We’re excited to share that the results are in from the contributor survey which was emailed and shared on the forum to all active Alamy contributors in September. Read on to find out about what you thought of the Alamy platform as a contributor. At the end, we’ll also share the areas where we’re now looking to make improvements based on your feedback and build on the plans we already had in place for the contributor experience.
Why did we conduct a survey?
Being aware that there has to be a meaningful loop between contributors and customers, we wanted to gain more insights into not only things like how long our contributors have been photographers, and what subjects they’re most likely to shoot, but also what they think of the current contributor offering, how this compares to other agencies (if they had other portfolios), and to make suggestions for improvements on the Alamy platform.
We believed that asking our contributors what they would hope to see improved would offer us more meaningful insights about how we can adapt and be better within the context of the ever-changing photography industry.
Survey analysis
Part I – About you and submitting to Alamy
We learned that there is a good mix of contributors to Alamy, from those who are just starting out to those with over 10 years of submitting to Alamy, with quite a range of years of experience – we can probably say that Alamy contributors have well over tens of thousands of years of experience combined in being a photographer (to put it in context, that’s equivalent to a photographer practicing their trade since the Ice Age!)
Inevitably, there is a direct correlation that the longer a contributor has been on Alamy, the more images they will have in their portfolio – and it made for insightful reading to learn what you’re most likely to send in. The top 5 subjects for submissions, in order of the greatest first, are: Travel, Nature/Wildlife, Lifestyle, Objects & Still life, and News images. We don’t think this is too surprising as these would be the most accessible subjects to anyone with a camera.
We believe that there’s still lots of growth to be had in selling new images in these areas – these subjects are ever in demand from our customers who seek fresh content as certain styles and trends change. It’s also worth noting that the News images you send in today will become the archive of tomorrow, and Alamy’s archive collection is unrivalled in the industry being one of the main reasons many of our customers come to Alamy to find this type of content.
Part II – Alamy commission and how we compare
It’s interesting that some don’t concern themselves with the commission rate they are on, more focusing on yearly earnings, with the majority of respondents saying that our average license price was better than they get from the competition.
We were also heartened to learn that 83% of you feel that Alamy offers an equal or better offering than the other platforms when it came to our platform and contributor service support.
Part III – Alamy contributor service and general feedback
After the Alamy Image Manager and Sales data, the tools that you’re most likely to use are: Alamy Measures, Download Sales Report, Alamy Forum, Portfolio, What Should I Shoot and the Contributor Help Pages. We also asked what you would improve about a current feature and suggestions to add a new one. The responses ranged from making the keywording experience and adding metadata more efficient, to receiving more insightful data on what sells, and improving the What Should I Shoot tool so you can upload with more efficiency and with more relevant content.
Just over half (51%) of those surveyed have emailed Contributor Relations with a specific question, and 65% of you were somewhat satisfied or very satisfied with the way your query was handled. The qualitative feedback was generally positive when it came to our Contributor Relations responses (and we really do follow up on every query, if it’s not already covered on our Contributor Help Pages!), with many of you finding the responses “professional” and “courteous and prompt.”
In the more general feedback, there were many positive comments mixed with more insightful thoughts which we can use to improve the Alamy platform, as we’re aware there is always room for improvement. Positive comments are shared below, while learnings we have from this feedback and the survey and as a whole are covered in the final section.
“Alamy is one of the best agencies.”
“A trusted global company that l am happy to be part of.”
“Thank you for treating us like professionals, valued and appreciated.”
Action points and looking ahead to 2024
All of this data has given us plenty of ideas on areas we can improve and build on the plans we already had in place for the content we ingest from both new and long-time Alamy contributors. Essentially, we know that helping you and improving the contributor experience will also help our customers in making it easier for them to access relevant, quality content, which in turn gives your content more visibility (in turn leading to greater revenue-generating potential).
- Alamy Image Manager: We’ll be looking to update this tool so that you’ll be more in control of your images and add in efficiencies around keywording and captioning so that you can spend more time out in the real world shooting great content and less time working on your metadata.
- Quality Control: We continually work on ensuring contributors upload images that fit our technical standards and remove any images we find that fall outside our current terms. However, our work in this area will become more defined so that content will have to fit into some or all of these four cornerstones: Accuracy (Is the metadata accurate); Relevancy (Is the content relevant for the customer); Legality (Are images marked for usage correctly if there third-party rights issues); Aesthetics (Based on quality and traditional QC standards).
- Contributor Help Pages: These are currently being redeveloped by our Marketing Team so that answers to your questions are more easily found. The pages should go live very soon.
- Portfolio Pages: Our Product Team is already working on how we can improve the functionality, reliability, and ‘look’ of the portfolio pages so that they’re easier for you to share on your own networks.
- Professional Masterclass Talks: Throughout 2024, we’re looking to invite specialist speakers on areas such as keywording and copyright, so that you can be better informed and apply ‘best practice’ to your content.
These things take time in development, but they do reflect just some of the areas where we’re excited to be refining and working on. In looking forward to 2024 and beyond, we hope you agree that taking on these action points will benefit both contributors and customers alike and improve the Alamy experience for all.