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10 years on - how are you doing?


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Today, 29th August 2014, is my tenth anniversary of joining Alamy. Nine years of constantly increasing sales and income followed by one year of slightly increasing sales but falling income, despite nearly doubling my number of images in the past 18 months. After remaining constant, almost to the penny, for four years, income per image has almost halved.

 

How are other long-term members doing?

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After 12 years I was in precipitous decline! This year has flattened that out and so far I have made similar sales to whole of last year. But it is still effectively my worst year despite more thought and effort.

 

But I am not giving up; as some at least have shown Alamy is a viable source of income. I just need to find my business model; done it before surely I can do it again?

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I've been with Alamy for 7 years, during that time i've increased sales every year (except one) and revenue has risen every year.

 

Already this year i've sold more than I have ever sold in a single year before.

 

John.

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I've been here since Nov 2006. Every year is better than the last, probably a reflection of me getting a better eye for stock shots. My first few years were poor as I was uploading slides that were not good stock shots, not shooting the right things (ie I was shooting pictures that I thought that others ought to like) and having a small and not varied portfolio. This year looks set to earn 20-30% more than last year. I have seen a few decent prices lately, including my first four figure sale at $1290 (for a not very interesting picture). Each month I calculate a mean price per sale, but the level of variability is so high that its impossible to say that the mean is higher or lower than a year ago. I am in the lucky position of not relying on photography for my income (I am shacked up with a lovely young lady doctor, having ditched my not so glittering career as a chemist a few years back). We now have two children and I am taking lots of them to see if I can get a few sales of them doing their daily activities. 

Col

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I see my first submissions were in late July 2004, so I'm 10 years on as well. My banner years were mid-2006 to mid-2010, after I got my Canon 5D. Somewhere during that time period, I got fed up with declining sales amounts and started submitting much less. My sales graph is a bit of a roller coaster after 2010.

Last year I sold my 5D and lenses, and started accumulating new Sony kit. My interest has returned, sales seem to be picking up, and I'm submitting more again. (Last year I even finished tidying up the last few hundred images that "needed more detail" after the annotation debacle, and deleted a couple hundred not-so-great images.)

Also over those 10 years, my skills have improved, the kit and software tools are better, and I'm a better editor of my own work. On the other hand, the pool is way bigger and the competition stiffer.

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I found it interesting to read Keiths interview earlier, as I joined in 2004 with an initial submission of a couple of hundred photos, then barely touched it until recently when I have made an effort to start to upload much more.

 

If I had continued at the same rate then I would probably be a lot better off than just a couple of thousand images on sale. Though I feel Ihave more if a grasp of the type of images required now than I did back then.

 

Revenue wise has been about the same every year aside from a huge spike in 2008, though Im hoping this will start to increase as my numbers increase.

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"If you're going to cry all the time, Ed, you'll have to do it outside the office. Your rather thin health plan does not cover all the tissues you've been using." This is what my doctor told me after he diagnosed me as having PTSBSD (Post Traumatic Stock Business Stress Disorder).  

 

At this point, I continue to shoot stock mainly to force myself out of the house. I'm getting old, so that's a good thing. 

 

Edo

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In my 7th year now, but only been able to devote any serious time to it in the last 3. Seeing steady growth in sales as the numbers go up and my knowledge of the market improves (still something of a black art mind, despite what Keith has to say! I am on occasion amazed at what the papers use, compared to what is available.... ).

 

Like Ed, I have this as a retirement pursuit, but the money is useful too. I could earn more doing things that I don't like doing (and spent too many years doing them) and the rate of pay is abysmal, but I guess that I am hooked.

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After two years with Alamy I have just over 50 sales to date with 1,000 photos uploaded so far. My fancy dashboard graph looks like a rocket ship blasting off. I am optimistic, especially from having so many textbook sales. I also feel that Stockimo has opened up a whole new world of photography for me. I am using the creative part of my brain I didn't know I had. I look at the world differently, always noticing quirky/cool/hip/odd happenings around me. And for the past year I have been dabbling in news, which has gotten me out to so many events I never would have believed, like a men's gay party in Palm Springs, Coachella music festival, Oprah's auction, Comic Book conventions, LEGO conventions, red carpet events, TED Conferences, dog shows, it's been crazy fun.

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I too have been with Alamy since 2004. For the first five or so years I didn't have more than about 1,000 images uploaded so my sales stats should be read with that in memory. Worked full time as a writer and photographer from 2000 to 2010. From the start I specialized in law enforcement, prisons, crime scenes, forensics and similar topics.
In 2010 my wife retired from her full time job and for us to have health insurance I had to get a job. Given my specialty I hired on with our State Department of Corrections. Since 2010 I haven't been able to add much in the way of new images at all as building a new career in a rather demanding field have taken lots of time and plenty of effort. I am now a sergeant at our state penitentiary, a maximum security all male institution with roughly 1,400 felons.
My images are all editorial in nature and less than five have releases of any kind.

Might as well get the details out there if they're of interest to anyone:
- Current number of images online: 3352 with another few hundred uploaded but not yet keyworded. Once my day job slows down to wher maybe I'll only work two double shifts a week I'll be able to get around to keywording them...
- Since 2004 my images have been licensed 768 times for a grand total of $95,497. Or $124.35 per license on average.
- So far, 105 licenses in 2014 for a grand total of $11,707

Anyone want any further information, ask. If I can stay awake between shifts I'll answer as soon as I can...

Mike

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, I can never figure out exactly what they sell here. Its a mystery to me. Hehe.  because no doubt they sell lots but what?

 

 

Really? You can't work it out? Its all there for you

 

km

 

Nope!  but man!  you have a massive port!  where do you get the time??? for all editing, keywording, etc. Impressive indeed.

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I joined in 2003 but didn't begin uploading until 2007 (it's a long story). I started making sales right away and the numbers climbed steadily, peaking in 2012. Then things took a significant dip in 2013, and I expected the trend to continue. However, I was wrong. Much to my surprise, 2014 is shaping up to be a very good year. My sales numbers (90 leases so far 2014) could easily surpass those of my best year 2012 -- i.e. my graphs could be turning into roller coasters rather than pyramids.

 

So I'm doing well considering that this is a part-time pursuit. I turned 65 earlier this year, but "retirement" (whatever that is) isn't in the cards. Actually, I like to think that I'm just getting started.

 

P.S. My gross income per image for 2014 is roughly $1.50. I haven't done the math, but I think it has remained fairly constant since 2009 when I reached a large enough number of images on sale to make regular monthly sales. Net income per image is probably a different story, though.

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volume.jpgrevenue.jpg

 

wim

 

Wim,

 

That's an excellent return from quite a small portfolio. Congratulations! I spent a little while looking at your images and I can see why, excellent quality and variety of images with minimal duplication.

 

Out of interest what's your typical CTR%?

 

Mark

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I'm glad this thread was started. As a new contributor, with the intention of slowly building a portfolio for three years, and then working harder at it, I've found the replies here inspiring.

 

Thanks to everyone for sharing their histories!

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Mark,

 

my CTR is all over the place month to month.

 

This month it's 0.59 according to the dashboard's graph.

 

The numbers on my Dashboard are:

 

 

Period : 01 Aug 2013 to 28 Aug 2014
Total views for wim wiskerke: 102,088
Total zooms for wim wiskerke: 514
Total CTR for wim wiskerke: 0.50
Average CTR for wim wiskerke: 0.81

 

The numbers on my Pseudonym Summary however are:

 

Total Views for wim wiskerke  :  102,060
Total Zooms for wim wiskerke  :  514
Average CTR for wim wiskerke  :  1.01
Total CTR for wim wiskerke  :  0.50

 

(both just copy/paste for exactly the same period)

 

To put that small portfolio number into perspective: only 380 images have ever sold (760 x in total). So my collection is still 1300 or so too big, considering some have not been on line long enough to sell.

 

We could make this into a quiz:

Now for the million dollar question: which are the ones that have been sold?

And the counter part: which are the ones that will never ever sell?

(And why didn't I know that when I clicked the shutter?)

;-)

 

wim

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I also started here nearly ten years ago but my revenue and volume of sales started to decline after 2011, even tho I kept adding images.  Sometime early last year I topped the $100,000 gross sales since starting and that was pretty cool!

 

That's quite a milestone, Michael. Congratulations.

 

I've had slightly more than $46K in gross sales in six years. I'm very pleased with this figure. It's more than I had expected to make on Alamy and far better than I've done anywhere else.

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I'm glad this thread was started. As a new contributor, with the intention of slowly building a portfolio for three years, and then working harder at it, I've found the replies here inspiring.

 

Thanks to everyone for sharing their histories!

 

I could not agree more, quite inspiring.

 

Having just signed up it goes to show that there is no particular style or direction that you have to take, other than not being too deep in the everyone does it, generic category...  I can see that I am probably never going to be a good stock photographer but then I'm not relying on Alamy for income.  Maybe one day I'll make enough on here to buy a colour camera... or there may be a cart and horse situation that I'm ignoring?

 

Thank you to everyone.

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