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Has anybody else had a total loss of sales over the last few months?


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  This means that the benefit of a high Alamy Rank has been largely lost and, rightly or wrongly,

I'm sure this is true. I used to get quite a few zooms where someone had just looked at 12 or so images. Now my images tend to be at the bottom of a page of 100 below a load of "creative" images. I'm beginning to wonder if the old stategy of keywording closely for rank is still relevant and perhaps a more expansive keywording ploy would actually be of benefit.

 

Not seeing this here. June has been quieter than normal but average $ fees are up on earlier in the year.

 

Rank is still hugely important. Despite the search now defaulting to 120 per page there are many searches that'll not go past a couple of pages deep (240 views). We have a very good Rank and only 240 images (from 14.5k, so roughly 1.6%) in "Creative" yet we're making regular daily sales.

 

J

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I have to weigh in on the side of sales being better than normal these past few months (in quantity, not in quality, but price-per-license is off topic for this thread). But I have a small and somewhat specialized collection, so I've learned not to read too much into the ups and downs of my zooms and sales. I suspect only a handful of buyers regularly search for and license my images, so a change in projects, or a maternity leave, or some such for just a couple buyers can make a big difference in the activity I see. When someone like Jose Elias, with upwards of 11,000 images, sees a sudden drop, it's a little harder to write off as random fluctation, particularly if he's had no corresponding drop in zooms.

 

It seems pretty clear, reading through the various responses here, that IF something weird is going on with sales, it is not affecting everyone equally. I don't know what it might be, but that's something to bear in mind when considering the various hypotheses people put out there. Unless a hypothesis can explain why Jose Elias has seen a sudden drop in sales but Jeff Greenberg is having a better-than-average month, it probably won't carry water.

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I have to weigh in on the side of sales being better than normal these past few months (in quantity, not in quality, but price-per-license is off topic for this thread). But I have a small and somewhat specialized collection, so I've learned not to read too much into the ups and downs of my zooms and sales. I suspect only a handful of buyers regularly search for and license my images, so a change in projects, or a maternity leave, or some such for just a couple buyers can make a big difference in the activity I see. When someone like Jose Elias, with upwards of 11,000 images, sees a sudden drop, it's a little harder to write off as random fluctation, particularly if he's had no corresponding drop in zooms.

 

It seems pretty clear, reading through the various responses here, that IF something weird is going on with sales, it is not affecting everyone equally. I don't know what it might be, but that's something to bear in mind when considering the various hypotheses people put out there. Unless a hypothesis can explain why Jose Elias has seen a sudden drop in sales but Jeff Greenberg is having a better-than-average month, it probably won't carry water.

 

All I can say is that in my little corner of the Alamy universe, monthly sales this year have definitely been less consistent than during the past couple of years. Why, I don't know. But it does seem that a significant number of other contributors are noticing a similar trend. Is it worth creating a poll?

 

In Jeff's case, he has so many images on Alamy that I imagine nothing could rock his boat. Good for him.

 

Not moanin', just observin'.

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One possible explanation why Jeff is having increasing sales is that he his US based, particularly in one very popular area like Miami if I'm not mistaken, and in the words of alamy's CEO there's a very, very strong growth of alamy in the US market. So, with almost 100.000 images with themes from the market that is growing it's natural that he may be seeing better sales.

 

On the other hand, apart my RF images, all my RM photos are more focused in the European market since all of them are from Portugal which is a tourist destination mainly for Europeans. And as it's common knowledge Europe isn't going through good days... But apart from this, what really puzzles me is the sudden discrepancy between relatively stable views and zooms and the falling sales. If all went down, I wouldn't be happy but could possibly find more reasonable explanations. More competition, better competition, lack of interest on the themes I photograph...

 

And I don't think I even had a drop in my search result position in consequence of CTR changes, as the views and zooms attest and my regular checks confirm largely.

 

So, in the case of Jeff it's possible to find an explanation for his growth. In my case it's more confusing to understand the drop.

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Stab at reasons for lo/no sales (only for those affected by this phenomenon):
 

1. Recession

2. Too much choice

3. Alamy Rank - I have almost 1,300 pics on here - a drop in the ocean!

4. Subject matter/material - is it landscapes, urban, architecture, news, natural history etc etc? This is apples and pears territory.

5. Depressing prices to virtually zilch to secure business

6. too many pics - 36? Million?

7. No specialisms

 

all any or none of the above - in other words, across such a MASSIVE supply and so many photographers, split across the many photographic disciplines when added to the TOTAL number of contributors weighed against us forum lot I don't think it is mathematically or statistically possible to draw any conclusions at all - especially from these posts - the vociferous minority.

:)

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Stab at reasons for lo/no sales (only for those affected by this phenomenon):

 

1. Recession

2. Too much choice

3. Alamy Rank - I have almost 1,300 pics on here - a drop in the ocean!

4. Subject matter/material - is it landscapes, urban, architecture, news, natural history etc etc? This is apples and pears territory.

5. Depressing prices to virtually zilch to secure business

6. too many pics - 36? Million?

7. No specialisms

 

all any or none of the above - in other words, across such a MASSIVE supply and so many photographers, split across the many photographic disciplines when added to the TOTAL number of contributors weighed against us forum lot I don't think it is mathematically or statistically possible to draw any conclusions at all - especially from these posts - the vociferous minority.

 

:)

Nick, with respect, these factors have been around for the last 2-3 years at least.  They may explain why it is getting harder to sell but not why there has been such a sudden change for a number of contributors.  My sales have been increasing steadily over the last few years, in spite of the above, but suddenly the trend is going backwards just in the last two months.  

 

Pearl

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I would agree, with Pearl, there appears to a drop, of around 30% - 50% over the past 3 months, which is hurting.


I also agree with a lot that Pearl has already said, and yes as someone who works hard in the background, I am not normally seen on the forums, but this matter has been of great concern for several months now, and in talking to other fellow Pro's, there is a downward trend here at Alamy, I don't believe its due to the recession, there is still plenty of business out there, with the other agents finding it.

I believe it has a lot to do with "shiny new buttons", which in turn brings up a lot of a very poor images (if there's not enough already) to the front, which will in turn, send the buyers away. Shooting one's self in the foot comes to mind.

It appears that we are having our business's ruined by computer programmes, and peoples various untried ideas,  - its hard enough with fair competition.

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...and suddenly, overnight, I have 12 zooms.  More than I've had in the last year.  Something is strange indeed.

 

This morning I had an additional 2 zooms compared to the day before but when I searched on yesterdays date only to see what had been searched/viewed etc, they didn't show..... they've appeared by magic!

 

Zooms have been quite consistent so far this month, 1-3 a day, no big batches of them. CTR on my main pseudonyms is 1.1% & 0.76% with the others around the Alamy average.

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I, too, have seen zero licence sales in May and June, after a three month period where licence sales were very good. Zooms are holding up well, mainly because searches leading to these zooms have returned only a dozen or so "Creative" images before the "Relevant" listing starts (where fortunately my images have appeared near the top).

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Andy

 

I would check all zooms you had in Google Image search.

 

wim

I wanted to ask about this. I put some of my zooms into Google image search and came up with a lot of relevant images, none of which were mine and first few pages weren't Alamy. Then I added Alamy to the search terms and got all Alamy images, but the first page were not relevant. 

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