MicrostockGroup

photodune is relatively new but part of Envato Marketplace. These sites have a lot of buyers. Right now these buyers are buying images at microstock sites. Photodune changes this and will begin to pull in more buyers due to cheap prices and growing library. Im thinking photodune is the site Fotolio is talking about. Look through all the affiliate sites on Envato and see how much products are being sold for. Its a pretty good deal for the buyer and contributors on the whole gets crumbs IMO.

Are you sure? I seem to recall that at (even before) the start they were going to be the only site fair to contributers, best commission rates, best ranking system, no nasty subscriptions undermining prices, best uploading, best everything for contributors.

I think that lasted until they has the first million or two files online, then they turned nasty.

The things I remember them saying remind me of what all the wonderful new start-ups today tell us. You know, those sites people say we should support that are desperate to fill their libraries, the sites which keep telling us how great things will be one day if only we spend weeks uploading our archives to them.

That's why I think we should support the market leaders not the ever-growing heap of "super fair" newcomers that may or may not fail but if they succeed will probably rush headlong down the Fotolia/iStock squeeze-the-contributors track.

Support SS and DT because they have a long record of success and being pretty straightforward with contributors, support iS for as long as it continues to deliver a return that is too big to ignore, same for Fotolia, I suppose, unless they wipe out the majority of your commission by downgrading you. Maybe support Veer because of its Corbis link which could be very valuable in the long term. As for the others, I don't think I would join anything that I'm not already partnering with. New sites, if they succeed at all, are likely to dilute sales at leading sites, extending the time it takes to get payouts on one and maybe never reaching payout on the other, which does us no good at all.

Maybe they have already  contacted FT and know that they are safe from it and are now keeping a low profile about it!!
Oops I read that as microstock contributors

Fotolia logic:

When a contributor sells on sites with significantly lower pricing and commissions, we will reset their rank to white to allow for competition. -> By cutting the photographer's royalties we will sell more and get more profit!

The real world logic:

When a contributor sells on sites with significantly lower pricing and commissions, we will reset their rank to white to allow for competition. -> The Photographer will remove his/her portfolio from Fotolia and we don't get ANYTHING. ZERO! ZILCH! NOTHING! (And the customers will go shopping elsewhere)


In a strange way I wish they would put me back at white ranking. It would be the last straw. The final push. I would pull my portfolio and cancel my account. I really don't like the *insult removed* at FT think they can screw everybody the way they like. Then I could freely give them some feedback with some harsh wording and really start a campaign to move customers from FT to... at least somewhere else....

Are the people at FT totally clueless they have been screwing their contributors for a long time and that there is a limit to everything?

P.S. I'm currently uploading my first batches to PhotoDune. I need to compensate for my dropping rank at FT

Do they talk of this at their forums (FT)? What people in these forums say?

is there even a post about it over there?

Don't know how long this will stay up:
http://us.fotolia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=36247

I suppose that once you reach the bottom, as Fotolia proposes, then you are no longer racing towards it.

The first post is a direct quote of the new rule (cut and paste) under the heading "what is this". The second post says:
"It means that Fotolia will price match Wal-Mart coupons.

Basically, they are saying that, if you are willing to take less from another site, Fotolia is willing to pay you less, too."

That's it. Pretty revolutionary stuff.

Folks,

It has come to our attention that some new agencies are selling the same contributor content at prices far less than most other microstock agencies. We feel that this is bad for both photographers and stock agencies. We do understand photographers are free to choose their own destiny in a free market economy, and our intention in these actions  is to encourage everyone to support fair pricing for customers and commissions for contributors. Only a handful of sites and contributors have been identified thus far, and we will communicate with them before taking any action.

By sponsoring and uploading to sites that undercut prices, photographers put the whole industry in jeopardy - and we feel our duty is to take action. If the community agrees with our approach, the status quo remains. If the community wants to place down pressure on pricing, we'll adjust accordingly, as a measure to be fair and respectful to our costumers and stay competitive. Keep in mind that when rankings drop, the ability to charge more for images goes away - and that hurts everyone's bottom line, including ours.

Chad Bridwell
Director of Operations
Fotolia.com

What is an "unfair" commission level in your view? Bearing in mind, of course, that your base rate is 13%.

The reason Shutterstock is so regularly at the top of the earnings poll is that they deliver top earnings month after month - they don't have the same high return per download that (for example) iStock does, but they deliver volume. The winning mix isn't determined by price or commission level alone, but that in combination with sales volume.

For Fotolia to try and starve other agencies for content by taking action against contributors who sell at other sites seems like a double edged sword sort of action to me. Given how low Fotolia's rates have become, suppose Getty/iStock pulled a similar move but targeted Fotolia as the offending agency?

If the agencies start waging this sort of war with one another - scorched earth is a phrase that comes to mind - with hapless contributors caught in the middle, where does it end? When there's only one agency left?

As someone else said earlier, the primary reason big contributors have started supporting some of the newer smaller agencies is because they're trying to maintain income levels as the bigger agencies greedily took more of the pie for themselves.

This isn't about fairness at all. And even though I don't contribute to Fotolia any more, it worries me that this sort of tactic will be taken up by others to the detriment of us all.