Alamy: Aha ... "a number of new products to broaden our customer base"

James West, CEO of Alamy, today in "Pricing - the Alamy way", worth to be quoted at full length:

As a general trend, prices across our industry are falling and appear set to continue to do so. This downward pressure ranges from mild to extreme and results from one or more of the following:

• An abundance of images on the market
• Customer consolidation (mergers and takeovers in the publishing world)
• Aggressive pricing strategies in some stock agencies
• Micropayment sites
• Erosion of traditional print media by the web
• Migration of advertising spending to the web
• Uncertain outlook in the global economy

 

We will shortly be making our revenue figures public for the first time. Our sales figures show us so far sitting outside this broader industry trend: they suggest that our prices are stable and our market share is increasing. This is because we are a growing company that does 70% of its business in the relatively stable secondary editorial market (magazines, non-current affairs sections of newspapers, book publishers, travel companies, etc.).

Later this year we will be releasing a number of new products to broaden our customer base beyond that secondary editorial market. In that expansion our pricing strategy will be one that recognises and respects that prices are falling across the industry but also that contributors need to retain control over how their images are sold.

Photographers need to be able to test the water in some of these growing new markets without cannibalising their sales or devaluing their product in the process. We will endeavour to make this possible for you and I promise that we won't do anything drastic without your consent!

Full post "Pricing - the Alamy way". Interesting comments.

 

Related:

• ImageTrail.net: The first microstock only photo portal, Q&A with Founder & CEO Peter Galbraith
  (July 25, 2007)

• "I submitted (relatively) the same set of images to Alamy and iStock. Result year-to-date: iStock: 374 downloads, Alamy: 0. I guess that with 3 Alamy sales, the balance would be even, but they still have to happen".
  (Strobist.com on Flickr: Thoughts on the new Photoshelter stock service and the move away from microstock, today)

 

(Contributed by LO)