Woo hoo Alamy!

I was lurking in the Shutterstock forums, and there's someone boasting about being right on par with a 10k gross earnings for the year, with somewhere around 5300 images in his portfolio. It's gaining all sorts of ooh's and ahh's from the other contributors. Pity they don't see how much it devalues their work.

This guy's $10,000 at SS's most profitable payout rate would pan out to 26,315 sales, likely less due to the $20 EL offerings and direct purchasing, so likely closer to 20-23k with some special download licensing.

My seven sales this year through Alamy were over $1k. If that trend continued, it would only take me 40 sales to equal this guy's 20k+ sales. Plus, considering how buyers don't want to use the same thing everyone else is using, my 40 are going to be a lot less noticeable than his 20k+. More and more happy with Alamy every day.

Oh btw, their most recent QC time for me was a matter of hours. Looks like they finally caught up on their back log =)

dadCameraGuy wrote in post #6202494
um.... ever hear of google?

Funny thing about that is ninety percent of all questions asked in this forum could probably be answered using this generic answer!

In fact I tell my wife that same thing when I don't know the correct answer... Except I say it more nicely.

ChrisRabior wrote in post #6947331
I was lurking in the Shutterstock forums, and there's someone boasting about being right on par with a 10k gross earnings for the year, with somewhere around 5300 images in his portfolio. It's gaining all sorts of ooh's and ahh's from the other contributors. Pity they don't see how much it devalues their work.

This guy's $10,000 at SS's most profitable payout rate would pan out to 26,315 sales, likely less due to the $20 EL offerings and direct purchasing, so likely closer to 20-23k with some special download licensing.

My seven sales this year through Alamy were over $1k. If that trend continued, it would only take me 40 sales to equal this guy's 20k+ sales. Plus, considering how buyers don't want to use the same thing everyone else is using, my 40 are going to be a lot less noticeable than his 20k+. More and more happy with Alamy every day.

Oh btw, their most recent QC time for me was a matter of hours. Looks like they finally caught up on their back log =)

I think he needs to meet the guy who made $8k from one sale

ChrisRabior wrote in post #6947331
My seven sales this year through Alamy were over $1k. If that trend continued, it would only take me 40 sales to equal this guy's 20k+ sales. Plus, considering how buyers don't want to use the same thing everyone else is using, my 40 are going to be a lot less noticeable than his 20k+. More and more happy with Alamy every day.

For the most part I agree wholeheartedly with what you say, but I'm not so sure about this part. Basically, if cheap pics are selling, then apparently there are people quite willing to buy what everybody else is buying. For some people and purposes exclusivity is irrelevant and cheap is more important.

photoguy6405 wrote in post #6948729
For the most part I agree wholeheartedly with what you say, but I'm not so sure about this part. Basically, if cheap pics are selling, then apparently there are people quite willing to buy what everybody else is buying. For some people and purposes exclusivity is irrelevant and cheap is more important.

There are images that have sold several thousand times - people buy what is popular.

And the $8000 sale mentioned above is very rare...

this argument about which is better - microstock or the others - will never be resolved... there are many markets out there - each one fills a void.

Is anyone else experiencing a really long time waiting for images to be put on for sale? I finished keywording some images three days ago and alamy still hasn't put them up for sale yet, this usually takes under 24 hours.

gary88 wrote in post #6952454
Is anyone else experiencing a really long time waiting for images to be put on for sale? I finished keywording some images three days ago and alamy still hasn't put them up for sale yet, this usually takes under 24 hours.

Remember, Alamy doesn't work weekends or holidays. It is Christmas.

dadCameraGuy wrote in post #6952436
There are images that have sold several thousand times - people buy what is popular.

And the $8000 sale mentioned above is very rare...

this argument about which is better - microstock or the others - will never be resolved... there are many markets out there - each one fills a void.

I'm projecting a bit here, but I bet this is pretty close to the truth...

I was at Wal-Mart today and while in line was looking at the gift cards for sale. One of the W-M gift cards has a picture of a baseball and baseball bat on it. I'd bet they found the absolute cheapest photos possible for their gift cards. They just want to sell the gift cards with as little investment as possible and probably could not care less that that same photo will appear somewhere else.

I'm new to this entire stock photography thing, but I know a guy who bought his house off of stock photography - he says he made over 150 000 $ on one image. Is that possible or what the hell was he talking about there? He said it was used a lot by nikon.

Kajuah wrote in post #6954358
I'm new to this entire stock photography thing, but I know a guy who bought his house off of stock photography - he says he made over 150 000 $ on one image. Is that possible or what the hell was he talking about there? He said it was used a lot by nikon.

I haven't heard of a single image selling for that much (a single sale). Even selling the same image over and over, 150k is a lot for a stock sale(s). From what I gather, stock photography was more profitable for those that did it full time several years ago. I've heard some use to get 6 digits a year and now are into 5. Keep in mind this is someone, or maybe a group of people, going at it full time and likely marketing thier images several different ways. The average ameture photographer can't expect to upload a few hundred, or even a few thousand images on Alamy and expect to make a living off of it. Sure, big sale or two is feasible, but don't expect a 150k sale.

So stock photography is the walmart of photography for businesses/newspapers/​magazines and corporations now?

Kajuah wrote in post #6954957
So stock photography is the walmart of photography for businesses/newspapers/​magazines and corporations now?

Now? It always has been. Its much cheaper for a business or publication to licence an image from Alamy/Getty etc. than to commission a photographer.

All you have to do is flick through one of the typical publications that sit on the shelf in your local store to see stock photography being used front to back. Another example, would a new manager of a restuarant commisson a photographer for product shots of the new menu for $500 or would he licence the thumbnail images from Alamy for $100?

I searched before thinking to ask but Im still unclear....

I 'thought' I read somewhere here that if submitting jpg's they have to be upsized to around 25MB. After looking at Alamy's site I found:

Is there a MINIMUM compressed file size?

fortisi876 wrote in post #6957914
I searched before thinking to ask but Im still unclear....

I 'thought' I read somewhere here that if submitting jpg's they have to be upsized to around 25MB. After looking at Alamy's site I found:


Is there a MINIMUM compressed file size?

No, as long as the uncompressed size is over 48MB and the compression is saved at level 11 or 12.

the only problem nowadays is what happened with the pc revolution a few years back anyone with a camera is supplying images so all of a sudden all these stock library got millions of photos, prices go down and people that used to make a living now have a tough time. As stated earlier in the thread, a lot of buyers don look for quality but quantity and today thats easier accesible. and to much right as well. If you want a photo of a baseball you should not need to pay more than a few credits, because of the sale it will yield. a few years back you might have had to pay a fortune for a baseball photo from getty. ahhh g..d I just lost my point! anyway....