ALAMY Talk

Emily Hoskin came to the university to talk to us about the stock library Alamy and how they offer a student deal.

The deal is called the 100% project and this gives the student photographer 100% of any money earned on their images for two years. The company usually gives the photographer 50% which is still higher than any other stock library. It is free to sign up and you can't loose as if you don't sell anything nothing happens but if you do you get 100% of the money.

Alamy uses slightly different concepts to other stock libraries for example they do not edit the images you submit to the website. If your images are on Alamy for 5 years and don't sell they will not be taken off.

Whatever you want to upload you can, there is a huge variation of who buys and what sells, there is a massive spectrum of people who buy from Alamy, it has a massive market for everyday photography.

A big tip is to leave room for copy, many buyers are using these images for editorial purposes so want space to add text over, in and around the image.

Licenses

There are two types of licenses on Alamy:

Royalty Free: these are sold per size, the buyer can use it whenever and wherever they like for a one off price, so it can be used freely.

Rights Managed: the buyer has to pay each time they use it, so it is bought per use.

Easy to shoot images: sell as Royalty Free
More individual images: sell as Rights Managed

If you do not have a model release form the image has to be sold Rights Managed.

Keywording:

When submitting an image to Alamy you will be asked to keyword it. This is very important, it is how people are able to find your images.

There are two ways you can keyword your images:

1: Be literal 'Dog'
2: The concepts of your image 'Freedon'

There are three sections of keywords that you can enter:

Essential keywords: most relevant

Main keywords: next relevant

Comprehensive keywords: any other words or phrases

If there is a keyword that you feel has a variation of words for example Guy, man, boy you should put all variations in the comprehensive keyword section.

People will search for exactly what they want for example: bus not yellow not london

you can add restrictions when you upload an image for example which industry it can be sold too or you can limit it to only be allowed to be sold to a certain country.

Prices

These are rough estimates as there is no standard price for the images

Online images: £49
Advertising: £10,000
Book Cover: £450

Average license price £125


It's free
You get all the money
You keep the copyright
You have loads of images that could be making you money
Chance to find out about the industry and what customers want
Non-exclusive
No tie ins
Upload whatever you want
You're in total control

I have signed up and will definitely continue to upload images, the talk was very inspiring and i found Emily really easy to talk too and full of knowledge.