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On the way to Silver from Gold


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We're almost at the 6 month half-way point in the annual 1 July-to-1 July sales commission model qualification race.

 

Currently I'm in Gold.  But in this year's race I'm currently lagging waay behind from previous year.   My sales are down over 80% for reasons unknown but perhaps macro economic ripple effect.  

 

Without an unusual spike up in sales between now and 1 July '24 it certainly appears I will be downgraded to Silver.  What are the odds given the likely state of the economies in next 6 months?  Not very good IMO. 

Edited by Phil
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Sorry to hear about the big drop in sales. Hopefully things will improve. My gross income has remained fairly constant over the past few years. I've actually just surpassed last year's. Can't say I've really noticed much correlation between up and down economic conditions and image sales where my collection is concerned, but no doubt they have an effect. I had a small drop in earnings in 2021 during the pandemic, but things bounced back in 2022.  Are your images doing well in relevant searches? That would seem to be the most important factor.

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45 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

Sorry to hear about the big drop in sales. Hopefully things will improve. My gross income has remained fairly constant over the past few years. I've actually just surpassed last year's. Can't say I've really noticed much correlation between up and down economic conditions and image sales where my collection is concerned, but no doubt they have an effect. I had a small drop in earnings in 2021 during the pandemic, but things bounced back in 2022.  Are your images doing well in relevant searches? That would seem to be the most important factor.

 

John - thanks for the thoughts - they're appreciated.

 

As for doing well in relevant searches - a quick check of a couple recent sales showed them as being high on page 1 of search results with many pages of hits.  Not sure how else to determine it.

 

As well as the big reduction in sales quantity the average $$ per image for this 6 months is less than 50% of the same time period in previous year. 

 

I have a relatively small Alamy portfolio, however in previous times it has provided slow but reasonably regular sales at decent prices until mid-year 2023.  I also have a small stock video portfolio on another platform and numerous contributors there are experiencing much the same.

 

Not encouraging.

 

 

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Phil, like you, I have a small port, but least you got to gold... for each of the last two years I was about $10.00 shy of reaching the gold level, and this year, well... very discouraging to say the least...

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5 hours ago, Phil said:

 

Without an unusual spike up in sales between now and 1 July '24 it certainly appears I will be downgraded to Silver.

 

Looks like I may be joining you. After 12 years of annual earnings many times the cut-off point, and a really good first half to this year, my sales since early August have totalled a mere $42. Falling off a cliff is no exaggeration.

 

Alan

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Phil, I don't think "macro economics" is an issue. Traditionally, stock photography has been counter-cyclical - it's known for doing better during downturns. The drops in sales that many of us are seeing are due to specific industry-related things like the endless price-cutting that has given way to huge numbers of free images. (although this isn't the only issue) It's important to watch developments in print media to see what's happening, it's a strange world out there.

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7 minutes ago, Inchiquin said:

Looks like I may be joining you. After 12 years of annual earnings many times the cut-off point, and a really good first half to this year, my sales since early August have totalled a mere $42. Falling off a cliff is no exaggeration.

 

Alan

 

Alan -Yikes!  

 

Your portfolio size is 4X mine - yet we're both falling off the sales cliff.

 

This is sounding more like a real trend...

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7 hours ago, Phil said:

I will be downgraded to Silver

what is gold threshold?
the day is coming when only a handful will be gold?
my Alamy 2023 will be ~$38K gross down 21% from 2022 $47+K gross;
Wall Street investments have been my financial heroes for years...
I'M ALL ABOUT THE MEGA CAPS BABY
stock photography, thank you for providing seed money years ago...
😍__ 😍__ 😍__ 😍
but long ago you were shoved to the financial back seat..
😢__ 😢__ 😢__ 😢
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Sorry to hear about your down turn in sales Phil, I can sympathize as my $ earnings this year are about half of last year, yet the sales volume I have just equalled last year. It feels like a trend to lower prices is happening certainly for me in the last three months. I hope you can hold onto gold.

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My sales were 113 in 2022, 34 so far this year, and that’s with a lot more images added. I didn’t have any sales in October which hasn’t happened for years so I sympathise. Luckily I’ve had a couple of $*** sales so the difference in income between last year and this is not as wide a gap. It’s sad if this is the way forward. 

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If there's a bracket below silver i'm possibly heading there although i've had an above $$ just drop in...1st sale since June. Plus i'm very aware my port is tiny to most so can't grumble. 

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21 hours ago, Jay D said:

If there's a bracket below silver i'm possibly heading there although i've had an above $$ just drop in...1st sale since June. Plus i'm very aware my port is tiny to most so can't grumble. 

 

Jay - Silver is the basement 20% bracket - nothing lower other than throwing in the towel.

 

Edited by Phil
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On 06/12/2023 at 15:06, Jill Morgan said:

I spent about 7 months in the silver basement the first year they started it.  That was 3 years ago wasn't it?  Managed to keep above water since.  This calendar year has been my best since 2015.

 

 

It's good to know you can escape from the basement. I always imagined that once you drop down there, there's no way out.

 

Alan

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On 06/12/2023 at 12:35, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

it would NOT shock me to NOT breach $25K gross/yr by 2027...

> $25K/yr gross = 50% exclu, 40% non-exclu ?
$250.00 gross/yr -- $25K gross/yr = 40% exclu ??% non-exclu

where is this chart...?  thanks in advance

 

Not sure where the chart is Jeff.  If you go under 25,000 it's 40%, exclusive or not.

 

Jill

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