How Was Your July?

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, PuffinsPictures said:

2 sales and not even $1 to me between them.

 

Ouch! 😐

[Sharon]

I haven`t had a sale since April...  curious as I opted back into distribution hoping I could get a few more sales before the end of June to retain my 40%.. didn`t happen... seems like I`ve dropped off the radar

[Bryan]

13 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

All my $$$ sales so far in 2022 have been for museum display, TV use, or multiple editorial use. All other options seem to be falling off the table. The good news is that there appears to be a significant increase in TV licenses this year.

Thanks for the update John, I was thinking of asking where these sales were occuring. My two biggest sales, which happened a long while ago, were for a mural in an office and as part of a local authority's advertising campaign. I don't think that I have ever sold to a museum !

Edited August 2, 2022 by Bryan

[John Mitchell]

4 hours ago, Bryan said:

Thanks for the update John, I was thinking of asking where these sales were occuring. My two biggest sales, which happened a long while ago were for a mural in an office and as part of a local authorities advertising campaign. I don't think that I have ever sold to a museum !

 

Museum display licenses can be very nice when/if they come along -- three this year for me so far, highest $230. This was about what I used to charge when I was able to license images on my own. It's one segment of the market that seems to have held up fairly well. Museums tend to be very good customers. I always enjoyed working with them.

Edited August 2, 2022 by John Mitchell

[John Walker]

15 Sales - A spattering of $$ and the rest $   Sales volume for the year has already exceeded my previous best for a whole year.  Mainly due to all the $ sales.

[Paul Heinrich]

5 sales for $82 gross but views and zoomz well down.

[Steve F]

Hhhmmm.. yeah I thought so. Someone bought the same image twice by mistake. Last pair of licenses in July was for the same image and license details @ $50. Just had a $50 refund in August... 😞

 

p.s. apparently that counts towards my total sales 😝

Edited August 2, 2022 by Steve F

[Abiyoyo]

Wrong place :😌

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Abiyoyo

[zxzoomy]

15 hours ago, PuffinsPictures said:

2 sales and not even $1 to me between them.

Keep at it. I gave up for a while when I had about that many images here. Then, after a few months I looked and the Times had paid for an image. Then the Daily Express used two. And it can take months for past sales to appear.

[Dave Nelson]

1 for $3.46.  Gross.

 

Summer is usually quiet for me.

[rose22]

I got 1 sale for $1 hahaha well because i am just starting my files up.

[Doc]

3 hours ago, rose22 said:

I got 1 sale for $1 hahaha well because i am just starting my files up.

To have sold one with just 145 images on sale is a very good start. Congrats!

 

Kumar

[Shergar]

On 01/08/2022 at 04:20, Doc said:

Final sales 60 licenses which sounds good till one sees $934 gross, or $15.50 gross per license which is poor. 

 

One low $$$  - 

Country: Worldwide
Usage: Single company - multiple educational editorial use only
Industry sector: Education
Start: 01 July 2022
Duration: Unlimited

 

12  refunds, all with equivalent re-sales; 

 

All still exclusive to Alamy; only in distribution for the US and Japan. 

 

21,500 views which is the fewest since Dec 2020 during the pandemic, despite appearing to have held a decent position in ranking. CTR good for me, at 0.87

 

Kumar

I had 43 views from 9000 images yesterday I used to get 300! July was pretty much more of the same. I emailed Alamy and this is what I got back.

 

 

Hi Duncan, 

Thanks for your email. 

Every day we receive new images, and the collection continues to grow. We currently have 29 million images on sale so there's always going to be lots of competition.

Unless you're uploading daily with a cross section of images that appeal to all different types of customers, changing trends and seasons, it's going to be tough to see a regular pattern of sales. So it's perfectly normal to see sales going up and down over the course of a year.

You might want to look at the type of images that you're uploading and check their popularity within Alamy Measures. It may be that the content you're uploading isn't quite what Alamy customers are looking for.

I hope this helps. 

Kind regards, 
Chantelle 

 

She missed the point of my email, Its the lack of views that concerns me . I wonder if they tell new contributors this part. "Unless you're uploading daily with a cross section of images that appeal to all different types of customers, changing trends and seasons, it's going to be tough to see a regular pattern of sales. So it's perfectly normal to see sales going up and down over the course of a year".

 

They will have to come up with some serious $$$$ for me to upload daily. 

 

Cheers and gone Shergar

Edited August 3, 2022 by Shergar

[Rebecca Ore]

1 hour ago, Shergar said:

She missed the point of my email, Its the lack of views that concerns me . I wonder if they tell new contributors this part. "Unless you're uploading daily with a cross section of images that appeal to all different types of customers, changing trends and seasons, it's going to be tough to see a regular pattern of sales. So it's perfectly normal to see sales going up and down over the course of a year".

Do most individual photographers upload significant numbers daily?   Ten a day is 3000 a year, would be do-able, but doing ten to twenty a day minus down time, probably would take several hours to maybe a day.   My total LightRoom catalogue is over 14,000, but not remotely most of those are suitable stock photos (and I have film photos in a friend's basement in Annandale, Virginia, plus the ones my mom threw out from my teen years).

 

By the time a trend is promoted and copied, it's not particularly fresh. 

 

I want to be the best photographer I can be, with influences that I genuinely feel connections to.   Yeah, I know how arty and maybe even pretentious this sounds.  But I had (and still have in my new portfolio) a thing that just appealed to me in terms of composition, somehow.  Put it up; it licensed for low $$ if I'm remembering correctly.  Someone else went, "Hum."  I want to license things some other quirky person happens to like.  And maybe some day that person and I will start the next trend instead of chasing it.  Or not, but at least I'll have done as well as I can. 

 

 

 

 

[John Mitchell]

Unless you're a news photographer who has to keep churning out "fresh" images, it seems to me that the best way to see a "regular pattern of sales" is to assemble a stable of dependable repeat-sellers. This of course isn't easy, and it can take a very long time. If I were starting out with Alamy now, I don't think that I'd have the necessary perseverance (I'm sad to say) given the low returns and massive competition.

 

 

Edited August 3, 2022 by John Mitchell

[meanderingemu]

On 01/08/2022 at 23:48, Sharon said:

I haven`t had a sale since April...  curious as I opted back into distribution hoping I could get a few more sales before the end of June to retain my 40%.. didn`t happen... seems like I`ve dropped off the radar

 

 Distributors, Preferred specifically selected partner selected by Alamy, are allowed so much leeway in reporting time, that even if you had licenced a bunch of image through that scheme in April, May if you not have even helped your level- So we again get penalised for Alamy's choices and practices, which i am sure is totally coincidental.  

[meanderingemu]

7 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

Unless you're a news photographer who has to keep churning out "fresh" images, 

 

 

 

News photographer with a definite UK slant, since Alamy has never expanded that market much.  I am using the scheme to upload reportage image since Alamy want give me access but I generally have little hope of getting LN licences for pure Halifax events. 

[John Mitchell]

6 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

News photographer with a definite UK slant, since Alamy has never expanded that market much.  I am using the scheme to upload reportage image since Alamy want give me access but I generally have little hope of getting LN licences for pure Halifax events. 

 

It's interesting how stock photography has changed. Once upon a time it was a good way to generate "passive income" from your precious images. You would submit them to a photo library, which had a fair pricing model and kept at most 50%, and wait for the money to start rolling in. Now you're supposed to wear yourself out snapping away and continuously submitting images to "agencies" that don't really act on your behalf, often license images for pitiful sums, and keep the lion's share of your earnings. Something definitely seems wrong with this picture. Or perhaps I'm missing something...

[Vitor from Portugal]

One single little sell 😜

[Sultanpepa]

18 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

It's interesting how stock photography has changed. Once upon a time it was a good way to generate "passive income" from your precious images. You would submit them to a photo library, which had a fair pricing model and kept at most 50%, and wait for the money to start rolling in. Now you're supposed to wear yourself out snapping away and continuously submitting images to "agencies" that don't really act on your behalf, often license images for pitiful sums, and keep the lion's share of your earnings. Something definitely seems wrong with this picture. Or perhaps I'm missing something...

Add to that the prices for everything are going up i.e. cars, fuel, cameras, food, electricity and gas, yet licenses for images keeps going down. PA have no interest in contributors, they just want a stream/bank of fresh images to share with their various titles at minimal cost. It isn't worth continued effort.

[IanDavidson]

On 03/08/2022 at 05:09, John Mitchell said:

Unless you're a news photographer who has to keep churning out "fresh" images, it seems to me that the best way to see a "regular pattern of sales" is to assemble a stable of dependable repeat-sellers. This of course isn't easy, and it can take a very long time. If I were starting out with Alamy now, I don't think that I'd have the necessary perseverance (I'm sad to say) given the low returns and massive competition.

 

 

John

you are right.  I am a news photographer.  I go to Westminster/Downing Street about three times a week when Parliament is in session.  (Nothing much happens on a Friday and I seldom work weekends because of the weekend warriors) On a “good” day I will send four submissions of about 50/80 total pictures each day.  I think my best is six submissions a day. Having said that I do sell quite a lot of “older” pictures, five, six or seven years old.  Last month I sold around a hundred pictures.
 

The downside of this photography is the fee per licence is low.  I just about cover my expenses.  I went to Westminster yesterday and got nothing!  However, this is unusual, most visits I get something.  

[rose22]

On 02/08/2022 at 14:32, Doc said:

To have sold one with just 145 images on sale is a very good start. Congrats!

 

Kumar

thank you i am now having 400 pending files that i need to work on

[John Mitchell]

5 hours ago, IanDavidson said:

John

you are right.  I am a news photographer.  I go to Westminster/Downing Street about three times a week when Parliament is in session.  (Nothing much happens on a Friday and I seldom work weekends because of the weekend warriors) On a “good” day I will send four submissions of about 50/80 total pictures each day.  I think my best is six submissions a day. Having said that I do sell quite a lot of “older” pictures, five, six or seven years old.  Last month I sold around a hundred pictures.
 

The downside of this photography is the fee per licence is low.  I just about cover my expenses.  I went to Westminster yesterday and got nothing!  However, this is unusual, most visits I get something.  

 

That sounds like a lot of work. The low fees must be very frustrating.

[rose22]

On 30/07/2022 at 04:02, Michael Ventura said:

Well I hope a weekend sale could drop in.  July was my best month of 2022 so far!  It sputtered the first two weeks with just a few tiddlers but then came back to life during the second half of the month.  Had 25 sales for $1,263. Five were $100+.   $51 average per sale!  Very happy about that.

Im hoping to make this much , congrats for your July rev.

[rose22]

On 30/07/2022 at 09:01, geogphotos said:

Summary for 01 July 2022 to 30 July 2022 ( 55 item(s) totalling $1429.56 )

Amazing