Fotolia has just advised their contributors by email of their intention to adopt the subscription system already in place at some of their competitors. 23 – 30 credit according to your rank would be the contributor's earning for each photo sold.
Rapid Response
The response on the Fotolia forums has been pretty rapid with mainly indignation at the discount strategy. Three main reactions appear on the forums (based on fotolia's UK and France forum):
- some contributers are indecisive, give the benefit of the doubt and are willing to try on the short term,
- others refuse categorically and will not accept their photos to be included in the subscription scheme, and
- some are talking about withdrawing altogether of the site like Andres Rodriguez (sapphire contributer).
Even a moderator of the UK forum admitted her disappointment
International Confusions
On both UK and French forums there are confusions about what will really be applied. On the US forum however, a moderator stepped in to give some precisions on the the new scheme: subscription downloads will be limited to the L standard license (why not say that in the email?)
The independent forums have rapidly growing threads of anger on the subject with people who sometimes already pulled out altogether of Fotolia. Maybe a bit hasty if you take into consideration the chronic bad communication Fotolia has shown in the past. On the other hand, there has been complaints piling up quite high.
Search Changes
Indeed, the contributors have been complaining about changes to the searches and subsequent loss of income, along with an increased rate of rejection as part of Fotolia's strategy to raise the quality of the photos on the site. Prior to that the introduction of the infinite collection annoyed the smaller contributors in that these pictures have a better exposure, are sold more expensively and are sometimes (often?) of very poor quality (see examples: http://en.fotolia.com/id/6547687 or http://en.fotolia.com/id/6533055). If other contributors than these agencies would submit these photos via the normal route, they would be rejected without a doubt.
Fotolia also came up with new licences early this year which was more than welcomed by the contributors.
Anger Among Contributors?
What angers contributors the most is probably the raise of quality followed by a discount. This will certainly not help with the bad press microstock has with part of the professional photographers.
In the same announcement Fotolia introduces the API Reseller scheme which allows a reseller to sell the photos under their own brand at a different price (not lower than the Fotolia price). We have to suppose they wanted to tell us a bad news and good news. Another testimony to Fotolia's poor communication since hardly anyone is mentioning it in the forums (only seen in the french forum so far)...
Showing posts with label fotolia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fotolia. Show all posts
Saturday, 31 May 2008
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Fotolia
Fotolia are probably the biggest Microstock agency in the world (they certainly make this claim), originally started in France, and now based out of New York, they're big enough to be highly selective in the images they host, and to have a massive library (3.6 million at last count.)
I've been on Fotolia for a good few months now, I've still not many images hosted with them, as most of the shots I take are of landscapes, animals, or plants, all of which are massively populated categories on Fotolia.
As a result of this, these shots, unless they're particularly excellent will be rejected by the staff reviewers. This is a sensible move for Fotolia as they'll be ensuring underused categories are growing steadily, while their resources, and buyers time, is not wasted digging through mountains of unsalable stock.
Friends who use Fotolia highly recommend uploading mostly product shots of all kinds of household products, while Fotolia themselves suggest focussing on products relating to large industries, so shots of technological goods and services, business (people in work situations), and pharmaceuticals will be good sellers. If you're looking to sell anything out of their market though, don't bother, Fotolia are VERY selective, try somewhere else.
Good images, well focussed for a market DO sell, and they sell well. Their commission rates for sellers are not great, they run around 50% of sale price for exlusive images, and 33% for non-exclusive images, although there is some space to improve on this rate with certain license types and increased rankings.
For buyers, the searching system in Fotolia is very simple, you can browse by a pretty decent list of categories, each with upwards of 50,000 images to choose from, or use their simple text search service which has ordering and filters as you'd expect.
Pricing starts at $1 for basic small web images, and a variety of licenses are on offer, to ensure you're able to purchase the image you need, for a satisfactory price. Along with a fairly substantial Free section, and their API allowing a lot of other sites to help you search their library, I'm sure designers and publishers will find what they need.
More pricing information can be found at http://us.fotolia.com/Info/RoyaltyFreePhotos
So?
Fotolia are a good company to be buying from, however to be selling with them, you need to be good at spotting niche microstock markets, and be willing to take a little bit of a hit on the commissions you'll earn.
If you have experiences of dealing with Fotolia as a buyer or a seller, please let us know.
I've been on Fotolia for a good few months now, I've still not many images hosted with them, as most of the shots I take are of landscapes, animals, or plants, all of which are massively populated categories on Fotolia.
As a result of this, these shots, unless they're particularly excellent will be rejected by the staff reviewers. This is a sensible move for Fotolia as they'll be ensuring underused categories are growing steadily, while their resources, and buyers time, is not wasted digging through mountains of unsalable stock.
Friends who use Fotolia highly recommend uploading mostly product shots of all kinds of household products, while Fotolia themselves suggest focussing on products relating to large industries, so shots of technological goods and services, business (people in work situations), and pharmaceuticals will be good sellers. If you're looking to sell anything out of their market though, don't bother, Fotolia are VERY selective, try somewhere else.
Good images, well focussed for a market DO sell, and they sell well. Their commission rates for sellers are not great, they run around 50% of sale price for exlusive images, and 33% for non-exclusive images, although there is some space to improve on this rate with certain license types and increased rankings.
For buyers, the searching system in Fotolia is very simple, you can browse by a pretty decent list of categories, each with upwards of 50,000 images to choose from, or use their simple text search service which has ordering and filters as you'd expect.
Pricing starts at $1 for basic small web images, and a variety of licenses are on offer, to ensure you're able to purchase the image you need, for a satisfactory price. Along with a fairly substantial Free section, and their API allowing a lot of other sites to help you search their library, I'm sure designers and publishers will find what they need.
More pricing information can be found at http://us.fotolia.com/Info/RoyaltyFreePhotos
So?
Fotolia are a good company to be buying from, however to be selling with them, you need to be good at spotting niche microstock markets, and be willing to take a little bit of a hit on the commissions you'll earn.
If you have experiences of dealing with Fotolia as a buyer or a seller, please let us know.
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