Category: Alamy
Stock Moves - Sascha Weis
Former Senior Sales Manager for North America at Corbis, Sascha Weis has joined stock photo library Alamy in Beirut to target the editorial and commercial markets in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Dubai.
Rachel Wakefield, head of sales at Alamy, commented “Sascha has over 15 years of successful international management and sales experience in our industry and an in-depth knowledge of the Middle East. Sascha will be developing direct sales, increasing brand awareness, and attracting local content in this exciting market which has not been a focus for Alamy before.”
Note: Alamy is also currently recruiting for a VP of Sales for their New York office to lead the next stage of growth and expansion in the US.
Alamy Reaches 26 Million Images Online
UK based photo agency Alamy has reached 26 million images uploaded which makes it (they say) ‘the largest online collection of stock images in the world.’
Alan Capel, head of content at Alamy, commented: “Registrations are up showing that the supply of good photography continues. It’s also been a great year for signing up contributors from every corner of the globe.
“We still get subjects like business meetings, tropical beaches, families in autumnal leaves and water droplets because these are clichés for good reason and customers love them. However, Alamy is probably the only place where you will find all of this stuff alongside obscure vintage postcards and award winning photojournalism.”
Alamy - ‘Super Fast’ Search For West Coast
Stock photo site Alamy is continuing its US expansion with super fast searching for West Coast customers with the help of ‘mission-critical data solutions’ company NYI. The company successfully oversaw Alamy’s upgrade for North America, and now the company will manage the West Coast activity. The Alamy servers in the Los Angeles data center will make searching for images on the West Coast as fast as on the East Coast.
Hello Alamy: “What exactly is a “Premium Account”?
this in from a reader this morning:
“Hi Will,
I thought you might be interested in the following email exchange between a client of ours and the Alamy sales team last week, following a cold call from Alamy. I thought you might find their sales pitch interesting. This is a travel Agent they were selling to, so a commercial rather than editorial client....We were shocked, we removed almost all our pictures from Alamy two months ago, but I am sure that most photographers with Alamy have no idea what is happening to their Rights Managed images”. read on...!
Alamy Launches An iPad App
UK based photo library Alamy have launched an iPad App - Available to download for free, Alamy’s iPad app is a gallery of imagery sourced from Alamy’s large network of photographers and international agencies.
Full details here: Alamy.com
News
A Look at Alamy’s 1Q09 reported revenue
As stated in previously in this space, with the disappearance of publicly traded companies from the stock photo industry, Alamy’s quarterly reports tell us much about the company itself and help us draw conclusions about what goes on in the industry, in general. Over all, nothing comes as a surprise. But the news is not exactly optimistic for the company or the industry.
News
A look at Alamy’s 4Q Numbers
With Getty going private and absorbing Jupiter Images, and Superstock having gone bankrupt, for the first time in over a decade, the stock photo industry is without a publicly traded company within its ranks. We can no longer rely on industry leader Getty’s SEC filings for indications of that company’s health, nor for hints at wider trends in the industry. We do still, however, have the quarterly reports from Alamy, reports unusually detailed for a privately held company. The Oxford, UK based Alamy provides a number of stats from which we can extrapolate trends both at Alamy itself and in the industry at large. Their 4Q, 2008 report adds even more detail about Alamy’s geographic sources of revenue, as the company has provided revenue figures for the three main currencies in which it operates, US$, Euros and British Sterling. Here’s our analysis of what Alamy’s 4Q’08 report reveals:
News
Alamy cutting royalties to fund US sales office
Alamy, one of the world’s largest stock photography libraries, has announced that it will open a US sales office in early 2009 in order to pursue high volume large accounts in the US. The UK based company has had its eye on the US market for some time and has been storing and serving images from the US Since late 2005 for increased website performance. In addition the company has announced that it plans to reduce the royalty percentage to contributors by 5% in order to fund the cost of expansion. The company currently pays an average of 60-70% in royalties to photographers who met the announcement with luke-warm enthusiasm. “I would have thought the money would have come from previous sales and investments, not by cutting the percentage that current contributors receive?” states contributing photographer Bruce Percy on the Alamy blog.
Alamy launches Limited Use scheme
PRESS RELEASE Alamy launches Limited Use scheme Oxfordshire, UK, 9 June 2008 Alamy, the largest stock photo site on the web, is launching a new scheme offering customers the chance to buy images for limited uses for a nominal fee. Aimed at new users like teachers or bloggers who do not normally buy pictures, the Limited Use scheme, due to go live imminently, is initially being trialled in the UK only. It will be launched worldwide in the near future. Customers looking for photos for certain web uses such as blogs and social networking sites or for educational uses like classroom presentations can buy from Alamy for as little as 60p per picture. So far around 3.5 million images - approximately a quarter of the 12 million pictures on the Alamy site - are available for Limited Use. The choice will increase as the Alamy’s ever growing collection continues to expand. Contributors to Alamy have the option of making their images available for Limited Use as well as being sold conventionally, giving them the opportunity to earn additional income without cannibalising their existing sales. Alamy CEO James West said: "This opens up our encyclopaedic collection to customers who can’t afford conventional licences. It also allows our contributors to compete in the low cost markets without undermining their existing revenue streams." The scheme differs from micro payment because it covers RF and RM images, the images are for sale at ‘normal’ prices elsewhere and the pricing may differ according to the project. To find out more please read the blog: http://www.alamy.com/Blog/contributor/archive/2008/06/05/2786.aspx -ends- For more information contact:www.alamy.com
News
Alamy terminates contributor contract over model release issue
According to a posting on the company blog, Alamy has terminated the contract of a contributor for falsely stating that an image had a model release. Alamy claims that it acted after the agency was contacted by a a person who was the subject of an image marked as released but was confident he had never signed one. When asked to supply proof of the model release the contributing photographer admitted having not received a release but was maybe hoping to track the person down later.
Editorials
Editorial: Slicing and dicing the numbers at Alamy
For several years, Alamy has published a fascinating set of quarterly statistics about the growth and composition of its archive and percentage break-downs of sales components. Details provided in the quarterly reports include numbers of new RF and RM images added to the archive, numbers of images contributed by photographers vs. agencies, average license fees for RM and RF images, and percentages of revenue derived from RM vs. RF licenses. The company’s decision in the third quarter of last year to also make public its actual revenue figures provides an opportunity to analyze its performance in a deeper way and raise questions about the trajectory the combined figures imply.
Features
Alamy CEO James West outlines plan for the future
Alamy has posted a few videos from a contributor event held in November outlining the agency's plans for the future.
Part 1: James West, CEO
Features
Interview with Alamy CEO James West
The UK-based image portal, Alamy, recently took the unprecedented step for a privately held company of releasing its revenue figures to the public. The figures show a company on an impressive trajectory having grown total sales from US$129K in 2001 to US$24.2MM in 2006. Founded by its CEO James West and his uncle, Mike Fischer, in 1999, Alamy also manages to dedicate significant sums to medical research and invests in technology to reduce the company’s carbon footprint. We spoke to James West recently to learn more about the thinking behind Alamy’s unique approach to the stock photo business.
News
Alamy celebrates 10 million images by offering an additional 10% to Photographers
Just eight years ago Alamy launched in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK as a family-owned business hoping to carve out a niche in the Stock Photography industry. The company founded by James West with his uncle and company chairman Mike Fischer, today celebrates the monumental milestone of 10 million unique images. To mark the occasion is giving an extra 10% commission to contributors for any sales they make today.
News
Alamy releases 1Q06 stats
Each quarter, the Oxford, England, based stock photo portal, Alamy, releases an interesting set of statistics about their image library and their sales. As a privately held company, Alamy does not release sales or profit figures. But the figures they do release show certain measures of progress at the company and, to the extent we believe some of the figures reflect wider trends, shed some light on conditions in the industry in general.
News
Niche RF producer 40260 signs with Alamy to supply baby-boomer content
Jack Hollingsworth’s new royalty free niche collection, called 40260, a name that signifies the baby boomer age group of forty- to sixty-year-olds, has signed a representation agreement with the stock portal, Alamy. The specialty lifestyle collection, which currently numbers 3700 images on Alamy, portrays upbeat, healthy and happy-looking boomers enjoying their leisure time.
News
Eyecandy Images launches new site; Signs with Alamy
Eyecandy Images, a recently launched RF and RM production company based in New York and London, has launched a new web-site and signed a distribution deal with Alamy, all in one week. The new web-site, at eyecandyimages.com, allows for on-line licensing and immediate download of images by registered users who can pay via credit card or invoice accounts set up in advance. The company also placed its entire RF collection on Alamy.com.
News
Alamy goes green by reducing greenhouse gas emissions
The UK-based online stock photo company, Alamy, has announced a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Program to reduce the negative impact its business has on the natural environment. The company has focused on two specific areas where it hopes to lessen the greenhouse gas emissions from its growing business activities; air travel and electricity use.
News
Alamy takes on wine, food, and travel imagery from BKWine
Alamy Images has signed an agreement to represent the work of wine and food reportage photographer, Per Karlsson. Karlsson, and his wife, Britt Karlsson, manage the wine tourism business, BKWine, from Paris. The tour business affords the couple to opportunity to travel to the important wine-making regions of Western and Eastern Europe and parts of South America. While traveling, they collaborate on feature stories about the places they visit, with Britt writing the text and Per taking the photos.
News
Alamy seeking patent for new search technology
Alamy has announced that it is testing new search technology that will move images from the best collections to the top of search results. Alamy is calling the new technology AlamyRank and has applied for patents for two key technologies that make the new search approach unique in the stock photography industry. The new search engine will favor contributors who provide the best images and most accurate keywording and penalize those providing mediocre work or using inappropriate keywords, hoping their images will be seen more often. This new search addresses a key issue with the Alamy service where keywording is done by the contributors by providing an incentive to keyword appropriately.
