This months Silver Membership call was with Head of Content Alan Capel from Alamy. What a treat! Let me first backtrack a little for those of you who are not as familiar (yet) with the world of stock photography.
Alamy, which is celebrating it’s 10 year anniversary with a cool contest (please see website for details) has over 17 million images from 18,000 photographers and 500 leading collections on their website. So what’s so unique about them? Their business model has always given all the power into the hands of photographers and collection owners. As an Alamy supplier you are entirely responsible for what you put up online – for better and for worse!
Alan and I met many years ago. While we have literally danced the night away amongst many other colleagues during the International Cepic conference we have in fact worked together. Alamy was one of our distribution partners for my stock syndication Beateworks. It is a specialized interior, architecural and at home collection that has been acquired by Corbis. I asked Alan, a former cartoonist (which I did not know about him) to get on the phone with me and deep dive into the criteria that get your images up on top of the search, how to find out what sells and submit the right amount of images. This expert who has been in the stock industry for over 19 years didn’t hold anything back.
The other topics we discussed where the changes that the stock industry is undergoing, how to start setting up a new revenue stream through Alamy. We covered technology terms such as algorithm and how that affects you, how often you should update your images and much, much more. As usual in the membership there is a special offer for the listeners.
One of the things that Alan stressed in the call is that changes are good and to be expected. To not be discouraged but to keep searching for opportunity. Just like Alamy came out with a new business model 10 years ago that excluded traditional components such as an editor we have to expect that new business models will continue to arise. The last big one we saw with Microstock just a few years ago. Instead of fighting things that have quickly become an industry standard like the flat rate internet use rates (now established at $49) he suggests to focus on finding your opportunity. In addition he has shared some new upcoming submission changes at Alamy and spread the good news that editorial, news and celebrity images will be accepted soon.
If you want to jump on the bandwagon and selfishly take advantage of the almost free membership trial, please click here. This call is only available for a limited time only.
Note from Beate 12/8/09:
I just saw that this post was picked up in a discussion at the Alamy Forum. As usual photographers have a variety of opinions about my blog posts. One of the prevailing ideas is that one should get all information mentioned for free.
Just like you, I run a business and am called the Photography Business Success Coach for a reason. It took me 28 years to build the relationships that I have today and I guard and appreciate them. The real information and the detailed how to is available only to members. It is a known fact in business that value is directly associated with the price. The purpose of the teaser is to get you (the reader) interested in what I do and apparently that worked just fine. I teach how to run the business and wouldn’t be very believable unless I would subscribe to those very principles myself.
Free calls are on the second Tuesday of each month and to be found here: http://Photosecrets.biz.
For the record: Alan Capel did not give me privileged confidential information about future methods of Alamy and he was quite clear about that. Alan shared insider information that would make a photographer understand in great detail how to best utilize the services of Alamy.
Alamy is an excellent company and one of the best syndications out there and one of the most open and upfront that I know. I am certain that they will announce upcoming changes to their contributors first – as they always have done in the past. My apologies to Alan if my blog post about our call, which by the way is absolutely amazing caused an ruckus. It certainly was not my intention!
