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I'm a relative newcomer to Alamy as well. Yea I'm in a similar boat too with no sales as yet. I keep hearing from people that you need the patience of a saint to do well on Alamy. More than once, Ive been told you usually have to wait a year before sales start to come through. Ive sold a reasonable amount through the microstock sites. Ive had multiple payouts on one MS site and one recent payout on another MS site. Though I have been told on an MS forum that I don't photograph anything interesting so I guess that's something that works against me.

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40 minutes ago, Patrick Cooper said:

I'm a relative newcomer to Alamy as well. Yea I'm in a similar boat too with no sales as yet. I keep hearing from people that you need the patience of a saint to do well on Alamy. More than once, Ive been told you usually have to wait a year before sales start to come through. Ive sold a reasonable amount through the microstock sites. Ive had multiple payouts on one MS site and one recent payout on another MS site. Though I have been told on an MS forum that I don't photograph anything interesting so I guess that's something that works against me.

 

You can check on All of Alamy (AoA) through your dashboard to see what customers are searching for on Alamy.  You can also search AoA to see if customers are looking for the subjects you are covering or are planning to cover. I think it's a very helpful tool that Alamy provides for their contributors.

 

Maria

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On 5/8/2018 at 12:39, MariaJ said:

 

You can check on All of Alamy (AoA) through your dashboard to see what customers are searching for on Alamy.  You can also search AoA to see if customers are looking for the subjects you are covering or are planning to cover. I think it's a very helpful tool that Alamy provides for their contributors.

 

Maria

 

A very useful resource, thankyou. It's interesting going through all the subjects that are being searched and it's so random - 'vintage newspaper', 'naked woman', 'fidel castro', 'storm sun sea.'

 

By the way, what does UCO stand for?

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Ive been looking through the All of Alamy (AoA)  and trying to submit images that relate, but still no sales. Ive uploaded tons of photos focusing on editorial over last few weeks since I started this thread and still nothing, not one sale, thousands of views, hundreds of zooms but no sales :-( :-( its very disheartening

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17 minutes ago, stevednp3 said:

Ive been looking through the All of Alamy (AoA)  and trying to submit images that relate, but still no sales. Ive uploaded tons of photos focusing on editorial over last few weeks since I started this thread and still nothing, not one sale, thousands of views, hundreds of zooms but no sales :-( :-( its very disheartening

 

Hello Steve, You only started submitting a couple of months ago. For many publications that's not even enough time to bring a draft copy to a state of readiness, let alone publish, receive an invoice and pay the contributors. Even if one of your images has been identified as a possible purchase, it may be many, many months before a sale registers. Similarly with newspaper usage.  It bear repeating again and again that Alamy is not Microstock; there is no instant gratification here and contributors here have to be in it for the long haul if they want to reap the rewards. Hang on in there. Summer is here and there are lots of shooting opportunities. Now is the time to be shooting and, for me at least, autumn and winter are for processing and uploading. If you do this and still have no sales this time next year you may then start to wonder whether you are doing the right thing at the right place.

 

Note: if you are getting 'thousands of views and hundreds of zooms' on a portfolio of 900 images you might want to check  if the searches they are appearing in are relevant to the searchers needs - if not asses whether the keyword which brought up the image is really relevant to it. Views which are irrelevant to searchers' needs will eventually hurt your search ranking. I get about 2500 views per month on my 3200 images and about 20-25 zooms, which is probably a bit low, but I have pruned my keywords to ruthlessly exclude false positives in searches.

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40 minutes ago, Joseph Clemson said:

 

Hello Steve, You only started submitting a couple of months ago. For many publications that's not even enough time to bring a draft copy to a state of readiness, let alone publish, receive an invoice and pay the contributors. Even if one of your images has been identified as a possible purchase, it may be many, many months before a sale registers. Similarly with newspaper usage.  It bear repeating again and again that Alamy is not Microstock; there is no instant gratification here and contributors here have to be in it for the long haul if they want to reap the rewards. Hang on in there. Summer is here and there are lots of shooting opportunities. Now is the time to be shooting and, for me at least, autumn and winter are for processing and uploading. If you do this and still have no sales this time next year you may then start to wonder whether you are doing the right thing at the right place.

 

Note: if you are getting 'thousands of views and hundreds of zooms' on a portfolio of 900 images you might want to check  if the searches they are appearing in are relevant to the searchers needs - if not asses whether the keyword which brought up the image is really relevant to it. Views which are irrelevant to searchers' needs will eventually hurt your search ranking. I get about 2500 views per month on my 3200 images and about 20-25 zooms, which is probably a bit low, but I have pruned my keywords to ruthlessly exclude false positives in searches.

 

Thank you for the advice. How can I check on what the searches was for on a zoom, I can see the photos that was zoomed but cant find out anymore info on why it was zoomed.

 

I also didnt realise that Alamy invoice people for the photo sales, so they dont take the money upfront ? that is a lot of waiting around for everyone and open to people wanted money back etc they can take the image, use it and then decide not to pay and have to be chased, thats a lot of admin and legal work

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43 minutes ago, stevednp3 said:

 

Thank you for the advice. How can I check on what the searches was for on a zoom, I can see the photos that was zoomed but cant find out anymore info on why it was zoomed.

 

I also didnt realise that Alamy invoice people for the photo sales, so they dont take the money upfront ? that is a lot of waiting around for everyone and open to people wanted money back etc they can take the image, use it and then decide not to pay and have to be chased, thats a lot of admin and legal work

 

On your dashboard, go to alamy measures and click on 'your images'. The resulting table defaults to the last month. Click on your pseudonym and you will see the list of search terms which have brought up your images for a view. You can also se the total number of images viewed by the customer on that search. Click on the individual search term to see the images concerned. Appearing here mean that the image has been returned in a search, zooms occur when a genuine buyer clicks on your image to get a closer look.

 

Alamy's roots are in the traditional photo agencies which predate microstock and they still operate largely the same way, though some sales are still the instant type from the website. Even when the sale is instant though (and shows up quickly in your sales report) it will still be some weeks before you get paid. Being an old fuddy-duddy, I prefer the way Alamy works to microstock, even if I have to wait.

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3 hours ago, Joseph Clemson said:

 

. I get about 2500 views per month on my 3200 images and about 20-25 zooms, which is probably a bit low, but I have pruned my keywords to ruthlessly exclude false positives in searches.

I wouldn't say so, I reckon a bit under a view/image/month is about right. I used to get nearer 1.5-2 some years ago but I was overtagged.

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6 hours ago, stevednp3 said:

Ive been looking through the All of Alamy (AoA)  and trying to submit images that relate, but still no sales. Ive uploaded tons of photos focusing on editorial over last few weeks since I started this thread and still nothing, not one sale, thousands of views, hundreds of zooms but no sales :-( :-( its very disheartening

 

 

As Joseph stated so well, it is often a lengthy period of time from when an image is uploaded to when it is downloaded and then invoiced.  Even if you have a lot of images up, if it's only been a short time since they were put online.    Looking at my last 5 sales, the dates of the images were Aug 2017, Jan 2016, July 2013, July 2015 and June 2014.  Unless you are covering a very timely and in demand topic, it may be a while before recently uploaded images are even searched for.  And it also depends on the number  and quality of competing images on the same topic.

 

Maria

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16 hours ago, Joseph Clemson said:

 

On your dashboard, go to alamy measures and click on 'your images'. The resulting table defaults to the last month. Click on your pseudonym and you will see the list of search terms which have brought up your images for a view. You can also se the total number of images viewed by the customer on that search. Click on the individual search term to see the images concerned. Appearing here mean that the image has been returned in a search, zooms occur when a genuine buyer clicks on your image to get a closer look.

 

Alamy's roots are in the traditional photo agencies which predate microstock and they still operate largely the same way, though some sales are still the instant type from the website. Even when the sale is instant though (and shows up quickly in your sales report) it will still be some weeks before you get paid. Being an old fuddy-duddy, I prefer the way Alamy works to microstock, even if I have to wait.

 

Thank you very much, thats really helpful. I dont mind waiting I have plenty of patience, just as long as I know what im doing is ok and will keep pushing forward :-)

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11 hours ago, MariaJ said:

 

 

As Joseph stated so well, it is often a lengthy period of time from when an image is uploaded to when it is downloaded and then invoiced.  Even if you have a lot of images up, if it's only been a short time since they were put online.    Looking at my last 5 sales, the dates of the images were Aug 2017, Jan 2016, July 2013, July 2015 and June 2014.  Unless you are covering a very timely and in demand topic, it may be a while before recently uploaded images are even searched for.  And it also depends on the number  and quality of competing images on the same topic.

 

Maria

 

Thank you, that puts my mind at rest :-)

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19 hours ago, Patrick Cooper said:

By the way, what does UCO stand for?

 

What is “UCO”?

UCO is Unique Customer Occurrence. The UCO is the number of unique customers who have used that search term.

 

... it tells you this in the yellow panel on the right-hand side when you are looking at AoA.

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  • 2 years later...
On 03/05/2018 at 13:00, spacecadet said:

GIS suggests that you have the same images on sale here and at MS sites. If you have, why would a buyer pay pounds here when they could pay pennies there? You do yourself (and, more indirectly, us) no favours.

But buyers on microstock sites pay quite a lot for subscriptions. (and can be hard to get out of see trustpilot but they get many images for the price that's why people often only get a few cents per DL. If they want a single image they still have to pay a few £s  on microstock - not much cheaper than Alamy. 

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The biggest problem with microstock sites now ar the large number of images buyers get on subs which is the main way that they get images cheaply. and if they don't use all their images in the plan (certain sites like one beginning with 'S and Adobe I think) keeps the money so contributors often only get a few cents per DL many times in a row. Contributors have been complaining on the forums and leaving in droves.. Sadly even if everyone left 'S' there's many other similar sites to take their place. 

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