Setting
the License
Once your images pass QC they will send you an email
to inform you that your images are ready to have the
license set and keywords added.
Alamy offers two types of licenses. Traditional License
(RM) and Royalty Free (RF). Remember if you sell Royalty
Free the sale will be one time and you will never receive
another payment for additional or alternate usage from
that buyer. Another buyer may one day also chose to buy
the same image, but no buyer will ever buy it to put
on a National Advertising Campaign paying thousands of
dollars. And remember that if you license Royalty Free
you MUST HAVE SIGNED MODEL RELEASE for all people appearing
in the image and a signed PROPERTY RELEASE for any buildings
or distinguishable property. If you set an image as Royalty
Free and do not have a Model Release the person appearing
in the image can sue you for a lot of money and you will
have no defense. Payouts for such suits vary from on
average of $100,000 to well over $1 million for more
severe infringements. This also applies to any distinguishable
property that may appear in an image. Someone’s
car or boat that features strongly in an image will require
a Property Release. Without these releases the photographer
who sells ROYALTY FREE is committing copyright infringement
as set out in the International Convention of Copyright,
know as the Berne Convention of Copyright. Read it on
Cornell University’s site http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html
It is important for a photographer to know the legal aspects of the trade. Read
the copyright law for your country and if you want to sell Royalty Free make
sure you get signed model releases for all people appearing in your images.
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Alamy currently represent 6400 photographers work in addition to 1200 agencies.
Approximately 95% of the Photographers only sell RM while the Agencies all sell
predominantly RF. As mentioned earlier RF is bad business for photographers.
When chosing the type of license you set for each image consider the time and
effort that went into producing the image as well as the uniqueness or originality
of it. Images that are pretty generic and commonplace are the only ones that
you would even want to think about putting into RF. For all other images it is
best to license RM, then when a large bank wants to use your great shot of a
Chinese Dragon Kite for a National ad campaign, you will win because they will
be able to know that this image has not and been used by another bank or for
some other usage that may detract from their plans. Once an image is RF it is
very unlikely that it will ever be used for a major commercial application.
Once the license is set you will not be able to change it so consider carefully
and when in doubt RM.
Alamy are a great agency in that there is a large group of contributors, with
approximately 2400 actively submitting new material. The average photographer
with Alamy has between 100-1000 images, while some serious shooters have close
to 40,000. Average income from images in Alamy are between $3-$10 per image,
per year. So if you have 1,000 images you will earn a minimum of $3,000 per year.
This is really only if you have quality images that people will want to buy.
Given that you follow the guidelines of shooting interesting quality material
and spend a good amount of thought researching your keywords you should do well.
Next Lesson: Keywording
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