Staying Exclusive

[Jim Gibson]

I only have about 7000 images (slowly built up since 2005) with Alamy, the vast majority of those are exclusive with my average sales over years working out at just under $3k per year. 

 

Though my images are exclusive I am in Alamy Gold with the split now being 60/40% split in Alamy's favour is there any benefit in remaining Exclusive to Alamy? 

[Sally]

On 31/07/2021 at 19:31, Jim Gibson said:

I only have about 7000 images (slowly built up since 2005) with Alamy, the vast majority of those are exclusive with my average sales over years working out at just under $3k per year. 

 

Though my images are exclusive I am in Alamy Gold with the split now being 60/40% split in Alamy's favour is there any benefit in remaining Exclusive to Alamy? 

No. Not unless you want Alamy to chase up infringements without asking you first if you’ve sold an image to anyone else directly yourself.

[spacecadet]

I'll be corrected if I'm wrong but I'm not sure there's any contractual obligation even to tell Alamy if you go non-exclusive. Certainly no moral one.

Edited August 2, 2021 by spacecadet

[geogphotos]

I informed Alamy of a large batch that needed to be changed to Non-Ex , that was Friday before last I think. I also sent a reminder last week to ask what was happening. No change as yet, I did this so that I can download the data and know in the future which images are truly Non-Ex, then I intend to change everything to Non-Ex.

 

ie) so I have the data to make changes in the future.

 

 

[Joseph Clemson]

I'm leaving my portfolio as exclusive, simply because they are not uploaded anywhere else and I see no prospect of them being uploaded anywhere else - I've not found anywhere which pays decently and has a good prospect of selling the generic editorial stock I produce. Or have I not looked hard enough?

 

I never sell directly to clients so the issue of infringements being wrongly chased is, for me, nil. 

 

The actual benefits I can see of being exclusive to Alamy though are so small as to be negligible.

 

 

 

 

[Joseph Clemson]

1 hour ago, spacecadet said:

I'll be corrected if I'm wrong but I'm not sure there's any contractual obligation even to tell Alamy if you go non-exclusive. Certainly no moral one.

 

There is a contractural obligation to not mark an image as exclusive to Alamy if it is available for licensing as stock on another agency. You don't actually have to TELL Alamy you're going non exclusive, but they will know if you mark your images correctly and they care to look!

Edited August 2, 2021 by Joseph Clemson
Clarification

[JaniMarkus Hasa]

I wonder how they are going to chase those infringements when they can't even invoice distributors without me reminding them. 

[Sultanpepa]

The simple answer is no. I've asked Alamy to mark all of my images as non-exclusive . Not that I sell elsewhere but might in the future. There's simply no advantage to remain exclusive.

 

[spacecadet]

I may leave them a while just to cash in on the infringement bonanza, then when there isn't one take them non-ex out of spite.

That's assuming I haven't taken them off because of the storage fee that there are no plans to introduce.

Edited August 2, 2021 by spacecadet

[teczoom]

Hi Jim,

 

Can i ask a daft question how do you know your a gold account? am i missing something on my control panel?

 

kindest regards,

 

Alan Teczoom

[spacecadet]

5 minutes ago, teczoom said:

Hi Jim,

 

Can i ask a daft question how do you know your a gold account? am i missing something on my control panel?

 

kindest regards,

 

Alan Teczoom

Account settings tab on dashboard. "Your commission model is.........."

[teczoom]

Thank you!

[Bryan]

9 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

Picfair Plus seems like good value to me, I bought a new domain name using 'geogphotos' and just sent all I have on Photoshelter.

 

The 'Views' system seems bizarre. Getting around 2000 a day. Not sure how many are false positives - certainly the first two views of every image are generated by the system not actual human visitors.  No sales - in the process of dropping price to £15.

 

 

 

Not sure how relevant this is but my experience of POD is that the large majority of views are generated by Bots, and rarely, if ever, result in a sale.

[Allan Bell]

2 hours ago, Bryan said:

 

Not sure how relevant this is but my experience of POD is that the large majority of views are generated by Bots, and rarely, if ever, result in a sale.

 

Joined one in December and had three sales so far but I have not been active in loading any more images for about two months now.

 

Allan

 

[John Mitchell]

6 minutes ago, BobD said:

 

It is a UK based platform so that may very well be the case.

I may give it a try for a year, it's only £55. With a decent amount of images uploaded it could very easily pay for itself at least.

 

Best of luck. I started uploading when they first started up (can't remember when that was). Made a couple of OK sales right away, and then everything died when the hordes arrived and started undercutting each other.

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2021 by John Mitchell

[Bryan]

7 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

 

Joined one in December and had three sales so far but I have not been active in loading any more images for about two months now.

 

Allan

 

That's good going, by my standards. To date I've just about covered the annual fee with sales. However, I've hundreds of photos there as compared to thousands on Alamy. Not particularly motivated to upload many more, particularly as my shooting has been targeted at my perception of the market here, rather than for decorative POD work. 

[Allan Bell]

8 hours ago, Bryan said:

That's good going, by my standards. To date I've just about covered the annual fee with sales. However, I've hundreds of photos there as compared to thousands on Alamy. Not particularly motivated to upload many more, particularly as my shooting has been targeted at my perception of the market here, rather than for decorative POD work. 

 

The wall art site I am with does not charge any fees for hosting. They just take a share of the sale price + costs. You also set your own prices.

 

I have 344 images with them.

 

Allan

 

[Graham]

On 02/08/2021 at 11:19, Sultanpepa said:

The simple answer is no. I've asked Alamy to mark all of my images as non-exclusive . Not that I sell elsewhere but might in the future. There's simply no advantage to remain exclusive.

 

Totally agree.  I have asked for my entire portfolio of over 26,000 images to be marked as non-exclusive. The few times I have asked Alamy to chase an infringement have not get me anywhere, so I do not see possible infringement chasing as being of any real value. I have already done the work, processing, keywording, etc., so I might as well see what else I can get elsewhere, even if it proves to be microstock.  
 

The large (percentage) deductions depress me.  The last straw was a sale a few days ago at $130, of which my share was $28.  It seems unfair to me that Alamy and distributors end up with a larger cut from my work than I receive: as everyone on this forum knows, there is considerable work involved in processing images to Alamy’s standards and ensuring proper keywording, most of which will never produce a return anyway.  And as others are noting, there seem to be increasing numbers of small licence fees which leave the contributor with almost nothing.  Of my remaining 15 sales this month so far, only 3 leave me with a double digit net take and all these are below $15. I have not missed a monthly payout for many years now, but at this rate I can see that the time will soon come when I might not even achieve the $50 minimum cleared balance for a payout.  
 

I am sure that Alamy charges all it can, and that the low fees are the result of market forces: if fees are diminishing, Alamy still has to cover its overheads, which is perhaps why it feels it needs to take a higher percentage - a bigger share of a smaller amount may only be stand-still for Alamy, and I understand that it needs to meet the same costs to stay in business. But whatever the reason, the diminishing returns, both in absolute fee amounts and in the percentage left for me, are making me personally feel it is not worth my effort any more. 
 

The net effect, for me, is that I have decided to leave my portfolio as it is, to carry on working for me as it has done, but I am not going to bust a gut putting up new material at anything like the rate I have been doing for years now. I am in the fortunate position of not relying on Alamy income, and if changing my focus away from primarily contributing to Alamy gives me more time to do other things, perhaps I will also find new outlets for what I like doing best, which is photography.  With its over 250 million images, I am sure Alamy will not be worrying that I will not be continuing to make real efforts to add to my portfolio any more, but I am sad that I feel such a change in my incentivisation to make efforts to contribute more images, which I have so much enjoyed doing for such a long time.
 

Graham

[geogphotos]

 I totally agree Graham.

 

I'm pursuing personal projects and not uploading anything to Alamy. I'm using Picfair as a place to upload through not expecting sales really. One thing with Picfair is that having had an account in the past I know that I can close it down very quickly should I decide to to offer my otherwise exclusive images to a specialist agency ( Yes, I do have one in mind). I am deleting all my slide copies from Alamy for the same reason that they might be attractive to an exclusive specialist agency that has shown interest in the past but did not accept non-exclusivity.

 

https://blog.geographyphotos.com

 

The main thing is that I am enjoying what I am doing and am not prepared to be taken advantage of by Alamy. 

 

 

Edited August 14, 2021 by geogphotos

[Sultanpepa]

 

 

5 hours ago, Graham said:

Totally agree.  I have asked for my entire portfolio of over 26,000 images to be marked as non-exclusive. The few times I have asked Alamy to chase an infringement have not get me anywhere, so I do not see possible infringement chasing as being of any real value. I have already done the work, processing, keywording, etc., so I might as well see what else I can get elsewhere, even if it proves to be microstock.  
 

The large (percentage) deductions depress me.  The last straw was a sale a few days ago at $130, of which my share was $28.  It seems unfair to me that Alamy and distributors end up with a larger cut from my work than I receive: as everyone on this forum knows, there is considerable work involved in processing images to Alamy’s standards and ensuring proper keywording, most of which will never produce a return anyway.  And as others are noting, there seem to be increasing numbers of small licence fees which leave the contributor with almost nothing.  Of my remaining 15 sales this month so far, only 3 leave me with a double digit net take and all these are below $15. I have not missed a monthly payout for many years now, but at this rate I can see that the time will soon come when I might not even achieve the $50 minimum cleared balance for a payout.  
 

I am sure that Alamy charges all it can, and that the low fees are the result of market forces: if fees are diminishing, Alamy still has to cover its overheads, which is perhaps why it feels it needs to take a higher percentage - a bigger share of a smaller amount may only be stand-still for Alamy, and I understand that it needs to meet the same costs to stay in business. But whatever the reason, the diminishing returns, both in absolute fee amounts and in the percentage left for me, are making me personally feel it is not worth my effort any more. 
 

The net effect, for me, is that I have decided to leave my portfolio as it is, to carry on working for me as it has done, but I am not going to bust a gut putting up new material at anything like the rate I have been doing for years now. I am in the fortunate position of not relying on Alamy income, and if changing my focus away from primarily contributing to Alamy gives me more time to do other things, perhaps I will also find new outlets for what I like doing best, which is photography.  With its over 250 million images, I am sure Alamy will not be worrying that I will not be continuing to make real efforts to add to my portfolio any more, but I am sad that I feel such a change in my incentivisation to make efforts to contribute more images, which I have so much enjoyed doing for such a long time.
 

Graham

 

4 hours ago, geogphotos said:

 I totally agree Graham.

 

I'm pursuing personal projects and not uploading anything to Alamy. I'm using Picfair as a place to upload through not expecting sales really. One thing with Picfair is that having had an account in the past I know that I can close it down very quickly should I decide to to offer my otherwise exclusive images to a specialist agency ( Yes, I do have one in mind). I am deleting all my slide copies from Alamy for the same reason that they might be attractive to an exclusive specialist agency that has shown interest in the past but did not accept non-exclusivity.

 

https://blog.geographyphotos.com

 

The main thing is that I am enjoying what I am doing and am not prepared to be taken advantage of by Alamy. 

 

 

 

 I'm sure Alamy/PA will have noticed the drop in submissions and also a drop in commercial use sales. They'll make up the drop in revenue in other ways I'm sure. It used to be the case that I was disappointed to not get a payout at the $100 threshold but I now occasionally miss the $50 payout with the same frequency. My smallish portfolio remains for now but there's no additional images forthcoming in the foreseeable future. In fact I've probably as much as given up on stock. Just got no incentive. Many many others must feel the same. I can't see the benefit for PA in squeezing the contributors dry. Eventually images will be removed and PA will suffer irreversible damage. The % drop and low fees are counter-productive IMHO.

[Panthera tigris]

I have been waiting on details about how they intend to operate the infringement system. But I have not seen any details so far, especially on rates/charging. If the intention to go after everything or just outdated Alamy RM licences and what are the fees (which is the most important factor for me). 

I am thinking of investing 40 USD a month in a pixy account though if I have to wait any longer for info. Their free service has kicked up loads of potential cases for me.

 

[geogphotos]

4 hours ago, Panthera tigris said:

I am thinking of investing 40 USD a month in a pixy account though if I have to wait any longer for info. Their free service has kicked up loads of potential cases for me.

 

 

Be aware that you can stop and start the subscription ( if you remember in time because it can't be done automatically).

 

So I pay £63 for a month ( actually this time for two months because I forgot to switch  back in time) - and then slide back to the free service.

 

Then I can gradually work on all the matches that have been found during the period of subscription and restart once I have caught up.

 

There can be long wait times between them running scans so it can be necessary to send an email and request one once you re-commence.

 

In other words you could give it a try for $40 and then remember to switch back before the next payment is taken. No commitment.

Edited August 15, 2021 by geogphotos

[riccarbi]

I was about to mark all my images as non-exclusive when I asked to myself: "What if, in the near future, exclusivity will become part of Alamy's ranking algorithm?". So, for the time being, I didn't change anything in my port; just stopped uploading to it.

[geogphotos]

5 minutes ago, riccarbi said:

I was about to mark all my images as non-exclusive when I asked to myself: "What if, in the near future, exclusivity will become part of Alamy's ranking algorithm?". So, for the time being, I didn't change anything in my port; just stopped uploading to it.

 

Before making the change I downloaded all my data so that I would be able to reverse the decision should there ever be a need. Also, in terms of chasing infringements I need to know which images were Exclusive to Alamy.

[Sally]

On 14/08/2021 at 22:14, Sultanpepa said:

 

 

 

 

 I'm sure Alamy/PA will have noticed the drop in submissions and also a drop in commercial use sales. They'll make up the drop in revenue in other ways I'm sure. It used to be the case that I was disappointed to not get a payout at the $100 threshold but I now occasionally miss the $50 payout with the same frequency. My smallish portfolio remains for now but there's no additional images forthcoming in the foreseeable future. In fact I've probably as much as given up on stock. Just got no incentive. Many many others must feel the same. I can't see the benefit for PA in squeezing the contributors dry. Eventually images will be removed and PA will suffer irreversible damage. The % drop and low fees are counter-productive IMHO.

The thing is I’m not sure that there has been a drop in submissions. The submission ID number continues to rise rapidly, even more rapidly than it used to I think. Of course we don’t know how many images are in each submission, but I expect any drop from individual contributors is more than made up for by other agencies.