Alamy

Alamy just sent emails out about a Royalty change.. if you use Alamy you will be losing 10% so for every photo you sell using Alamy they take 50% of your work.. is it even worth it. you do all the work and give half away. Just food for thought.

Email from Alamy below

We’ve posted some important information on our blog and there is an accompanying video from James West Alamy CEO to explain some changes at Alamy.

In summary;

Your royalty percentage will be decreasing by 10 percentage points in early 2013 for direct and distributor image sales.

The change applies to all images from all our contributors, regardless of which commission structure you are on. For example, Alamy Blue contributors will move from receiving 60% of each sale to receiving 50%. Video royalties will remain unchanged at 50%.

Why are we doing this? Alamy is a profitable business, however we are at a stage in our development where we have reached the limits of our expansion under our current set-up.

Alamy has developed significantly over the past 18 months. We introduced a News Sport and Entertainment division and we are now selling video. We’ve started curating the collection for creative picture buyers and continue to bring innovation and high quality service to the editorial market. We have ambitious plans to gain market share from our competitors and grow the business.

We’ve increased our sales staff in our core UK and US offices and also in key growth markets such as Germany, India and Australia. We’re also simplifying the buying process for our customers by introducing sales focused initiatives such as Alamy iQ.

In early 2013 we’ll unveil our new look website. Alamy is transforming into a Sales and Marketing led business with the ultimate goal of growing sales.

All of this is designed to drive sales and this will be accompanied by further initiatives planned for 2013 to improve the contributor experience.

We understand that reducing your share by ten percentage points cannot be seen as great news in the short term. However, this investment will provide Alamy with the foundation to greatly improve our presence and penetration and so increase sales.

When we made a change like this back in 2008 it was to fund expansion into the US. We’ve been true to our word. Our US office sales performance is growing at the rate of 30% year on year. The US is now our largest direct sales operation and we are currently recruiting staff to expand it further. Our experience shows that investing in the right things does pay off.

All contributors will receive a formal notification via email of the changes to the contract.

Thank you for your time.

I have not even heard of them till you posted this. I do not use any of the stock photo sites, because in my mind they are all ripoffs. You are always better off having your own site and promoting it. Granted bringing traffic to it is work, but if you do the work you reap the rewards. Seems as though some photo hosting sites are claiming the same thing they are about needing to raise rates. Smugmug did this just as I was getting ready to move to a Pro account, so I left them. They came up with the our business is so large now we need more storage space, and that those cost were up, when in reality they are down. Then the truth came out that one of the largest reasons was the lawsuit that they and some others were in. Which really is not my problem, my only problem was with the rate increase. But stock photo sites are worse, there is no such thing as free, they always screw you somewhere down the line.