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How was your 2013?


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It's time to take stock of how the almst over 2013 was in terms of sales.

Deecember was an average month for me which is not bad at all considering a few photographers complained about poor or none sales during this month.

Talking now about 2013, I am quite happy as, compared to 2012, I got over 50% more sales.

I truly hope 2014 may bring more sales and happiness to everyone but, above all, more chances to take new and creative photos! ;)

 

Happy New Year from Barcelona!

 

Stefano

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I consider 2013 to be a huge starting point.

 

Sales in 2012 were not great but then I didn't really understand exactly what I should be doing. Now, things are different and I had a 5 times increase over 2012.

 

Things are already in place for the first 6 months of 2014 travel wise with other things being worked on. Hoping that my chosen areas and ideas will work. 

 

Saleable subjects have come into play for me and I will be looking to exploit these further in the coming year.

 

What is beginning to frustrate me though is the total lack of sales on Alamy. I get zooms but no further. Extremelu frustrating which is why I am mirroring some of my work here somewhere else as I know that two of the distributors this new image library have should bring sales.

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Without doubt the worst year in the ten I have been with Alamy and that was despite being more active and increasingly careful with what I submitted.

 

It is why I am actively looking for a channel that will help me syndicate words and pictures. I plan to do more in depth feature stories (words and pictures) as much for my own satisfaction as for commercial purposes. If I don't make money at it I might as well enjoy it and meet some interesting people!

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I started mid 2012 so the 4 sales that year were I guess on par for a new starter. 2013 has provided 36 sales, half in the last 3 months so things seem to be picking up nicely & an additional 4,200 images since feb/Mar 2013 to the RM port.

 

From March I was able to spend a lot more time on images here and by July, I also started working seriously on a separate micro port (700+ images). At the moment, Earnings are 50/50 between RM and Micro.

 

As with you Jools, 2013 seems to be the start of something good. Passed my target for mid 2014 in Dec 2013 so can't complain. Just need to knuckle down and get more images uploaded. Plenty of plans and looking forward to the challenges ahead!!

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I have just started this October and since then I have the opportunity to see what are all this Alamy is all about. The conclusion so far is It will not be easy for me because my images are 100% travel oriented and it could be around the 20 or 30% of the total Alamy sales. To get a portion of that small cake, where there are already lots of good photographers, it will be difficult and even more in this time of declining sales. In any case for 2014 I will continue to upload more and more images, old and new ones and we will see.

Happy New Year from Madrid.

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When I started to be a contributor to Alamy with my travel photos I thought the same but I wanted to give a try anyway. A few years later, I am very happy about the results I got since then, despite the general declining sales and growing competition. So, don't surrender! keep taking photos and upload them!

 

To get a portion of that small cake, where there are already lots of good photographers, it will be difficult and even more in this time of declining sales.

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I started uploading properly to Alamy around the middle of January this year. The majority of my images are news focused which doesn't go down well in the stock market but in the last year I have had 7 sales, 9,110 views and 18 zooms and that is on a small amount of images (665).

Hopefully I will get time in 2014 to start shooting a lot more stock images along side the news stuff which I enjoy. If anybody any constructive criticism of my images please let me know.

Happy New Year To You All!

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No Sales for me but then I haven't expected a sale yet... I have only started to upload in November "apart from a dozen or so from 2012..I only have 1 zoom... :-(     "yes I do understand about my own zooms now   ;) ..but there are still loads of thing I don't understand about alamy... Need to read up more" :rolleyes:

  Well done to all who made sales and good luck for 2014 .....

  Best wishes to all.... Barbara 

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It's 3 years with Alamy for me and today I can say - it's alive! ;)

And I'm alive here...

 

For 2 years I had about 200-500 poor files and 2 sales a year. In all 2013 I surprisingly had sales month by month, wow! From $7,45 to $200...

All this time I was reading you here, guys and learning... thanks for help! To long I believed I have a lot of images, then I understood these 500 files is nothing ;) I couldnt imagine to have 1k files in 2013, didn't believe that it's possible so fast... I admired you having 2-5k or more files here. So much work you did. So much work I have to do! ;)

Then (in August) I started uploading new stuff (mostly RM) and today, with almost 1,5k files I can't tell how fool I was doing nothing before...  :rolleyes:

 

I love Alamy and hope 2013 is a good start of something great :)

 

Best wishes for 2014!

 

Btw., just sold one image :P

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Mixed. Starting with Alamy some years ago I set a target net income that would boost my pension.  In 2013 I was pleased to have achieved that target for the first time, but, despite increasing my collection significantly, I'm not sure that position is sustainable. I'm seeing many more sales, but generally  lower fees.  Time will tell....

 

Having said that, I continue to enjoy my photography, the normally mature and friendly forum, and the challenges that stock shooting presents.

 

I may be in a minority here, but I also enjoy the research involved with key wording.  :)    

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You can look at things from multiple directions.

 

Revenue up from 2012

 

Portfolio over doubled in size

 

Revenue did not double from 2012

 

No images licensed so far at Alamy in December after two last month.  Most of my portfolio is reportage or portraits...neither sell with any regularity (at any agency) so rank is low (and will continue to be).

 

Goal for next year is to shoot more often, upload more often, and hope for the best.

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Each year with Alamy i have seen an increase in unit sales and in 2013 the selling prices were better than the previous years with a number of very simply taken shots achieving 3 figure sales amounts.

 

When I started out i decided to apply a minimalist key wording strategy which looking back was a big mistake. For 2014 I am going to re-keyword my whole collection and spend time researching in depth

the content of each image, I have already started this process and I am seeing positive results in searches and learning an awful lot more about the subjects i have photographed.

My rank had nosed dived in 2013 but having split my portfolio up, my total CTR is sitting at 0.51 with my best pseudo sitting at 0.93.

 

2014 for me will be about taking less pictures, rigorously editing what i upload and spending as long as takes to keyword each image. 

 

Let's hope that if we see an upturn in the economy, we will also see a thirst for the use of our images in 2014.

 

Regards

Craig

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I haven't counted the various refund/resales but they probably account for 24 of my 204 transactions, so around 180 sales and $8700 gross. Five sales in the last two days of December (so far) including a couple of decent editorial fees.

 

Interesting that RF images sold under the newspaper scheme are repeatedly sold, not just once; $85 from repeated uses of one image despite the $7-10 normal fees, even more from another. Also interesting that specific photo opportunities have returned way more sales than others - getting stranded in Turkey during the Iceland volcano business meant we spent a lot of time wandering around waiting for news, taking pictures of course, and those have made that week not lost time in any way.

 

David

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Good year for me in terms of sales and revenue. Hard to tell compared to previous years as I increased portfolio size with lot of variety in past 18 months.

This year; 57 sales for $3072 gross.

 

Good luck to all in 2014.

Richard

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When I do the math, my 2013 sales and revenue seem to be in step with ManWay and David. 

 

In 2014, I plan to double the size of my portfolio (I doubled it in 2013). I also want to diversify my subject matter. Not so easy to do, right? In a policy statement to myself, I said I would not spend money to shoot stock, other than camera gear and software. That means no money spent on travel or on props for tabletop, no taxi rides, no nothing. I know . . . this shows a lack of belief in the future of the stock business. (Yes, I see the glass as less than half-empty.)  

 

In 2013 I spent time regularly revisiting my keywords, hopefully making them better.  My placement remains good . . . but I find myself wanting to submit pics that I like but have some borderline noise issues. Stop that!

 

Good luck to all in the New Year.   :)

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2013 had a slow start for me but I had a very good run in the second half of the year.

It was my fourth full year at Alamy and the good news is that return per image has been pretty consistent over those four years.

In the end the income from it is still nothing to write home about but I'll just keep adding images slowly but steadily.

Best wishes for 2014 to all!

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I haven't counted the various refund/resales but they probably account for 24 of my 204 transactions, so around 180 sales and $8700 gross. Five sales in the last two days of December (so far) including a couple of decent editorial fees.

 

Interesting that RF images sold under the newspaper scheme are repeatedly sold, not just once; $85 from repeated uses of one image despite the $7-10 normal fees, even more from another. Also interesting that specific photo opportunities have returned way more sales than others - getting stranded in Turkey during the Iceland volcano business meant we spent a lot of time wandering around waiting for news, taking pictures of course, and those have made that week not lost time in any way.

 

David

 

Refunds appear twice in your summary. Once as a sale; once as a refund. (And often a third time: as a new sale, often for the same amount; sometimes discounted; sometimes even for a higher amount.)

So for a correct number of images sold (leased) you have to deduct 24 if there have been 12 refunds; 48 if there have been 24 refunds.

 

wim

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2013 was a bad year for me.  Taking out the refunds, I had 128 sales for $9798 gross ($4526 net) this year, compared to 232 sales for $14,140 ($7992 net) last year.  I add about 1000 images every year.  Percentage net went from 57% to 46%.  Combined with other venues stalling or dying, my stock income is down more than 50%.

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2013 was definitely better for me, than 2012, with my with image sales up on the previous year. I also reached and passed the 4000 image landmark in my portfolio, and replaced my aging Canon 1Ds Mk 1, with a pristine Canon 5D Mk II and an, as new,  Canon 1Ds Mk III. Very pleased with the performance of both cameras!   Happy New Year to all at Alamy and all the best for 2014!

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