Gone stock with Alamy
After I got back from Iceland in the new year, I decided to follow in the footsteps of a friend and colleague, Snorri Gunnarsson, and sign up with Alamy, a London (and recently New York) based stock agency.
The island Drangey makes for a spectacular view from the swimming pool in Hofsós, Iceland.
I read up on them as much as I could, asked around, and finally I joined. What I like about them is the fact that they’re nothing like your average microstock site. The photographer gets 60% of the sale, the prices are decent (compared to the big microstock sites), and I decide whether I licence my images or sell them as royalty free stock.
So, around mid-January I submitted my initial four images. After a very brief wait I was notified that they had all passed inspection, and from now on Alamy would only check a sample of images from every batch I submit. That said, if I send in a batch of 40 images, one of them happens to have slipped my radar and is covered in dust spots, and that particular photo is inspected by Alamy – the whole batch fails. I like that system.
In the one month since my initial submission, I have placed 278 photos for sale, (food making up more than a third of the collection) I have a few photos which have not been keyworded yet (and thus not for sale), and there’s a batch of almost 60 images waiting to be inspected. I’m hoping to have 400 images for sale by the end of the month. Obviously, I have to keep adding to that number and continue to produce good (or upgrade to excellent) work.
Sólvík restaurant (right) and the Western Emigration Center in Hofsós, Iceland.
Filed under: Photography, Stock
I'm just in the process of trying to organise my whole library of photos to to start uploading to Alamy. It's a long slog getting all the keywording done and filtering the best photos out, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!
Is it an easy uploading process?
The uploading process is pretty easy. You just select a number of photos and hit the Upload button. When the uploading is done, you have to click another button to say that you're not going to upload any more photos at this time, and that's when the images enter the processing queue.
There seems to be no quota on how many photos you can upload at a time, you just have to make sure they are at least technically near-perfect for them to pass through inspection. One bad (dusty, shaken, badly edited) photo can ruin a batch of 10 or a 100 photos.
About the keywords, I wouldn't necessarily bother with them until the images have been accepted. When uploading, Alamy takes the keywords from the IPTC keyword field and puts them in a field called "Comprehensive keywords" which has medium search significance. You will then have to move the keywords to other fields ("Essential keywords" and "Main keywords").
That said, if you've keyworded your images already, good for you.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Gunnar
Hi Gunnar,
Good luck with your journey into the world of stock. Your work is great so once you get a good grasp of what sells as stock you should do well, though as I'm sure you appreciate it is a tough market and long term endeavour.
Thanks Alex, I appreciate your kind words and pep talk :-) I'm definitely going into stock for the long haul, good things usually don't happen over night.
Oh, and I've been reading your blog - a great resource.
It would be great to know if you have made any sales through Alamy OR whether your friend has found it worthwhile to be with Alamy.
I need to decide ASAP whether to stick with my current stock agency Stock Connection OR to send my new images to Alamy.com
I tried a google search to find comments from photographers with Alamy experience but no luck. Your thoughts?
Peter www.peterkburian.com
Sorry for not answering sooner, but for some reason your comment was mistaken for spam!
I haven't made any sales yet, but then again I've only been with them for less than two months. My friend has sold a few images, and I think it's been worthwhile for him. You might take a look at the Alamy forums (http://www.alamy.com/forums/), I'm sure the people there have better answers to the questions you might have.
Cheers,
GFS