No sales on Alamy - and I sale on other sites

[dumalaaleksander]

Hi all,

 

Just a quick question: I have no sales on Alamy (around 600 views), and using the same (very small - just over 400 pics) portfolio, I have around 20 sales on two other sites.

20 on each of them.

Because by portfolio is very small and exists just over half a year, I do not expect many sales, but at least one sale would be nice.

My pics can be found (I guess) using my email: dumala.aleksander@gmail.com or the link https://www.alamy.com/search/imageresults.aspx?pl=1&plno=1121409

Can someone guide me, please, what makes Alamy get me no sales, while I get a couple of sales on two othes sites, every month?

 

Regards

Alex

Edited October 4, 2023 by dumalaaleksander

[Matt Ashmore]

On 18/10/2023 at 17:05, spacecadet said:

It was always possible to sell one's product at different prices- think of high-end portraiture and schools or event photography- but that was in the days of differentiated markets. On the internet, with identical product, there's no such thing. So with the same images on microstock you are just competing with yourself at a lower price point.

 

 

Never underestimate peoples' laziness, the pressures of deadlines and the fact that companies have preferred suppliers. I have images on Alamy and elsewhere and they still sell on Alamy..

[dumalaaleksander]

On 15/01/2024 at 14:59, Steve F said:

 

Hi Aleksander,

Congratulations on your first sales! Most of my image sales are not of pretty scenes, or technically amazing - they are just of subjects that clients want. 'Better' or 'worse' is not really a thing (although a certain minimum quality is necessary).

 

Ok, I'm going to be direct as you're asking again - please take this in a positive sense. You are not having much success on Alamy due to a number of factors.

• You are keyword spamming, this will hurt your CTR - see point 3: https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/16969-ill-jump-in-no-matter-what-it-does-to-my-confidence/?do=findComment&comment=344671
• Your portfolio is tiny. There are arguments for having a very conentrated high quality portfolio, but seeing as you're not sure exactly what will sell, I would advise trying to make your portfolio as diverse as possible (whilst still maintaining the quality).
• You have rendered a large portion of your portfolio unsellable with poor captioning. You have not taken on board my first post above about captions. Example:

highway intersection by night with lights blurred - Image ID: 2PP4PCR there are tens of thousands of images similar to this - why would a client buy yours? It's not a particularly pretty image, so what concept are you trying to illustrate? Where is it? Road? Country? City? What theme - government transport ministry or traffic flow in the city or the city economy or...?

trees in a park in winter - Image ID: 2TAYKAR again, not an amazing picture, but more importantly where is it? What park, what tree species? Why would anyone buy this image? 

spring in a rural area - Image ID: 2PR1BD3 there are over 1 million search hits on Alamy for spring and rural. Where is it????? You haven't mentioned the name of the river or the fact that there are people fishing. Why would anyone buy this image, you have not given them a reason to license it.

seedlings in a greenhouse being prepared for planting in the field - Image ID: 2PR1A4Y I could see this selling, if it was captioned better. Where is it? What type of seedlings, what crop? What month are the seedlings growing in?

Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland - 12.04.2023: A person wearing orange high visibility jacket performing maintenance work on railtrack - Image ID: 2TAYKMM YES!!! We have the location, and a much better description. Exact date is not really necessary as this is presumably not live news - you could just say in the winter or in December. You could also have added that it was a concept shot in relation to e.g. the poor maintenance of railtracks in Poland by the network operator.

 

These will never sell without better captioning and/or better choice of subject - Alamy clients are looking for specific places and/or concepts. Questions you should be answering are Who, What, Where, Why When. If you just want to sell generic shots of something, they better be at least as good as the better images out there.

 

Look again at my first post above and the image I licensed of Barclays bank. Maybe the buyer just wanted an image of Barclays bank logo. Or maybe they wanted an image of Barclays bank specifically in Farnham. Or maybe they wanted an image illustrating 'mortgage deals'. I haven't checked, but I've increased my chances of a sale with the caption.

 

More generally, we've all got limited time. If you can't think why someone would license an image, ask yourself if it's worth the effort of taking it, editing, uploading and keywording. If you don't have an idea of what will sell, keep a look out for published stock images, they are everywhere.

 

What is in the news a lot in Poland at the moment? What images can you take that illustrate this?

 

I hope this helps, best of luck,

Stephen

I AM taking it in a positive sense. Thank you very much!

[dumalaaleksander]

23 hours ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

Could be explained if buyer searched:
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/weather-observation-station-poland.html

 

yours is top ranked; not saying this was actual search, but...

yours is near top in other similar searches, too...

That may be it. Thanks.

[Matt Ashmore]

It's worth noting that there is a lag between a customer of Alamy's using a picture and us as contributors finding out based on the way Alamy do business. They wait for customers to fess up that they used an image, invoice the image, etc... compared to other agencies where it is payment up-front.. no money.. no image download and instant sale notification as soon as the image is downloaded.