Betty LaRue Posted January 2, 2016 Share Posted January 2, 2016 In 2015, I sold way more Es Second largest number are Bs A few As, Cs & Ds No Fs So for my own work, the newest images sell best, but still making sales from all. I did start shooting different subjects in the Es. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ollie Posted January 2, 2016 Share Posted January 2, 2016 Kumar: Many thanks for this interesting analysis. I don't understand why your percentages only add up to 18%. Do you have other Alamy sales in 2015 that are not images in the A-F category? I had 105 Alamy sales in 2015, of which 25 were images I made more than ten years ago. This is not quite the same as when they were submitted to Alamy, but I see that 20 of my 2015 sales were in the "A" category. The other five were probably in the B category, submitted in the 2007-10 period. I think Armstrong makes a very good point. Today's sensors and digital software enable us to optimize images in ways we could not do more than ten years ago. I recently scanned about twenty 35mm slides that were twelve years old which I thought I would add to a submission of recent material on the same destination. When I examined them I decided that none of the slide scans were good enough to submit. I don't think my photographic "eye" has improved a lot (maybe a little), but I'm definitely using a higher-quality lens now than I was back then, and my digital sensors are capturing better data than the film did. The grain in the film was quite noticeable, and while there are things we can do to reduce that, it's time-consuming. Nevertheless, while I 'm not likely to submit new scans from old slides, those images that sold that are more than ten years old are from slides and they're still selling. I think that's because of the subject matter. I do mostly Third World photography of foreign cultures and many of these images are still valid representations of conditions in those areas. Ollie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted January 2, 2016 Share Posted January 2, 2016 I wrote a downloadable report for 2015 sales dates, with the Alamy Ref Number as the only field checked. Then I opened it in Excel, did a Text to Columns (fixed width) and viola. Oh, be quiet. I haven't done math other than simple addition, multiplication and division since God made dirt. What you did, Lisa, is beyond my 2016 capabilities. Oh, yes, and all the other years stretching back for.....not sayin'. Let alone spreadsheets. Never even learned how to do those. I'll take off my shoes, now, so I can count to ten. Think I'm kidding, dontcha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Kuta Posted January 2, 2016 Share Posted January 2, 2016 This is similar to analyses in another thread in the last 2-3 months, but I can't find that thread. Here's mine. Letters, percent of my images for that letter, and percent of my 2015 sales for that letter: A: 46% 33% B: 25% 28% C: 1% 6% D: 10% 0% E: 17% 33% F: 1% 0% As you can see, I took a break in submissions somewhere from late B to early D. I attribute the better performance of my E's to better image selectivity on my part, maybe a little fresh inspiration from new equipment, and, in some cases, the newness of the image. Also, the continuing performance of the A's and B's is partly supported by older images that are multiple sellers/resellers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wiskerke Posted January 2, 2016 Share Posted January 2, 2016 Bill, Here you go: http://discussion.alamy.com/index.php?/topic/4732-stats-breakdown-for-images-found-october-2015/ wim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 Sold in 2015: A: I have no A files B: 43.5% C: 39.5% D: 14.5% E: a1.5% F: 0 I've only got 15 F images Seems likely that the number of B files and C files percentages is boosted by repeat buys of two files, always at tiny rates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 In my collection, F images didn't start showing up until August 2015, which isn't really all that long ago, so I guess it's not surprising that few of us are reporting sales of F's. . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gvallee Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 My 2015 sales: A = 37% B = 25% C = 27% D = 2% E = 8% F = 0% (I only uploaded 1,000 images until April in 2015. I've been on the road ever since). Plenty to upload when I touch base somewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pearl Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 OK so I have been a bit more scientific this time. Using Kumar's formula i.e first row is the number of sales made; the second row is the number of Images with that starting letter I have on Alamy, The third row is the percentage of images with that starting letter which sold in 2015, I get a slightly different impression than my original subjective one. Here are my results A 51 4864 1.05 B 146 4494 3.25 C 91 2742 3.32 D 52 2225 2.34 E 51 1500 3.4 F 0 399 0.0 So now it looks like Bs, Cs and Es are performing best relative to how many I have but for actual number of sales Bs are best. I do have a few Bs that just keep selling so they are skewing the numbers. At least it shows me that perhaps I haven't lost my way too much. Pearl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doc Posted January 3, 2016 Author Share Posted January 3, 2016 Kumar: Many thanks for this interesting analysis. I don't understand why your percentages only add up to 18%. Do you have other Alamy sales in 2015 that are not images in the A-F category? I had 105 Alamy sales in 2015, of which 25 were images I made more than ten years ago. This is not quite the same as when they were submitted to Alamy, but I see that 20 of my 2015 sales were in the "A" category. The other five were probably in the B category, submitted in the 2007-10 period. I think Armstrong makes a very good point. Today's sensors and digital software enable us to optimize images in ways we could not do more than ten years ago. I recently scanned about twenty 35mm slides that were twelve years old which I thought I would add to a submission of recent material on the same destination. When I examined them I decided that none of the slide scans were good enough to submit. I don't think my photographic "eye" has improved a lot (maybe a little), but I'm definitely using a higher-quality lens now than I was back then, and my digital sensors are capturing better data than the film did. The grain in the film was quite noticeable, and while there are things we can do to reduce that, it's time-consuming. Nevertheless, while I 'm not likely to submit new scans from old slides, those images that sold that are more than ten years old are from slides and they're still selling. I think that's because of the subject matter. I do mostly Third World photography of foreign cultures and many of these images are still valid representations of conditions in those areas. Ollie Hi Ollie! Apologies for not being clear - the % in the third column are the % of those images I have in total for that starting letter which actually sold in 2015. Had they added up to 100% that would mean I had sold 18.5K images in 2015!! (As if!) Cheers Kumar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IDP Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 Interesting topic, Kumar! I don’t really do that much analysis of my own figures, except where it can help to improve my sales. I’d certainly not looked at this aspect before and had assumed that sales by prefix were pretty evenly spread. However, on closer inspection, this doesn’t turn out to be the case. My figures look like this for 2015 Prefix 2015 Sales % Total Images % of 2015 Sales Sales Ratio A 260 31.82% 13.42% 2.78% B 396 21.38% 20.43% 6.31% C 497 16.62% 25.64% 10.19% D 367 14.16% 18.94% 8.83% E 394 12.73% 20.33% 10.54% F 24 3.29% 1.24% 2.48% It does look very much like my early images are starting to stagnate. I think this could well be because of relatively recent changes to the search engine, whereby even with a good rank, older images get pushed further down the search results. Ian D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brooks Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 I saw similar sales falloff figures in the days before the internet. I think the age of the image, photographer’s health, a change in photographer’s home location, the maturing eye of the photographer, the better equipment, the photographer’s flight from image quality in order to get image numbers up, image buyers who remember an image they saw last year, publishing projects that get delayed and then restarted, images that make a second sale to the original buyer, change in image supply in your speciality, will all have an effect on the numbers over the years. I think crunching the numbers is an important exercise, however the interpretation can be complex. The simple answer to the original post is that good images will continue to sell but at a reduced frequency. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Gallery Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 Old rare subjects still selling at comparable rate and not only on Alamy if that any use. New stuff getting priority on rare subject is still leaving me on the second page at worst so I am not so worried. It seems that selecting New over Creative and Relevant in searches brings up pages and pages of spammed similars with almost no variation in some cases (I thought Photoshelter searches were bad for that). A feature that is going to discourage use of the New button. Subject knowledge, tight key wording and understanding how the same image will appeal to different markets (who may use specialist terms or local place names for instance) will win out. Sorry I cannot contribute as fully as others as I have not submitted anything for over four years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marianne Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 Half my sales in 2015 were from prefix B images - these were also among my highest-grossing sales About 45% were C and then a couple of D and E Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokie Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 Prefix 2015 Sales Number of images % 2015 salesA 1 54 1.85%B 20 1462 1.37%C 32 1314 2.44%D 17 1484 1.15%E 29 1418 2.05%F 0 586 0%I'm quite surprised about how many E images i've sold, thought the figure would have been lower.John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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