Shameless self promotion

Alan Capel speaks to John Lund

James Allsworth - Content Executive — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 09:48:00 GMT

Recently our Head of Content, Mr Alan Capel, was interviewed by 'the stock photo guy' John Lund.

Among other things, if you want to read Alan's thoughts about the path we're on, pricing structures and image ranking, then have a read of the interview over on Mr Lund's blog.

The Alamy 20 millionth image...100% royalty giveaway

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:27:00 GMT

We have given away the ultimate prize to celebrate hitting 20 million images.

Peter Jones’ image of an unusual row of terraced houses is the winner of Alamy’s 20 millionth image competition. Peter will receive 100% royalties on this image and another 19 of his images for 20 months.

On hearing the news a delighted Peter Jones said: "I have been an Alamy contributor since March 2008. Given that Alamy uploads 10,000 images every day my feat was a real shot in the dark. Here's to the next 20 million images!"

There were also 20 runner-up prizes for the 20 closest predictions of the time that the 20 millionth image hit the site. Each runner-up has been notified and will be given all the royalties on one of their images for 20 weeks.

20 million

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:27:00 GMT

© Oleksiy MaksymenkoWe've hit the 20 million images mark. We'd like to say a big 'thank you' to all our contributors who have helped us reach this total. We still believe variety is extremely important to picture buyers today and will continue to modify our site to manage and deliver an increasing volume of content.

The competition to guess the time of the 20 millionth image is now closed, good luck to those who entered! Winners will be notified shortly, along with the identity of the 20 millionth image.

The following press release (below) went out today.

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Alamy has doubled the size of its collection in three years, with 20 million images now online and available to clients. The agency’s content spans cutting edge creative stock, editorial, news, sport and entertainment imagery, providing customers with an unrivalled encyclopedia of imagery to suit all projects.

Oxford, UK – Alamy has experienced phenomenal growth to reach today’s milestone figure of 20 million images. The agency receives 300,000 new images every month from its global network of the world’s leading picture agencies and professional and amateur photographers. Alamy has no restrictions on the number of images contributors can upload and operates a pioneering open door policy. This approach has enabled the company to grow rapidly and to meet customers’ demands for fresh imagery.

“With 20 million images from all of the leading image producers in the world why would customers need to go anywhere else?” said James West, Alamy’s CEO

In the last year, Alamy has introduced new search features and upgraded its infrastructure to ensure that clients can continue to easily find what they are looking for.

Helen Hicks, Head of Customer Service at Alamy said: “Customers want the best of both worlds - millions of images to choose from and a great online experience. Alamy delivers on both counts”.

To celebrate, Alamy is running a contributor competition where the owner of the 20 millionth image receives 100% royalties on 20 of their images for 20 months. There are further runner-up prizes for predicting when the 20 millionth image was added. The winners will be announced shortly.

About Alamy: Alamy connects thousands of designers, marketing departments, news desks, and publishers with some of the best professional and amateur photographers around. Alamy’s revolutionary approach to the stock photography business means 60% of each sale is paid to the content owner and 89% of company profit goes to medical research. See about Alamy for more information.

Alamy's 20 millionth image - 100% royalty giveaways

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:09:00 GMT

To celebrate Alamy hitting the 20 million images mark we are giving all our contributors the chance to enjoy the delights of 100% royalties.

We will be closely monitoring our databases over the next few weeks to identify the 20 millionth image to land on the Alamy site.

The lucky owner of the 20 millionth image will be able to select a further 19 of their images on Alamy, and we'll take 0% commission on all sales for those 20 images for a period of 20 months.

Do you see a theme forming here?

We are also giving away another 20 runners up prizes.

For users of Twitter if you retweet #Alamy20Mimages with your prediction of the time and date of the 20 millionth image hitting the site you also stand a chance of enjoying a 100% return.

For those of you still resisting the temptations of Twitter, you can still enter by simply emailing Member Services with your prediction, putting Alamy20Mimages as the title of your email.

The 20 contributors who get nearest to predicting the time of the 20 millionth image will each receive a runners up prize of 100% royalties on one of their images (that they select) for 20 weeks.

To give you some guidance, we currently have 19,818,048 images on the site and we usually add between 6 and 10,000 images a day, but submission volumes vary from day to day.

Good luck to all contributors and many thanks for helping us achieve this groundbreaking milestone.

Alamy press launch video

James Allsworth - Content Executive — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:40:00 GMT

Part 1: Alamy CEO James West demos the new website and shows off the amazing speed of the search engine. Recorded at Shoreditch House, London on the 20th April 2010.

Part 2: James reveals the extent of Alamy's significant activities in medical research and combating climate change.

The event was attended by members of the press, key clients and Alamy photographers.

Members of Alamy staff were also there to meet and chat with our guests over breakfast.

It was wonderful to catch up with some of our clients and contributors and we welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate how we can provide everything for the picture buyer.

New look website on the way

Alan Capel - Head of Content — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:46:00 GMT

Our new look website is about to be launched. It’s going live soon but you can currently get a sneak preview.

It’s faster, slicker and cleaner with a host of improved features for customers.

The new look includes:

A one-click search tool to quickly filter results by region, ethnicity, age and more
An option to see the home page with or without pictures
A Creative Collection tailor-made for the advertising and design market

We will be providing guidance on how these changes may affect contributors shortly. The good news is we haven't introduced any new fields in Manage Images as a result of these changes, so there is no mandatory additional work required.

The Creative Collection will feature a handpicked selection of contributors who supply imagery that has a strong creative bias that we believe will appeal to advertising and design customers. It is very much about the aesthetic qualities of the imagery.

We will shortly be providing a page in My Alamy where you can apply to be considered for this new collection.

Record breaking - Our best day of sales ever!

James Allsworth — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:48:00 GMT

© Brand X PicturesAs a perfect introduction to our new Shameless self promotion category we are delighted to announce that Wednesday the 31st of January was our biggest day ever in terms of sales made.

We haven’t done anything spectacular to celebrate this joyous occasion, but what we are doing, right now in fact, is giving ourselves a whacking great pat on the back. Here’s to breaking the record again very soon, Cheers!