To make content, contribute and invest.

[Allan Stone]

Hello, My name is Allan, I am not after a definitive answer and I certainly don't wish to go over the same issues that so many must have asked but with so many changes over the years within the stock world/ Industry.  Is it worth the investment ??

 

Of course many come in to this arena for different reasons, the monetary side of things is a must not a bonus for me, I've sold many images as a photographer, I have been commissioned time and time again over the years but I need diversity, I want diversity, many periods within any one year, I have the energy, the time, the creativity to invest in Alamy but I wish for success. I have been a member for a while but without really getting hooked.

 

Do you enjoy the process, is it a job to you, perhaps a side hustle for you but is it financially rewarding and creatively rewarding?

An image of mine has recently sold for £5 but that is it.. I am new really to the process and would love your thoughts.

Thank you for getting this far and I look forward for feed back and some replies. 

Thanks Allan 

Edited April 6, 2023 by Allan Stone

[John Morrison]

I wish I could offer good news, but your notion of a "side hustle" seems more realistic, in 2023, than your "wish for success". For even modest rewards, the 'numbers game' now requires a portfolio of, say, 10,000+ pix online. That's a lot of work: enjoyable for many people, of course, but the pickings are slim.

 

More competition, diminishing prices, smaller share of the pot for photographers. There isn't a silver lining to that big black cloud. I make a non-trivial sum from Alamy each month., because of the number of pix I already have.. but for anyone thinking about getting involved in stock photography now, I would say "don't bother"...

[Allan Stone]

Thank you John  for your reply, you underlined what I thought may well be the issue within this market.

I've looked on from afar for sometime and when I've done a little research it does seem to be a tougher and tougher market to be in and a very time consuming market to be in.

Forget the shooting, the processing, the editing, the key wording and the financial investment (not that we can really forget about any of that) but I am still hoping that within the the realms of what I shoot I can still make a return, however small....If it is terribly small , then I am not sure what next!

 

Rather than blanket bomb the site with many dull and average images that may never be seen (of course I have lots of them) I still wish to add work that I enjoy shooting and I hope (probably stupid thing to say} will have some punch and be relevant....

The problem I see with Alamy is the lack of censorship or Quality Control (of course that's the beauty of Alamy but also perhaps how we all get lost in the mix).

 

I'm very new to the forum but is there a pecking order in place, or some sort of editing or placement involved from their editing team so 'your work' can be seen in front of others? More commercial, more professional work or what is deemed great imagery or more relevant work to the market or what's trending must get lost because of how many images are uploaded weekly or is there a tiered system somehow?

 

Thank again John Morrison 

 

Edited April 6, 2023 by Allan Stone

[DJ Myford]

Alamy does have a ranking system, but how it works is a closely guarded secret. Number of sales, frequency of upload, number of customer zooms, and other factors may be taken into account, but we are not given that information, and some suspect that if too many people get close to cracking the secret, the algorithm gets changed.

[Allan Stone]

3 hours ago, John Morrison said:

I wish I could offer good news, but your notion of a "side hustle" seems more realistic, in 2023, than your "wish for success". For even modest rewards, the 'numbers game' now requires a portfolio of, say, 10,000+ pix online. That's a lot of work: enjoyable for many people, of course, but the pickings are slim.

 

More competition, diminishing prices, smaller share of the pot for photographers. There isn't a silver lining to that big black cloud. I make a non-trivial sum from Alamy each month., because of the number of pix I already have.. but for anyone thinking about getting involved in stock photography now, I would say "don't bother"...

 I'm not sure when replying should I quote you ???

[Steve F]

1 minute ago, Allan Stone said:

I'm very new to the forum but is there a pecking order in place, or some sort of editing or placement involved from their editing team so 'your work' can be seen in front of others? More commercial, more professional work or what is deemed great imagery or more relevant work to the market or what's trending must get lost because of how many images are uploaded weekly or is there a tiered system somehow?

 

Allan, welcome to the Forum.

 

In answer to the above, not as you're thinking. Your pictures will appear at a certain level (e.g. first page, 10th page... etc.) in searches by clients, depending on various factors. CTR and Sales are the only factors we know about for sure in the secret formula Alamy uses to set our search ranking. Your CTR rank (on your Dashboard) is a function of the number of times a client zooms (clicks on) one of your images versus the number of times your images appear in a client search, but are not zoomed.

 

We assume that new contributors get some sort of temporary boost as they won't have any sales yet.

 

Keywording and captioning is almost more important than the image quality, as it doesn't matter if you have the most amazing images if clients can't find them. Captions are also searchable. See:

 

https://www.alamy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Captions-and-Tags-checklist.pdf

https://www.alamy.com/blog/tips-for-your-captions-from-the-sales-team

https://www.alamy.com/blog/captions-and-tags

 

+1 about what John says re. side hustle. I have a full time job, family and a lot of hobbies, so not so much time for Alamy. But it's still been lots and lots of work to get to just 4,500 images online in 8 years - and nowhere near paying minimum wage (bearing in mind some people have a much more efficient workflow than me though). 

 

I find it creatively rewarding (to an extent), although the pretty landscape type pictures don't sell at all well compared to e.g. home studio shots.

 

Steve

 

[Steve F]

2 minutes ago, Allan Stone said:

I'm not sure when replying should I quote you ???

 

You don't have to. But if you're replying to a specific point, it helps to make it clear. And if you quote someone, they normally get a notification.

[Allan Stone]

4 minutes ago, DJ Myford said:

Alamy does have a ranking system, but how it works is a closely guarded secret. Number of sales, frequency of upload, number of customer zooms, and other factors may be taken into account, but we are not given that information, and some suspect that if too many people get close to cracking the secret, the algorithm gets changed.

Thank you, the great  and the good must be pushed or those that are clicked and zoomed on which has also just been mentioned.. Thanks.

[Steve F]

23 hours ago, Allan Stone said:

the monetary side of things is a must not a bonus for me

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/16286-2022/

 

[Allan Stone]

6 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

Allan, welcome to the Forum.

 

In answer to the above, not as you're thinking. Your pictures will appear at a certain level (e.g. first page, 10th page... etc.) in searches by clients, depending on various factors. CTR and Sales are the only factors we know about for sure in the secret formula Alamy uses to set our search ranking. Your CTR rank (on your Dashboard) is a function of the number of times a client zooms (clicks on) one of your images versus the number of times your images appear in a client search, but are not zoomed.

 

We assume that new contributors get some sort of temporary boost as they won't have any sales yet.

 

Keywording and captioning is almost more important than the image quality, as it doesn't matter if you have the most amazing images if clients can't find them. Captions are also searchable. See:

 

https://www.alamy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Captions-and-Tags-checklist.pdf

https://www.alamy.com/blog/tips-for-your-captions-from-the-sales-team

https://www.alamy.com/blog/captions-and-tags

 

+1 about what John says re. side hustle. I have a full time job, family and a lot of hobbies, so not so much time for Alamy. But it's still been lots and lots of work to get to just 4,500 images online in 8 years - and nowhere near paying minimum wage (bearing in mind some people have a much more efficient workflow than me though). 

 

I find it creatively rewarding (to an extent), although the pretty landscape type pictures don't sell at all well compared to e.g. home studio shots.

 

Steve

Thank you Steve,

You seem to have covered lots for me thank you very much and some great links too.

I try to be thorough with captions and tags....more so with tags at the moment......I am getting there......

 

Is there a way of finding out the things that sell really well, is there a list or top 100 images that have sold?

As I write this, it already sounds silly because people will jump on the bandwagon set a speak... but what sells well I wonder...

 

A side hassle perhaps but hopefully a side hustle........

Thank you once again

Allan 

 

[Steve F]

Just now, Allan Stone said:

Is there a way of finding out the things that sell really well, is there a list or top 100 images that have sold?

 

Jein (My favourite German Austrian word, a contraction of Ja and Nein). 

 

There's an images sold thread in the Forum for each month:

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/16563-images-sold-in-april-2023/

 

But I suspect most people don't put their best sellers on there; I certainly don't.

 

The best way to know what sells Allan is to keep a good look out for published stock imagery in books, magazines, newspapers, websites etc.

[Allan Stone]

6 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/16286-2022/

 

After having a quick look at the discussion from your link and some of those figures people are mentioning it all seems somewhat grim Steve.... I have not been able to look at photographers work or contributors work but the fees are low. ;(

 

[Steve F]

5 minutes ago, Allan Stone said:

I try to be thorough with captions and tags....more so with tags at the moment......I am getting there......

 

You're welcome. You'll want to know this too if you haven't seen it either:

 

Don't spam keywords, it will affect your CTR rank. Your CTR rank (on your Dashboard) is a function of the number of times a client zooms (clicks on) one of your images versus the number of times your images appear in a client search, but are not zoomed.

CTR=Zooms/Views * 100

 

E.g. don't put sky, blue, clouds for every single outdoors picture you shoot. There is a tendency to try to put lots of keywords for your images to try to get them seen by clients. So they may well appear in searches, but if they're not zoomed by a client, your CTR rank will drop. Which means your images won't show as high up in client searches. You don't want your images to get buried in the 350 million images on Alamy. By all means, put a lot of keywords in for certain pictures if they're relevant. Captions and keywords are almost more important than the image itself because you can have the most amazing images ever, but if they're keyworded wrong, no one will ever see them.

 

Also include singular and plurals  of words if appropriate. Don't worry about moving the line in Alamy Image Manager (AIM) to optimised (green) - we have collectively decided that this is not a good idea unless you really need that many keywords.

[Steve F]

7 minutes ago, Allan Stone said:

it all seems somewhat grim Steve.

 

Welcome to stock in 2023. The great fees were 10+ years ago. $$$ gross sales are very rare now. A saturated market with low barriers to entry, too many images online and reducing fees. You can certainly distinguish yourself from the crowd though and sell better than people with similar sized portfolios. I appreciate the monthly income, but not sure I'd get into it now if I was starting from scratch....

Edited April 6, 2023 by Steve F

[Allan Stone]

2 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

Welcome to stock in 2023. The great fees were 10+ years ago. $$$ sales are very rare now. A saturated market with low barriers to entry, too many images online and lots of agencies. You can certainly distinguish yourself from the crowd though and sell better than people with similar sized portfolios. I appreciate the monthly income, but not sure I'd get into it now if I was starting from scratch....

The more I read the Grimmer this market seems and that's in the last 30mins !!!...... When I assisted many years ago, a photographer I worked with made many thousands a month but my assisting career went abroad and in a different direction so I didn't get involved but I know the criteria in being signed was very tough at the time.

 

Correct work, great key wording, fantastic captions...  relevant captions and lots of images .... not sure I have many of the above....... Perhaps I will become a shareholder it will be a better way of making money with Alamy...

Thanks for your time.

Allan.

[Steve F]

2 minutes ago, Allan Stone said:

The more I read the Grimmer this market seems and that's in the last 30mins !!!...... When I assisted many years ago, a photographer I worked with made many thousands a month but my assisting career went abroad and in a different direction so I didn't get involved but I know the criteria in being signed was very tough at the time.

 

Correct work, great key wording, fantastic captions...  relevant captions and lots of images .... not sure I have many of the above....... Perhaps I will become a shareholder it will be a better way of making money with Alamy...

Thanks for your time.

Allan.

 

Anecdotally, you can make more money by spreading across multiple agencies. I personally am exclusive to Alamy. It's partly related to lack of time. A lot of us also don't like the idea of competing against ourselves by having the same image at multiple prices online (e.g. prices typically higher on Alamy vs microstock).

[Cal]

On 05/04/2023 at 15:43, Allan Stone said:

the monetary side of things is a must not a bonus for me, 

 

Then I think stock photography is not for you. In terms of efficiency and bang for buck, stock is one of the worst ways of earning extra income. You would be far better off getting a second job or even dare I say investing wisely. it's nice to earn money from photography, and the good thing about stock is, unlike being a traditional pro you don't have to limit yourself to one genre or style of photography, stock can be anything. The only way, starting out now that you would make a sizeable amount of money from it is if you already have a portfolio of 5-10,000+ images ready to go already edited and keyworded.

 

Sorry to put a downer on things but if you're only in this for the money you've chosen probably one of the hardest ways to do it.

[Allan Stone]

7 minutes ago, Cal said:

 

Then I think stock photography is not for you. In terms of efficiency and bang for buck, stock is one of the worst ways of earning extra income. You would be far better off getting a second job or even dare I say investing wisely. it's nice to earn money from photography, and the good thing about stock is, unlike being a traditional pro you don't have to limit yourself to one genre or style of photography, stock can be anything. The only way, starting out now that you would make a sizeable amount of money from it is if you already have a portfolio of 5-10,000+ images ready to go already edited and keyworded.

 

Sorry to put a downer on things but if you're only in this for the money you've chosen probably one of the hardest ways to do it.

I think its being realistic Cal, so thank you I do have a back catalogue so to speak and a folio of images that I can tap into within reason  but I don't have property releases or model releases with the more commercial images I have shot, so they cannot be used.

 I'm very much a novice with stock photography and the market so thank you for the reply and the many others I have received.

I suppose I will now see, how well i do over the coming year (s) as I add more and more work....... 

I can only watch so many box sets......So I will add images (slowly)as I edit and try and being effective.  

 

 

[Steve F]

12 minutes ago, Allan Stone said:

I don't have property releases or model releases with the more commercial images I have shot, so they cannot be used.

 

Whether you have permission from the entity that commissioned the commercial work is another question. But you don't need property or model releases to sell stock images - non-released images with people and property in can be sold for Editorial use. Alamy primarily specialises in editorial imagery.

 

12 minutes ago, Allan Stone said:

I can only watch so many box sets......

 

Join the club. 

 

12 minutes ago, Allan Stone said:

So I will add images (slowly)as I edit and try and being effective.

 

Suggest you ask for a Portfolio review earlier rather than when you've uploaded several 1000s.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Steve F

[Allan Stone]

6 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

Whether you have permission from the entity that commissioned the commercial work is another question. But you don't need property or model releases to sell stock images - images with people and property in can be sold for Editorial use. Alamy primarily specialises in editorial imagery.

 

 

Join the club. 

 

 

Suggest you ask for a Portfolio review earlier rather than when you've uploaded several 1000s.

So Alamy will take a look at my work and critique it and review it... I didn't or I have not seen this pop up anywhere...or mentioned anywhere, although I have been skimming and skipping over topics skip. would it be an email or are there editors available?

....... I am sure Ai has popped his head up...are people here using it for key wording and capturing options?

 

Thank you for the support, time and replies, I hope it helps others as well. A. 

 

[Steve F]

1 minute ago, Allan Stone said:

So Alamy will take a look at my work and critique it and review it...

 

That would be nice, but 🤣

 

See: https://discussion.alamy.com/forum/18-portfolio-critique/

[Steve F]

3 minutes ago, Allan Stone said:

I am sure Ai has popped his head up...are people here using it for key wording and capturing options?

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/16578-why-are-there-no-sales/?do=findComment&comment=336694

 

 

Right, I'm off. Have a good Easter weekend all.

Steve

[Phil]

50 minutes ago, Steve F said:

A lot of us also don't like the idea of competing against ourselves by having the same image at multiple prices online (e.g. prices typically higher on Alamy vs microstock).

 

The pros and cons of spreading our stock media across multiple platforms to hopefully increase our sales is an oft-mentioned aspect of selling stock media.

 

Some agree - some don't.  I'm generally in the "don"t do it" group.   There is anecdotal 1st hand evidence offered by at least one stock platform that buyers in many instances make efforts to shop around different stock platforms for the cheapest price.  Given this why compete against ourselves for the lowest price?

[Allan Stone]

3 minutes ago, Steve F said:

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/16578-why-are-there-no-sales/?do=findComment&comment=336694

 

 

Right, I'm off. Have a good Easter weekend all.

Steve

Thank you Steve have a great Easter Weekend, once again your links etc  are much appreciated

[NYCat]

5 hours ago, Allan Stone said:

s there a way of finding out the things that sell really well, is there a list or top 100 images that have sold?

 

There is useful information on your Dashboard in Measures. Click on All of Alamy. This is, of course, just data automatically collected. And I think sales only register if they happen quickly after a zoom. Most of my sales have not been zoomed. Anyway, you can see what the clients are asking for. It is only a set of frequent buyers. You know you can look at our images by clicking on the number next to Images on the left.

 

Paulette