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Big step :)


MircoV

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As to big steps I am seriously considering walking away from Alamy after nearly 13 years. After a year of substantially increased effort and thought my views, let alone sales, are still declining - they are now running at a level below 1 September 2014 when I relaunched my photography with almost full time effort. The trend is clearly negative on all fronts including rank - I see no way back. If I have to keep pumping in images to get views but few sales I see no point in submitting.  My sales in 2014 were only a little higher in gross terms than my sales in my first part-year of 2002 when I was on 70% commission. I am making less in cash terms than when I first started in photography in 1974.

 

I know my work is useable, i have licenced it directly, and through other agencies. I am now actively researching other avenues of making money from my photography, and writing.

 

I would be sad to leave but it just doesn't really make any sense any more to continue flogging a dead horse. I can earn more by selling one or two short articles that would take me perhaps a day in total to write (as I did last year). I could probably make more by putting the same effort into blogging

 

Whatever, a new approach is needed.

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funky,

 

Last winter I went on a holiday too this time in February.

To where they have summer in our winter: the Antipodes.

For us that's NZ.

We had nights that summer over there that were colder than the nights that winter over here.

They had no snow here during that month. We did have snow over there (albeit at 700 meter and up).

 

So I hope you have chosen your destination wisely!

 

Burning bridges in winter: staying warm. There must be an analogy with photography there somewhere. Oops maybe not kick someone into that winter S.A.D.ness any deeper. ;-)

 

wim

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I won't burn the bridge but the effort will go where I believe it might deliver a return. Richard, like you I am in an ongong process of reviewing and replanning. I started with an active relaunch last summer and by the rerank in November it seemed to be having a modest effect on views but not much else. Then the rerank hit and I was suddenly down to 30% of where I was in September, and it has barely improved since Christmas.

 

I had raised the issue a couple of years ago that if you drop to the bottom of the rankings it is all but impossible to claw your way back to a worthwhile position; you might be better creating a new account. Recent experience confirms that, juggling psedonyms, new content seem to have little or no impact and may even be counter-productive in some respects. My new submissions and News contributions seemed to have put a sticking plaster over the problem as views rose slowly. But when I stopped for a few weeks to deal with other things  the views collapsed, especially at the rerank and Christmas. I now effectively have only one day in a week that has meaningful views - the rest often seems to be an extended weekend.

 

If I "leave" I will not throw my toys out of the pram, make a big fuss and pull my portfolio. I will just stop submitting and focus my effort elsewhere. I will let Alamy be a passisve income, such as it is.

 

Just another snippet. In 2013 one copyright infringement alone earned me three times my GROSS sales on Alamy. If I had gone for the full amount it could have been as much as NINE times.

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I won't burn the bridge but the effort will go where I believe it might deliver a return. Richard, like you I am in an ongong process of reviewing and replanning. I started with an active relaunch last summer and by the rerank in November it seemed to be having a modest effect on views but not much else. Then the rerank hit and I was suddenly down to 30% of where I was in September, and it has barely improved since Christmas.

 

I had raised the issue a couple of years ago that if you drop to the bottom of the rankings it is all but impossible to claw your way back to a worthwhile position; you might be better creating a new account. Recent experience confirms that, juggling psedonyms, new content seem to have little or no impact and may even be counter-productive in some respects. My new submissions and News contributions seemed to have put a sticking plaster over the problem as views rose slowly. But when I stopped for a few weeks to deal with other things  the views collapsed, especially at the rerank and Christmas. I now effectively have only one day in a week that has meaningful views - the rest often seems to be an extended weekend.

 

If I "leave" I will not throw my toys out of the pram, make a big fuss and pull my portfolio. I will just stop submitting and focus my effort elsewhere. I will let Alamy be a passisve income, such as it is.

 

Just another snippet. In 2013 one copyright infringement alone earned me three times my GROSS sales on Alamy. If I had gone for the full amount it could have been as much as NINE times.

 

Martin - I'm not sure I could 'leave' because I never really joined - if merely having a passive income is to be outside the club, that is.  Even before the crash there was always somewhere else where the money was a lot better.  And that is certainly the case now.  Simply use Alamy to archive your spare work.  If it sells it sells.  If it doesn't it doesn't.  But either way you haven't wasted your time. 

 

If anyone thinks that Alamy is where fortunes are made, or even a sustainable income, they need specialist help. The exceptions merely prove the rule.  But there are other positive things to be said.  A few years ago my income stream was temporarily down to a dribble when a four figure fee (pounds) popped into my account, then I had (courtesy of the firm) a picture in a high profile exhibition.  Recently I got some A1 publicity from an Alamy usage.  One time I placed some personal work, thinking it was unsalable, but found it wasn't, and so made use of that information - unfortunately not here though.  I have work in other places that don't produce very good earnings, but occasionally unexpected and pleasant surprises. 

 

In this business we need a lot of resources, a lot of outlets, and we can't expect them all to be working for us all the time.  What matters is that, at any time, some are working.

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I won't burn the bridge but the effort will go where I believe it might deliver a return. Richard, like you I am in an ongong process of reviewing and replanning. I started with an active relaunch last summer and by the rerank in November it seemed to be having a modest effect on views but not much else. Then the rerank hit and I was suddenly down to 30% of where I was in September, and it has barely improved since Christmas.

 

I had raised the issue a couple of years ago that if you drop to the bottom of the rankings it is all but impossible to claw your way back to a worthwhile position; you might be better creating a new account. Recent experience confirms that, juggling psedonyms, new content seem to have little or no impact and may even be counter-productive in some respects. My new submissions and News contributions seemed to have put a sticking plaster over the problem as views rose slowly. But when I stopped for a few weeks to deal with other things  the views collapsed, especially at the rerank and Christmas. I now effectively have only one day in a week that has meaningful views - the rest often seems to be an extended weekend.

 

If I "leave" I will not throw my toys out of the pram, make a big fuss and pull my portfolio. I will just stop submitting and focus my effort elsewhere. I will let Alamy be a passisve income, such as it is.

 

Just another snippet. In 2013 one copyright infringement alone earned me three times my GROSS sales on Alamy. If I had gone for the full amount it could have been as much as NINE times.

 

Martin, I can see where you're coming from.  After a couple of years of good QC record I started being dumped into the sin bin which stopped me uploading altogether. I felt there was a lot of effort for very little return so I would do better elsewhere.

 

I wouldn't remove anything but just look forward to the odd sale when it happens.

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Robert, you are spot on, although when I joined Alamy in 2002 one could make a useful income with modest effort. That is long vanished.

 

I have already adopted the approach you suggest. I will place work here that does not have a home anywhere else. However that said my aim is not to shoot generic stock or even stuff that is Alamy bread and butter. Too much competition from crowd sourcing, As you know I am looking at other, very different photography and sales channels.

 

As Alamy is not working for rme I need to find other channels that can. I have been working hard on building that platform since Christmas.

 

I should stress I am not in the "woe is me, life is unfair" camp. I always take responsibility for my situation, I am taking active steps to address the issues, it is just that Alamy will be a very much lower priority in 2015.

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This is going way off topic here from the original post so needs to draw to a close.

 

Please bear in mind that our top sellers are not just "sending us the work that doesn't go elsewhere", they are treating Alamy as a priority and concentrating their best work with us.

 

The secret to success is high quality, original work that is well keyworded.

 

Thanks

 

Alamy

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