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How many photos did you have when you had your first sale?


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I am completely new on Alamy and this is my first post on this forum, so....  Hi everyone!

 

I am curious. How many photos did you have in your portfolio when you had your first sale?

 

I see a lot of photos of people in Alamy, but a lot of them are without a release so I am guessing that they are just people passing by or something. How are you handling  with photographing other people?

To be honest I don't feel really fine with this, because we don't know if they have something against being photographed or not. And... All photographs of people, buildings don't need a release if they have a right's managed (RM) license, right?

 

One more thing. If you have any advice for a newcomer I am listening too.

Thanks :)

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I had about 650 images up. That was 2014. 

 

As Phillippe has mentioned, be sure to correctly identify your flora and fauna, including the latin names.  Don't use keywords that are not relevant to your image as that will only end up hurting your rating with Alamy.

 

Good luck.

 

Jill

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Thank you Philippe for your notices about those irrelevant tags. I will take a look at that!

 

Thanks Geoff for your advices about keywording and for the link to your topic. I will read it later!

 

And thank you for all your replies. I really appreciate that. It really helps me understand some things :) 

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I had about 500 poorly thought out images before I made my first sale. A brick had to fall on my head before I truly understood what constituted a good stock image.  That's because before, for a short time, I contributed to a new agency that believed themselves to think out of the box and encouraged images that, in effect, were not good stock images. When they folded, (DUH) I still had that mindset and it took me awhile to change it.

Then it took me a while to grasp good keywording. 

The one thing I can say is that this business is a constant learning process. It's a challenge to keep up, and it's best not to get stuck in the past..."this is the way I've done it for years" "if it's not broke, why fix it" mentality.  Mainly because the important decisions are made by the agency and our decisions are limited to our choices within the agency's parameters.

i just work with what is and chill.

Betty

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Back in 2007, when I started contributing, Lady Luck smiled on me right way. In fact, one of the initial 10 images that I submitted (via CD) licensed right away. But that was then, and this is now...

 

P.S. I had been submitting images to a specialized stock agency and licensing images to editorial clients on my own for many years, so I had a pretty good idea of what might sell to a particular market. Also, Alamy had far fewer (an understatement) images in their collection back then. It's a totally different ballgame for new (and old) contributors now.

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50 minutes ago, Betty LaRue said:

I had about 500 poorly thought out images before I made my first sale. A brick had to fall on my head before I truly understood what constituted a good stock image.  That's because before, for a short time, I contributed to a new agency that believed themselves to think out of the box and encouraged images that, in effect, were not good stock images. When they folded, (DUH) I still had that mindset and it took me awhile to change it.

Then it took me a while to grasp good keywording. 

The one thing I can say is that this business is a constant learning process. It's a challenge to keep up, and it's best not to get stuck in the past..."this is the way I've done it for years" "if it's not broke, why fix it" mentality.  Mainly because the important decisions are made by the agency and our decisions are limited to our choices within the agency's parameters.

i just work with what is and chill.

Betty

 

Ohhhhh Betty. I know, I know. It doesn't make sense to only upload every 6 weeks because I'm allergic to the new Image Manager. I know. I know. I am working on my keyword hierarchy in Lightroom (time consuming and boring) but also finding ways to make it a bit less painful. I just have this gut reaction when I see all those little bubbles instead of text. I can't easily sort out what I have. I shall persist. Thanks for the pep talk.

 

Paulette

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Interesting question from the OP and reading the responses shows just how much things have changed in just a few years. My first sale was in June 2011, 3 months after joining and I had about 94 images up by then.  I can't imagine getting a sale that quickly and with so few images if I joined today - I reckon I'd count myself lucky to get a zoom in that time.

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Back in 2003 I only had a few pictures online, guess about a few dozen, and my first sale was never paid and later got cancelled. :-(

Second one was a big one. For a travel brochure and a website totalling $1500. These were the times ...

I wish I had started 15 years earlier!!!

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40 minutes ago, vpics said:

Back in 2003 I only had a few pictures online, guess about a few dozen, and my first sale was never paid and later got cancelled. :-(

Second one was a big one. For a travel brochure and a website totalling $1500. These were the times ...

I wish I had started 15 years earlier!!!

 

I signed up in 2003 but didn't start submitting until 2007. At the time, I figured it would not be worth the effort. In hindsight, that was a mistake. Mind you, prices were still pretty good in 2007. There were also plenty of fertile gaps in the collection. Now you need a magnifying glass just to find one.^_^

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Back in 2004 I had less than 300 images online when Alamy licensed one of my images, my

first license with Alamy.

 

In my opinion, not that much has changed, except for the amount being paid for the

licenses.  I am also seeing many more licenses per month in 2017.

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In 2014 I had about 320 images, when I made my first couple sales, about 9 months after starting to submit to alamy.  How quickly you get sales depends on how quickly you get your images online (there is a time lag between when sales are made and reported), how much in demand your subjects are, and how your images compare to those that are already online with the same subject (and how many there are already on that subject).

 

Maria

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4 hours ago, NYCat said:

 

Ohhhhh Betty. I know, I know. It doesn't make sense to only upload every 6 weeks because I'm allergic to the new Image Manager. I know. I know. I am working on my keyword hierarchy in Lightroom (time consuming and boring) but also finding ways to make it a bit less painful. I just have this gut reaction when I see all those little bubbles instead of text. I can't easily sort out what I have. I shall persist. Thanks for the pep talk.

 

Paulette

I totally understand! :D I feel sure things will smooth out for you.  And I shouldn't be so smarty-pants because there are many ways people use to develop and keyword.

I sit here all smug because the new AIM fits my tried and true method which is not to tag in LR, but Bridge. It's all pretty painless. I feel for you who do it differently, because it surely is more of a struggle.

 

Yet I do have my struggles with my legacy images. Many have too many tags, some are broken, and because captions now have more weight, I'm having to overhaul them.

But what I said before stands....what is, is, and I just have to accept the problems and not get my tail in a twist. That would be me allowing and encouraging more stress in my life. I have enough of that, not of my making. I just keep plugging along with the old ones. Someday they'll be finished. Like when I'm in a nursing home! :blink:

 

In other words, I pick my fights. The ones I can't win I let go. That's me trying to survive. ?

Betty

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5 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

Back in 2004 I had less than 300 images online when Alamy licensed one of my images, my

first license with Alamy.

 

In my opinion, not that much has changed, except for the amount being paid for the

licenses.  I am also seeing many more licenses per month in 2017.

 

Hmmm.. when I started submitting in 2007, I believe there were about six million images on Alamy. Now there are over 100 million. That strikes me as being a rather significant change. For newcomers, getting started has to be much more difficult than it was 10+ years ago.

 

I too now make more monthly sales per month than I did "back then," but that is to be expected -- or at least hoped for -- since I now have many more images.

 

 

 

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I had my first sale with about 50 images on file, but that was long ago. As for dedication and commitment: when Alamy attempted to introduce storage fees, before backing down and offering the choice of red, green or blue plans, they permanently dented my faith in them. If I had joined later and missed that event, my collection would be much larger by now.

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I had only a handful of images may be less than 50 and it was a matter of weeks after uploading when I got my first sale.

 

Most people fail, as mentioned earlier, looking for a quick get rich scheme; stock photography is a long term venture - as shown by a recent sale of an image taken some 20 odd years ago - in terms of sport; it is an ultra-marathon and not a sprint, returns are slow and long term.

 

 

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I had 15 images on sale which were my initial submission.  The first sale came after a year which gave me the incentive to upload more.  That was in 2004 when there were far fewer images on here but also more other libraries in competition with Alamy.

 

A lot depends on whether you have a very niche collection.

 

Pearl

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It was interesting to look back, and to answer the question 140 images and four months after joining before a first sale for $111 (oh for more of those now!), followed by a second sale three days later. I'd been contributing directly to aviation magazines for twenty odd years and saw the chance to open my portfolio out to a far wider audience for not a lot of extra work on my part. My first fourteen sales were aviation themed subjects before selling a shot of the Tornado (tenuous link?) steam loco a year and a half later. The magazine work was a sideline to my day job (steel trade) and so I've become accustomed to working in my 'spare' time pretty much continuously since, and so uploading and working on my Alamy portfolio sometimes late into the night just seems a 'normal' thing to be doing for me. 

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T'was about 2 years after my first upload before my first sale came through.:angry:

 

That is perseverance for you.:D

 

Allan

 

 

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