Micro sales

[Rebecca Ore]

31 minutes ago, Walrus said:

Buyers have money. They've always had money. They just don't want YOU to have it! If you have an image they want, do you think they will hire a photographer to shoot it for £850--1200 when they can get it for £250? They will opt for £250 every time. If you give them option to buy for £2 or £250, which one does Alamy thinks buyer will opt for? Erm...Toughie...not!

 

Thing is Alamy isn't the only agency. 

 

As long as someone on Flickr or such is happy to see a photo in print or on line, with no compensation, that's what we're all competing with.   

[Walrus]

On 06/05/2022 at 16:39, Rebecca Ore said:

 

Thing is Alamy isn't the only agency. 

 

As long as someone on Flickr or such is happy to see a photo in print or on line, with no compensation, that's what we're all competing with.   

 

There's no reason for Alamy to exist in that case. Your case makes no sense. Newspapers, magazines, ad campaigns, etc, do NOT want to source images for free. They have budgets, and have always had budgets. If I could set a minimum price, I would. I don't really care if some newspaper suffers as a result of not being able to use my image of ¢60.

[Victorino]

Do you still do it now after several months? I think that the situation is different now, but Germany still buys. I am not a good professional yet, but I am trying to learn more about this market. I study salesgrid every day, and it gives me an image of what is going on in this area. What other tools can you suggest I use to learn about the situation in the market now? I read analytics, but it does not say all the things exactly. Also, what can you say about the future of cryptocurrencies? Will they thrive, or are they ready for their decline?

Edited May 18, 2022 by Victorino

[Rebecca Ore]

7 hours ago, Walrus said:

 

There's no reason for Alamy to exist in that case. Your case makes no sense. Newspapers, magazines, ad campaigns, etc, do NOT want to source images for free. They have budgets, and have always had budgets. If I could set a minimum price, I would. I don't really care if some newspaper suffers as a result of not being able to use my image of ¢60.

 

The trick is to take better pictures than the person happy with a publication but no money can take.   Or rarer pictures.  Or pictures that the average Flickr photographer wouldn't take. 

 

My first editor told me that the average advance on first s.f. novels hadn't gone up since the fifties -- $5,000.   It was still $5,000 in the 1980s and probably hasn't gone up much since then.  And in the 1950s, $5,000 was a large chunk of the cost of a house or could buy a good car. 

 

The academic world also has gone from TAs and adjuncts being rare to 50% to 70% of the classes being taught by TAs and adjuncts and tenured professors teaching fewer classes to have time for research or a side hustle.   The deans have multiplied; the amenities for students are posher. 

 

The people who report $$$ licenses seem to be specialists in the hard to get but desired.  

 

Friend of mine who majored in photography said the best career paths these days were fashion photography and combat photography.  He ended up turning to programming.

 

If you were with a photo agency, Alamy does seem to write contracts for them that allow setting minimum prices, but a lot of agency photos are model-released and the agency is going to take a cut of the payment, also, too often in the arts more like 50% than 15% common with literary agents.

 

I've had people want me to sell movie rights some of my books without an agent.   Nope, they work through my agent if they want movie rights.  They don't work through my agent.   They wanted the rights cheap.

 

Could you sell independently without Alamy?  My thinking is that Alamy probably saves me a lot of hassles.  Not really thrilled by recent developments (I quit for a while), but realistic about the world we're in now.

 

 

[Walrus]

On 09/05/2022 at 17:55, Rebecca Ore said:

 

The trick is to take better pictures than the person happy with a publication but no money can take.   Or rarer pictures.  Or pictures that the average Flickr photographer wouldn't take.

 

 

 

With due respect, you are missing the point. The images are selling. That means someone wants to buy MY image, not yours. However, Alamy have introduced schemes, I dare say other stock houses as well, that suits them, but NOT the individual photographer, and they know photographers are ten a penny, and have no power. If only there was a union for stock photographers, then joint action would force stock houses to rethink their pricing policies.

 

I just sold another image for $2. Someone is getting a bargain, and it ain't me!

[wiskerke]

Just google commodity.

 

wim

[Rebecca Ore]

11 hours ago, Walrus said:

 

With due respect, you are missing the point. The images are selling. That means someone wants to buy MY image, not yours. However, Alamy have introduced schemes, I dare say other stock houses as well, that suits them, but NOT the individual photographer, and they know photographers are ten a penny, and have no power. If only there was a union for stock photographers, then joint action would force stock houses to rethink their pricing policies.

 

I just sold another image for $2. Someone is getting a bargain, and it ain't me!

 

The best license fees I've gotten (in the past before PA) were for things that most people weren't photographing, or places where I had special access.  There's a cooperative agency that was formed to bring prices up and now that agency is doing a range of things that aren't licensing images for print or web media.   If they're having to branch out to gallery sales, classes, one on one tutoring, then that says something about what we're dealing with.   

 

 

[sooth]

On 09/05/2022 at 04:51, Walrus said:

 

There's no reason for Alamy to exist in that case. Your case makes no sense. Newspapers, magazines, ad campaigns, etc, do NOT want to source images for free. .. 

 

 

First thing that happens with an interesting news story is big media companies scour social media for people who took images and video of an event and they reply to an image they like with:

 

"Hi, can we use this image for _news_agency_, we'll credit you."

 

Sometimes they might attach an image use agreement to the tweet.

 

If they can get it for free, why pay for it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[meanderingemu]

11 hours ago, sooth said:

 

 

First thing that happens with an interesting news story is big media companies scour social media for people who took images and video of an event and they reply to an image they like with:

 

"Hi, can we use this image for _news_agency_, we'll credit you."

 

Sometimes they might attach an image use agreement to the tweet.

 

If they can get it for free, why pay for it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and that's when they just don't use the tweet itself without asking. 

[Rebecca Ore]

People who had good photos up on Flickr often got asked if people could use the photos for books or marketing websites.  No pay was mentioned.  A friend who'd been a pro photographer always asked for money and the person asking for permission to use the photo always went on. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Walrus]

On 17/05/2022 at 21:03, Rebecca Ore said:

 

The best license fees I've gotten (in the past before PA) were for things that most people weren't photographing, or places where I had special access. 

 

 

 

That's not my experience. Images I sold for £100--250 or so everyone had access to locations. Best image I sold for over £8000 (yes, three zeroes) was of tomatoes, which every photographer has access to one way or another. No, you can find all kinds of excuses why prices have plummeted but best reason is the stock houses driving them down with deals that suit them, and their clients, but NOT the photographers (I'm talking of your average stock photographer, not someone who spends £125,000 on a shoot).

[Phil Crean]

1 hour ago, Walrus said:

No, you can find all kinds of excuses why prices have plummeted but best reason is the stock houses driving them down with deals that suit them, and their clients, but NOT the photographer

Nail; Head; Big Hammer 😒

 

Phil

[Rebecca Ore]

7 hours ago, Walrus said:

 

That's not my experience. Images I sold for £100--250 or so everyone had access to locations. Best image I sold for over £8000 (yes, three zeroes) was of tomatoes, which every photographer has access to one way or another. No, you can find all kinds of excuses why prices have plummeted but best reason is the stock houses driving them down with deals that suit them, and their clients, but NOT the photographers (I'm talking of your average stock photographer, not someone who spends £125,000 on a shoot).

 

More and more people are looking for side hustles;  more and more competition.  Running a press newspaper was more expensive than running a web site just as running a film camera was more expensive than running a digital camera, so more and more people chasing the advertising dollars.   I used to work for one of two daily papers in a rural Virginia county of 16,000.   The paper I worked for is still in business, now with web presence and part of a media chain.  The other paper folded in 1995.   https://theenterprise.net/subscribe/ for details.   Those people running the media chain want their cut, too. 

 

Where I live, private dental and medical care is cheaper than in a lot of other countries because it's competing with free to consumers and a low cost national insurance program for better than the free clinics.   Private has to be much better than the free and lower cost state systems to compete.

 

Content providers can be squeezed.   Things changed drastically when internet connections became ubiquitous.  La Prensa's Chamorros started to lose money and decided they needed to be presidents of Nicaragua again.   I've had people approach me about movie rights who vanished when I pointed them to my agents.  Bill Gates seems to have believed that content providers would be cheap or free.  

 

Writers also have talked about unions.  This has worked in the movie and television industry but the streaming services are looking for cheap, very obviously.   And people do sell rights cheap because they want exposure -- and sometimes, that works.   

 

Create a union, and media easily moves to right to work states in the US.  The problem photographers are having is part of a much larger problem.    Friend was an editor of a science fiction magazine (Asimov's) which was acquired by an international media chain at one point.  The chain expected a third of the money earned by the magazine to go to the parent company and had a minimum requirement for that.  The more centralized things are, the pointier the pyramid.  Also, the more money content providers don't have, the less money for legal challenges or union organizing.   The textile union organizers I interviewed in Virginia had enough cash to bring in an organizer they thought lefty little me would relate to (Florida teachers union organizer).  The problem for Nicaragua and for us is the same -- very centralized and very rich financial systems looking for cheap at the bottom of the pyramid. 

 

When someone has a plan to organize a union that will do things like set minimums and have some actions to be taken against strike breakers that works, cool.  But I didn't have to join one to work for The Enterprise with no health insurance and zero job security and that was in the 1970s.   Unions in the EU and Australia may be more powerful. 

 

I'm 74.   I set up with Alamy again because as bad as $3 for a released photo is, if those photos just sit on my hard drive, they can't bring in anything.   I'm going to take some more photos to get my portfolio up to 1,000 over the next year or two, and then I'm going to spend more time on other things.   I no longer write poetry, either.  Only money in that was giving readings which were at one time subsidized by state money, but not now.  The only way to make a living as a poet is to teach, which is doing something else for a living, really.

 

When things were not as centralized as they are now, when Mont Blanc was an independent pen maker and not part of Dunhill, there was more money for media and pens that didn't break when they were dropped.   Yeah, we got squeezed.   The point of the economic pyramid is far higher and far pointy than it used to be.    In the US, corporations are people, too, and bribes are free speech.

 

 

 

 

[Rebecca Ore]

6 hours ago, Phil Crean said:

Nail; Head; Big Hammer 😒

 

Phil

 

Not just in stock photography.   It's all chains now, all the way up.  Figure out how to unionize globally, and I'll be happy to clap from my chair in the old folks home.

[geogphotos]

Moved to another thread

 

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by geogphotos

[Rebecca Ore]

On 08/02/2022 at 12:49, meanderingemu said:

 

 

at this rate, i really hope Alamy can still claim average licence is $30 in 9 months.  Going to need plenty of $$$ and high $$ to maintain it. 

 

Don't forget agencies can set minimum payments in their contracts and they're possibly providing the bulk of photos licensed for use.

[Rebecca Ore]

Out of curiosity, I looked up "Agency Photographers salary" on Google and found this:  https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/agency-photographer-salary-SRCH_KO0,19.htm.

 

Pay ranges are from $23K to an average of $44,193 a year in the US. 

 

Another site hilariously enough showed Managua, Nicaragua agency photographers making more than US national average, possibly because all of them (two or three) work for Reuters.  https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Stock-Photography-Salary   As with writing, people who teach on-line courses make the most money from photography.  Sigh.

 

I'll take what I can get to easily and try to do that better. 

 

 

 

[meanderingemu]

11 hours ago, Rebecca Ore said:

 

Don't forget agencies can set minimum payments in their contracts and they're possibly providing the bulk of photos licensed for use.

 

sorry i am confused, what does that have to do with Alamy's stated average licence price?

[Rebecca Ore]

4 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

sorry i am confused, what does that have to do with Alamy's stated average licence price?

 

If most of the sales are not through individual photographers but through agencies that can set minimum prices, then what individual photographers make is offset by what the agencies get.   We can't set minimums; they can if I'm remembering correctly from the contract discussions earlier.   Agency photos are also more likely to be released, so can be used more in advertising.

[Gervais Montacute]

Micro pricing is basically a form of asset stripping. 

 

If you do this as a hobby it probably doesn't matter that much; if you do it for a living you're in trouble. 

[Phil]

4 hours ago, Gervais Montacute said:

 

If you do this as a hobby it probably doesn't matter that much; if you do it for a living you're in trouble. 

 

Whether it's a hobby, or adding to a small supplemental retirement income stream, or a full-time career - it makes no difference If one has some degree of pride and principle when attaching valuation of their work effort, knowledge, experience, and costs to the end product.   When a creative work product is devalued its also perceived as devaluing the producer.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Phil

[Rebecca Ore]

19 hours ago, Gervais Montacute said:

Micro pricing is basically a form of asset stripping. 

 

If you do this as a hobby it probably doesn't matter that much; if you do it for a living you're in trouble. 

 

It's not the only asset stripping being done in today's world.  None of this is unique to photography.  

 

Coffee I can buy roasted whole bean at a grower's coop for around $3.50 US a lb. sells for $16 a lb. roasted whole bean in the US.  Picker's wages are probably closer to 50 cents to $1 a pound.  Some years, farms lose money on the crop because some other country undersold them (one year, Vietnam came on the market with extremely cheap robusta coffee, which the big commercial coffee companies use as their base, and pickers in Nicaragua didn't have work). 

 

I don't think anyone who puts together a portfolio of several thousand images is just doing this for a hobby.

 

 

[Rebecca Ore]

15 hours ago, Phil said:

 

Whether it's a hobby, or adding to a small supplemental retirement income stream, or a full-time career - it makes no difference If one has some degree of pride and principle when attaching valuation of their work effort, knowledge, experience, and costs to the end product.   When a creative work product is devalued its also perceived as devaluing the producer.

 

And some of this is cultural -- that the only value is money earned.  One of the things about Nicaragua and, from what others have said, about Latin America in general, is that there's no "art loser" designation for those who don't make full time livings at their creative work.  Lawyers sometimes drive cabs, too.  I tend to not tell visiting gringos about my writing.  Nicaraguans introduce me to other people as an "escritora," not "a science fiction writer" in Spanish.

 

We're getting chewed up by people who value managing people more than creating things.  And a manager's value to his managers is saving money and getting more work done out of fewer people.   Our US folk heroes are people who bought companies to run, not the guys who created the products.

 

Where do we and the coffee pickers and everyone else go from here?  

[Gervais Montacute]

What are you going to do when the commission split goes down to 30/70? 

 

That's not even a hobby. That's charity. I lost interest when it went under 60%. Your views may vary. 

[Rebecca Ore]

32 minutes ago, Gervais Montacute said:

What are you going to do when the commission split goes down to 30/70? 

 

That's not even a hobby. That's charity. I lost interest when it went under 60%. Your views may vary. 

 

I walked away for a while after the new contract was announced.   I didn't see any other agency that seemed to be doing significantly better that I felt I could join.

 

A number of photographers have said they'll take pictures they want to take and see what happens.   That seems reasonable, but just stopping submitting also is a solution.  Alamy seems to be moving more and more into promoting their model released photos.  Shrug.