Microstock Group - A meeting place for microstock photographers

Dear Fotolia Admin,

You have just increased prices substantially for customers buying credits. Please can you explain why these higher prices have not resulted in proportionate increases in our commissions?

What you propose to do about it and when?

Why are you not paying commissions based on the actual purchase price of the purchaser's credits (or higher) as other reputable agencies do?

This is not Fotolia forum. You can scream and they could never hear you :-)

That's not true.  Administrators from all the major agencies keep up with these forums.    And FWIW there is a thread on the Fotolia forum with similar concerns raised.

@ Gostwyck, I am right there with you.  This is the first time I am aware of in the micro industry where a site has raised it's prices but the contributors have not gotten their contracted percentage.  

It seems that a response (beyond the confusing and dismissive replies sent to Warren) is in order.  

I can't overstress the significance of this type of behavior in my calculations to go exclusive with Istock.  

To be honest, I really didn't WANT to go exclusive anywhere, but actions like this on the part of Fotolia have pushed me in that direction.

Please be aware that this is not just a problem with FT, since I can guarantee that the rest of the industry is watching very closely (as they do in all of these matters).

If this issue doesn't get sorted out properly, then I can guarantee that other agencies will follow suit quickly.

Not true. They climbed down on the both the subscription commissions and also on them counting towards Ranking. This is MUCH more important and no compromise will be acceptable. We want to be paid our rightful commissions.

Who said anything about threats, unfulfilled or otherwise?

We are campaigning to be paid our rightful commissions. Why do you have a problem with that and why aren't you doing the same?

Well you all know im 100% behind you guys if only we could get some of the real big guns to say somthing here or on the forum it might help

They once started off with micro !!

Warren

Big guns are few and they can be always "compensated" for being loyal :-)

Please try and understand that there is a history of vindictiveness from "some" sites towards what people have said here, rest assured as mentioned in a previous thread some of the 'big guns' are taking this latest insult from Fotolia very seriously, that may involve going exclusive with iStock or for others reassessing the viability of creating images for the microstock market as a whole, either way Fotolias latest attempt at foul play will have an effect on them.

As for speaking out on their forum - pointless, either the management just ignore it or 'censor boy' will delete it before they get a chance to see any comments.

It'll be interesting to see in a few months how many people have been tipped over the edge towards iStock exclusivity because of Fotolias latest move, and what will be even more interesting will be to see their blogs and comments all over the internet stating their reasons why they did it!

Is IStock really more ethical, with a higher regard for contributors?  If so can we count on them to stay that way?  Especially if the competition goes away?

I tried to find the forum thread on their site and couldn't. The only post about it was from Chad stating that he appreciated everyone patience as the new commission and purchase incentive programs are rolled out. 

I just spent a few minutes looking at the contributor agreement.  It is 100% weasel words and in reality it commits to nothing in terms of commissions.  It says contributors get certain percentages - but does not specifically say that means a percentage of the sale price. It says we get 'credits' but is completely vague on the subject of what a credit is, in terms of local currency.

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me there's nothing actionable here, Fotolia holds the cards.

None of this means much to me, I'm a small player, I can use the money but it isn't a big factor to me.   I've been in this a year, have already dropped a couple of agencies and, and Fotolia just went to the #1 spot on my "next drop" list.  They're simply trashing this business.

  

Actually, withholding uploads is a pretty effective technique for any site that sells a lot of subscriptions. Subscription buyers want new stuff each month. If there isn't any, they fuss (you should have read the Jupiter forums about Photos.com plus before the SXP content went up there; they were mad that there wasn't anything new getting uploaded).

Pulling a portfolio is really an end-of-the-line sort of move - putting it back entails a ton of work on the contributor's part plus all the reviewing all over again on the agency's part. I can't imagine any serious (i.e. large portfolio) contributor would do something like this as a negotiating tactic.

Funnily enough, the one site that has the easy ability to disable the whole portfolio with one command is the one site that has in general behaved fairly reasonably with contributors - SS. It'd be great if other sites had that feature so you could just turn off the sales if you weren't happy but turn them back on once the dispute was resolved. Given FT's track record, I can't imagine them implementing that feature.

The major problem is that there are a few very large contributors that just don't get involved in any way with the smaller folks. It'd be a huge help if they did, but I think they figure they don't have anything in common with the non-factory contributors. If anyone knows any of them and can approach them offline to see if they'll weigh in, that'd certainly be worth trying.

In the movie business people want a percentage of the gross as their bonus - when it was a percentage of profits the studios ensured that the way the books were kept there never was any "profit" to get a percentage of. It seems to me FT is playing this game - if they control the definition of what contributors get a percentage of and it's independent of the price a buyer pays then they can keep reducing royalties by changing the definition of a credit.

Seems reminiscent of boxes of cereal, tissues, crackers, etc. that stay the same size while reducing the weight/count of product, hoping the buyer won't notice it's a price increase. And that's a scummy practice too!