Greetings from sunny Portugal here I welcome you to my entertaining & hopefully useful April 2024 Brutally Honest Report, where as usual I’ll be discussing my earnings as well as AI news. I’ll also discuss updates from getting sued via Alamy for two of my editorial images (hence the click-bait title). Let’s get started!

Support the Brutally Honest Blog

Throughout my blog, as you can appreciate, I’ve given quite a bit of my time to help you make sense of this complicated stock industry and help you to focus on making money. If you feel that the information below and throughout the blog is useful I kindly ask you to buy me a coffee.

-> Buy me a coffee! <-

Keep in mind that I’ve put in many many hours of my time to compile these comprehensive reports and interviews when I’m not chasing the sun!

Otherwise, another great way to support the blog is to click and sign up to the “recommended products” on one of the banners on the right-hand side of this page —–>

Some of your donations will be used to pay off Alamy’s legal fees 😀

YouTube version of the report below!

Coming soon…

Monthly highlights on the blog

A quiet month blog-wise only means that it was a busy month travel wise where I certainly enjoyed my time in South Africa. Just one blog post published from that trip where, as usual, I ask myself whether I’ll be able to recoup (some of) my costs from the trip in the near future. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to cover these costs with stock earnings despite trying my best efforts…

• Case Study: Will I Recover my Costs from my Recent trip to South Africa?

Back to shooting poker tournaments

Other than traveling I was also busy doing some client shoots and shooting a poker tournament at my local Casino Estoril over five days.

New Print Shop Opened on Etsy!

One of my goals for 2024 was to open up my own printing business and I have finally taken this bold step with the help of Steve Heap’s super useful article on “Selling Physical Prints in an Etsy Shop“.

It was also one of my yearly goals!

“Goal 4 – Devote more time to promote my prints

As shown with my current Print on Demand results at only $75 for the whole year, I’m keen to start promoting my limited-edition prints directly to clients as a full-service business thus providing a more personable service. I’ll also avoid all the hefty fees that Print on Demand sites charge. More details soon as I’ll be ironing out details.”

I’ve therefore opened up a shop on Etsy in partnership with my architecture friend/colleague, Joas Souza who runs his own printing business in London – ImagePrintCentre. Joas’s printing shop covers me at least for the UK market and although ImagePrintCentre of course ship to customers outside of the UK due to Brexit shipping outside the UK has become both expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, I’m looking to team up with printing shops in Portugal to reduce my costs.

Aerials by Alex

It’s early days and I’m still building up my collection on Etsy. So far, its deliberately focused on aerials captured with the drone which I feel would make for great wall-hangers.

I’ll keep adding a few images every week until I have a collection of some 50 or so of images that I feel would make for the best prints. I had originally shortlisted some 300 but it’s just too many and best to focus on a few particularly as there is a small cost for each upload on top of the hosting fee. Here’s my collection so far with a link to my shop below.

So, yea exciting times 🙂 Now let’s move onto less positive news…

Brutally Honest Alamy Lawsuit!*

I wrote back in the January 2024 report about an email I received from Alamy out of the blue about complaints related on two of my images of newstands captured in public, which read:

“Given the notice received we must make you aware that the complaint makes demands for compensation in respect of the alleged infringement and we must therefore place you on notice that Alamy may be required to rely on the indemnities provided under your contract with us to recoup any costs related to compensation related to these claims or any litigation proceedings that are initiated in relation to the content. Should this eventuality arise, we will of course let you know.”

Fast-forward and I receive no news for over a year until mid-April when I opened my inbox to read:

“We previously wrote to you concerning Alamy’s receipt of a claim of infringement of intellectual property rights and injunction in relation to images displayed on Alamy as part of your collection.

This claim originates from Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH, the parent of the BILD newspaper who have filed proceedings against Alamy in the German Courts for infringement of its intellectual property rights.

Alamy are currently defending the claims, and the imposed injunction provisions connected to the alleged infringement for which Alamy have been required to sweep for and remove images from your collection featuring the intellectual property.

We placed you on notice of these claims and demands and are writing to update you that costs are being incurred in defence of the claims.

As you will be aware as a contributor to Alamy you provide Alamy with indemnification against such claims under the terms of our contract. It is Alamy’s intention to rely on these indemnities to recoup the costs incurred in defending the claims resulting from the submission of these images to our platform.

These costs will be divided by each image involved within this claim so each contributor involved will pay a fair proportion of the costs incurred.

To frame your expectations your liability for costs incurred to date in connection with these claims (2 of the 6050 images removed as part of the injunction compliance to date) stands at £22.87.

Alamy regularly rejects spurious claims regarding copyright infringement, ownership of images and image rights, without incurring any legal expenses. However, in this case we will be deducting funds from your account balance to recover the costs incurred in resolving this claim. You will see this deduction of the indemnified costs reflected as a debit on your Balance of Account page in due course.”

Was worried was going to be subtantially more but neverthless I pressed Alamy on whether the £22.87 would bring and end to the matter and they replied the following:

“This matter remains ongoing with the case currently in front of the German courts. As mentioned, legal costs are being incurred by Alamy in defending the claims which as a contributor to you provide Alamy with indemnification against such claims under the terms of our contract. In the event of any further developments in relation to your cost liability under this matter we would provide you with an update to advise of any changes.”

FML

Yeah, OK…at the moment with little information to go by and nothing to follow publicly it’s just a wait and see approach on whether I’ll have to sell of my kidneys to cover Alamy. I’m not the only one affected as there are probably 100s of other contributors, thus adding to Alamy’s legal bill to defend this frivilous claim – so far around $86,000 (6,050 images times $14). Appears like Bild just did a blank claim on all searches in Alamy’s database that included any depiction of their pathetic newspaper.

Another contributor affected started a thread over at the MSG Forum with an interesting discussion which I’ve also added my thoughts. As well as at the Alamy forum (surprised they haven’t shut it down…yet).

I’m obviously highly annoyed at this and don’t necessarily blame Alamy, although they did accept the images into the collection with no issues and I tagged them “editorial only). The fact that I need to idemnify them for any claims is quite common and all agencies have this clause. In other words, if someone brings a claim against any of my images I’m ultimately responsible for costs to defend the claim.

What truly annoys me is the nature of the claim over images which featured part of this useless newspaper among others in a newstand. A super common sight in most European cities and me being a street photographer and all don’t miss this type of opportunity even if I know that it won’t sell for much (but as you can see below, these types of images do sell).

Between a rock and hard place

As you all know I’m not earning huge amounts with stock so if I have to walk on egg shells going forward while carrying out street photography, it’s just not worth it. Feels like editorial is the only way to go to avoid the lingering AI threat to commercial content. Will keep you guys updated in subsequent reports on news related to this claim.

Speaking of AI, let’s now discuss some AI news from April.

AI News

This month we bring you news that the new Microsoft AI can animates faces from photos, just check out this example using Mona Lisa herself.

“Microsoft researchers detailed a new AI model they’ve developed that can take a still image of a face and an audio clip of someone speaking and automatically create a realistic looking video of that person speaking. The videos — which can be made from photorealistic faces, as well as cartoons or artwork — are complete with compelling lip syncing and natural face and head movements.

In one demo video, researchers showed how they animated the Mona Lisa to recite a comedic rap by actor Anne Hathaway.”

LipDub, the future of AI dubbing

Now this is all silly and perhaps entertaining but in a more serious note, it’s going to be difficult times for dubbers of media as one company, Lip Dub has made strides in using AI to realistically mimic actors’ mouths in different languages, see an example here from Oppenheimer with more examples in this article.

Looks like it’s not only commercial stock photographers/videographers that will have to adapt to this new reality as film translators may also face significant headwinds in the coming years.

Let’s now move onto the usual detailed earnings report.

Detailed Monthly Earnings Breakdown

Image Earnings (US$)

Agency	Number of Images in port (new images April)	Net Revenue April	Avg Return Per Image
Alamy	16,077 (77)	98 *(minus 25 for legal costs)	0.006
Arcangel (RM-exclusive)	4,190 (163)	TBD	–
Adobe Stock	4,608 (56)	98	0.02
DepositPhotos	8,292 (74)	11	0.01
Dreamstime	9,184 (73)	6	0.01
Etsy	6 (6)	0	0
Freekpik	1,010 (0)	6	0.06
iStock Turds (Mar 2024)	8,964 (79)	65	0.007
MotionArray	185 (31)	5	0.05
Robert Harding (Q4 2023 monthly average) – RM/RF exclusive	541 (18)	19	0.04
Shutterstock	12,275 (61)	75	0.02
Wirestock	3,066 (0)	144 +11	N/A
Total		513

Clip Earnings (US$)

Agency	Number of clips in port (new clips April)	Net Revenue for April
Adobe Stock	1,082 (29)	11
Pond5	2,644 (35)	72
Depositphotos	1012	6
iStock Turds (Mar 2024)	857 (25)	4
Shutterstock	1,981 (22)	16
Total		201

Grand Total: $714

Thoughts on the month

Another month where Shutterstock didn’t emerge as the top agency and it’s happening more and more as they lost out to Adobe Stock and Alamy.

Even though I failed to reach my overall goal of $1k this month I’m happy to see that Adobe Stock, Alamy and Pond5 all pulled in a solid months.

However, the winner of the month is Wirestock, surprisingly and I’ll discuss why next.

Wirestock

This month I will start my report with an agency that I rarely ever discuss, Wirestock.

Wirestock reached out to me in late-March when I was still in South Africa with a proposal for one of their challenges, so I thought…why not, I’m up to trying something different. Basically, they asked me to create 15 sets of 4 images each to tell a story. Check out their “Challenges” Page for more.

I duly submitted all 15 sets before the deadline and most were accepted…some were asked to be revised and others were outright rejected (mainly to do with captions). So far, here are the ones that were accepted with new batches pending their approval. Anyway, here’s my fav story from the series.

For the earning report purposes I’ll only consider the above approved so they have earned me 9 x 4 x $4 which is $144. They’ve asked me to send in a few more batches to complete the 15 but they’re still pending being reviewed so will not count them towards the total until I know 100% that they’ve been approved.

Alamy

Strong month at $98 net (not including $25 to cover Alamy’s legal costs) on 12 downloads with some of the following:

As you can see above, a scan of an image that I shot in 1999 at Vancouver’s GM Place sold on Alamy earning me $24 net. You may recall about this mini project of scanning old images and uploading them for stock that discussed in my May 2023 Earnings report. The below images and other scans were digitally sharpened/recovered/noise-reduced using the magical Topaz AI software.

I’ve spoken to my dad to try to recover some of his old footage and he told me he will look it into to recover the VHS / CDs in a box somewhere! Those will be unique and quite rare showcasing the world in the 1960s – early-1990s.

Adobe Stock

Strong month at just shy of $100 with these best-sellers:

With some low-priced clips to add to the total:

Pond5

After a few sleepy months, the hibernating bear finally woke up producing a strong month at $72 with two sales + $19 for a “Netflix Premium License Upgrade”.

The largest of the sales was:

Followed by the day-to-night usual timelapse that sells regularly and has earned me a tidy $600+ over its lifetime.

iStock (Turds)

After a truly shocking February report where there were significant deductions to my earnings I was expecting a considerable uptick in earnings for March. There was an increase but not much at just a combined $70 on 198 downloads. Really low average RPD at 35cents. Nothing special to report.

Shutterstock

Another agency that has been disappointing as of late is Shutterstock where I’ve set my minimum payout at a lowly $100 since I started back in early-2013. I’ve just checked my historical earnings and since 2015 there were only four months where I didn’t reach this tiny payout threshold (with this month being the fourth).

If push came to shove on what to show, only one drone clip to report earning me $13, that I captured in Vigo in September 2022.

Arcangel

Hereby reporting 163 approved images approved this month which is quite impressive in itself.

However, no slideshow this month as not in the mood to discuss/showcase any book covers as it’s obvious that I’m underperforming there and not reaching my goals despite a huge investment of time and growing portfolio of 4,190 images to date. In December last year I set myself this goal for the year which I’m not meeting…

“Although it’s more difficult to quantify the goals, in the end the number of sales will speak for themselves and I’m cautiously optimistically predicting that in 2024 I’ll have at least 12 sales which would earn me around $3,000 net. Now watch me wipe the egg of my face this time next year.”

At this stage I need to have regular sales or it’s time to flip burgers at McDonald’s (oh wait that job is now been replaced by machines).

Ok, I couldn’t help myself (I still love Arcangel despite some disappointments as of late)…here are my favourite 6 images of the month.

Onto more positive news.

Happy 10-year “Passive Income” Anniversary

Continuing on with this truly “passive income” series, in April I had sales of the following that were accepted over 10 years ago when I was living in The Netherlands.

Until next time!

Hope you’ve enjoyed this blog post. How did you do this month?

---

About Alex

I’m an eccentric guy, currently based in Lisbon, Portugal on a quest to visit all corners of the world and capture stock images & footage. I’ve devoted eight years to making it as a travel photographer / videographer and freelance writer. I hope to inspire others by showing an unique insight into a fascinating business model.

I’ve gone all in on submitting book cover images to Arcangel Images. Oh and was also flying a DJI Mavic 2s drone regularly (although it crashed into Botafogo Bay on NYE – here is the story), which I’ve upgraded to a Mini 3 Pro and eventually an Air3 in 2024/2025.

I’m proud to have written a book about my adventures which includes tips on making it as a stock travel photographer – Brutally Honest Guide to Microstock Photography