Question about Alamy stock photo website

[Jaime Vinas]

Have any of you tried Alamy or know anything about how that all works? Is it worthwhile to get into that? I would like to be able to start paying some of my equipment off or at least make enough to buy some more

The wife already said that if I want more equipment I better start selling lol

If any of you know, or have any good info on them, please pass it my way :)

Also, if you yall like please check out my work, do you think its worthy? :)

[na4m]

I've slowly built up a small portfolio (less than 100 images) on Alamy over the last year or so. Made a couple of sales earlier this year but haven't worked real hard at expanding my portfolio.

You will get more $ per image per sale on Alamy than on microstocks but probably less quantity of sales. I think photogs commission is 65% of sale price.

On Alamy you can sell images either as Royalty Free (RF) or Licensed.

Alamy has just over 9 million images for sale at present and climbing. I think I've read that they have images submitted from about 10,000 photographers or agencies worldwide. So the competition is fierce and it's generally agreed that there is an oversupply of stock images in all agencies as a result of the wide spread availability of good digital cameras at reasonable prices.

As to whether you can pay for your camera gear by submitting to Alamy. It all depends on how hard you work and how well your images may sell. It may take a while to build a portfolio and get them high enough in the Alamy search engine to get sales. So - realistically speaking it's unlikely you can submit a modest amount of images and hope to pay for a new Canon 5D or MkIII anytime in the first year or so.

I believe they currently require new submitters to send 4 images for quality checking before you can submit images for sale. Alamy's image technical quality checking has become more stringent in the last few weeks both for new and existing submitters.

The best thing is to open an Alamy account and then browse their images and use their on line pricing calculator to understand their pricing. They also have extensive contributor information on the technical requirements for images as well as how Alamy works.

Good Luck.

-Phil

[xseption]

Originally Posted by na4m

I've slowly built up a small portfolio (less than 100 images) on Alamy over the last year or so. Made a couple of sales earlier this year but haven't worked real hard at expanding my portfolio.

You will get more $ per image per sale on Alamy than on microstocks but probably less quantity of sales. I think photogs commission is 65% of sale price.

On Alamy you can sell images either as Royalty Free (RF) or Licensed.

Alamy has just over 9 million images for sale at present and climbing. I think I've read that they have images submitted from about 10,000 photographers or agencies worldwide. So the competition is fierce and it's generally agreed that there is an oversupply of stock images in all agencies as a result of the wide spread availability of good digital cameras at reasonable prices.

As to whether you can pay for your camera gear by submitting to Alamy. It all depends on how hard you work and how well your images may sell. It may take a while to build a portfolio and get them high enough in the Alamy search engine to get sales. So - realistically speaking it's unlikely you can submit a modest amount of images and hope to pay for a new Canon 5D or MkIII anytime in the first year or so.

I believe they currently require new submitters to send 4 images for quality checking before you can submit images for sale. Alamy's image technical quality checking has become more stringent in the last few weeks both for new and existing submitters.

The best thing is to open an Alamy account and then browse their images and use their on line pricing calculator to understand their pricing. They also have extensive contributor information on the technical requirements for images as well as how Alamy works.

Good Luck.

-Phil

Thanks Phil for the info!

[na4m]

Originally Posted by na4m

I think I've read that they have images submitted from about 10,000 photographers or agencies worldwide.

-Phil

I was wrong about the number of photographers/agencies submitting to Alamy. Don't know where I saw that but it's incorrect.

According to Alamy's 2007 Q2 statement the numbers are about 2900 photogs and 178 agencies.

Here's a link to Alamy's Q2 statement with those numbers and others:
http://www.stockphototalk.com/photot...nt-Q2-2007.pdf

-Phil

[Jaime Vinas]

Thanks for the info Phil. Which is better to sell images? royalty free or liscensed?
Im kinda new to this whole selling your work to companies. What would be the main difference?

[ttusa]

Royalty Free-when image is sold they can use it untold times, but you're only paid once.

Rights Managed-payment is made each time is used. I'm in a Rights Managed only stock agency.