MicrostockGroup

I'm really peeved at FLs attitude to European contributors signed up to the US site and their unwillingness to switch you to the correct version.
They were one of the first sites I signed up to years ago and I didn't realize that there were two versions, the Euro one and the US dollar one.

Have any Europeans stuck on the US one considered deleting their portfolio and re-uploading to the European site so they can get Euro payouts?

I am one of that.. I entered on a US link but I live in Portugal.. Email them like 10x and always with some months between.. really bad actually.. we are losing a lot of money, I try to not think about it..

I am not even Silver there but it would be a pain to upload again all my stuff and perhaps get a lot more rejects these days.. been there since March 09, not a lot of money but certainly a lot more if I were with EUR, should I try? don´t know.. really hard once I do have a few pics that sell regularly..

I am always waiting them to change it but seem that will never happen.. another screw up contributors for this business

Yeah I know it's a big gamble but I'm wondering if it's worth the risk for the potential reward.
The main thing that was stopping me before is that I'm a fair way towards Emerald, but I'm thinking that they will probably change the levels yet again before I reach it anyhow!

Definitely not worth the risk IMHO. Every single image you have accepted will immediately go to zero in the search order. If you are approaching emerald, you must have a lot of images and some or a lot of those images may be from time when FT was image hungry. Many of your present best-sellers may be rejected on the basis of arbitrary criteria by the 'rejectors' etc, etc.

To be honest, I've never figured out why FT allows a couple of things, 1) Payment in Euro and 2) Euro contributors to be become exclusive. When they sell a downloaded image in USD from a European bronze exclusive, they have to give the contributor 40% of $1.45 of every $1.00 received when they pay out. The higher the canister level, the more they lose! And there are few benefits to FT that I can see of having exclusives. They don't promote them, exclusives' files may be more expensive and it's not even possible for buyers to see who is exclusive and who is not!
The reason that FT does so well in Europe (IMO) is that the various European sites of FT work in the language of that country and buyers prefer to search in their own language which is often not English. Keywording on eg. the German site is done in German by the contributors so it is much easier for a German buyer to find what he wants in his/her own language when they go to FT.de (or get sent there automatically).

When I joined in 2008, there were 3 choices. Join USA and get paid in USD, join UK and get paid in GBP or join one of the European country sites like Germany or France but have to go through registration in German or French. I went with GBP. Converted to Euros at present, a 50 credit@75pence (GBP37.50) payout gives around €44. Whereas a US$50 payout only gives €32.

Has been before (in 2002). Can be again. All in the hands of the central bankers to decide.

As long as he continues to do the corporate kleptocracy's/bankers' bidding, he's good for another 4 years.

Hi,

long time IS exclusive here. My girl wants to get her feet wet in microstock and she'd like to create FT account. I remember from my independent days that it used to make more sense to register on Fotolia EU than Fotolia US because credit prices in EUR were higher. Is that still true today? Should she choose Fotolia US because all other agencies pay in USD or is there a financial incentive to go with Fotolia EU?

If that matters, we live in EU but do not use EUR in this particular country, so no matter what currency we are paid in, it must be converted to local currency one way or the other.

Thanks

My experience at FT is that old pictures are selling well, while newly uploaded pictures hardly have sales. So it's a very risky trick.

I didn't even wait that long with Fotolia. I closed my account after withdrawing all my images about two months ago. Will all the rumours of serious fraud and dubious business practices I really felt I did not want my images associated with them or their tactics. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to get rid of everything within a few dozen mouse clicks - they must be used to contributors cancelling their accounts and removing their portfolios - not so easy at DT I have to say - they make it REALLY difficult to kick them into the long grass.

I can't find that info on the new Fotolia website. Anyway, it you subscribed through a European website (fotolia.de, fotolia.fr, fotolia.ie, ...) then you have Euro; If you subscribed through fotolia.co.uk you have Pounds, through fotolia.com you have Dollars. You will find out at next payment as well.

The other(more recent alternative) is that your Fotolia address begins with http://eu.fotolia............and the site and keywords are in English, payout in Euro.