Agency Based Discussion > Adobe Stock
Am I stupid ?
totony:
Hello everyone,
From the messages I read here about fotolia, it seems that nobody here has exclusive photos on fotolia.
I started stock photo by putting a limited selection (about 30 or so) in 5 or 6 sites, to see how it behaved. Left that simmer for more than a year. I like to think of it as a study period, although it was pure laziness not to upload for so long.
In that period, fotolia was the only site with regular sales (I was not on SS though), and seemed like a winner in my case. So I proceeded to upload exclusive images there. First, there was the immediate increase in revenue due to the more generous royalties (50% instead of 33%), and the anticipation of a quasi doubling with the bronze level, which seemed easily attainable.
Currently, my strategy is to first submit to fotolia (with exclusivity), and what gets rejected is submitted to all the other agencies. This way, I'm not upset with fotolia random rejections :-)
I've not shot photos with stock in mind yet, I'm only submitting a backlog of what I consider "sellable" photos. So my rejection ratio is high on fotolia (a bit more than 50%). So the approach is quite balanced for the moment. As I begin shooting for stock, I anticipate higher acceptance rate, and then I'll possibly have to change my approach.
I'm now at 99 sales on fotolia, meaning I'll reach bronze level quite soon. I'm a bit puzzled. On one hand, I'm happy to see my prices double there, but on the other hand seeing all of you choosing not to upload exclusive content to fotolia makes me think I'm on the wrong track.
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp !!
Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Anthony.
PS : Sorry for the long post, next time I'll be faster, promised...
anton9:
Not sure if you read the forums on fotolia a while ago but they changed the numbers for getting to each canister so you have a while to go before reaching bronze now. I personally would never go exclusive with fotolia. I actually have more images on fotolia than i do on istock yet I have 5x more sales at istock. Sales come very slow on there. But then I hear that the legendary yuri thinks its his best site of all so some ppl must like it more than others
totony:
Cool, the first person to answer is called Anthony, like me :-)
They changed the level only for higher levels. Bronze is still 100. They initially upped also the bar for bronze but came back to 100 after the resulting uproar :
http://fr.fotolia.com/Info/Pricing#8
(sorry, in french, but numbers are international, right ?)
Thanks for the feedback. It's strange to have so much disparity among submitters. On IS I only had 19 sales total... Granted, now the portfolios are different on IS now, due to lots of fotolia exclusives, but it was the same trend before I started.
I'm impatient to see what will be the difference on photos that I shoot specifically for stock. Maybe I'll upload a few batches without exclusivity for comparison. Although it's hard to have statistical relevance with my portfolio size...
anton9:
Its all about being called Anthony these days ;)
I just think that each site is different and something I noticed is that what sells more on fotolia are vectors/illustrations and not really photos. I tend to upload to all sites and if an image is rejected from all but fotolia then I will click the exclusive button for it but wouldnt ever upload to fotolia to be exclusive. I understand why ppl do go exclusive with a site due to less hassle but every site offers something different and allows you to upload more and potentially earn more too
sharply_done:
--- Quote from: totony on January 26, 2009, 08:10 ---... On one hand, I'm happy to see my prices double there, but on the other hand seeing all of you choosing not to upload exclusive content to fotolia makes me think I'm on the wrong track.
...
--- End quote ---
There are a few people who list images exclusively on FT while at the same time using other agencies, but they use a different method than you.
The technique is to upload images to all sites, then regularly visit FT to see what your best sellers are. You then compare the potential exclusive income of each best-selling FT image to the income it is currently generating from all sites. If FT comes out ahead you remove the image from all agencies and change it to be exclusive at FT. Although I've never done this, my gut feeling is that I might make at most an extra couple of hundred dollars per month - for me this is not worth the hassle. A problem with this method is BigStock: you can only remove an image there after it has been online for 90 days. The policy at DT is 6 months, but they allow you to remove 30% of your less-than-6-months images, so it shouldn't a problem there unless you have a very small portfolio.
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