For those that don't know, Alamy is a Stock/Editorial/News Photography website. It's a place for you to upload your best work and people buy the license to use it.
Getting Started
Signing up is easy. You submit 4 images, they review them, accept or deny them and you're off and running.
Quality Control Policy can be found here.
For me it took 28 days to get my images reviewed, however, I have heard it was sooner for some.
Quality Control
They are very strict about what they require from you.
If you simply cannot do without over editing images, sharpening and adding your touch to things, then it may be hard to get accepted. They are looking for everything that looks like it came straight out the camera. There are a few rules though.
No sharpening of any kind
No watermarks, copyright info or text added to the image
No Chromatic Aberrations in the image at all
Uncompressed file size has to be over 24Mb (usually converting from RAW in DPP works wonders)
Your camera has to be on the list
That's the small important things. Here is the extensive list of things they don't accept in an image LINK
How does it all work?
Alamy has two types of contributors from what I can make out.
Pure stock, and editorial jouro type people that submit to the news feed daily.
There is the few like myself that float about both areas. I prefer the news route and it can be quite exciting.
Alamy has loads of diverse buyers. Anything can sell, and nothing is too rubbish for stock. As long as it meets the submission criteria, you can sell it.
What's the difference between RM and RF?
RM = Rights Managed - A license model that applies a date range to the cost of the license and buyers must adhere to that range. Anything outwith that license period and they must buy a new license.
RF = Royalty Free - The buyer can license the image for use as much as they like and how many times they like within the parameters of the original usage.
What sells the most?
RM & RF sales vary greatly. Some RF sells higher than RM and vice versa. I have a strict RM catalogue, because I like the protection RM offers.
How long before I can expect to see a sale?
You get an Alamy Rank, it's a base rank that all new people get. This fluctuates when you add images. The more you add and more chance you see views, zooms and sales. I started to see views at 100 images, zooms at 400 and sold my first image at 96 images. There's no science to it.
Views? Zooms?
Views are when someone enters a search critera and your picture came up on the page.
Zooms are when that search criteria is used and your picture was clicked on to produce a larger image on screen.
There's a theory that there's one sale for every 4-5 zooms, however, I've not experienced this.
Amazing!! I'll be buying a new FF in no time!
Wow hold on. Alamy isn't a quick selling system. For the most part it's actually quite a slow process. You upload batch of images and it can take up to a week for them to be cleared in QC. They then go into the Manage Images pool, and then you key word them. Keywording an image is a nightmare. So many variables, however, if you have a hard time keywording an image then it's going to be difficult to sell to anyone.
Who is Alamy for?
It's for everyone. You're not selling your soul to the devil. You are well protected and thought of. Submit your best work, have a good story attached to it and you will be a success. One guy is making $5000 a month on it. So there is success.
I created this because of a few enquiries of late and thought it would help folk who didn't want to PM me to ask. It's not a secret society. There's a lot of really disgruntled photogs on the Alamy forum who constantly moan about it not being as good as the old days, but I just get on with it.
We all have thousands of images kicking about doing nothing, and I just think in this day and age of austerity it's about time they went to good use.
If I can sell an image of a boiler to Scottish Gas for a promotional campaign then anyone can sell on there.
Any help you need, I'll be happy to do so :)
Paul
Getting Started
Signing up is easy. You submit 4 images, they review them, accept or deny them and you're off and running.
Quality Control Policy can be found here.
For me it took 28 days to get my images reviewed, however, I have heard it was sooner for some.
Quality Control
They are very strict about what they require from you.
If you simply cannot do without over editing images, sharpening and adding your touch to things, then it may be hard to get accepted. They are looking for everything that looks like it came straight out the camera. There are a few rules though.
No sharpening of any kind
No watermarks, copyright info or text added to the image
No Chromatic Aberrations in the image at all
Uncompressed file size has to be over 24Mb (usually converting from RAW in DPP works wonders)
Your camera has to be on the list
That's the small important things. Here is the extensive list of things they don't accept in an image LINK
How does it all work?
Alamy has two types of contributors from what I can make out.
Pure stock, and editorial jouro type people that submit to the news feed daily.
There is the few like myself that float about both areas. I prefer the news route and it can be quite exciting.
Alamy has loads of diverse buyers. Anything can sell, and nothing is too rubbish for stock. As long as it meets the submission criteria, you can sell it.
What's the difference between RM and RF?
RM = Rights Managed - A license model that applies a date range to the cost of the license and buyers must adhere to that range. Anything outwith that license period and they must buy a new license.
RF = Royalty Free - The buyer can license the image for use as much as they like and how many times they like within the parameters of the original usage.
What sells the most?
RM & RF sales vary greatly. Some RF sells higher than RM and vice versa. I have a strict RM catalogue, because I like the protection RM offers.
How long before I can expect to see a sale?
You get an Alamy Rank, it's a base rank that all new people get. This fluctuates when you add images. The more you add and more chance you see views, zooms and sales. I started to see views at 100 images, zooms at 400 and sold my first image at 96 images. There's no science to it.
Views? Zooms?
Views are when someone enters a search critera and your picture came up on the page.
Zooms are when that search criteria is used and your picture was clicked on to produce a larger image on screen.
There's a theory that there's one sale for every 4-5 zooms, however, I've not experienced this.
Amazing!! I'll be buying a new FF in no time!
Wow hold on. Alamy isn't a quick selling system. For the most part it's actually quite a slow process. You upload batch of images and it can take up to a week for them to be cleared in QC. They then go into the Manage Images pool, and then you key word them. Keywording an image is a nightmare. So many variables, however, if you have a hard time keywording an image then it's going to be difficult to sell to anyone.
Who is Alamy for?
It's for everyone. You're not selling your soul to the devil. You are well protected and thought of. Submit your best work, have a good story attached to it and you will be a success. One guy is making $5000 a month on it. So there is success.
I created this because of a few enquiries of late and thought it would help folk who didn't want to PM me to ask. It's not a secret society. There's a lot of really disgruntled photogs on the Alamy forum who constantly moan about it not being as good as the old days, but I just get on with it.
We all have thousands of images kicking about doing nothing, and I just think in this day and age of austerity it's about time they went to good use.
If I can sell an image of a boiler to Scottish Gas for a promotional campaign then anyone can sell on there.
Any help you need, I'll be happy to do so :)
Paul
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