Im selling photos in Fotolia only to european buyers

[Alatriste]

I have a spanish account in Fotolia and until now I was uploading images with weywords in Spanish. It was supposed that its engine does the translation.
Now they allow to upload english keywords.
I have realised that almost all my sales have been done by european customers (german, france, spanish, italian...)
With this problem, Fotolia is my 5th earner what isnt aint bad but for a reason I dont know Im missing opportinities in the english spoken market.

Any experiences or thoughts with this?

[Peter]

I have USA account, and also selling to Germany and France mostly.

[vphoto]

USA account, and sales mostly Germany and France.

[tdoes]

My account is a English (USA) account and I have alot of Eurpean sales.  I would guess about 55-60% of my sales are to European customers.

[MikLav]

yep, similar experience for me

[anonymous]

ditto...it seems that the European firms are comfortable and happy dealing with them.

[Leo Blanchette]

We have no control over who gets what right? Do I have to opt in for different countries to have access?

[ACS]

USA account, selling to Europe +1

[Alatriste]

Very interesting... if they grow in the english language market their sales should increase a lot I think

[madelaide]

I have a spanish account in Fotolia and until now I was uploading images with weywords in Spanish. It was supposed that its engine does the translation.
Now they allow to upload english keywords.

Trebuchet, when you do this (English keywords in the Spanish site), don't you lose keywords?

I did this once, although not using a Brazilian account.  By default www.fotolia.com takes me to the Brazilian site.  I uploaded there and chose keywords in English.  All seemed fine, but I noticed later that some keywords were missing.  All were non-English words - names of places in this case, such as Rio de Janeiro, Guanabara, Botafogo. 

I can't tell however if these keywords were missing as I uploaded or only after submission. I only noticed it after approval. I don't believe the inspector would remove these keywords, so it must have been some automated thing. I was going to resubmit this image in the English site were I have my account.

And yes, I also have a lot of sales to European countries.

Regards,
Adelaide

[ParisEye]

I encountered the same problem : my photos of Annecy (a french town) lost the "annecy" keyword even though it was the first one ! I suppose it's because they don't accept any keyword which is not already in their dictionary as I read here on another thread. That means most of the towns around the world.

Now, if you type "Annecy" on the french site you get thousand of photos for "ann�e" (year) which must be the closer word in their dictionary to the one you are looking for.

[Alatriste]

I have a spanish account in Fotolia and until now I was uploading images with weywords in Spanish. It was supposed that its engine does the translation.
Now they allow to upload english keywords.

Trebuchet, when you do this (English keywords in the Spanish site), don't you lose keywords?

I did this once, although not using a Brazilian account.  By default www.fotolia.com takes me to the Brazilian site.  I uploaded there and chose keywords in English.  All seemed fine, but I noticed later that some keywords were missing.  All were non-English words - names of places in this case, such as Rio de Janeiro, Guanabara, Botafogo. 

I can't tell however if these keywords were missing as I uploaded or only after submission. I only noticed it after approval. I don't believe the inspector would remove these keywords, so it must have been some automated thing. I was going to resubmit this image in the English site were I have my account.

And yes, I also have a lot of sales to European countries.

Regards,
Adelaide

I havent try if some words dissapear. I just put english keywords only in the last batch and it is pending approval.


Do you think if you change the language to english, you will be reviewed in english or supported by english team?
I think that if you have an account (or they moved to it) in the brazilian site you are "locked" to it but not sure about this.

Id like to change from spanish fotolia because of this problem and support people (they are not very kind...)

[madelaide]

Trebuchet,

There is no advantage to migrate to the Brazilian site, if they let me do it, because anyway the business is run in USD (images are even sold in USD, and not in Brazlian money) and they don't pay locally.

It's curious what happened in this only attempt, because those non-English keywords are not erased when I upload to the US site.  So it seems that somehow, when we're using a different language than that of the local site, some sort of vocubulary check is done.

Regards,
Adelaide

[Alatriste]

I had made some test and now I am more confused.
Mystery in Fotolia...

I opened fotolia Usa, Spain and Germany

and made the following searches trying to find this image:
uploaded to the spanish site, keywords in spanish

http://es.fotolia.com/id/6563327

Search 1
In spanish, fotolia spain, search for:
noche, puente, r�o, agua, luces, ciudad, arquitectura, luz,
My image is found

Search 2.
In spanish, fotolia US, search for:
noche, puente, r�o, agua, luces, ciudad, arquitectura, luz,
0 images found

Search 3.
In spanish, fotolia Germany, search for:
noche, puente, r�o, agua, luces, ciudad, arquitectura, luz,
0 images found

Search 4.
In english, fotolia Spain, search for:
night, bridge, river, water, lights, city, architecture, light, (same words as spanish taken from the info of the image)
0 images found

Search 5.
In english, fotolia US, search for:
night, bridge, river, water, lights, city, architecture, light,
4 images found. But none is MINE!!!!!!!

Search 6.
In english, fotolia Germany, search for:
night, bridge, river, water, lights, city, architecture, light,
1 image found. not mine.

Search 7.
In german, fotolia Spain, search for:
Nacht, Br�cke, Flu�, Wasser, Lichter, Stadt, Architektur, Licht, (translated in Altavista�s Babel fish from english)
0 images found

Search 8.
In german, fotolia US, search for:
Nacht, Br�cke, Flu�, Wasser, Lichter, Stadt, Architektur, Licht,
1 image found. Not mine

Search 9.
In german, fotolia Germany, search for:
Nacht, Br�cke, Flu�, Wasser, Lichter, Stadt, Architektur, Licht,
25 images found. First is mine

Last Search.
In english, fotolia US, search for:
night, bridge, river, water, lights, city, architecture, light, tourism, travel, reflection, road, blue, steel, structure, dark, building, construction, ocean, sea, urban, illumination, landscape, scene, monumental, plentzia, spain, north, basque, country, boat, calm.
(all the keywords in my image)
2 images found. NOT MINE.
I clicked in one of the images. Its keywords are:
aerial architecture attraction boat boats bridge bridges building buildings city cityscape eiffel europe european evening france french illuminated illumination landmark light lights night nightlife nighttime panorama panoramic paris reflection reflections river roof roofs rooftop rooftops scenery scenic seine shore skyline stone street streets tourism tower travel traveling vacation view water

I dont like the conclusion I take and this is the answer to why I only sell photos to european customers.
My image couldnt be found in fotolia US.
Should I think that NONE of my images can be found there?

I ll continue making some test...