photo credit: Yukari*

If I could embed an mp3 of a violin I’d do it.

In a 6.30pm email to all contributors yesterday (March 18th) the CEO of the Alamy Stock Library, James West announced that the mainly editorial stock agency may well have to succumb to a subscription based model based upon unlimited downloads as a worst case scenario. It would seem the UK newspaper industry is in such a mess it has decided to take its ball home if it can’t buy usage for microstock rates.

I’ve seen some bun fights over on Alamy’s forum and some toys thrown out of the pram (and in this case rightly so) but I’m sure when James clicked on the send button in his office at the end of that day he had no idea of the intense shit storm he was about to unleash. Just read the blog comments. Up to 134 and counting. About 5 in favour of giving our beleaguered newspapers an as much as you can eat buffet for a fixed fee. 99% screaming (literally) for a way to opt-out of Newspaper subscriptions.

Almost 24 hours (save 3 minutes) later James responded to those comments on the blog and no doubt the trillions** of ‘Angry from Croydon’ emails he’d invited his contributors to send him via his personal email inbox.

From James West himself in a comment below:

Clarification to readers – approximately 17,000 contributors received my email about UK newspapers and 300 opted out. The author has used the reaction on the Alamy forum to gauge contributor opinion, which is not representative of opinion across the Alamy contributor community as a whole.

James West
CEO
Alamy

In this follow up response James mentioned allowing an opt-out.

If you’re still unconvinced, please email Member Services, with the subject line “UK newspaper opt-out”, and we will exclude your images from any deals we do with UK newspapers.

If you are going to take my offer of an opt-out, please do something for me in return: wait and see. Don’t rule this out until you have had a chance to gauge the impact it will have on price and volume for yourself. You will be able to opt-out at any point in the future if you wish.

This appeased some but did this stop the masses from revolting? Hell no. Off they went again. 98 comments to date. Some rather well thought out and lucid arguments too. Grab a coffee and read through especially if you’re new to Alamy and/or stock. I can’t help wondering whether Alamy’s policy wing deliberately tosses out a bad news scenario in order to brainstorm possible solutions for free. I know that’s a cynical attitude to take. It could be that they are genuinely concerned about how their contributors feel.

At least they sort of pseudo-consult (albeit in a ham fisted manner) unlike Getty who are more than likely to just tell you to bend over and brace yourself.

24 hours later the cavalry arrive in the shape of another clarification blog post from Head of Content Alan Capel.

You guessed it……. still not enough detail to quell the fires of revolt! Though we did now realise that RM images were fair game for the Newshounds too! Despite assurances that prices would be set on usage, there’s a foul smell of a download model emerging which would let these key customers (only 8% of Alamy’s business mind) fill their boots for an all you can eat monthly fee. RMs RFs RPs the lot.

Contributors rightly point out that under the current model the Newshounds quite often “forget” to account for usages. As it is the key customers get access to download hi-res images on a “self billing” arrangement which trusts said organisations to account for each and every use they have made of the image.

Worse though, and the real crux of a subscription scheme like this is that Alamy can negotiate a price that isn’t far off what they get now on a contractual basis. Guaranteed income. No such guarantee for the contributor who will get the crumbs and see their work devalued even further. Can’t blame Alamy for wanting to secure cash flow in a recession but it’s the contributor that provides the content that gets the rough end of a subscription deal every single time.

Client gets cheaper imagery – Alamy get guaranteed payments – Contributor gets sod all!

The Alamy Forum (PP side note: not for those of nervous disposition) often reports unpaid usage attributed to the Newspaper accounts. So if Alamy can’t control this now (despite assurances they’re taking it seriously) PP wonders how the hell they’re going to control usage under subscriptions where the late nite sub-editor is going to look upon the whole of Alamy as his personal free stock resource. “I’ll mark those uses up later” – not.

More worrying is the precedent this is going to set within the industry. BAPLA have already spoken out against the Newspapers’ attempt to dictate the value of photographer’s work. PP feels that once the magic download rabbit is let out of the hat the other volume clients are going to come asking for it too. There could be a slow creep until the whole editorial and educational use sector is subsumed.

Best kill it now. Like the ill-fated Novel Use scheme. That didn’t work either.

PP thinks Alamy’s contributors have a great diversity of content that’s just not available anywhere else (yes anywhere). Some of it is complete crap but thankfully Alamy Rank is doing a good job in letting that sink to the bottom. There’s good cause for the Newspapers to pay real money to licence Alamy’s diverse content. Without it they’d have to send someone to the outer reaches of whatever godforsaken place they’re doing a piece on and get it shot. And that’s going to cost them way more than the current heavily discounted licence fees they enjoy from Alamy.

Of course they could:

1. Nick it off the web or FlickR (mind you don’t nick a Getty image now Mr Newspaper man); or
2. Persuade a newbie to part with their image for the absolutely wonderful “can’t resist oh no its just too good” reimbursement of a credit line.

Why can’t they just be thankful they can licence rare content for the current 75% off calculator knockdown price. But no, they want it even cheaper. Hey, that’s capitalism! But it takes two to tango and if Alamy show some cojones and stand firm the Newspapers can’t do much about it.

Fast forward to 25th March and in response to the tidal wave of opt-out emails James West feels compelled to write to everyone again. This one isn’t on the blog and it gives more detail on the probable (his words not mine) usage price points of £25 – £55 per use. If I thought that was even remotely possible I’d applaud though it covers the current discounted rates for spot up to 1/8th, getting 60% of £55 for a DPS in a national newspaper is going to seem like a hugely bad deal.

Fact is that Getty and AP who supply newswire sport, breaking news and celebrity images are already way way below that price point. I just can’t see Alamy managing to thrash out a contract with a newspaper in a recession that comes close to £25 – £55 for every single image for single non-exclusive editorial use.

PP is with a number of commentators who call for Alamy to let this sector go. By all means continue to service them at regular prices but don’t cave in chasing 8% of revenue from a dying industry. Newsprint isn’t exactly flatlining yet but they’re in A&E and the prognosis isn’t good.

Further developments are awaited with an uneasy mix of interest and trepidation. Lets hope for the sake of our future editorial sales Alamy’s negotiations with our UK Newspaper magnates are more successful than this guy’s attempt at appeasement.

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Understanding licensing types: Royalty Free image licences (1)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Ready Image licences (0)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Protected or Exclusive image licences (0)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Managed image licences (0)
• Stock Photography: Can you sell an image as RF and RM at the same time? (3)

photo credit: Mulad

Ouch! Seems that all is not well in the land of $1 images. Seems that the $1 image companies aren’t making quite as much profit as they want to and are making “some changes”.

First off microstock GrandDaddy istockphoto have decided to…erm….do some “housekeeping”. See the email they just sent out to selected contributors. .

This is hot on the heels of some more than unwelcome announcements by Fotolia which seem to increase image prices but reduce contributors earnings and also change the way exclusive images are paid out. See the fallout discussed here

Heads up to http://www.stockphototalk.com for the lead!

As if it wasn’t bad enough that you had to sell your work for peanuts, now you’re all are being asked to bend over and… well….I’ll let you imagine.

Lube up boys….

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Stock Photography: Can you sell an image as RF and RM at the same time? (3)
• Is the stock photography bubble about to burst in 2008? (1)
• Breaking news: Alamy allow 2 week Novel Use opt out from 10th June 2008 (2)
• Alamy go all ‘microstock’ with ‘Limited Use’ scheme (2)
• Understanding licensing types: Royalty Free image licences (1)

photo credit: Suzie T

Shoot! The Blog over at the Photoshelter Stock Library has posted a great countdown of 10 top tips to help you improve your success with Stock Photography. I have to say that I agree with all of them, and especially Tip 1!

Get on over there and inwardly digest this great piece of advice

10 Things You Should Know about Stock Photography

(strangely their URL says “8 things” – perhaps someone added two more when they weren’t looking… :)

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Understanding licensing types: Royalty Free image licences (1)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Ready Image licences (0)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Protected or Exclusive image licences (0)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Managed image licences (0)
• Stock Photography: Can you sell an image as RF and RM at the same time? (3)

photo credit: DerrickT

Quick heads up for Alamy contributors having Alamy QC failure paranoia. I’ve been alerted to some great examples of Soft & Lacking Definition failures from Alamy QC over at andysmee’s blog here where he explains each type of failure with good 100% crops so you can see exactly what is being failed.

Whatever you might think about Alamy QC failing images for “soft or lacking definition”, as explained here, so far those of us who frequent the forum have yet to see a picture that the photographer can show at 100% to be free of some kind of flaw. Since I seem to be capable of creating pictures that are soft and lacking definition on demand I thought I would put up some more examples for those who are still in denial about it.

So be in denial no longer – get over there and see for yourself!

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Stock Photography: Can you sell an image as RF and RM at the same time? (3)
• Selling on Alamy: Royalty Free or Licenced? (5)
• How to effectively delete an image off Alamy straight away (1)
• Five practical tips to help increase your Alamy Rank (4)
• Breaking news: Alamy allow 2 week Novel Use opt out from 10th June 2008 (2)

photo credit: C.P.Storm

Following yesterdays controversial decision by Alamy to sell RM images for as little as 60p today Alamy CEO James West has announced an opt-out period for those seemingly locked into Novel Use participation until April 2009:

An opt out has been made available for Novel Use. The opportunity to opt out will be available for two weeks from today. I apologise unreservedly to those of you who feel you have been misled. This was never my intention and it is not the Alamy way of doing things.

To opt out of Novel Use go to My Alamy and follow the link to ‘Novel use’ under ‘Additional revenue opportunities’. Select ‘No thanks’ and then ‘Submit’.

Kudos and thanks to James West and Alamy. This news is of great importance to RM shooters and we are grateful of the opportunity to preserve the image rights this licence affords.

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Alamy go all ‘microstock’ with ‘Limited Use’ scheme (2)
• Stock Photography: Can you sell an image as RF and RM at the same time? (3)
• Selling on Alamy: Royalty Free or Licenced? (5)
• Understanding licensing types: Royalty Free image licences (1)
• Understanding licensing types: Rights Managed image licences (0)

photo credit: rastafabi

I predict a riot. Alamy appear to have gone all microstock on us today. No, seriously. No, don’t look at your calendar – its not April 1st.

So just WTF (as teenagers say in text speak) is going on over there?

Today on their blog, well known stock photography agency Alamy wrote that they were “delighted” to announce the introduction of a new revenue opportunity to be known as “Limited Use”. Unfortunately their contributors, upon seeing the details, were not delighted at all. In fact, some of them appear to be pretty livid.

Quick History lesson

Back in September Alamy introduced what they termed as their “Novel Use” scheme. This was apparently to be able to sell licences that fell outside of the normal price calculator. It was noted that the sort of “novel uses” Alamy had in mind were high volume but low revenue opportunities. Think phone screensavers etc – though Alamy never gave any idea of what they thought Novel Use meant; in part because it was there to capture as yet unrealised uses and partly (as I can understand fully) so as not to give away their ideas to the competition.

Scroll forward to April just gone (April 2008). April is the one month a year where you can opt-in or out of Alamy distribution and/or Novel Use. Since nobody in the known universe had actually reported a Novel Use sale yet most people , it would seem, left the opt-in live.

Today (9th June) Alamy released this blog post on their blog which outlines the new “Limited Use” scheme.

According to the blog: Limited Use has been devised to let your images compete in the low cost ‘micropayment’ market without undermining your existing revenue streams on Alamy.

It proposes a three tiered pricing point which covers images from web resolution up to A6 print size:

Quoting from Alamy:

Blogs: Use in articles posted by an individual blogger on personal and special interest blogs for an unlimited time. Images cannot be included in a corporate site, used for advertising or promotion or used in a defamatory, sensitive or controversial manner.

Social Networking: For use by an individual on social networking and virtual world websites for an unlimited time. Images cannot be used in advertising, promotion or in a defamatory, sensitive or controversial manner.

Education: For teachers, academics or higher education students on a single user basis for any of the following combinations:

* Interactive whiteboards
* Hand outs
* Project work
* Reports
* Dissertations/theses
* Presentations/lectures

So how much are these licences?

Limited Use licence pricing

XS 0.4 MB Web 450 x 300 px (16 x 11 cm @ 72 dpi) £0.60

S 1.4 MB Electronic media 689 x 462 px (25 x 17 cm @ 72 dpi) £1.20

M 5.5 MB A6 print out 1142 x 1688 px (20 x 29 cm @ 150 dpi) £1.80

Limited Use will be trialled in the UK initially and covers all RM & RF licence types. Yes that’s right – RM or “L” as Alamy call it is included. This is what is so wrong. RM sold at 60p, that is plain wrong even if it is for limited use (who is going to police the use??). RM images are controlled by history of sales. I could understand Alamy doing this with RF only but with RM it is completely devaluing the licence type.

And we all thought RM had gone to the dogs when Getty introduced the $49 web licence – that seems like a good price compared to this.

As I write there are 73 (and rising) comments to Alamy – none of which welcome this move. The Alamy forum thread is nearing meltdown.

Contributors are threatening to remove their images from Alamy. This sounds a drastic move but if you signed up for “Novel Use” and didn’t remove yourself in April 08 you are now committed to this until April 2009 – so any and all of your RM or RF images can be sold for 60p!

Yes, there is (I think!)! but its not going to be quick.

Alamy say the following about Novel Use: “If you do sign up however, all of your images (except those with licence restrictions) are locked into the scheme. You can opt-out in April of each year if you wish to.”

Add a restriction:

So if Novel Use images must be free of any restrictions then to stop that image being included in the new Limited Use scheme simply set a restriction. Any restriction will do. Even “internal business use in the Pitcairn Islands”. It doesn’t matter.

Just add a restriction that won’t restrict its normal saleability. i.e. don’t be a muppet and restrict worldwide editorial use!!! :)

Tutorial: how to set a restriction

I’ll try and keep this post up to date with how this progresses. Its only day one and the peasants are revolting.

This is gonna get ugly……

PP

Update from Photoshelter: Consensus on the forums there (but no word yet from the big cheeses) is that if you have images in Alamy’s Novel Use scheme you cannot have them for sale on PSC as it will break their “under $50” rule.

I think that’s harsh. A lot of contributors to both agencies have trusted Alamy and opted-in to Novel Use in good faith that it was to pick up out-of-calculator sales – not micropayments. Now they face being penalised twice. Alamy have 10 months left for all the opted-in contributors before they can make a mass exodus. Alamy are not playing fair here.

Come on PSC – you aren’t the worlds top seller of imagery and you do take some stick but no need to kick us when we’re down eh?!

Update 10th June 2008: Alamy have today announced a 2 week opt-out period for Novel Use participation from 10th June 2008.

See THIS POST for details

Update 14th June 2008: The Alamy site will be down all day on the 15th June to implement “Limited Use” – gulp…!

Update 8th July 2008: Alamy have posted that they are listening to contributors and have plans to modify the scheme, perhaps allowing opt-in by pseudonym or individual image. See the Alamy blog post here

Update 11th July 2008: Two more Novel Use / Limited Use updates have appeared. Alamy have posted that they are allowing internal corporate use under a subscription model. See the Alamy blog post here and that Novel Use / limited Use is now available to customers worldwide. See the Alamy blog post here

Update 7th June 2009: The Novel Use scheme appears to have passed quietly away sometime in February 2009!. The scheme is no longer active at Alamy. Alamy’s adventure into microstock was short lived. I, for one, am glad. Alamy’s USP is not to service bloggers but to sell its wide and diverse collection of editioral images that are unobtainable anywhere else.

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Breaking news: Alamy allow 2 week Novel Use opt out from 10th June 2008 (2)
• Stock Photography: Can you sell an image as RF and RM at the same time? (3)
• Selling on Alamy: Royalty Free or Licenced? (5)
• Stock Photography: Adding Sensitive Issues restrictions to your RM or RP images (0)
• Stock Photography: Adding exclusive usage restrictions to your RM or RP images (0)

photo credit: Gaetan Lee

OK so you’ve discovered your Alamy Rank and where your work sits in the grand scheme of things. You want to get off page 45 so you can get some views, zooms and increase your CTR. You want sales of course! Fed up with languishing in the division three of search returns? Then you need PP’s 5 practical tips to get up that ranking ladder….

Before we go any further. If you haven’t done so already – make a note of where your pseudonym sits compared to others by reading BHZ and how to find your Alamy Rank

done that? Made a note of your position? Let’s get the numero uno, supreme, first, most important, ultimate tip out of the way first (this isn’t in the five!):

Supreme Tip of Tips: Shoot more saleable images

No seriously, do that and you will sell. What the 5 tips below are going to help you do is improve where you are already. But you aren’t going to sell jack if you are shooting pics of cats and rulers….i.e. you need to have some idea about shooting for stock. There’s no free lunch but Alamy will reward hard work. If you have got a half decent folio of saleable images but they’re caught languishing a few pages down in search returns then it could be your approach to how Alamy works that is wrong.

TIP #1: Edit edit edit your collection….

There’s nothing quite as good as killing off your CTR with a huge number of similar images. If you have one shot of the Eifel Tower then great. Two or three is fine too if you are exploring different angles. But 34?

Ha! You might laugh – I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Unless your extras are adding something then get rid of them. Keeping them on the off chance that a photo editor is going to need frame 26 rather than frame 25 because you moved 1″ to the left is pure fantasy.

Cull them I say! Keeping them means that on a basic CTR calculation you’re 34 views down before you even started when someone searches for our little Parisien monument. Remember, Bad CTR = bad Alamy Rank = no sales. So my 8 frames per second addicts; imagine each shot is costing you $20 to produce and slow down and edit your captures, and only upload the best. It’ll help in the long run. Trust me.

See here if you’re wondering how to effectively delete an image off Alamy immediately.

What is efficiently? Remember that every word you use could pull up your image for that term. So describe the image accurately but don’t copy Roget’s Thesaurus or Wikipedia into the keyword fields. Use the three-tiered keywording system Alamy provides to separate your keywords into order of importance.

If there’s a small duck in the scene yet the subject is a riverboat in the foreground don’t put “duck” as a keyword unless the buyer knowing a duck is in the scene is crucial. I saw a shot once (the one I’m describing) where the duck even had its latin name keyworded. That’s plain nuts if you want a good Alamy Rank. Remember views are no good without zooms and sales. Get viewed a lot and not zoomed or sold and your rank will plummet faster than you can say Alamy Discount… ;)

I often see people referring to Alamy Measures (Alamy’s beta of a statistical information tool for contributors) as “can’t be bothered with that” or “its all wrong anyway” or even “waste of time”. How wrong they are. If you are doing something and spending money and time doing it and someone could show you for free where you are going wrong then you’d be a bit stupid not to listen, right?

So take notice of your Alamy Measures statistics. They’re easy to understand. If you need a refresher or are new to Alamy then I wrote a post on understanding Alamy Measures so go take a look.

Use Alamy Measures to constantly tweak your keywording and see where you are getting “false views” i.e. you are being seen for a search term you match but your image is not really what the buyer wants. You must address these false returns. This normally means you’ve over-keyworded or have been a bit loose on your description of the image in the keywords.

Including words that are really only on the outer edges of what the image is conveying is going to result in views with no zooms. Sometimes you may have keyworded correctly but didn’t get a zoom. Don’t worry! Be glad you are being viewed for the correct terms – else tweak those keywords until you get it right.

You should look at Alamy Measures as often as possible. Constant keyword refinement will pay off over time.

Why? People create Pseudonyms for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they shoot material they’d rather not have their real name associated with. So they shoot under a pseudonym just like a writer may choose to write a novel not in their regular genre under a pen-name. Other people use pseudonyms to categorise their collection so if a buyer clicks the link that takes them to your collection they will see similar images i.e. a pseudonym for architectural work, one for lifestyle, one for travel images etc. one for RF images only perhaps.

Having multiple pseudonyms can also (by using Alamy Measures) show you what your most popular genre is. Experiment but remember that all new pseudonyms created are given a median rank (at least they were last time I created one). So if you’re near the top then you may drop back in Alamy Rank with a pseudonym change.

Nothing at Alamy changes overnight (except keyword revisions..!). Your Alamy Rank is based upon the last 300 days of Alamy Measures activity ans Alamy Rank is updated roughly every 100 days (though earlier this year they updated twice in a fortninght.) So any changes to keywording you make today will go live tomorrow but your “BHZ” Rank will not change until the next Alamy Rank update.

What will change (if you are watching your Measures) is that as you cull excessive similars, move to new pseudonyms, revise and tweak your keywords – you should see your zooms increase and CTR rise; you may even see more sales!

But patience dear contributor is the key. Stock photography is a long term game – requiring patience, stamina and in the case of submitting to Alamy, constant revision. Its a game you must play else you’ll sink without a trace; and in a sea of 12 million images, the bottom is a very long way down….

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Alamy Rank: what it is and why it matters (2)
• “BHZ” and how to measure or find your Alamy Rank (13)
• Stock Photography: Can you sell an image as RF and RM at the same time? (3)
• Soft and lacking definition… just what do Alamy QC mean? (0)
• Selling on Alamy: Royalty Free or Licenced? (5)

photo credit: Jef Poskanzer

So you’re underway with selling stock photography on Alamy. You’re getting some views and some zooms so you’ll have an Alamy Rank. How do you know what your Alamy Rank is ? How can you improve it?

PP shows you how to easily compare your Alamy Rank to others.

Finding your Alamy Rank. Before we can improve it we have to find it!

We’ve previously learnt that Alamy don’t tell us our Alamy Rank. There is nowhere in the contributor screens that says “Your Alamy Rank is XX”. This is because your rank position will vary with each search made by a buyer. Your Alamy Rank puts your images relative to other people’s images which are returned in any given search.

Thus your Alamy Rank in real terms will vary on each and every search.

I’m not a mathematician, but I do know that in any given formula, if you want to compare something to something else its useful to have a constant. The constant in this case is going to be the search term itself.

The search term BHZ was thought up by one of the contributors on the Alamy Forum. He realised that the letters BHZ used as a word had no hits in the live collection – i.e. searching for BHZ returned nothing. He figured that if a number of contributors used this search term and placed the BHZ word in the same place everyone would be able to see where they stood in comparison to others. A small easy to follow set of rules were drawn up.

Here’s how to play the Alamy Rank BHZ game:

1) Select one of your “L” (Rights Managed) images (do not select an RF image – see Note 2) and click Edit image to get to the Edit image screen where you update keywords etc.

2) In the Essential Keywords field write BHZ as the first word in the field

3) Save your changes to the edited image

4) That’s it – all done!

Note 1: Only ever add BHZ to one rights-managed (L) image for each pseudonym you have. If you have more than one pseudonym this is a good way of comparing them to each other and other contributors. Remember: its the pseudonym and not the image that is subject to Alamy Rank – so there is absolutely no use adding BHZ to more than one L image per pseudonym.

Note 2: Do not add BHZ to RF images. RF images are treated differently by Alamy Rank and the Diversity Algorithm. RF images do not give a true picture of your Alamy Rank.

When will I see the changes and how do I measure my Alamy Rank?

1) Wait at least 24 hours until the next database refresh. Your new BHZ image will then be searchable.

2) From the Alamy search box enter BHZ and select “L” images only (because despite simple instructions some people have put BHZ into RF images – doh!)

3) The search will return all images keyworded as BHZ including yours. Look at the total number of images returned and scroll down and page through to find your position (you’ll need to count and should be able to recognise your own image of course!)

Make a note of your position (and of your other pseudonym positions too) so you can see how changes to your collection affect your Alamy Rank over time.

There are (at time of writing) 950 “L” images so one can assume 950 pseudonyms playing the BHZ game! While this is only a fraction of Alamy’s total contributors, it is a good enough sample to give you an idea of where you stand relative to others.

How often does Alamy Rank update?

Alamy say every 100 days based upon your CTR and sales and other performance over the past 300 days. Remember, you are measuring your performance compared to everyone else, not against an Alamy scale!

Next post we’ll have a look at the factors involved in increasing (or decreasing!) your Alamy Rank.

PP

If you found this article helpful you may also like to read:

• Alamy Rank: what it is and why it matters (2)
• Five practical tips to help increase your Alamy Rank (4)
• Alamy Measures primer: Understanding Views, Zoom and CTR (0)
• Alamy Measures primer: The individual Pseudonym and CTR % screen (0)
• Stock Photography: Can you sell an image as RF and RM at the same time? (3)

photo credit: Buster Butterfield McLeod

Another common cry and cause of much angst and grumbling is Alamy Rank. Just what is it about search positions on Alamy that get contributors so hot under the collar? Is it weighted against photographers and for Agencies or vice-versa? Is it possible to work out your Alamy Rank? What do you need to do to get a good one? PP explores…..

What is Alamy Rank?

Put simply, Alamy Rank is a way for the Alamy stock photography library to rate contributors and return the most popular (some would say the best) images in any given search. It’s a key feature to understand because with 12m images you need to be in the first few pages of a popular search (i.e. one that returns thousands of hits) to stand a chance of being seen at all.

Alamy currently has a little over 12 million images. A lot of popular subjects can have thousands of images that match search terms. So how does Alamy go about sorting the plethora of images into some semblance of order? What makes Joe’s image return at position 1 but Fred’s at position 1,000.

Easy, it lets the customer decide.

The customer does not vote. But the customer (in the course of looking for a specific image to suit their needs) searches then clicks on interesting images to take a closer look and then, hopefully, buys. It’s this customer interaction with the database of 12m images that Alamy uses to decide who comes where in searches.

The formula:

According to Alamy:

AlamyRank records all the images that are seen in search results by customers – called ‘views’. The system also records when customers click on, and purchase, images they are interested in. Images that are seen but seldom clicked move down the results. Images with a greater proportion of clicks to views are moved further up the results.

The three major elements views, zooms & sales are used to calculate your Alamy Rank.

Sounds simple huh?! So what is the unit of Rank? I mean if speed is measured in miles per hour (mph) and weight is measured in pounds or kilos, what unit of measurement applies to rank?

Nobody really knows. A few like minded Alamy contributors have discovered a way to compare their rank to each other though. That gives a sort of measurement. I’ll cover that next post so as it’s important in tracking your efforts with keywording etc. to improve your position.

Is my alamy Rank the same as my CTR% figure shown in Alamy Measures?

No, its a different indicator. Your Alamy rank takes your CTR into consideration (we think it does – else why show it?) but the actual weighting of the formula above including CTR and sales is a closely guarded (and soon to be patented) secret. Colonel Sanders wouldn’t give you his recipe now would he…?!!

What if I have more than one pseudonym?

You get an Alamy Rank for each pseudonym.

The “Diversity Algorithm” also plays a part here though that is more concerned with spreading similar images returned by a search through the returned search pages i.e. so one person cannot totally dominate the top of the search. As far as I can tell the diversity Algorithm is not a factor in Alamy Rank save for weighting the spread of search results as described previously.

Where do new pseudonyms start?

A brand new pseudonym is given a median rank i.e. in the middle of the pack. Remember its the pseudonym and not the individual images that are ranked.

Why are my images higher up in some searches than others?

This is because you are competing against all other contributors, not a static measure. e.g.

A search for “honey bee” may return 5,000 images. Your top image may be on page 5.
A search for “horse” may return 141,000 images. your top image may be on page 85!

Why? Because there is more competition for the “horse” search and you have more people in front of you with a better Alamy Rank.

Next post will deal with how to compare your Alamy Rank to other contributors.

PP

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photo credit: Jeff Kubina

Doom mongers and naysayers have been predicting the collapse of the stock photography industry almost as long as Nostradamus has been predicting the end of the world.

So who is right?

Thanks to a link on the Alamy forum earlier today I got to read an excellent post on Philip Nealey’s blog, Unsharpmasked.com regarding the possible crash of the Stock Photo industry as we know it today. Philip talks of the history of Stock Photography and how it rose into the models we are all familiar with. There’s some wise words for microstock participants too.

Here are my thoughts on Philip’s article…

Whatever happens, you can be certain that the status quo won’t apply in a few years’ time. I think we all agree on that.

It was a very good read but strangely there was no mention of Alamy. I think Alamy and its ‘find anything as it’s unedited’ business model may just win out – because there are still gaps in Alamy to fill. The world is a very big place and not even 12m images will cover everything that a researcher wants.

Contrast that with the microstock libraries where most micros have more shots of smiling teenagers with phones than you can shake a stick at…

Philip reoprts that some of microstock’s leading players are beginning to question the business model as it stands today. Why would this be?

Like most “mass produced” goods, the iStock profits were there initially for the people with the foresight to get in and risk their shirts ahead of the curve of the masses. Who could resist “proper” stock shots for $1. But now the masses have caught them up and their returns are being spread among more and more image producers and decreasing rapidly, so it’s no wonder their enthusiasm to carry on with that model is waning.

Traditional RF could well get squeezed down price-wise as it must compete with RF micro. But good conceptual RF as sold by the likes of Getty, Corbis and Jupiter may still have a few years left to reap rewards and even more if the micro bubble bursts from oversupply and disinterested contributors.

I still think that the safest bet is in production of high end exclusive RM. This has a place and the best will continue to rival bespoke assignment work especially for agency buyers.

Strangely enough Alamy, by its very diverse unedited model will have a place too. Still plenty of gaps in that 12m (at time of writing!) to find. Happy hunting folks..!

PP

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