Alamy vs Microstock
August 21st, 2007 by Lee Torrens
I now need two hands to count the number of people who’ve encouraged me to try Alamy. I’ve been kept away by high quality requirements and a lack of Internet upload facility. Now they have that Internet upload facility and when I checked out their quality requirements, I discovered my camera meets their minimum requirements. Just. So will I join?
Alamy is NOT Microstock
Why?
- They don’t sell at micropayment prices
- They sell photos with Rights Managed licenses (in addition to Royalty Free)
But “microstock” is just a label, not a reason not to join.
What’s good about Alamy?
- The commission is 65%
- Offers Rights Managed or Royalty Free
- Great website - clean, functional, and clear copy
What’s not-so-good about Alamy?
- Payment by check incurs US$8 fee
- Payment by EFT incurs US$11 fee
- No PayPal payments
- Payout limit is US$250
- Their RSS feed only provides headlines
What Else about Alamy?
- 4 test images required to qualify
- High image quality requirements
What Could I Expect?
I found a discussion about Alamy vs Microstock on the Alamy forums. From the experiences there, the sales at Alamy pay high amounts, but don’t occur very frequently. According to some Alamy contributors, some types of photos earn more in microstock than on Alamy. I wonder how quickly that discussion would have been censored in a microstock agency forum.
What Else?
The Alexa traffic statistics for alamy.com, while not a flawless measure, show that Alexa traffic has been declining since early 2006.
Photographer commissions were 85% until 2002, and 75% until October 2006. Now they’re 65%. While this puts them miles in front of most microstock agencies, the trend isn’t pleasing.
Contribute to Alamy, or Not?
If I upload photos that are available in microstock, why would an Alamy buyer pay macrostock prices? Maybe, as one of the Alamy contributors said in the forum thread I linked to above said, they’re lazy.
I’ve registered with Alamy and will attempt to qualify as a contributor. If I pass the test, I’ll upload a handful of my good photos to sell royalty free and we’ll find out how many Alamy buyers are lazy. However, I’ll concentrate of contributing images that are excluded from the microstock market, such as unreleased photos of people.
Alamy have their place in the market. They appeal to photographers who want to sell their images but can’t bring themselves to sell at microstock prices. However, from the evidence I’ve found, photos at Alamy don’t earn as much as they do in the microstock market.
Tags: Alamy, Contributing, Macrostock, Reviews
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Not only the market is different for Alamy comparing with microstock, but their business/sales model is quite different. My understanding is that most sales is done by Alamy agents and partners and not automatically via website.
Also the clients are bigger and they don’t mind paying higher price but do appreciate agent’s help to get quickly what they need instead of paying low money but spending long time searching through the websites by themselves. Probably (just a guess) some of these clients do (or will) use microstock more and more, but I am quite sure that some will stay if that added value will still exist.
I think this kind of mid stock will surely decline the next years. Quality in microstocks is as good as it is on Alamy.
Besides the fact that I see no future for Alamy, I think they don’t pay that well. In the dicussion on the forum someone said, and I quote : ” By my estimate (based on my 4300 pictures) 7,000 would be returning an average of $3300 a month ” -> that’s less than $0.5 / image / month.
I know many contributors to microstocks , including me, are well above this number.
But I’ll surely hear how things went for you :o)
Greetz
Stefan
Hi,
Alamy Images are an awful company and worse than Getty for corporate brutality. My advice is stay well clear of them, as I helped them a lot in 2001, only to have them delete all my files under 24MB (around half my collection then) - which almost put me out of business.
At the moment, I may have to sue them, as they are refusing to acknowledge or pay for a recent re-use of one (though probably more) of my images when I was with the portal.
I told them long ago about web uploads and was ignored. I resigned in disgust in 2004.
Also, from what I hear, their sales performance is not as good as it was in 2003, as Microstock portals are now taking a lot of their market. RM stock portals can be a good bet for some work though. I have lots of people in my pics, so only a limited amount can be loaded onto Microstock portals.
I think Rights Managed stock will follow the Microstock model and there will be special Rights Managed Microstock portals for editorial material. I submit to a very tradtional agency - TopFoto and my recent sales reports show sales to publishers of £50 or even sometimes £20. Unlike Microstock, there is only one download!
Personally, I think traditional Rights Managed Editorial stock is in a state of transition and concept/commercial stock is almost entirely RF Micro.
I first developed the concept of Rights Managed Microstock on theimagefile.com portal, though apparently sold not one image (rather odd, when the “seed” license price was US$50 - though this meant a web use was just US$10, etc).
I now have most of my core collection on Digital Railroad’s Marketplace. And guess what? No sales to date. I think most serious editorial agencies must be looking at Microstock models, though many lack the courage to take the leap.
Publishers will still pay good money for editorial pics, though the market is very difficult these days and there is basically more money in Internet uses. For example, how many people would spice up political blogs with pics from editorial sources if the prices were similar to RF Microstock? The answer is tons.
At the moment, as a photojournalist (or rather ex-photojournalist) and travel reportage photographer, most of my RM collection is little used and it is very hard to stay in business. Microstock whether RF or RM offers a lot of potential for us to make some sort of living again.
Newspapers and magazines often want their cake and eat it. Unfortunately, few traditional agencies offer anything approaching a regular income and most photojournalists I know make money through sheer luck. The rest of us are dying a slow death, though there is a bit of hope with the possibility of a larger market.
This will change when Getty and Corbis start offering editorial pics with cheaper Rights Managed licenses and as the Microstock phenomena shows, there is certainly a larger market out there for pics of all types, whether they be a conceptual stock image, a travel pic or a dramatic shot from Darfur!
Keep snapping and if you are editorially inclined, keep praying!
Jon Mitchell