Alamy .... what are they cooking?

[Niels Quist]

Feeling tired now ...

[Alexandre Fagundes]

 

 

Photographers who are or who have uploads to Microstock should not be welcomed to Alamy

Hehe!  they are here by the tons and earning a heck of a lot more lolly then you!

 

So I presume your images are also on Microstock ? If so will you tell us what did you earn NET in the last 12months from micro ?

 

 

Travelshots 

My thoughts are that in microstock you keep feeding the beast with new images, but it keeps bringing you less and less per image every month.

So, unless you have a way to create a lot of new images every month, eventually your earnings start dropping.

But is a different business model than here (or at least I hope so).

[Phil Robinson]

My numbers of sales are certainly up, if not the income. 

Also, I find when I do a Google image search (which seems to have gone normal again) images that have been zoomed come up several times under different heading.

I'm not sure what that means but Google is certainly picking up more Alamy images.

[spacecadet]

 

) images that have been zoomed come up several times under different heading.

I'm not sure what that means

 

It means Google is picking up separate images for each keyword or group of keywords. You can confirm this by checking your own.

[MircoV]

Somebody came with the idea on Microstock Group forum that maybe a part of previous Corbis costumers have joined Alamy. Those costumers are the once that didnt choose Getty for several reasons. But it is only a idea.

 

Mirco

[christian58]

No way, to keep filling up with images just for the sake of assets, a million images per week in total. Just listen to it..... one million per week is utter madness and completely derogative to the entire industry. Nobody is impressed!  and creative buyers just hate wading through all irrelevant material. I work with Ad-agencies all the time and when they look for fill-outs or main briefs, believe me many are going to the smaller Boutique agencies.

Now with SS, Getty and Alamy even Adobe its become some sort of a pointless race, who have the most. Also considering the reviewing here at Alamy is very, very lenient, well you can imagine the image-spam. We as sppliers don't count but buyers are affected badly by this.

 

The two leading micros started a year back to enforce strict editing and blocking too many sisters, so did the big G and its about time Alamy did the same.

[John Mitchell]

No way, to keep filling up with images just for the sake of assets, a million images per week in total. Just listen to it..... one million per week is utter madness and completely derogative to the entire industry. Nobody is impressed!  and creative buyers just hate wading through all irrelevant material. I work with Ad-agencies all the time and when they look for fill-outs or main briefs, believe me many are going to the smaller Boutique agencies.

Now with SS, Getty and Alamy even Adobe its become some sort of a pointless race, who have the most. Also considering the reviewing here at Alamy is very, very lenient, well you can imagine the image-spam. We as sppliers don't count but buyers are affected badly by this.

 

The two leading micros started a year back to enforce strict editing and blocking too many sisters, so did the big G and its about time Alamy did the same.

 

Also, at some point there will probably have to be a massive cull of images in the whole industry and hence of photographers as well. Natural selection doesn't seem to be working any longer.

[dustydingo]

 

No way, to keep filling up with images just for the sake of assets, a million images per week in total. Just listen to it..... one million per week is utter madness and completely derogative to the entire industry. Nobody is impressed! and creative buyers just hate wading through all irrelevant material. I work with Ad-agencies all the time and when they look for fill-outs or main briefs, believe me many are going to the smaller Boutique agencies.

Now with SS, Getty and Alamy even Adobe its become some sort of a pointless race, who have the most. Also considering the reviewing here at Alamy is very, very lenient, well you can imagine the image-spam. We as sppliers don't count but buyers are affected badly by this.

 

The two leading micros started a year back to enforce strict editing and blocking too many sisters, so did the big G and its about time Alamy did the same.

Also, at some point there will probably have to be a massive cull of images in the whole industry and hence of photographers as well. Natural selection doesn't seem to be working any longer.

I'd suggest the number of images to be culled would make it impossible, or at least hugely expensive, to do so. Maybe, as Christian says, a line could be drawn in the sand and certain limits etc that are not rigorously applied currently could then be enforced for all subsequent submissions. This would at least allow buyers to eventually be able to apply the "new" filter to see a more regulated (? sensible) collection.

 

EDIT: punctuation correction.

 

dd

[Alexandre Fagundes]

 

No way, to keep filling up with images just for the sake of assets, a million images per week in total. Just listen to it..... one million per week is utter madness and completely derogative to the entire industry. Nobody is impressed!  and creative buyers just hate wading through all irrelevant material. I work with Ad-agencies all the time and when they look for fill-outs or main briefs, believe me many are going to the smaller Boutique agencies.

Now with SS, Getty and Alamy even Adobe its become some sort of a pointless race, who have the most. Also considering the reviewing here at Alamy is very, very lenient, well you can imagine the image-spam. We as sppliers don't count but buyers are affected badly by this.

 

The two leading micros started a year back to enforce strict editing and blocking too many sisters, so did the big G and its about time Alamy did the same.

 

Also, at some point there will probably have to be a massive cull of images in the whole industry and hence of photographers as well. Natural selection doesn't seem to be working any longer.

 

 

A policy the other agency I work with has I think is interesting, they cut all images with more than 4 years online that didn´t sell, its a way to clean up the database, 

[John Mitchell]

 

 

No way, to keep filling up with images just for the sake of assets, a million images per week in total. Just listen to it..... one million per week is utter madness and completely derogative to the entire industry. Nobody is impressed!  and creative buyers just hate wading through all irrelevant material. I work with Ad-agencies all the time and when they look for fill-outs or main briefs, believe me many are going to the smaller Boutique agencies.

Now with SS, Getty and Alamy even Adobe its become some sort of a pointless race, who have the most. Also considering the reviewing here at Alamy is very, very lenient, well you can imagine the image-spam. We as sppliers don't count but buyers are affected badly by this.

 

The two leading micros started a year back to enforce strict editing and blocking too many sisters, so did the big G and its about time Alamy did the same.

 

Also, at some point there will probably have to be a massive cull of images in the whole industry and hence of photographers as well. Natural selection doesn't seem to be working any longer.

 

 

A policy the other agency I work with has I think is interesting, they cut all images with more than 4 years online that didn´t sell, its a way to clean up the database, 

 

 

Please don't even suggest it. That would be a disaster for me. Most of my bestsellers have been on Alamy for more than four years. A forum discussion of not too long ago (can't find it now) suggested that this is the case for a lot of other contributors as well -- i.e. their images uploaded a long time ago tend to outsell newer ones.

 

A better way to begin cleaning up the database would be for contributors to stop uploading so many similars and start deleting the ones that they already have on sale. 

 

P.S. However, I can see how "flushing the toilet" (sorry) at microstock agencies every now and then might be a good idea.

[MircoV]

I just have to add here something about that agency policy of removing old images.

 

It is true that the agency started with this. But then i remember many contributors complaining about it. Especially related to editorial photo. People where saying that it doesnt make sense since older editorial photos can get some extra value. There is always somebody that needs a photo of a classic Pepsi Can for example. The image maybe didnt sell for 4 years and then suddenly a sale come in. This agency removed this policy and now since few years no images will be removed. You can now choose to keep them online or ad them on the free section .

 

Mirco

[Arletta]

The DT agency you are talking about is actually not doing good todays (you can see many people's opinion out there)... Alex, try to give us some better examples than DT The idea of removing 4 y.o. images from gallery is deeply flawed. 

[Niels Quist]

Cheers,

Philippe (off for a couple of days to shoot video of wolves and wild boars in the snow  )

 

That doesn't sound boaring, good luck with the boaring and wolfing ... 

[Phil Robinson]

 

) images that have been zoomed come up several times under different heading.

I'm not sure what that means

 

It means Google is picking up separate images for each keyword or group of keywords. You can confirm this by checking your own.

 

Yes, but it seems to only be happening to images that have been 'officially' zoomed. Iwas wondering how that works.

[John Mitchell]

I just have to add here something about that agency policy of removing old images.

 

It is true that the agency started with this. But then i remember many contributors complaining about it. Especially related to editorial photo. People where saying that it doesnt make sense since older editorial photos can get some extra value. There is always somebody that needs a photo of a classic Pepsi Can for example. The image maybe didnt sell for 4 years and then suddenly a sale come in. This agency removed this policy and now since few years no images will be removed. You can now choose to keep them online or ad them on the free section .

 

Mirco

 

I've got images taken 25 years ago that continue to sell on Alamy. In fact, I'm still uploading them.

 

I'm really, really slow...

[christian58]

DT have completely deteriorated but NOT because the way they remove old pics, thats got nothing at all to do with it. DT changes their search at the same time they started to push sub-packages and it all started to fall apart. Heavy contributors leaving, etc.

DT is a golden example of what happens when when short-term-profit thinking don't work but instead just destroy. Pity! used to be a fair agency with good pricing.

 

 

Removing old pics is not a good idea. All it needs is to stop irrelevant material at the door, first step, the reviewer have that responsibility! in the old days the editors used to ask three questions: is this picture commercial?, does it convey any message? is it technically sound?  if the answer to all three is a fat NO,  then whats the point of letting it clogg up the files?

[Marianne]

I had an image that had never been zoomed, which I took and uploaded in 2009, that was licensed for $400 in 2015, for a current marketing campaign. You never know what will catch a buyer's fancy - the unedited collection of unique and offbeat images here is Alamy's USP. 

 

 I think buyers turn to Alamy for the plethora of authentic images that aren't "stocky," though it does mean there's a lot of stuff that wouldn't get into any edited collections. Here, the buyers make their own decisions and their zooms/ Alamy Rank regulates what photos end up on top, so people who upload dozens of similars are going to drop way down in the ranking, rather than cluttering up the first pages of searches.

 

The new "Creative" tab that comes up as the default is starting to put a more edited collection in front of buyers. I think that has helped some of my older images move up in searches and I see both old and new images being licensed.

 

I shoot primarily travel for Alamy - and a lot of natural travel scenes and nautical images in places that haven't changed over the years, so demoting older photos would certainly hurt my bottom line. I've often had one of a series zoomed on and then the buyer chose a different one from the series (the old "more by this photographer" helped there) - to demote others in the batch because they weren't "zoomed" when the buyer most likely looked at several wouldn't make sense. I'm glad they don't have those rules here.

 

It does seem counter-intuitive that the agencies adding a mind-numbing number of images daily are doing better than those that are being more choosy and it's possible this has more to do with google than giving buyers more choices than anyone needs but whatever seems to be causing a surge in activity here on Alamy and what seems to be an uptick in sales for many of us is a good thing. Whatever Alamy is doing lately seems to be working. It could be partly due to the influx of photographers from Corbis as well as microstock shooters who have honed their skills in those edited agencies - even those who hate the micros have to admit that along with a lot of less than stellar stuff, there are some awesome images and some very talented photographers. 

 

When I see Alamy images online or in print, I also often see images by G, SS, F, and DT alongside them. To me, this means buyers want choices and they're open to looking here where the collection is unedited to find that gem which didn't make it to those other collections either because it was rejected or because the photographer is only here. Whatever Alamy is cooking, it seems to be working.  

[christian58]

I had an image that had never been zoomed, which I took and uploaded in 2009, that was licensed for $400 in 2015, for a current marketing campaign. You never know what will catch a buyer's fancy - the unedited collection of unique and offbeat images here is Alamy's USP. 

 

 I think buyers turn to Alamy for the plethora of authentic images that aren't "stocky," though it does mean there's a lot of stuff that wouldn't get into any edited collections. Here, the buyers make their own decisions and their zooms/ Alamy Rank regulates what photos end up on top, so people who upload dozens of similars are going to drop way down in the ranking, rather than cluttering up the first pages of searches.

 

The new "Creative" tab that comes up as the default is starting to put a more edited collection in front of buyers. I think that has helped some of my older images move up in searches and I see both old and new images being licensed.

 

I shoot primarily travel for Alamy - and a lot of natural travel scenes and nautical images in places that haven't changed over the years, so demoting older photos would certainly hurt my bottom line. I've often had one of a series zoomed on and then the buyer chose a different one from the series (the old "more by this photographer" helped there) - to demote others in the batch because they weren't "zoomed" when the buyer most likely looked at several wouldn't make sense. I'm glad they don't have those rules here.

 

It does seem counter-intuitive that the agencies adding a mind-numbing number of images daily are doing better than those that are being more choosy and it's possible this has more to do with google than giving buyers more choices than anyone needs but whatever seems to be causing a surge in activity here on Alamy and what seems to be an uptick in sales for many of us is a good thing. Whatever Alamy is doing lately seems to be working. It could be partly due to the influx of photographers from Corbis as well as microstock shooters who have honed their skills in those edited agencies - even those who hate the micros have to admit that along with a lot of less than stellar stuff, there are some awesome images and some very talented photographers. 

 

When I see Alamy images online or in print, I also often see images by G, SS, F, and DT alongside them. To me, this means buyers want choices and they're open to looking here where the collection is unedited to find that gem which didn't make it to those other collections either because it was rejected or because the photographer is only here. Whatever Alamy is cooking, it seems to be working.  

Fine! that happens in all agencies but you can't live on hope's and maybes, if's and but's an image will sell. The agency have a resposibility to its customers and suppliers to set firm rules of whats allowed in or not. All in the hope of creating a speedy and good quality search.

It is not a clever idea to just amalgamate gazillions of files, publicly boasting, bragging about it when some 70% is old outdated editorial has-beens.

[Martin Carlsson]

Alamy hasn't really changed it's "rules" regarding what goes in or not since inception, it's what makes it different to the others, for better or worse.

 

In theory the Alamy search algorithm should let the "70%...old outdated editorial has-beens" (christian58) sink to the bottom of any search, if not they are either selling/zoomed more often than one thinks or the search isn't working as stated and intended.

[Guest]

Not sure if it's in the current agreement but there used be a mechanism for deleting the worst performing images from a collection....... Alamy never seemed to enact it and here we are with 70 million images.

 

Whilst old un-loved images do occasionally sell, don't forget the sales that were never made because of the impact an unedited collection has on perceptions of Alamy from clients. Also the database is going to be much more prone to problems...... search algorithm problems at moment showing a taste of the future. Most of the biggies are having db site problems.....

[Martin Carlsson]

Not sure if it's in the current agreement but there used be a mechanism for deleting the worst performing images from a collection....... Alamy never seemed to enact it and here we are with 70 million images.

 

Whilst old un-loved images do occasionally sell, don't forget the sales that were never made because of the impact an unedited collection has on perceptions of Alamy from clients. Also the database is going to be much more prone to problems...... search algorithm problems at moment showing a taste of the future. Most of the biggies are having db site problems.....

 

Not disputing it, but that is the first time I'm hearing about "a mechanism for deleting worst performing images" at Alamy.

 

Contributing recent search problems to the size of the collection is of course an educated guess, but not necessarily a fact to give credence to a "taste of the future". Alamy frequently admits to tinkering with the search algorithm, I can only imagine that even the smallest of mistakes in that tinkering is magnified through the sheer size of collection, but not necessarily because of it.

[Pearl]

If we had data showing number of views, zooms and sales for each image it would be a lot easier to decide which images should be deleted.  Without it we are relying on memory and I for one often forget what has been sold not to mention what has been zoomed.

 

Rather than delete, I tend to demote suspected non sellers to a low ranked pseudo so they are out of the way.  A lesson learned from a few years back when I deleted something and then more than six months later a buyer was trying to find it so I had to re-upload.

 

Pearl

[Guest]

 

Not sure if it's in the current agreement but there used be a mechanism for deleting the worst performing images from a collection....... Alamy never seemed to enact it and here we are with 70 million images.

 

Whilst old un-loved images do occasionally sell, don't forget the sales that were never made because of the impact an unedited collection has on perceptions of Alamy from clients. Also the database is going to be much more prone to problems...... search algorithm problems at moment showing a taste of the future. Most of the biggies are having db site problems.....

 

Not disputing it, but that is the first time I'm hearing about "a mechanism for deleting worst performing images" at Alamy.

 

Contributing recent search problems to the size of the collection is of course an educated guess, but not necessarily a fact to give credence to a "taste of the future". Alamy frequently admits to tinkering with the search algorithm, I can only imagine that even the smallest of mistakes in that tinkering is magnified through the sheer size of collection, but not necessarily because of it.

 

 

The earlier contracts (agreements) had clauses about termination of non-performing images. They were amended at various times and eventually dumped AFAIK.

 

Below it's referenced in one of the periodic amendments to the agreement from http://www.alamy.com/terms/contributor.asp Alamy once saw itself as editing by performance but somewhere along the line decided to change.

 

[Martin Carlsson]

You learn something new every day and I coincidentally joined Alamy a month after that amendment. Kudos to your memory ability!

[christian58]

Sorry! I don't get this at all. Zooms, views, so what???  I have a couple of images with so and so, one of them has, 1100 views NO sale, the other one, 700 odd views, NO sale. It means nothing!  thats like playing a Roulettee, you can sit there all your life and never, ever get the one single number you*ve backed. Nuts.