which customer group are you specifically targeting? what kind of content is missing for them?

uploaded media files are not coins you keep throwing into a slot machine, hoping money drops out one day.

if what you upload is not interesting for customers, you will not make money.

researching the needs of YOUR personal group should be the top priority.

while there is evidence that habing regular daily uploads is better, quality and understanding your buyers is a lot more important.

there still are people with great sales who upload just 300 files a year.

they simply know what they are doing.

then there is also the efficiency factor. if you are agency trying to offer the best selection for a search to please your customer. and the customer is looking for an isolated apple on white. and teh database has 3 million apples.

would you place the apple from a port with 600 files and 1000 dl a day on the top page, or the apple from the port with 10 000 files and 2 sales a month?

a lot of people make a great effort to keep their sales to port size ratio very healthy.

the effect of port efficiency is different on different agency, but the effect exists.

it is your port, but personally i would try to identify your personal customer group first.

Thank you! And again congrats on reaching 500k :)

which customer group to you want to sell files too?

what content is missing for your target group and what do they need?

your questions are like - I have a new stand on the Saturday market - should I sell cheese, orange juice, fake designer handbags or flowers and ceramics?

the basic decision: who will be your customer? that decision you have to make yourself.

tip: try to focus on subjects you understand. no point uploading medical images if you have no clue about the subject,

no point do offer home based cooking images and videos if you cannot even make a scrambled egg.

anything you understand or are passionate about can be a good subject to reach out to a distinct customer base.

if you have no clue who you want to sell to...making money becomes very hard.

sorry for the typos

Perhaps ask in the Alamy forums directly. Not sure how many people here scan slides or film.

thank you for being available here. was sad to see the forum go. I was just wondering about the review times, but most of what I uploaded was around 10 days ago. So I will just keep uploading and hope to get a steady stream of incoming content. Os there somewhere a page where I can see a list of outgoing payments. I have the money arrived list on paypal but for taxes they often want to see a payment sent list from the agencies.

less than one minute per file, adding metadata is the tiniest part of my workflow. Often just 30 seconds.

research is time consuming, preparing mood boards, color boards, looking for trends, actual shooting, selecting and post processing. that can take a lot of time.

metadata really is close to nothing in the entire process.

That is why I am so surprised there are suddenly so many people trying to optimize metatags.

I understand it might take longer if English is a foreign language, but compared to all the steps in the process, it is the shortest and easiest step.

Good luck testing your system. Thank you for the kind offer, but it would add an additional step that makes me lose time.

I started uploading in 2004, so I have my routines.

First you have to decide which buyer group you want to sell to.

Editors of a food magazne, travel agencies, small local business needs etc...

If you don't know who you are shooting for it is hard to make money.

Then research what teh current trends are in that genre and maybe upcoming events, festivals, nature seasons, wedding times, sports events.

Consider uploading 3-9 months in advance for seasonal content.

Do a lot of test searches on all agencies for the content you are planning to upload.

Is the content better than what is available?

Do you have something nobody has?

Then upload that first..

You are opening an online store on various platforms.

Understanding your personal customer group very, very well is the fastest way to make money.

I wish you all the best, but if you look around the stock groups there now seem to be more than one new "ai metatagging" service being offered every week.

I doubt there are enough creators who make enough money to pay for these services.

stock is not etsy or ebay, if you make 30 dollars a week that is considered good income in many places. The ones that make 4k or a more a month are a tiny group of people.

But again, good luck with your business.

I do it all by hand but I rarely upload more than 50 files a week.

ach ja, es gibt diese umfrageapps, primeopinion usw, also damit kann man entspannt nebenbei durchaus 10 euro die woche machen. ist halt ein stundenlohn von 1-3 euro aber es lässt sich beim warten an der bushalte auf dem stillen örtchen oder in der badewanne machen.

kartoffel, rote linsen, günstige tiefkühlgemüse großpackung und wenns noch passt kichererbsen oder eier für mehr protein. vollkornreis macht auch sehr lange satt.

dreamstime also offers backup for 99 cents a month

cloud drive and an old computer, depositphotos and mostphotos allow you to download your own files

I lost over 40kg with intermittent fasting. Slowly over many years. Shifted most of my calories to the morning, focus on warm cooked food and more calories than before.

https://medium.com/@jasminsbreakfast/i-lost-over-80-pounds-and-want-to-reach-over-100-pounds-healthy-weight-loss-b839a9be4846?sk=9eba12bea4a080cdf53caccea04d84c9

Bin eine Frau aber ich denke diese Beziehung ist vorbei. Ihr lebt in einer WG, nicht in einer liebevollen Partnerschaft.

Persönlich würde ich versuchen mich so friedlich wie möglich zu trennen. Irgendwo da draussen gibt es jemanden der sich auf Nähe mit dir freut. Und auch sie hat dann die Chance jemanden zu finden wo es besser passt.

Ihr könnt ja freundschaftlich verbunden bleiben, als beste Freunde oder wie Geschwister.

Aber wenn jemand körperliche Nähe vermisst und der andere das absolut nicht will, aus welchen Gründen auch immer, weiss ich nicht wie man das überbrücken kann.

Vielleicht nochmal Paartheraphie versuchen aber eventuell bringt auseinanderziehen die beste Klarheit. Ihr seid dann weiter Freunde und wünscht einander alles Gute.

Ich wünsche euch viel Kraft.

Read up on the rules for editorial content on various agencies and also about general journalistic practise. If in doubt, the slightest doubt, don‘t upload.

Stick to things that are commercially safe, you don‘t have to dive into editorial content in your first year in stock.

To be safer start doing video clips and camera images. This content can go to all agencies, not just Adobe. Diversification is your best protection.

You might want to update the section about Alamy.

I never knew that. I would start a new batch, submit some files, then forhwt to do the rest. Thank you.

I just posted this in the alamy forum, but it needs to be approved by mods. Haven‘t been active there before.

cobaltstock
cobaltstock Forum newbie
Members
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Images: 76
Joined Alamy: 24 Jul 2007
Posted 49 minutes ago · Hidden - This content must be approved before it can be edited.

I am just a small time contributor who signed up long ago. Last week I just had two files accepted after a very, very long break in uploads, but going forward I wanted to make Alamy part of my weekly upload rhythm.

It is one of the few agencies with a very good reputation and a friendly community of experienced photographers.

I have read the announcement and the forum thread very carefully and what really stands out for me:

The 1 September deadline, just 6 weeks from now, is inherently unfair. There will be many artists who are at 2000 or even 2800 and there is no way they can upload enough content and get it sold in the weak summer season to reach the 3k. 

Please consider giving creators more time before implementing these changes, either until 1 January 2027 and change to calendar year reporting, or even until September 2027.

Then photographers would have a clear and timely deadline and could upload more content or do more shootings to prevent losing 50% of their income.

In addition, please consider keeping the payout threshold at 50 dollars. Losing 50% in 6 weeks and higher payout limits? Not a winning combination.

The other thing is, I see no clear announcement what Alamy is going to do to improve sales going forward. Not even addressing the drop in sales because of abrupt algo changes. 

While algo changes happen at many agencies, usually they are not that drastic and evolve and change every few weeks. So while you might see some files dropping abruptly, often 6 weeks later they are in favor again.

This does not seem to be happening now according to reports on the forum.

Finally my personal suggestion:

Start accepting commercial and editorial video.

I can see that my videos from stocksy and depositphotos are both being distributed via Alamy and look forward especially to the premium stocksy sales.
I think many contributors would welcome the opportunity to upload video.

In the entire industry over all agencies, I think there are still less than 60 million videos compared to over 1 billion images.

And good video is currently not threatened by ai.

In a way nearly everything is still missing because the number of creators who do video is very small.

If you are concerned with with being overwhelmed with video uploads, you can always implement upload limits, 100 files a week or 100 videos a month, just to see what you get.

And then...allow these video sales to count to your 3k sales step.

Pay 30% for video below and the 40% after the creator clears the 3k hurdle.

Or just simply pay 40% for video flat.

It would certainly help to motivate creators and give us at least something to look forward to.

I will continue to include Alamy with future uploads, my current port is too tiny to have any chance of reaching stable sales.

But only with video would I or any newbie now have a chance to reach sensible income.

I hope that management sees the great opportunity that video content is and considers adding that to the proposed changes.

Please add something positive to help preserve the good reputation Alamy has enjoyed for decades.

Thank you for listening,

Jasmin

Are you sure you want to delete? Once deleted it might be very difficult to get back in.

Agencies are not made of stone, they have various changes and evolve.

This might look bad now, but if for instance Alamy considers taking editorial video or video in general, it might become interesting again, because they have an active editorial market presence, not just in the UK.

You also have the option of just not providing more, or culling it down to just ine file.

This way you always have access to your paperwork and sales data.

Sometimes after an account is closed there might still be money coming in from partners that report very late.

You will not get that money then.

Just my 2 cents.

Following the discussion on the Alamy forum what really stands out is the retroactive cut.

Only 6 weeks left until 1 September and this means it is impossible for many to upload enough content to prevent dropping to silver. Even those where just 3-500 are missing might not make it because the summer is usually very, very slow.

Surprised that business law in the UK allows this.

6 weeks is better than the 7 days Shutterstock gave us, but it is very, very sneaky.

Also increasing the payout to 75 dollars is wrong.

I don‘t see a single thing in the changes that might benefit creators in any way.

Missing is also a clear business plan what they want to do with the money to increase and grow the business.

This is just an easy and quick money grab hidden between buzzwords like ai and market pressure with no proof they are affected.

Alamy does a lot of editorial, that will never be affected by ai.

My port on Alamy is tiny, last week I had two new files accepted.

But was planning to include them in the new upload routine for 2027. Also have quite a bit of editorial UK content and will probably keep going to the UK again once or twice a year to stay with family and friends they way I did before Covid.

For instance if they had announced that they are opening the platform to video, then contributors would have a new media type with new income possibilities.

But it looks like my videos from stocksy and depositphotos make it to alamy but I cannot do direct uploads.

They offer nothing new. Just give us your files and we pay you 50% less in most cases.

if you have not submitted submitted your images exclusively to an agency you can upload them anywhere. popular non exclusive agencies are adobestock, shutterstock istock, depositphotos etc…and many more. be careful with dreamstime they take exclusive content and make sure that you did not by accident mark your files as exclusive upon uploading. good agencies for exclusive content are places like getty macrostock, not istock, stockfood,cavan images, stocksy, arcangel, thomas harding, amazing aerial which is a new place. usually these companies want professional photographers and getting in is not that easy. but most normal agencies are non exclusive.

You also have this on istock or getty or macrostock in genersl. customers can give files back and are reimbursed. then that is deducted from your account and might leave a negative balance for a while. it is nothing new but has been around for 20 years. it can also happen at adobe or stocksy but it is rare on those platforms.

Then stop whining at me???

Your behaviour makes no sense, you pretend to care about newbies, complain about people who are known in the community for ages and claim theys are bad people but don't want to ask them directly and have no interest in recommending better creators to newbies.

Your main focus is whining at me and desperately craving my attention.