This post has been inspired by some discussion on the Alamy forums and follows on from my previous analysis of the 2009 performance of my portfolios at Alamy and Agefotostock.

As Alamy is a non-exclusive agency it is common for contributors to seek out additional outlets for their images and Agefotostock is one of the agencies that interests many, particularly as they have recently started accepting non-exclusive images. This change makes Age a very viable option for those seeking another agency.

While there are many other non-exclusive agencies what still sets Alamy apart is its unique selling point of accepting pretty much anything you throw at it as long as it meets technical requirements. Don’t expect to dump your whole Alamy portfolio at Age; they state a typical acceptance rate of only 10% of images submitted to them! However I don’t think this should necessarily be seen as a problem.

Having your submissions critically evaluated by picture editors who have a sound understanding of what sells is a valuable service and learning experience. While there is a lot to be said for Alamy’s open editorial policy, and the diversity of material that sells is testament to the suceess of the idea of making everything available, it doesn’t always work in the interest of every individual contributor. In fact the temptation to build your portfolio size by throwing up everything you’ve got could in fact work to the contributors disadvantage.

Alamy’s willingness to accept almost any image can be a double edged sword. On the up side it does give contributors the opportunity to market pictures that would otherwise struggle to find an agency and this in turn creates a uniquely large, diverse and esoterical collection for picture buyers and researchers to explore. However for both contributors and buyers of images there is a potential downside of this open policy.

While the size of Alamy’s collection is touted to buyers the sheer volume of images can potentially make it harder to find the right picture. The effectiveness of the Alamy search engine is therefore essential to sort through this huge haystack of imagery and present just the images a buyer is looking for. Without effective search results the quantity of images to wade through would actually start to be a deterrent to potential users. For contributors the implications of this manifest themselves as Alamy Rank; part of the mix of sorting that determines the order in which images are shown for searches. In the best traditions of search engines Alamy doesn’t, of course, entirely disclose how your rank is calculated but we do know enough to understand that if images are consistently failing to interest buyers all the images of the applicable pseudonym will gradually start to drop down the order in search results. This is obviously meant to prioritise the better images and in essence it does a pretty good job of this. However there can be reasons a contributor with good images is penalised by Alamy Rank.

Sadly for photographers, who for the most part just like making pictures, the business of photography involves a great deal more than creating images and stock photography is no exception. Success selling images on Alamy, or as stock photography generally, is only in part about creating strong marketable images and has a great deal to do with understanding how to market your images. The art of keywording is an obvious example of a skilled task that is essential for any degree of success in selling stock images. This often tedious task is arguably doubly important on Alamy where poor keywording will actively work against your images. If dubious keywords are making your images show up on irrelevant searches this will, over time, impact negatively on the rank assigned to your pseudonym. It means keywording for Alamy needs to be undertaken with the Alamy system in mind and often less keywords may be appropriate for any given image than would generally be deemed suitable at other agencies.

Another, perhaps less obvious, implication is in the number of images a contributor should submit; and herein comes the potential benefit of feedback on your submissions from an experienced editor. As stock is often seen as a numbers game it is natural to assume more images will lead to better returns; that a big portfolio will outgun a similar but smaller collection. Leaving aside the differences in approach between the specialist, with a smaller but highly targeted collection, and generalist, this will usually hold true with one huge caveat; the difference in size needs to be achieved through good quality diversity. Simply put the larger collection needs to be genuinely bigger by virtue of distinctly different images.

Lets look at a couple of examples; Arthur and Bob. Both have decided to get a bit more serious with their stock photography and set themselves the target of a portfolio of 1000 images; often seen as the magical number where reasonable returns can be expected on a sustained basis. Arthur goes for the quick charge and submits multiple versions of many images with uniform keywording and repeats general subjects and topic areas in his collection. Meanwhile Bob is slightly more pedestrian, taking the time to seek out or develop fresh ideas. His editing is tighter meaning he submits fewer images and builds his collection more slowly. Can you see how different their two collections will be when they make it to 1000 images? Arthur will get there first, but I suspect even at that point Bob’s collection could well be outperforming Arthur’s in sales performance. Alamy rank will reward the carefully crafted nature of Bob’s steadily built portfolio and slowly start to penalise Arthur’s effective shortcuts. Portfolios can’t be judged on size alone. Looking into the future Bob is still gradually adding to his strong portfolio of good quality diverse images. Arthur, disappointed with his returns, has lost his enthusiasm and stopped submitting new material.

Bob’s steady considered approach to building a strong stock photography portfolio is easy to appreciate but not necessarily so easy to apply, particularly so for the newer contributor eager to see results. This is where working with an edited agency like Agefotostock can help. Submitting a few batches of images to Age before Alamy could well be an interesting eye opener in how few they deem worth accepting. This can teach two elements of editing; which images are considered potentially saleable and of those how many similars are worth having. This isn’t to say only what Age accept should be submitted to Alamy, that wouldn’t be taking any advantage of Alamy’s open door policy. However, it would, I’d suggest, promote a stricter editing mentality with the long term benefit of building a leaner but meaner Alamy portfolio.

While plenty of microstock photography blogs publish earnings reports there is less publicly available information on returns and trends from photographers relating to images with traditional agencies. I don’t intend to start publishing regular earnings updates because I’m too lazy that is between me, the Missus and the tax man. However, looking over some reports from 2009 I do feel there is some worthwhile information on sales of my images through traditional agencies to share. For the purposes of this post I’m looking at sales during 2009 through two agencies; agefotostock.com and Alamy.com.

On each of these agencies I have both Rights Managed and Royalty Free images available for licensing and the comparison between the performance of these different licensing models makes for some interesting food for thought.

Here’s the breakdown of the performance of my portfolio on each site for 2009;

AGE

Portfolio size of 51o images. On agefotostock my portfolio is split RM 65% – RF 35%.

65% of revenue came from RM sales
35% of revenue came from RF sales

Average return per sale for RM images was $27
Average return per sale for RF images was $79

Alamy

Portfolio size of 1400 images. On Alamy my portfolio is split RM 74% – RF 26%.

56% of revenue came from RM sales
44% of revenue came from RF sales

Average return per sale for RM images was $44
Average return per sale for RF images was $115

The numbers reported are the net returns after the commissions payable to the agencies. Agefotostock report in Euros which I’ve converted at the rate of 1 euro = $1.44 (10/01/10) for ease of comparison.

The total amount earned from each agency was actually almost equal. While this would seem to indicate a great performance from Age the portfolios can’t be compared simply on numbers. The images concerned on Age are represented exclusively  by Agefotostock and are also probably a stronger collection given I have tended to submit what I consider my better / more commercial work and these submissions are then further edited by Age. Images submitted exclusively to Age also benefit from some in house keywording and optimisation which may well contribute to achieving sales.

It can be seen from the figures above that the average return from sales at Age was actually significantly lower than at Alamy. Given the general concerns over low fees at Alamy and in the industry generally this is disappointing. As stated my earnings from each agency were pretty comparable, so it can also be inferred that Age made up for the lower fees with a lot more sales over the course of the year.

As Agefotostock have now started to accept images on a non-exclusive basis my choice in how to interpret and act upon these results is made somewhat easier. While image exclusivity may help Age generate some sales it didn’t translate into any significantly large ones in 2009. Trading in some modest lost sales through Age for the ability to distribute future images through Alamy and other non-exclusive outlets would seem sensible. The ‘risk’, of course, is that a potential big sale through Age in the future is lost, but then it might be gained elsewhere. While I’m talking about significantly large sales I’m sad to report Alamy didn’t scoop me one either! However, it can be seen prices were better at Alamy for both Rights Managed and Royalty Free sales.

The comparison between RM and RF at both sites is also somewhat surprising given the traditional thinking that Rights Managed images command higher fees. While this is certainly still the potential with RM – the elusive ‘significantly large sale’ – the more bankable reality is in low value editorial sales for which an RM image is often cheaper than a Royalty Free shot. The figures above show that on both Age and Alamy I have favoured RM licensing. While this is sometimes dictated by the nature of the image it is also often down to a call on my part on the best licensing model for each image. My 2009 report cards would seem to indicate I may not always have been making the right choice.

On both sites average returns per sale for RF images were higher than for RM images. While on Age the two sides of my portfolio exactly pulled their weight in terms of overall revenue share, on Alamy my RF images outperformed my RM; contributing 44% of total revenue when making up only 26% of my portfolio. In the defense of Rights Managed licensing there is of course the potential of further returns from one of these sales in the form of extensions, further uses etc. RM does also have the uncapped potential to turn these results around; one big sale could make a year’s data look very different. However, given the results above I’d be wasting my time reflecting if it didn’t make me think hard about building my RF stock.

Obviously the results I’ve seen are in a large part reflective of the content of my portfolios in terms of subject, styles and quality. No doubt other contributors may have different stories to tell?