Shooting stock photos in London for Alamy

So, here's a little more analysis of the income potential of stock photos placed at Alamy. This time it's my local bread and butter - getting on the train to Waterloo, wandering around and shooting stock.

As with the previous two entries - travel stock and model released stock photography - I look at the time invested on the day of the shoot and the net income arising since. That allows me to calculate the "Income per hour of shoot per annum" (which is perhaps better expressed as "Income per annum per hour of shoot").

I've chosen two very typical days out in London - you can see how the total of 8 hours invested can expect to earn me £57.50 next year, based on past performance.

Shoot 1
Costs - £7 in travel fairs
Date - March 2004 - 3 hours shooting
Sales - 6 (4 of one photo)
Income - Alamy gross $600 - Me (before commissions payable) £210
Income per hour of shoot per annum - £17.50

Shoot 2
Costs - £7 in travel fairs
Date - March 2007 - 5 hours shooting
Sales - 4
Income - Alamy gross $746 - Me (before commissions payable) £261
Income per hour of shoot per annum - £40

Now you may observe that the rate of pay is rather above the minimum wage and is repeated each year. But of course it does not take account of the time spent processing the images, keywording and getting them online which I'd say is double the time of the actual shooting itself. It also does not take account of equipment costs, time spent preparing or time on the train....

So income per annum per hour worked is actually about £15. It's not as good as the model released photos (by some margin) but a damn site better than travel.

Why is travel so bad, for me anyway? With over 393,000 images of London on Alamy, of which I have contributed 900, why should I imagine that going out and shooting even more of London bring in any at all?

I think it's local knowledge - 300,000 0f those images are probably contributed by photographers outside London or the UK. Somehow I imagine that collectively they must be as bad at getting saleable stock photos of London as I am at getting saleable photos from elsewhere. Local knowledge plus some knowledge about what sells. But I've no idea how to describe either. All I know is that the knowledge is lacking when I travel. Or I could blame the family!

Selling assignment photography

Spent much of the day on a course at the Association of Photographers - a lot of demand with 20 there - far more than I thought. I was relieved not to be the oldest there!

There was lots about cold calling, about which I learned a lot, and about dealing with a 'go see' about which I learned less but when I'm in front of someone I'm rather more confident anyway.

The main points for me were:

• Use email to get something (eg image & link to website) in front of people
• That email's then referred to in a follow up call
• The statistics may seem loaded against (know what they are!) but this is moving into territory with much higher potential gains
• Every failed call is a statistical necessity to earns you ££££'s (always look on the bright side......)
  
• The pay for editorial shooting is rubbish!
  

There was a suggestion that in the event of someone requesting to unsubscribe then one should send some written material (eg a card) - I have not quite worked that idea out yet.

After the session I met a potential assistant who it turns out has telesales experience. Nice unassuming guy, with great enthusiasm. And cool too....

Just how well is Alamy doing?

If you look at photoconnect.net then you will see that I sell images through Alamy and some of the images on photoconnect carry a link straight through to Alamy where buyers can download images and pay.

I am not sure if I've ever sold an image through this route because there is no way of tracking. However I have been looking at my overall sales through Alamy to see how things are progressing there. The only sensible way of doing this is not to look month on month (because monthly figures fluctuate so much) but to measure over a period - in my case I look at a rolling 6 month sales pattern and compare these sales with the number of images estimated to be online at the end of the six month period. I then translate that figure into $ invoiced sales per year (gross).

Before June 2004 with fewer images online it's difficult to pick up anything useful but since then this is what I see:

6/2004 800 images $3.16 per image per year
9/2004 900 images $2.83 per image per year
12/2004 1000 images $2.44 per image per year
3/2005 1100 images $3.16 per image per year5
6/2005 1200 images $2.99 per image per year
9/2005 1300 images $3.76 per image per year
12/2005 1400 images $4.87 per image per year
3/2006 1600 images $4.60 per image per year
6/2006 1800 images $5.81 per image per year
9/2006 2000 images $5.58 per image per year

The important thing is that there is a growing trend, which makes me feel happy because I appear to be good at getting the right sort of images to Alamy and, importantly, am getting better at doing so.

It's worth looking at this to this point because of the change in the way the Alamy search engine works. I always used to be in the bottom of the 3 tiers of photographers results as shown up in searches. Now I am gratified to find my images near the top, even for my 'specialist' collections where I have hundreds of images online.

When my images were at the back of the search results they did not get to be seen often but when they did I guess that they generated above average views and sales. Hopefully now they will be seen more often with an impact on my sales per image per year. We will see.