MicrostockGroup

I like the "creative professionals"  <- professional can't afford $1

re quality - I looked at backgrounds and textures, lots of garbage but there is the coffee beans, parchment papers, brick walls, wood textures a bit of wading through the garbage and there is some decent stuff (sounds like my portfolio LOL) - a few years ago the micro's were just considered full of garbage.

This is going to shock you I know, but I'm going to play devil's advocate

I never opted to have my images offered for free when submitting them originally.  When the offer was presented to sell the right to offer my images that have remained unsold for 2 years or more to an unknown free site for $.50 each I balked and waited.  When I looked at my unsold images I realized 2 things...

1:  I had a crapload of unsold images after two years.  Somewhere around 1,000
2:  Most of those unsold images were unsold for a reason.  The low acceptance rate gripes you find today, you did not find 2 years ago as some of you may recall.  Most images were rejected because they had a date stamp in the corner or something.  If I had to guess, I would say 75% of the photos I had in the "unsold" category would not be approved today. 

So with no gun to my head and absolutely no idea where my photo's would end up I opted to sell the pics for $.50 a pop.  I took the $500 I was paid for them and spent it with no qualms whatsoever.  It would be a bit hypocritical for me to get worked up about it now.  I read the word "donate" when referring to offering their images for free.  I was paid.  If you were not and you opted to give your images for free originally..I'm sorry, but that's on you.  The only incentive I can see to do that would be to simply have bragging rights that your images may be used by somebody somewhere for something.  I would rather get paid. 

If there are 350,000 images available that means they paid $175,000 for them.  I can't help but think there must be some thought that has gone into this as to a tangible return. 

Mat

Your link to PDN at the Fotolia forum was removed.

OK, I'm a high school teacher with an insatiable wish for images and no way of buying them except out of my own pocket. The few times I've been desperate enough to try that, I haven't found anything suitable.
But for free, I can satisfice, and often do that at Microsoft Clip Art anyway.
So I followed the link and signed up.
Firstly, you can only get 3 downloads until you give them a lot of personal information, including your mobile phone number. Hell, only my husband, my sister and my parents know my mobile number - I don't even know it. Forget that.
It's a big con, though. Before I discovered that you have to type in your mobile number (it's hidden until you get to that bit, which is the last field) I had typed in the other info, as vaguely as possible. But I bet they have that info when I clicked on the 'click here to get your registration number', which was the only way to find out that you must give them your mobile number.
Well, even three downloads is better than nothing. Think about the first lesson I'll be doing on Tuesday morning and look for a suitable image. First of all, the keywording and/or search engine is pretty useless, but at last I found an image I could use. Click to download it. 404 not found error, but they system says I've had one download. Try again, still 404 not found error, so I haven't downloaded anything, but I'm still only showing as one download.
Try another search. Search results are totally bizarre, and 6 search pages later, I haven't got what I want.
I don't think you need to worry about too many people downloading your images for free.

Yeah, it is completely clear to me that the site is intended for data harvesting only. Otherwise there would be no business model behind it.

Thanks ShadySue and Flemish for the detective work. Now I am starting to think it was a good idea not to have a link to FT!   

Hmm.  Maybe it's a company that purchased those images FT "paid" contributors for, with a nice profit to FT, so they can have content for their little scheme?

Well nothing surprises me with Fotolia as I mentioned in my previous thread.
I do not trust them one bit.

It's a real shame that good peoples work is being associated with a data capture scam. It's probably a good thing though that images are not credited.

Nothing suggests it's a scam or fraudulent. Yes you will get free images (3), and if you want "more", well, you have to give your cellphone number. It's clearly stated in their TOS they can commercialize this content (your personal data) through "subsidiaries". These "subsidiaries" are just what they are. There is no guarantee at all they are related to photography. It can  be a real estate "bargain" company selling beach property in Nevada.

This "fine print" trick is a very well established procedure outside the net too, and it works with (a small?) percentage of gullible people that fail to read that "fine print". Many travel and luggage insurance contracts have a small clause at the back that laptops, jewelry, cash, cameras etc... are not covered by the contract.
Is that scam? No, since those clauses are there to read for all. They even make some sense, since not only big bad companies are after our money, but there are many consumer-sharks around too. It's all too easy to walk to a police station and claim your laptop has been "stolen", then cash in. In Europe, it was estimated that about 10% of the reported "theft" of luxury cars was insurance fraud.

It seems that PhotoXpress is just a clever way to monetize content on the outskirts of the Internet. For instance are "domain snatchers" sharks? Not really because they operate within the rules and regulations of the system in a very creative and slick way. A lot of money on the net is made by these players, but it's not scam.

For those interested how these clever players / soft sharks work, this story about awsurveys is quite instructive. It catched my attention since my collaborator here spent half a day writing reviews for them, "earning" 27$ quickly, then I googled on them... and he found out he wasted half a day.

Although perfectly legal, no serious company that is built on trust, like a microstock site, would take the risk being associated with these gray practices. It's still not understandable why Fotolia did it.
As Deep Throat said: follow the money. If PhotoXpress paid a lot of money for those images (as Matt claims) and they have no ads on the site and they give away their content for free, there must be a catch or the business model doesn't work. Will anybody with a better explanation than data mining  please stand up.

Maybe you will, or maybe, like me, you'll get a 404 not found but it shows you've had a download.
Looks like a scam to me; but I'm not about to try again to be sure. 

...they have a reputation? When did this happen?
Do you mean positive reputation?

Daryl has misinterpreted Pat's statements. The compensation in reference is the $0.50 donation fee Fotolia is offering of non-selling images.

The explanation for the opposing statements about pricing is that the first one is referencing "stock photos" while my reference is just "microstock".  Macro prices are dropping while micro prices are rising.