MicrostockGroup

Yes I got one too. Worded the same. As a silver non-exclusive I would be bumped to gold and would earn 2% more . . .
I am skeptical about the increase in traffic but then what do I know?
I asked Chad for some clarification. You need to volunteer 30+ images to qualify for the rank crank, but you do have some say in what images they select.

I'm considering it but not rushing in.

yes I did receivethe same letter.

I am currently silver at Fotolia. I looked at the royalty structure (for non-exclusives) and this offer makes no sense for me (from an increased rank perspective, not sure about increased traffic).

If I would be gold and could make it to emerald, now that would be a completely different matter ...

I didn't get it.  What collection are they talking about??

Fotolia has created a pilot program called Crank Your Rank that will drive more sales and traffic for our participating contributors. Every day Fotolia receives requests from potential and existing partners to trade traffic with images at no charge. An example of this type of request comes from Microsoft where Fotolia provides small images for free to their users in exchange of Microsoft promoting Fotolia and the contributor. While there is no commission on this type of transaction Microsoft does drive a lot of traffic to Fotolia and the contributors who submitted images resulting in increased sales. We have a few images to work from but we are looking for higher quality to represent the Fotolia collection. As a result Fotolia is building a small library of images that will be used in this manner. 

 

Contributors who allow us to select 30+ (Small sized) images to add to the library will receive a one time rank increase as a reward. So if you are a Silver Rank you will instantly become a Gold ranked member, or Gold to Emerald. In addition Fotolia will push the traffic from these partners to the contributor’s portfolio for increased sales.

Please remember: FT has a long track record, measured in years, of not doing what's good for their contributors.  This doesn't appear to be any different.  The increased traffic will absolutely not be worth giving away your best-sellers, even for small size.  And, by the way, do you really think that those "requests from potential and existing partners" are going to stop at the "small" size??  Not on your life.

Think think think.

I remember you saying that when the ranking levels were increased you had just missed out on Emerald (as you have confirmed above) __ however I've noticed that you have actually been Emerald for some months. The way I read your speil above suggests that this is a very recent change. Has the offer been running for some time and, if so, how are the lucky ones chosen?

I was in on this originally and had just one photo in the collection.  There is so much traffic that while the pic was probably downloaded thousands of times for free I ended up selling what would have in my opinion been a very unproductive pic (based on similar shots of similar looking girls in my portfolio's sales) and it sold over 100 times.  Not a crazy number of sales, but again..more than it would have had under normal circumstances I am sure.  Including multiple EL's.  Here is a link to the photo originally used... http://us.fotolia.com/id/3029748

I've added more pics this time around and have received a bump in rank to Emerald (I was at 9950 sales when the criteria got changed from 10,000) so I am very happy about the increase in commission and believe the added sales from the increased visibility on some of my best pics plus the extra % should work out to be a lucrative deal for me.

Mat

I'm not sure if any of the new photo's are even showing up yet.