at ASP.myupload_metadatadownloadhandler_aspx.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)

[Tony ALS]

1 minute ago, Alan Beastall said:

Just tried to 'download your data' in Image manager but getting this message. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong or have Alamy stopped this facility?

 

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at ASP.myupload_metadatadownloadhandler_aspx.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)

Just worked successfully for me Alan.

Perhaps the system can't cope with the number of requests coming in.

[Sally]

1 hour ago, wilkopix said:

That's a very good point.

Luckily a large proportion of mine are keyworded before submission but still well worth downloading the file.

This is no problem if you use Alamy Lightroom Bridge, which I keep blaming on about but few people seem to use. It will download all captions and keywords automatically once you’ve matched the images in Lightroom to those on Alamy.

[Barry Hitchcox]

13 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

You are right, I expect. When my husband began working for an utility company during his 20s, the management was run by engineers who had been there a long time. They cared about the employees.  One older man who’d been there for years digging up lines to repair, occasionally went on a bender. He’d miss a day of work throwing up his guts, then be back on the job working hard. The bosses closed a blind eye rather than fire a man who’d been working hard there for 35 years and mess up his pension. That type of kindness was widespread.

As time went on and the engineers retired, they were replaced with men who had Masters of business degrees. All they cared about was the bottom line and they didn’t care what bodies they ran over to make the most money. The whole feel of the company changed.

It was reflected by the employees having less and less loyalty, and many retiring early just to get out.

I guess I hoped Alamy still had a heart.

Betty your loyalty post chimes with me big time! I've always felt that I had a small personal connection with Alamy because they are physically based just a couple of miles down the road from my origins. I was even slightly proud of that. I knew several of the early managers. Now I just feel betrayed. And I live 130 miles away so I can't go round and blow it up!

[Rico]

2 hours ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

What we are looking at is an almost effortless way of quickly boosting profits in the short term.

 

My guess would be that Alamy is a stepping stone for our CEO and this rapid 'transformation' of the company is an attractive and easy step upwards. 

Yup, change a few words on the contract...instant more profit! How (not) cool is that.

[Nathaniel Noir]

27 minutes ago, Alan Beastall said:

Just tried to 'download your data' in Image manager but getting this message. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong or have Alamy stopped this facility?

 

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at ASP.myupload_metadatadownloadhandler_aspx.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)

 

Yes, it has worked for me as well, maybe try again in an hour if the server is too busy

[Bill Kuta]

Anyone selling on Photoshelter? How's it going?  Asking because I have a family archive project that needs a home, so could maybe kill two birds with one stone.

 

Also, I'll reiterate that while the commission structure is a very aggravating change, I'm more concerned about the shifting of responsibilities/liabilities/potential costs onto contributors.

[jillhyland]

56 minutes ago, Christian Wilton said:

Welcome to the machine.

For me, these contract changes are giant red flags that demonstrate a change of ethics in the company.  I initially liked Alamy because I felt the commission split was reasonably fair, and the staff at Alamy had always been responsive and supportive.  I hadn't posted on the forums until now, but I have read them when I had questions and they have been incredibly helpful - another great resource leading to an overall positive contributor experience.

 

A few things in the new contract bother me, and I won't agree to it. I want to say thank you to the people here for helping me even when you didn't realize it, and to the staff at Alamy who assisted me in the past. Best of luck to all of you, you deserve better.

[Betty LaRue]

3 hours ago, spacecadet said:

Well, yes, but you know what? I'm not sure I give a monkey's anymore. Alamy can police its own forum. Guess what we get for doing it for free?

EXACTLY!

[MizBrown]

2 minutes ago, Bill Kuta said:

Anyone selling on Photoshelter? How's it going?  Asking because I have a family archive project that needs a home, so could maybe kill two birds with one stone.

 

Also, I'll reiterate that while the commission structure is a very aggravating change, I'm more concerned about the shifting of responsibilities/liabilities/potential costs onto contributors.

 

They're charging $10 a month and up.  And you're running your own website so you'd get all the legal liabilities there.   First rule from the Science Fiction Writers of America's advice to new writers -- money should flow to the writer, not from the writer.   Same applies with paying for storage space vs. 20% of something or nothing.  If they're making money from the photographers, hopeless wannabes far outnumber people who could have been staff photographers before newspapers started outsourcing photography.  

 

I'm about to see what Wikipedia says about Magnum, which was created as a photographer's coop to sell/license photos by its members. 

[hotbrightsky]

5 minutes ago, MizBrown said:

First rule from the Science Fiction Writers of America's advice to new writers -- money should flow to the writer, not from the writer.

 

"Full member dues are $100.00 USD annually". 😄

https://www.sfwa.org/about/join-us/sfwa-membership-requirements/

[Gina Kelly]

@AlamyI'd also like to know what the plan is with Stockimo commissions - nothing was mentioned about that in the blog post. I started with Stockimo as an Alamy contributor at the 50% commission rate and have over 3,500 photos listed there so I'd really like to know what to expect. (and yes I am aware that we're not supposed to discuss Stockimo here, but there's no other place to discuss it, and you did ask us to present our questions here. . .) And I guess further I'd add that it would be nice to have a forum in which it IS ok for Stockimo contributors to discuss their experiences!

[ChrisR Photo]

1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

Deja Vu all over again? 😁

 

 

"We recently sent an email regarding a change in the commission structure at Alamy where the commission contributors receive for direct sales will change from 50% to 40% in February 2019.

After careful review, and taking into consideration photographer feedback, we have come to the decision that images exclusive to Alamy will remain at 50%.

Our CEO James West has explained the exclusivity commission in further detail in a video which you can view, and leave comments on below."

 

It's quite transparent and obvious now from the former CEO that the contempt and lack of compassion he had for contributors was purely to make Alamy as attractive as possible ready to sell out, and now the new owners have got their greedy corporate glasses on! 

 

But remember this Alamy, keep driving commissions lower and lower for corporate profit is not a good long term business model, There's an old saying which is so true

'Pay peanuts and you end up with monkeys'! 

[MizBrown]

42 minutes ago, hotbrightsky said:

 

"Full member dues are $100.00 USD annually". 😄

https://www.sfwa.org/about/join-us/sfwa-membership-requirements/

 

I'm not a member anymore.  Basically, you have to have sold three short stories or one novel to get in as a full member.  I was on a committee that looked into making SFWA more exclusive and got into a head butting contest with a couple of the older pros who wanted to kick out all the "three story wonders."  Talked to the guy who founded SFWA and heard what Robert Heinlein said about membership qualifications earlier (life is hard enough for writers without forcing them to reprove themselves every year or whatever.  Guy who founded SWFA said that there weren't enough full-time pros to support the organization.   In SWFA's cases on this, the wounds were internally inflicted.   The minimum pay rate for pro status short fiction was three cents a word.   Probably half to three quarters of the membership hadn't sold much beyond the three stories or one novel with a commercial publisher to qualify.   Not that different from here in some ways.  My total sales for the almost five years I've been here are $811.  I'm going to get 20% of anything I sell in the future. 

 

SWFA does give Nebula awards, supports a SFWA suit at conventions (if I liked going to conventions), and does have a medical emergency fund and a legal fund (which one author used when another author swiped his manuscript and turned it in to a publisher as his own book under contract).

 

If PA/Alamy was giving emergency grants to long term members in the gold and platinum ranges, it might be a bit more humane.   Also, stop with the junk sales already.  

 

Selling hundreds or thousands of $1 or less photos a day might be profitable for PA/Alamy but it's not working for the individual photographers.  

Edited May 18, 2021 by MizBrown