James West, CEO of
Alamy, has just posted his latest answers to contributor questions at
Ask James Take 3. Highlights of the 10 minute video include the fact that sales of iPhone photos acquired through its Stockimo app are selling “slightly better” per 1,000 photos than sales of the rest of the Alamy collection. He gave no indication as to how many of the 1 million images per month are iPhone produced images.
He indicated that “overall it (the stock photo business) is pretty flat, there’s not a lot of growth, it’s got very competitive, there are lots of photographers vying for position, lots of agencies vying for position”
In this regard, in
October 2013 James said Alamy licensed about 360,000 uses in 2012. At that time they had 40.58 million in their collection. Today they have 48.98 million images in the collection.
James also said, “We’re also seeing that while it (revenue) has been flat, it (sales) have been increasing in volume, so prices have been falling but there are also markets where the price has not been falling so dramatically, and actually volumes are going up, and it shows us that there is still plenty of opportunity out there.”
I think that means that while sales may be somewhat higher than 360,000 units, prices, overall, have fallen enough to keep revenue flat. It would also mean that Alamy is licensing less than 1 image per year for every 100 images in the collection.
When asked about the U.S. market he said it, “has become, our biggest direct sales market.” (In October he said it represented 60% of revenue.) He also pointed out that “the US industry, for Alamy at least, is heavily reliant on the text book education market and those customers are themselves going through quite a lot of structural changes, they migrate their product from a rather exclusive print only business, to a highly competitive digital business, and we’re tracking their fortunes somewhat. And so in order to reduce our reliance on a small group of very big customers we’re starting to push the business into new areas.”
For those who would prefer to read the text rather than watch the video we have reproduced the full transcript below. The comments under the video are worth taking a look at.
Full Transcript
Hi there, thank you for all your questions. We’ve had hundreds of questions and the team have boiled it down to the top 10 that they think represent a good spread of the questions that have come in, so I’m going to crack straight on.
1.
How do you feel about the current state of the industry following Getty’s latest move to give away 30 million images and the constant growth of microstock? Where does Alamy fit in?
Well I’m a relentless optimist. Getty’s announcement is interesting but it isn’t going to change our core business, we have no indication from our customers it’s changing their buying habits. What they’re doing is saying “ok we’re going to give you free images and you’re going to use a bit of your page to devote to our free images and in there we can also put some ads”, so the customer is giving away some control of their product in order to get the benefit of the free picture. That is not going to be to everyone’s liking, and we have no evidence that it’s changing our business at the moment. Interesting to see how they get on, but it’s not keeping me awake at night, and it certainly doesn’t live up to some of the cataclysmic predictions we saw in the industry press.
2.
In a league table of the top 10 non-exclusive agencies, where do you see Alamy?
Well if you look at the industry as being the traditional Rights-managed, Royalty-free long tail of commercial images and editorial images, Alamy is firmly in the top 5. If you include all of the microstock players, we’re in the top 10.
3.
Why do you think stock has a bad reputation amongst creatives? And is that why you started the 100% student project?
Stock doesn’t have a bad reputation amongst creatives! Sure if you’ve got unlimited budgets, you can commission the beautiful picture so it exactly matches your vision, but that is out of step with reality for most picture purchasing. And you only have to look at the incredible number of stock photos that are sold every year to see that its one of the most successful digital industries in the world. So creative’s love stock photography, otherwise they wouldn’t be buying so many pictures!
And is that why you started the 100% student project? Well no, the 100% student project was about two things; one was engaging with the next generation of photographers, the other was that a lot of people who study photography don’t become professional photographers, they end up in adjacent fields, and it’s a great way of getting to know the future picture buyers, and so we’ve been using the 100% student project, not only to get people started as contributors on Alamy, but also to go in and do lectures at universities on the importance of intellectual property, and educate the next generation of digital media buyers.
4.
I’m starting to lose faith in the stock industry (this isn’t me by the way!)...What are the main reasons I should sell my images on Alamy?
Well Alamy pays a better royalty than all of its competitors, 50% royalty split. We also have a very friendly contract, so you can add as many images as you like to Alamy, and you can take them off whenever you like, so there’s really nothing to lose. You certainly shouldn’t have pictures lying around not in the market, you should have them on Alamy at the very least, and if you’ve got them elsewhere under a non exclusive, put them on Alamy as well - it’s a complete no brainer.
5.
I’ve noticed some of my images are now appearing in Google image searches. What’s your plan for Google images?
Great that you’ve noticed it. We’re trying a bunch of things, so Google images we think is very important, it’s a source of new customers. And on that note, we’ve learnt some really interesting things over the last 12 months; we’ve been trying out different price points, different licensing packages aimed at the first time visitor. This is stuff that isn’t seen by our existing customers, and we’re converting people into buyers that had previously been bouncing through our site. And to put that in context, up until a year ago our credit card business was shrinking year on year, and had been actually shrinking for about 7 years, because we are largely an account based business dealing with big customers. The credit card business, since the changes we made last year, and on the basis of the monthly incremental change we do when we review the numbers each month, has been growing at 30%, which is a fantastic result, and it shows that there is latent interest in the product, if you can just get it to talk to the customer in a language they understand.
6.
What’s the plan for Stockimo? How’s it going so far? Do the sales match up to regular Alamy images? And when will it be available on Android?
That’s four questions in one! What’s the plan for Stockimo? Do more Stockimo. We’re still excited about it and we’ve got some new versions of the app underway, very exciting things coming out later in the year which you’ll be hearing about soon. How’s it going so far? It’s going very well thank you very much. Do the sales match up to regular Alamy images? Well interestingly the sales per 1000 images on Stockimo are doing slightly better than the average on Alamy. Make of that what you will, but it’s encouraging. When will it be available on Android? It will be available on Android when we’ve finished our core development work on IOS, and we’re still working on making the product as good as it can be, so not immediately, but it will be coming up the list in time.
7.
How’re things going in the US? Are sales what you’d hoped for when you opened the US office?
Well the US, when we started in 2008, was a slightly nervous time; we opened the office at the beginning of the financial crash. It turned out to be a really good move because we were able to secure our biggest customers when they were going through a lot of change, by being physically present over there to negotiate and re-negotiate deals, and its since became, has become, our biggest direct sales market. So the US has been a great success since we opened it. It is however going through quite a lot of change, the US industry, for Alamy at least, is heavily reliant on the text book education market and those customers are themselves going through quite a lot of structural changes, they migrate their product from a rather exclusive print only business, to a highly competitive digital business, and we’re tracking their fortunes somewhat. And so in order to reduce our reliance on a small group of very big customers we’re starting to push the business into new areas. So overall it looks a bit flat in the last couple of years, but we are getting some success and building out into new customer areas, in particular travel in magazines and in consumer product, they’ve been working well for us in the last 12 months.
8.
Why do Alamy not get accreditations to big news events? I rely on Alamy to help me get into these events because they tend not to take individual applications. What’s the future for live news?
Well we do actually get accreditation for some events; it’s always worth writing to the News team and asking them what they think about your plans. We have been focusing our effort however on going where the pack, the press pack, are not. Partly because it’s a very competitive industry, and we think the large regional spread around the world of Alamy photographers brings something new, and so most of the front page news stories we’ve been getting with Alamy photos in the last 12 months have been of a regional nature, and using the great advantage we have of so many contributors all over the world. However, we are looking at scaling up the service; the business is growing and the news team have been doing a great job, getting more pictures sold every month. So please let us know what your interests are and we’ll see if we can accommodate them.
9.
You’ve mentioned before that there are plans to update contributor tools. What’s the latest on that?
Ah good news there. So we’ve just started working on scoping out the next generation of contributor tools and upload; we want to make it much, much easier and faster for you to get your pictures onto Alamy, and we want to make the contributor tools that you use to keyword and describe your pictures for indexing much better, and so we’ve been cracking on with that. You’ll have noticed a few things changed recently, firstly the My Alamy was updated, we’ve also greatly improved the purchase path for first time buyers on Alamy, and we’re bringing those disciplines of superfast and convenient user experience to the whole site, and we’re working our way through it. The next area of focus for us is on contributor tools and work has begun.
10.
How do you feel Alamy is doing as a business over all and what does the future look like?
Well I’m a terrible optimist, I’m always optimistic. That’s one of the things that excites me about business, is that I can always see that there is a way forward, and although the industry has been going through quite a lot of challenges since 2008 - overall it’s pretty flat, there’s not a lot of growth, it’s got very competitive, there are lots of photographers vying for position, lots of agencies vying for position - I still feel very optimistic about it. Which is that we’re still learning there are things we can do to increase the attractiveness of the product for the first time buyers, and that isn’t just about price, that’s about just making it work for people. We’re also seeing that while it has been flat, it has been increasing in volume, so prices have been falling but there are also markets where the price has not been falling so dramatically, and actually volumes are going up, and it shows us that there is still plenty of opportunity out there. I think that no doubt it’s a different industry to what it was 10 years ago, and a different industry to what it was 20 years ago, but it will still be here in 10 years, it will still be here in 20 years time, it’s just going to go through a lot of change. And we’re going to be here for the long run, and we hope that you’ll stick with us and thank you for all your patience and all your questions, and speak to you next time. Cheers.