payment times?

[marc]

I have two images sold in April and another in May. I still haven't been paid for them. 

 

I was told by Alamy that the average time is 3 months.  Should I be asking them to follow this up?

 

M 

[John Mitchell]

I have two images sold in April and another in May. I still haven't been paid for them. 

 

I was told by Alamy that the average time is 3 months.  Should I be asking them to follow this up?

 

M 

 

You won't get paid until your "cleared balance" exceeds $75.

[NYCat]

I can't tell from your post if you are saying the sale hasn't cleared. If it's distributor sale that can take a VERY long time. I'm still waiting for one to clear for February in Japan. If it's not a distributor and it doesn't show as cleared in your Account Balance it wouldn't hurt to let Alamy know. I always wait at least 4 months before emailing Alamy. One time it was a newspaper that was late reporting. They can be tardy.

 

Paulette

[Jill Morgan]

Something I have never figured out is waiting for newspapers to report usage. 

 

Surely when they download the image, it is recorded on their account and should be put into their 30 day, 60 day or even 90 day net if that is their contract with Alamy. But it should show as a sale right away on our accounts. How does one of my images I see in the paper on the 26th of June not show up as a sale until the end of August? Surely it is a June sale, especially since the customer has already used it. Then their 30, 60, or 90 day net starts at the end of August instead of in June when the image was used.

 

The only reporting necessary should be if they use an image they have previously downloaded, so a sale is not in Alamy's system. And that should be discouraged. A separate order and download should be recorded for the second useage.

 

I'd like to see my suppliers say its okay to wait to pay them until I actually use the item and then wait for my customer to pay me.

 

Jill

[John Mitchell]

I used to do a lot of freelance writing for newspapers. They can be very s...l...o..w to pay you. They are probably even slower these days given all the financial challenges they face.

[marc]

Thanks NYC. To clarify the images have not cleared.   I contacted Alamy, they said most cleared after 3 months.  These images were sold 5 and 4 months ago.   I sent a follow up mail to Alamy and they did not reply.   Seems like they should take a bit more care of their contributors.

[dov makabaw]

I don't start chasing for at least 6 months, particularly for newspaper sales. Unfortunately it is a fact of life these days.

 

dov

[Mike]

Marc:

 

You need to develop a much larger reservoir of patience or you will likely drive yourself crazy pretty quickly. Sales can take a long time to clear and that's just how the business is sadly. Nothing to do with Alamy either. When I license images directly to publishers most pay within a month but there are a few (big national magazine and book publishers) that drag it out for as long as they possibly can and they'll take anywhere from three to five months to pay.

 

As a small business this sucks. When I order stuff from B&H they expect to get paid in advance. When my phone bill arrives, Windstream expects me to pay fairly quickly and should I "forget" to pay for more than a few weeks past the due date they get rather antsy... I am fortunate in that I'm in a narrow specialty and this actually helps getting my invoices to publishers paid a little bit quicker because the publishers are aware of the fact that my images can be hard to replace. Not because I'm a better photographer than anyone else here but because some of my images are a bit hard to replicate and get. Most publishers understand this and it helps. There has been a time or two that I've pulled image rights when the publishers take too long to pay and if this is the case I typically will not agree to grant usage rights again to that publisher. Very small - and probably petty - way for me to get a tiny bit of satisfaction, because in both cases where this has happened the images were not available anywhere else and the two publishers (one mid-sized and one rather large one) had to figure something else out with a deadline that was long since past. This was about 10 or so years ago and one of the publishers got desperate enough that they offered me three times the original fee but I politely declined. The original licensing fee was less than $200 and it was worth it to me at the time. Naturally I lost a customer but since that customer was one that didn't pay until I threatened (and went through with) revoking the image rights I figured it wasn't a big loss to me anyway. The industry as such is small though and I'm sure this client spoke less than glowing about me to others but what the heck, it felt nice and was worth it to me.

 

Just to give you an idea of how long this can take, the payment that Alamy will make to me on October 1st is for - among many others -  five images licensed early June of this year. Editorial stock photography sometimes move at glacial speeds, but there's almost always movement. Not always forward but hey, at least we're going places...;-)

[marc]

Thanks for the information everyone.    Just to make clear it is not to do with me being impatient, but wanting a heads up on how long payments on Alamy take. They say it should be three months, clearly it can be morel like 6. 

 

 With 15 as a journalist behind me, I know how long newspaper payments take.