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1 minute ago, gvallee said:

 

The problem is that to get a permit, you have to declare the pics intended usage. We don't know that.

I doubt the pictures on Alamy have a permit, it's probably just ignorance or taking the chance.

Presumably Alamy could simply refuse to licence these images in Australia, because those restrictions certainly wouldn't be enforceable anywhere else, but as always it takes the easy way out and just removes them all. Or most of them.

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13 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

If your sales are coming from all over the place, I think that is probably a healthier situation than being overly dependent on repeat-sellers. I too have spent a lot of time trying to keep up with the various keywording changes over the years. However, a lot of my older images still need more work. It can be tough to find the motivation, though.

Absolutely, motivation is definitely hard to find sometimes. I've uploaded a few new batches this year of new stuff and old 1970s family archive stuff. As the weather here is not exactly inspiring, I thought I'd work through my oldest images and see if they are optimised, as you know they used to separate all the keywords and now each tag has no character limit. It's still less work than processing new batches. Plus some are 20 years old so almost archive really, and that seems to sell!

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9 hours ago, Robert M Estall said:

Ir has always been the case that as little as 5% of stock will sell. The problem being that no one can safely identify that 5%. In the past, I used to see various libraries to whom I had contributed try to edit out the "dead wood". I was convinced they almost always got it wrong!

 

I wonder how well that estimate works for Alamy as a whole. Let's see... 5% of about 350,000,000 images is "only" 17.5 million. I imagine that the percentage of "sellers" is considerably higher for microstock agencies, but maybe not.

 

 

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I'm late to this party as usual. I'm finding that those that were repeat sellers are no longer doing so. My best repeat earner hasn't sold for a few years now. I recall commenting how the returns on that image were asymptotically heading for $$$$, but never getting there.

 

However things have perked up recently, with some better prices and for some long standing images that have never sold before, e.g. a TV license for a toilet pan shot for low $$$. Anything sells !

 

So things here are entirely unpredictable, there is no clear pattern. 

 

Over the years cutouts have done quite well, probably worth the pain of carefully using the pen tool in PS to isolate part of an image against a white background.

 

Further, a diverse selection of images covering a breadth of subject matter and location seems to be part of the reason for my limited success !

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2 hours ago, Bryan said:

However things have perked up recently, with some better prices and for some long standing images that have never sold before, e.g. a TV license for a toilet pan shot for low $$$. Anything sells !

 

 

Speaking of toilets, I had one of those invoiced (UK, TV) today. See the images sold in March thread. Your toilet was worth more than mine, though. Nice going. 🚽

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While I am only one example and an anecdotal one at that, I find I have two distinct patterns of sales - regulars, which all seem to fit into a certain niche I cover, and new images. It's not uncommon I'll upload something and it'll sell in the first couple of weeks or month, and then never sell again. The regulars keep me going, but I'd expect that to be the case everywhere.

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Hi John - I did a brief "back of a fag packet" check on my images sold this year;

 

Total sold: 189

Images with an Alamy number starting with a "2", ie images from the last 3 or so years: 28

 

Having started in 2004 I have images going right back to the "A"s. I think my submissions for sale have gone down in the last few years, reflecting the reduction in % of the sale going to the contributor.

 

Of the 189, 63 were images I would certainly class as "repeat sellers"

 

Out of interest, of 189 sales, 6 have been $$$ sales.

 

I don't have the feeling that only repeat sellers are selling, but I agree with above comments that if images do sell, they move up in searches, and consequently those that don't sell move down.

 

I also think that, certainly from my measures, the huge majority of searches appear to be of only 100 images, which again reduces the chances of those images which have never sold seeing the light of day

 

Kumar

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29 minutes ago, Doc said:

Hi John - I did a brief "back of a fag packet" check on my images sold this year;

 

Total sold: 189

Images with an Alamy number starting with a "2", ie images from the last 3 or so years: 28

 

Having started in 2004 I have images going right back to the "A"s. I think my submissions for sale have gone down in the last few years, reflecting the reduction in % of the sale going to the contributor.

 

Of the 189, 63 were images I would certainly class as "repeat sellers"

 

Out of interest, of 189 sales, 6 have been $$$ sales.

 

I don't have the feeling that only repeat sellers are selling, but I agree with above comments that if images do sell, they move up in searches, and consequently those that don't sell move down.

 

I also think that, certainly from my measures, the huge majority of searches appear to be of only 100 images, which again reduces the chances of those images which have never sold seeing the light of day

 

Kumar

 

Thanks, Kumar. Informative analysis. I haven't done the math, but if I did I would likely see a similar pattern emerging. Also, I'd say that my $$$ sales (such as they are) these days are generated by repeat-sellers. I've only seen one of those rare birds so far this year, and it is a 13-year-old repeat that comes up ahead of the pack in searches.

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11 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Thanks, Kumar. Informative analysis. I haven't done the math, but if I did I would likely see a similar pattern emerging. Also, I'd say that my $$$ sales (such as they are) these days are generated by repeat-sellers. I've only seen one of those rare birds so far this year, and it is a 13-year-old repeat that comes up ahead of the pack in searches.

A useful one to have!! I don't think I have any repeat sellers for which I get $$$ sums!

 

Kumar

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