Comments on: Alamy vs Microstock

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 04:59:31 +0000

The claims about quality requirements are not true. I had no difficulty being accepted as an Alamy contributer, but when I applied to become an iStockphoto contributor as well my images were repeatedly refused until I just gave up. The terms of refusal were not technical image quality but mainly on the grounds that my subject matter and composition was not unusual enough.

By: Corey Ford

Corey Ford — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:27:15 +0000

One more thing about Alamy for photographers. They have a list of cameras that they will accept photos from and a list of cameras that don’t cut it.

By: Corey Ford

Corey Ford — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:11:26 +0000

I joined Alamy a few months ago and have 549 images (Illustrations). It took awhile to get all these images on there and tagged. The tagging is quite time consuming and I had IPCT data on them already. Nothing was happening for the first few months while I was uploading and tagging but since August 2011 my images started to sell. I’ve sold four illustrations ranging from $39.19 to $238.17 for a total of $442.00 so far. Well worth the time it took to get them on there.

By: Quiroswald

Quiroswald — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 07:47:29 +0000

I agree with Enrique. Today there are many pictures in microstock agencies and I think it is really hard to make hundreds of sales of a particular image to get a decent amount of money out of it, whereas in Alamy, you are likely to get a high revenue from every sale.
I am a beginner in micro/macrostock and still need to learn much more, but this is how I see it right now

By: Enrique

Enrique — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:34:31 +0000

38 vs 25, recalculated …. hmmm. not big diference

you probably are right and I am wrong

do you know what are the facts?

By: Lee Torrens

Lee Torrens — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:15:46 +0000

I get 38 cents per download at Shutterstock and on-demand & extended license sales take the average much higher. Most serious contributors get the same or close to it. It’s important to get the facts straight before evaluating and drawing conclusions, don’t you think?

By: Enrique

Enrique — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 22:29:20 +0000

I wonder if the market for photography is so great to be able to sell photos at 25 cents and still be good business,

I have no doubt that this is a good deal for microstocks agencies, but what about photographers?

how many pictures have to sell to get 500 DLS month? 2.000 to 25 cents each

according shutterstock (home page) has photographers 216.070 registered

if we multiply 216,060 photographers by 2000 photos this is equal to 432.12 million multiplied by 25 cents photos give us sales of 108 million dollars per month,

so big is the market?

anyway, 500 DLS very low earns,

can you survive with 500 DLS monthly?

By: Fred Voetsch

Fred Voetsch — Tue, 05 May 2009 22:04:57 +0000

To me, the question is not, which is better, but is it a good investment of your time to contribute to Alamy? If you have the types of images they seel them it might be.

I own a small stock photography site and our overall numbers are not impressve but for the photographers who haven’t uploaded in a few years but are still getting checks, their time was well spent, even if they have moved on to bigger and better things by now.

By: Perrush

Perrush — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 12:51:48 +0000

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 )

Greetz
Stefan

By: MikLav

MikLav — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:39:14 +0000

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.