Alamy Posts 2005 Numbers

Posted on 4/14/2006 by Jim Pickerell | Printable Version | Comments (0)

3

ALAMY POSTS 2005 NUMBERS


April 14, 2006



Alamy has up dated the operational figures provided its contributors in August 2005 (See Story 747) with figures for all of 2004 and 2005. A complete breakdown is provided below.

Alamy officially launched its search engine in the fall of 2001 and has been growing ever since. Currently they have over 5 million images from over 300 stock agencies and over 5000 photographers. They are adding new images at a rate of over 200,000 per month.

Points To Consider

  • In 2005 Alamy added 1,555,439 new RM images and 690,295 new RF images to their site. In Q4 2005 59% of the revenue came from the licensing of RM images and 41% from RF images.

  • Images submitted by photographers were responsible for 40% of the revenue while images submitted by agencies were responsible for 60% of the revenue.



  • Over the two years there has been a small but steady increase in the proportion of total revenue generated from RM sales while there has been a corresponding slight decline in the proportion of RF revenue. This would be encouraging for RM producers except for the fact that more than twice as many RM images are being added each quarter compared to the RF images. This means that the average return per RM image is likely to be going down much faster than the return on the average RF image.

  • One of the reasons for the low prices is that 65% of total revenue came from licensing images for editorial use while only 35% of revenue was for commercial use.

  • About 32% of the images on the site are RF and 68% are RM or more that 2 RM images for every RF. But the percent of total revenue generated by RF was 41% compared with RM at 59%. Thus, the average RF image sells more frequently than the average RM and at a higher price ($206 for RF and $170 for RM).

  • It should also be noted that the average price for an RF license was consistently higher than the average price for an RM license throughout the year. The reason for this appears to be explained by the fact that a significant portion of Alamy's revenue comes from licensing for lower priced editorial uses and editorial users tend to make much more extensive use of RM imagery rather than RF.

  • The average price for an editorial license was $131.00 in Q4 while the average price for a commercial use was 2.7 times higher at $359.00. It is interesting that commercial prices seem to fall significantly in Q4 of both 2004 and 2005, but they jumped back up in Q1 of 2005 and hopefully will have done the same in 2006. It is also worth noting that commercial prices ranged from 2.7 times to 3.2 times the average editorial price throughout the year.




















































































































































































































































































































































































2004

2004

2004

2005

2005

2005

2005

Contributor Information

Q1 & Q2

Q3

Q4

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

New RF images from photographers

58,315

38,787

39,827

53,408

74,008

89,199

83,614

New RF images from agencies

128,199

89,852

94,097

60,850

140,360

63,451

125,405

New RM images from photographers

222,103

163,962

169,321

203,641

258,847

268,147

291,356

New RM images from agencies

132,931

105,090

98,619

125,688

143,297

120,030

144,433

% Revenue photographers

33%

35%

36%

38%

39%

41%

40%

% Revenue agencies

67%

65%

64%

62%

61%

59%

60%

2004

2004

2004

2005

2005

2005

2005

Contributor Information

Q1 & Q2

Q3

Q4

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Photographers submitting images

2,920

1,600

1,692

2,030

2,209

2,349

2,452

Photographer submitting RM images

2,875

1,456

1,554

1,850

2,001

2,111

2,179

Photographers submitting RF images

1,525

636

678

907

1,041

1,135

1,214

Agencies submitting images

229

163

159

165

175

179

161

Agencies submitting RM images

203

140

131

142

141

142

128

Agencies submitting RF images

97

56

61

58

70

72

67

RM images submitted in quarter

900,758

269,052

267,940

329,329

402,144

388,177

435,789

RF images submitted in quarter

467,780

128,639

133,924

114,258

214,368

152,650

209,019

All images submitted in quarter

1,368,538

397,691

401,864

443,587

616,512

540,827

644,808

2004

2004

2004

2005

2005

2005

2005

Percentage Revenue Info

Q1 & Q2

Q3

Q4

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Images per transaction - credit card

1.9

1.8

1.8

1.7

1.7

1.8

1.8

Images per transaction - account

2.6

2.5

2.7

2.9

2.9

3.0

3.3

% Revenue RF

46.5%

46.8%

45.0%

43.0%

43.1%

42.3%

41.0%

% Revenue RM

53.5%

53.2%

55.0%

57,0%

56.9%

57.7%

59.0%

% Images sold RF

53.3%

48.6%

45.9%

41.0%

39.0%

39.9%

36.4%

% Images sold RM

46.7%

51.4%

54.1%

59.0%

61.0%

60.1%

63.6%

% Images sold - credit card

29.9%

27.2%

23.9%

23.0%

21.9%

23.0%

21.0%

% Images sold - account

70.1%

72.8%

76.1%

77.0%

79.0%

77.0%

79.0%

% Revenue - credit card

28.5%

26.2%

26.2%

25.0%

25.4%

28.1%

25.1%

% Revenue - account customer

71.5%

73.8%>

73.8%

75.0%

75.0%

71.9%

74.9%

% Revenue editorial licenses

60.0%

64.2%

61.4%

67.0%

66.0%

62.7%

65.0%

% Revenue commercial licenses

40.0%

35.8%

38.6%

33.0%

34.0%

37.3%

35.0%

2004

2004

2004

2005

2005

2005

2005

Average Price in USD

Q1 & Q2

Q3

Q4

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Avg RF price - credit card

$133.00

$161.00

$175.00

$191.00

$199.00

$206.00

$210.00

Avg RM price - credit card

$266.00

$225.00

$232.00

$239.00

$276.00

$304.00

$236.00

Avg RF price - account

$145.00

$176.00

$172.00

$193.00

$206.00

$114.00

$203.00

Avg RM price - account

$174.00

$177.00

$174.00

$170.00

$156.00

$146.00

$162.00

Avg RM price - editorial use

$135.00

$141.00

$134.00

$132.00

$137.00

$131.00

$131.00

Avg RM price - commercial use

$410.00

$427.00

$381.00

$423.00

$423.00

$425.00

$359.00

Avg price all RM images

$183.00

$182.00

$180.00

$177.00

$165.00

$182.00

$170.00

Avg price all RF images

$139.00

$171.00

$182.00

$192.00

$203.00

$201.00

$206.00




Copyright © 2006 Jim Pickerell. The above article may not be copied, reproduced, excerpted or distributed in any manner without written permission from the author. All requests should be submitted to Selling Stock at 10319 Westlake Drive, Suite 162, Bethesda, MD 20817, phone 301-461-7627, e-mail: wvz@fpcubgbf.pbz

Jim Pickerell is founder of www.selling-stock.com, an online newsletter that publishes daily. He is also available for personal telephone consultations on pricing and other matters related to stock photography. He occasionally acts as an expert witness on matters related to stock photography. For his current curriculum vitae go to: http://www.jimpickerell.com/Curriculum-Vitae.aspx.  

Comments

Be the first to comment below.

Post Comment

Please log in or create an account to post comments.

Stay Connected

Sign up to receive email notification when new stories are posted.

Follow Us

Free Stuff

Stock Photo Pricing: The Future
In the last two years I have written a lot about stock photo pricing and its downward slide. If you have time over the holidays you may want to review some of these stories as you plan your strategy ...
Read More
Future Of Stock Photography
If you’re a photographer that counts on the licensing of stock images to provide a portion of your annual income the following are a few stories you should read. In the past decade stock photography ...
Read More
Blockchain Stories
The opening session at this year’s CEPIC Congress in Berlin on May 30, 2018 is entitled “Can Blockchain be applied to the Photo Industry?” For those who would like to know more about the existing blo...
Read More
2017 Stories Worth Reviewing
The following are links to some 2017 and early 2018 stories that might be worth reviewing as we move into the new year.
Read More
Stories Related To Stock Photo Pricing
The following are links to stories that deal with stock photo pricing trends. Probably the biggest problem the industry has faced in recent years has been the steady decline in prices for the use of ...
Read More
Stock Photo Prices: The Future
This story is FREE. Feel free to pass it along to anyone interested in licensing their work as stock photography. On October 23rd at the DMLA 2017 Conference in New York there will be a panel discuss...
Read More
Important Stock Photo Industry Issues
Here are links to recent stories that deal with three major issues for the stock photo industry – Revenue Growth Potential, Setting Bottom Line On Pricing and Future Production Sources.
Read More
Recent Stories – Summer 2016
If you’ve been shooting all summer and haven’t had time to keep up with your reading here are links to a few stories you might want to check out as we move into the fall. To begin, be sure to complet...
Read More
Corbis Acquisition by VCG/Getty Images
This story provides links to several stories that relate to the Visual China Group (VCG) acquisition of Corbis and the role Getty Images has been assigned in the transfer of Corbis assets to the Gett...
Read More
Finding The Right Image
Many think search will be solved with better Metadata. While metadata is important, there are limits to how far it can take the customer toward finding the right piece of content. This story provides...
Read More

More from Free Stuff