MicrostockGroup

The last time I requested a payment wason Friday 16th June and I had the e-mail from paypal on 18th of June so only 2 days

whereas I requested payment on the 4th of August and still no cash from FT 

DT state 1-5 days

It took me atleast a week.

Note that at FT, you can cash out at any time and provided the amount is above $50, there is no charge to do so (less than $50 it costs $1).

I like Fotolia for their growth and primarily for their forum bouncing admin, Chad. But honestly their customer service is THE WORST of all the microstocks. I'm in the same boat. I submitted for payment a week ago, still not gone through. Customer service doesn't answer. Last time it took 8 days and an e-mail.

Thanks for the info. Now I can sit back and wait for my beer money to come in.

Shutterstock also has it easy as it only does one payment run a month.  It doesn't have to worry about it the rest of the month.  It just runs one report, uploads that into its payment system and it is done.  All the rest that payout when requested have to do that dayly.  I am supprised they dont work on a weekly system.  ie al those requested by Friday, we will do a payment run on monday so it will go out on tuesday etc.

123RF also does monthly payments.

Perhaps fotolia also does scheduled payments however.. if you are lucky to request payout right before a scheduled payment, you get paid quick, if you request payment just after a scheduled payment, you'll have to wait a few days until the next one comes around.

My payment just arrived from Fotolia so hopefully today is payday  - 5 days

I've been waiting for a Fotolia payment forever now. Problem with Fotolia is they're putting all of their resources into expanding their db (first to a million race), at the expense of 1) customer service, 2) quality of photos accepted and most importantly 3) marketing.

I've done some statistics as a job and would like to bring up a concept/equation:

Variables:

PortfolioShare = Your portfolio as a share of the total number of photos in the agency
AgencyGrowth = How quickly agency is adding photos
PortfolioGrowth = How quickly you are adding photos
AgencySales = Total photos sold by agency
YourSales = Total photos sold by you

Assuming:
1) proportionality (that all photos sell equally well, which is NOT true on a case by case basis, but probably true within 2 standard deviations for a large portfolio: say 500+ photos) then

If PortfolioGrowth = AgencyGrowth then you keep the same PortfolioShare.

Fotolia's been growing very fast 5-10% a month for the last 3 months. So has my portfolio. My share has kept constant (as does my ranking: currently in the top 400). My sales in the 3 months increased by lousy 5%! Because my ranking did not drop (neither total, nor weekly, although weekly varies wildly from top 100 to top 1000 depending on sales), it is clear that despite huge growth in number of photos offered, Fotolia is just not selling more. The only reason why my sales are keeping up is because I upload a lot and keep my portfolio share up.

This points to only one thing: lack of good marketing. All the resources are being diverted elsewhere, approvals and God knows what else, but not marketing. In the same span my portfolio grew by the same 50% on Dreamstime: sales doubled.

Moral of this mathematical diatribe: Fotolia better get into shape or it will fall into oblivion along with GimmeStock, Crestock and recently BigStock

I seriously doubt Fotolia will go into oblivion.  It doesn't cost them hardly anything at all to store their large cache of photos.  Just a single large raid array and extra backup time.  Their income is dependent upon their total sales and not the individual sales of their photographers.  Meaning if they add a lot of images without increasing their sales Fotolia's total income stays the same.  Photographers aren't happy because their $/image drops.  I seriously doubt they are hurting and believe that as a company they are probably doing quite well.

Mark

I just received my payment.  Maybe they are running on a bit of a schedule, based on the fact that others seem to have gotten paid as well.  If so I wish they would make that public so we aren't waiting around wondering what's up.  If I knew I had to wait for a certain date I could certainly be patient but just leaving me dangling doesn't sit well with me.  Oh well, I got paid so I'm happy none the less.