MicrostockGroup

Lately I notice an increase in XL size images sold as "premium subscription". Did you notice the same?

I'm curious about the general trend, it seems that FT slowly turns into a subscription site, which (given the huge difference in sales volume to the real subscription site - SS) will also turn it from a crappy site to the crappiest.

Year after year FT sucks more and shows more that it doesn't give a * about photographers.

I know it was announced, it just came into effect recently, more and more. Most of my sales now are subs or "premium subs". And the premium ones are mostly sold as XL.

I had several last month, none this month so far (only regular subs). This move again make subs more advantageous for big buyers, or maybe to attract subscribers from other sites.  FT was already the cheapest subs, if I am not mistaken, but with that restriction.

I have more and more subscription sales at all agencies, and I'm thinking, what can be worse...

So, ladies and gentlemen, I think, today we are living in the Golden Era of Microstock Photography since there are many more per-photo sales. Compared to the future when we, the rich photographers, we will pay for our images to be downloaded and at the end of the day wins who paid more.

Seriously, with the today's technology and equipment availability virtually everybody can be a photographer. Forget the old days when only composition and message was important via the photo, today it's very important also the volume what this army of photographers produce. Volume production needs volume selling.

But the theory remains the same: it has value what is rare.

Not that I'm advocating it, but ...

One change would be far fewer sub sales (I think I average about 1 in 40 sales being subs at IS, compared to about 6-7 of 10 at FT).

But maybe a bigger change would be getting $5.60 for an XXXL sub sale instead of the huge total of ... $0.36?

ETA: In the spirit of full disclosure, though, I've never had a sub sale larger than L at IS (but those have earned as much as $2.28, which still handily beats $0.36).

Well, I wrote "not that I'm advocating it". But what I really meant was, "not that I'm seriously considering it for myself". For those who are bothered by sub sales even more than I am, then perhaps I am advocating it after all! 

It's beginning to look more and more to me like there will be little difference in subs / PPD DLs among DT, FT, and SS. SS's PPD sales keep increasing, while the same can be said for sub sales at DT & FT. If the current trend holds, it wouldn't surprise me to see all 3 roughly at about the same level within a year (which looks to me to be around 70-80% subs).  And FT loses in that comparison, since their average PPD is far below DT & SS for me.

Exactly. Except that Fotolia doesn't quite care about whether we're happy or not.

I would really like to see a mass exodus from Fotolia, this is the worst ever agency from photographer's point of view. I simply hate those emails "congrats you have sold another Premium Subscription XL size photo". They also dropped in revenue for me to a funny place 5, even after 123RF.

For me FTL is still not bad. Before this premium subscription they were the more dynamically advancing agency... income-wise.  They already outstiped SS and they were near to IS in monthly income. It resulted a higher priority in our daily upload policy so FTL got the most images of our and they got them first. But now they are back to 3-4th place.  This is sad, because I had and still have high hopes in this agency. I still hope they will change their mind... or something.

Kevin,

I am curious as to how many photo's you have in your portfolio there.  Can we see an example of your work to determine if it is in fact the agency that is causing your poor revenue stream?  I see my sales and profit continue to increase month after month with a diverse mix of regular subscriptions, Premium subscriptions, L, XL and EL sales every day on Fotolia.

Looking forward to seeing your work,

Mat

I'm guessing the OP is a small contributor.. you can't really compare a small contributors experience against a pro's..