MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Adobe Stock => Topic started by: Elenathewise on November 17, 2010, 00:48
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Did Fotolia just changed the upper limit for EL license for emerald contributors or is just me? Used to be 200, now the upper limit is 100... What's going on? No announcements, no explanations... I am getting sick of this.
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Thanks for pointing that out. I am gold and my upper EL limit has gone from 150 to 100. Even for my one and only exclusive image!!
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Ok now they have managed to get me pissed. I sold at 200 credits and sell between 1 and 4 a month so that is a lot of money to lose!!!!!!!!
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I never used to set mine at the upper limit, but I have just checked and now my upper limit choice is at a maximum of 100, I know for a fact it's different from two days ago because I always had to manually change the amount to my choice.
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Mine also dropped from 200 to 100 >:(
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I asked them what's going on. Here is the answer I received. Amazing, isn't it? They seem to think they can treat contributors as retards.
Question I see that my files are limited to a maximum extended license price of 100 credits instead of 200 as it used to be. Why has this changed? Was this change announced? Can it be corrected?
Elena Elisseeva (elenathewise)
Answers:
Fotolia : Hi Elena,
We have checked your account and noticed the the maximum price you can have for the EL license, according to your rank and exclusivity, is 100 credits each. Please visit http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors (http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors) for more information.
Kind regards, 11-17-2010 04:51 pm
I also sold a few of 200 ones a month. I'll be losing 100-200 dollars a month because of this.
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So they changed the EL prices. Here is the old chart:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-SkT-uOXhIkJ:www.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors+http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-SkT-uOXhIkJ:www.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors+http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a)
Scroll down half way.
WOW and not just that... hang on
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Here you go:
(http://i1226.photobucket.com/albums/ee412/klonker0815/fotolia1.jpg)
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:o >:( :-X
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Removed.. Read the credits amount wrong. FT just can't stand being overshadowed by anyone can they? They must have noticed all the negative talk was focused on Istock recently.
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While this doesn't affect me, it's disappointing to see price setting become more restrictive instead of less. Every change I've seen recently seems to be a move in the wrong direction. I'm starting to wonder if my idea of what the industry should look like is so far off from what the agencies want to do that I'm somehow that delusional or out of touch.
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So there really are no Rubis and Diamond contributors any more -...?
Wow, I bet Yuri is having a party now - NOT!
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What I can't get my head around is they end up punishing their most productive, most hard-working and talented contributors, the very people that bring them most sales. First they dangle a carrot in front of you to get you motivated to produce more and better, and then when you get there, the carrot is gone! Basically the idea is "Let's tell them we'll pay more as they sell more, so they'll work even harder to makes us rich, but then we won'd really pay them anything... har har har..." Treating us like we're stupid donkeys, which we kind of are going along with this.
Actually, with all this ranking crap - if the agency is doing something like this, this should be in a contract. A binding one. You can't just change your mind or make false promises, this is bad business ethics. All of them are doing that kind of shady stuff. As I said before, I'll sign up with anyone who'd take a task to get this industry regulated. I don't know much about it myself, but will be willing to help. They have to be accountable for their actions.
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What the...???? When did this take effect? Wait. No notification. No communication. Did Getty buy them while we were sleeping??
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Did Fotolia just changed the upper limit for EL license for emerald contributors or is just me? Used to be 200, now the upper limit is 100... What's going on? No announcements, no explanations... I am getting sick of this.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this before but FT did make an announcement in their email newsletter which I received on 12th Nov. Here's the text;
"We have recently run several studies on sales depending on price structure and we have concluded that the contents with a price superior to 3 credits for a XS size were sold considerably less often. The consequence is a decrease in revenue.
We have therefore decided to limit the Standard XS license to 3 credits and the Extended license to 100 credits. This is an experiment in order to optimize our prices structure.
This change will apply to all sizes with the current mechanism (S = 3*XS, …) and will be active on November 16th 2010. It could be adjusted in the next weeks.
As always, it is our priority to offer the best possible revenue to our contributors. This adjustment is necessary and we are convinced that it will help development our common sales.
The entire Fotolia team thanks you for your confidence and wish you great sales!
Sincerely,
The Fotolia Team"
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Hmm... Looks like you're the only one they sent that newsletter to:)
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Thanks for pointing this out Elena. I missed the newsletter too. Maybe went to my spam filter?
Although emerald, I have always kept my EL's at 100, so I am not personally affected, but I do understand how this could be a problem for folks that have been charging more.
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I received the newsletter too. They have a study justifying the move on XS prices, and I can't argue with the logic.
From the Old vs New Charts above, it looks to me like Exclusives are getting hammered much harder than non-Exclusives. Yet more proof of what exclusivity will get you in microstock.
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Recently I enquired with a senior member of management why Fotolia do not promote exclusive images, I got this reply:
"Fotolia has never been huge proponents of exclusivity however if a photographer wanted to be exclusive we are willing to pay extra for that loyalty, but exclusivity does not mean an image should be promoted more than others, thats and istock model we don't want to follow."
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Did Fotolia just changed the upper limit for EL license for emerald contributors or is just me? Used to be 200, now the upper limit is 100... What's going on? No announcements, no explanations... I am getting sick of this.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this before but FT did make an announcement in their email newsletter which I received on 12th Nov. Here's the text;
"We have recently run several studies on sales depending on price structure and we have concluded that the contents with a price superior to 3 credits for a XS size were sold considerably less often. The consequence is a decrease in revenue.
We have therefore decided to limit the Standard XS license to 3 credits and the Extended license to 100 credits. This is an experiment in order to optimize our prices structure.
This change will apply to all sizes with the current mechanism (S = 3*XS, …) and will be active on November 16th 2010. It could be adjusted in the next weeks.
As always, it is our priority to offer the best possible revenue to our contributors. This adjustment is necessary and we are convinced that it will help development our common sales.
The entire Fotolia team thanks you for your confidence and wish you great sales!
Sincerely,
The Fotolia Team"
do they have several newsletters? I got an October contributors newsletter but it just had a tutorial and a photographer bio in it. No news about changes or any 'business' at fotolia.
Do you know what was the email subject line of the newsletter you got?
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do they have several newsletters? I got an October contributors newsletter but it just had a tutorial and a photographer bio in it. No news about changes or any 'business' at fotolia.
Do you know what was the email subject line of the newsletter you got?
Both the subject and the sender were entitled 'Fotolia Newsletter'.
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Recently I enquired with a senior member of management why Fotolia do not promote exclusive images, I got this reply:
"Fotolia has never been huge proponents of exclusivity however if a photographer wanted to be exclusive we are willing to pay extra for that loyalty, but exclusivity does not mean an image should be promoted more than others, thats and istock model we don't want to follow."
I have to say I find that attitude on exclusivity refreshing. Good for them for not following the istock model. And yes, I do believe exclusives should be rewarded for their loyalty.
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I didn't get anything from Fotolia either.
It doesn't affect me, but it surely sucks. Of course some sales are lost in the high credit images, but everyone seems to report better overall results. And it was an option to set at the maximum, contributors had a choice not to overprice their images if they wanted to.
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I'm not affected, but I am still amazed at why the micro sites don't send out emails on these types of changes. They bury the news in some newsletter that nobody reads or posts it on some big long forum thread, which a lot of people don't read.
I guess I just gave two big reasons why they don't. :(
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Maybe it's just me, but I can't draw any comparisons between this and what Getty pulled on its contributors. Fotolia lowered the credit costs for a few images sizes and top line ELs. I realize this sucks for high end contributors. But it hits Fotolia harder than the contributor, since FT make the lion's share of the commission.
Obviously they wouldn't lower the credit cost if they could avoid it, because it hits them harder than it hits any contributor. So their data shows them this is the right move for their company and its contributors. I find no problem in this.
Unlike Getty/IS which just decided to lower contributors' commission percentages and keep a higher % of the profit, in this case Fotolia and its contributors are clearly in the same boat together. If Fotolia is wrong on this move, it will hit them harder than it will any of us.
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I feel like we will loose many sales just because the XS prices from Yuri Arcurs' images have dropped from 4 to 3 credits and thus get sold more often... :-)
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One thing that's really hard for me to understand:
Fotolia restricts the ability to increase prices for contributors (effectively leading to a closer price range for similar images) and most people are upset.
Istock increases prices for parts of their collection (effectively leading to a wider price range for similar images) and everyone is upset.
So what would be the right way? ???
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I feel like we will loose many sales just because the XS prices from Yuri Arcurs' images have dropped from 4 to 3 credits and this get sold more often... :-)
Why are all your images identical to his?
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Maybe it's just me, but I can't draw any comparisons between this and what Getty pulled on its contributors. Fotolia lowered the credit costs for a few images sizes and top line ELs. I realize this sucks for high end contributors. But it hits Fotolia harder than the contributor, since FT make the lion's share of the commission.
Obviously they wouldn't lower the credit cost if they could avoid it, because it hits them harder than it hits any contributor. So their data shows them this is the right move for their company and its contributors. I find no problem in this.
Unlike Getty/IS which just decided to lower contributors' commission percentages and keep a higher % of the profit, in this case Fotolia and its contributors are clearly in the same boat together. If Fotolia is wrong on this move, it will hit them harder than it will any of us.
+1
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^^ +2
Well stated Dan.
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One thing that's really hard for me to understand:
Fotolia restricts the ability to increase prices for contributors (effectively leading to a closer price range for similar images) and most people are upset.
Istock increases prices for parts of their collection (effectively leading to a wider price range for similar images) and everyone is upset.
So what would be the right way? ???
I think this is probably a rhetorical question, but in the event you were actually looking for an answer, it would be:
The right way would be to treat contributors like partners in the business so that (a) gains and belt-tightening were reasonably shared, (b) communication and in some cases a discussion would accompany significant changes and (c) the long term success of the enterprise would be kept in mind, not just profits for the current quarter/year.
Being yanked around ticks people off. Both the changes you note felt like being yanked around. People got upset.
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One thing that's really hard for me to understand:
Fotolia restricts the ability to increase prices for contributors (effectively leading to a closer price range for similar images) and most people are upset.
Istock increases prices for parts of their collection (effectively leading to a wider price range for similar images) and everyone is upset.
So what would be the right way? ???
I think this is probably a rhetorical question, but in the event you were actually looking for an answer, it would be:
The right way would be to treat contributors like partners in the business so that (a) gains and belt-tightening were reasonably shared, (b) communication and in some cases a discussion would accompany significant changes and (c) the long term success of the enterprise would be kept in mind, not just profits for the current quarter/year.
Being yanked around ticks people off. Both the changes you note felt like being yanked around. People got upset.
I fully agree that the treatment of contributors as partners seems to be a low priority for both these agencies. And that this contributes a lot to the negative sentiment is obvious.
But in the Istock threads a lot of people argue about how bad it is to have different prices for similar images on one site and that it drives customers away. Nobody really mentioned that the same existed at other agencies as well.
Now that Fotolia is moving towards a smaller price band and removing these perceived unfairness against customers, almost all voices are negative again.
And the question was not completely rethorical, what would people really prefer?
A simple pricing scheme, same for all images? Special collections with higher prices as Istock offers (but maybe with stricter control to not allow similars with different prices)? The ability to set your own prices (as Fotolia still offers, just a bit more restrictive)? A image-level system as DT offers?
What I see here is different agencies trying to raise average prices using different methods. These different pricing schemes are competing on the market, and it looks like FT fears that their scheme was not competitive enough.
I personally would not be able to predict what's the best way to maximise prices without driving customers away. In the ideal world these different schemes would be open for participation for all (including independant) contributors, this way everybody could find his/her own strategy. Unfortunately this is not the case, it's only for exclusives and/or higher level contributors, so for myself these changes have no practical impact.
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DT level system seems to prove that it is ok to increase the price. Lots of people will pay for better images (supposing better images will be the ones in higher levels, of course it depends on many factors, mainly time on site). I have regular credit sales of my level 3 and 4 images.
The reduction of EL price is a bit too drastic.
Above all, it's the lack of communication that sucks.
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DT level system seems to prove that it is ok to increase the price. Lots of people will pay for better images (supposing better images will be the ones in higher levels, of course it depends on many factors, mainly time on site). I have regular credit sales of my level 3 and 4 images.
The reduction of EL price is a bit too drastic.
Above all, it's the lack of communication that sucks.
I agree. The DT level system seems to work ok, and more importantly, it has been that way since I can remember. Consistency. Something that IS lacks big time. Seems like every week/month, some new scheme is introduced.
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DT level system seems to prove that it is ok to increase the price. Lots of people will pay for better images (supposing better images will be the ones in higher levels, of course it depends on many factors, mainly time on site). I have regular credit sales of my level 3 and 4 images.
The reduction of EL price is a bit too drastic.
Above all, it's the lack of communication that sucks.
I agree. The DT level system seems to work ok, and more importantly, it has been that way since I can remember. Consistency. Something that IS lacks big time. Seems like every week/month, some new scheme is introduced.
The biggest difference between the DT Level system and the various iStock price points is that at DT, the buyers drive the price point by choosing which images meet their needs. Supply and Demand. If an image is unworthy it will remain Level 1. If it is special, it will be driven to 4 or 5 quickly. At iStock, the price points are determined by a reviewer. Or in the case of the Agency collection, they are just imported into the fray at a higher price point than existing collection images which may be just as good if not better. I always found it ridiculous to assume a reviewer can predict future sales, and thus set an appropriate price point.
And just so it's not interpreted wrongly, I am not bashing the reviewers. On the contrary I feel they are being asked to do the impossible.
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The DT level system seems to work ok, and more importantly, it has been that way since I can remember. Consistency. Something that IS lacks big time. Seems like every week/month, some new scheme is introduced.
I'd hardly hold DT's pricing architecture as a shining light judging by overall sales. My earnings have barely risen there in 3 years and they appear to have been steadily losing market share against other agencies over the same timescale. One image can still be 9x more expensive than another simply by virtue of it being old enough to have sold 50 times. There's images at IS that sell more than that every week.
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I think both Fotolia's and Dreamstime's pricing schemes are clearer and more logical than Istock's.
First off, they are completely performance based - performance of the image, in DT's case, and performance of the contributor in FT's case - unlike Istock's, which appear pretty random.
FT and DT's higher priced content are better integrated into the main library.
The prices do not fluctuate by tens or hundreds of dollars for regular RF license.
Most importantly, the default search engine isn't front loaded with (almost) entirely the most expensive files, but offers buyers a nice mix of price points.
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The biggest difference between the DT Level system and the various iStock price points (...)
In fact I was comparing DT with FT, regarding the original discussion, as there were some posts agreeing with FT strategy.
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Personally, I like istock's pricing the best. As a vector artist, it's nice that they don't sell the raster version at a bunch of different price points. I'd like to see small sizes go away. The one image one price model makes a lot more sense than priced by size. This isn't rights managed, so why should a web image be cheaper?
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I have to agree. I like the fact that iStock is moving away from being a pure micro agency. The possibility of higher prices for higher quality image motivates me to improve my work and aim at higher goals.
Personally, I like istock's pricing the best. As a vector artist, it's nice that they don't sell the raster version at a bunch of different price points. I'd like to see small sizes go away. The one image one price model makes a lot more sense than priced by size. This isn't rights managed, so why should a web image be cheaper?
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I have to agree. I like the fact that iStock is moving away from being a pure micro agency. The possibility of higher prices for higher quality image motivates me to improve my work and aim at higher goals.
Sorry, but higher prices don't do much for contributors if royalties and downloads are both dropping dramatically. Sounds like a zero sum game to me.
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I think both Fotolia's and Dreamstime's pricing schemes are clearer and more logical than Istock's.
First off, they are completely performance based - performance of the image, in DT's case, and performance of the contributor in FT's case - unlike Istock's, which appear pretty random.
FT and DT's higher priced content are better integrated into the main library.
The prices do not fluctuate by tens or hundreds of dollars for regular RF license.
Most importantly, the default search engine isn't front loaded with (almost) entirely the most expensive files, but offers buyers a nice mix of price points.
All good points, that does make a difference.
But at FT there still is the infamous "Infinity Collection" with different price tags, sometimes starting at 55 credits for an XS. And they are also mixed into every search page, not as prominent as on Istock but still this looks a lot like an effort to promote that collections. Even if you sort by downloads these images appear on the first pages, and I very much doubt that their real download numbers (which are not visible) are taken into account.
So there is intransparency to a certain degree on all these sites.
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I have to agree. I like the fact that iStock is moving away from being a pure micro agency. The possibility of higher prices for higher quality image motivates me to improve my work and aim at higher goals.
Sorry, but higher prices don't do much for contributors if royalties and downloads are both dropping dramatically. Sounds like a zero sum game to me.
Lisa, I empathize with you and other non-exclusives who are excluded from some benefits at IS. But I also want to point out that some of your views do not reflect the whole picture. Since I became exclusive, the majority sales have been way above $1 so my royalties are definitely not dropping overall. The DL numbers are slightly down if I take consideration of the expansion of my port. But since canister levels no longer matter under the Redeemed Credit system, I am ok with the higher income.
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Exclusivity has been good for me too, up to now.
What you need to bear in mind is that although download numbers no longer matter, neither do dollars, at least as far as what you get for the following year's royalty percentage.
So if IS wants to manipulate contributor royalty rates further, they can increase credit prices and decrease the number of credits paid for each size or image type. If the buyer doesn't see much more than the expected annual price increase, what would they care about the credit total? But the contributor could be seriously hosed the following year when they don't meet their expected redeemed credit target.
IS is sweetening the pot for the recent changes by having increased Vetta & Agency prices and promising (at some point) to sell Vetta & Agency via Getty Images (with a flat 20% royalty and no redeemed credits getting added to your total). But as contributors we need to keep our eye on the ball that matters for us.
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Lisa, I empathize with you and other non-exclusives who are excluded from some benefits at IS. But I also want to point out that some of your views do not reflect the whole picture. Since I became exclusive, the majority sales have been way above $1 so my royalties are definitely not dropping overall. The DL numbers are slightly down if I take consideration of the expansion of my port. But since canister levels no longer matter under the Redeemed Credit system, I am ok with the higher income.
I see your point, Freedom. When I responded I had forgotten you are exclusive at IS. The experiences of exclusives vs. non at Istock have definitely become very different over the past year or so.
Glad exclusivity is still proving lucrative for you :)
So if IS wants to manipulate contributor royalty rates further, they can increase credit prices and decrease the number of credits paid for each size or image type. If the buyer doesn't see much more than the expected annual price increase, what would they care about the credit total? But the contributor could be seriously hosed the following year when they don't meet their expected redeemed credit target.
Yikes! That is quite a scary thought. And in spite of having read the monster thread on Istock, (before it was locked) this is the first time I have seen it articulated. Makes complete sense though.
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I asked them what's going on. Here is the answer I received. Amazing, isn't it? They seem to think they can treat contributors as retards.
Question I see that my files are limited to a maximum extended license price of 100 credits instead of 200 as it used to be. Why has this changed? Was this change announced? Can it be corrected?
Elena Elisseeva (elenathewise)
Answers:
Fotolia : Hi Elena,
We have checked your account and noticed the the maximum price you can have for the EL license, according to your rank and exclusivity, is 100 credits each. Please visit [url]http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors[/url] ([url]http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors[/url]) for more information.
Kind regards, 11-17-2010 04:51 pm
I also sold a few of 200 ones a month. I'll be losing 100-200 dollars a month because of this.
Support's reply to your query re-confirms my suspicion that it consists of no more than HAL9000 operating out of somewhere on the Indian sub-continent. Wondered why THE CHAD had been hanging around the FT forum for a couple of days answering 'little' questions like, "What does the green 's' mean next to my image?" He was really there to capture the blow-back (or lack of it) from this 'little,' unannounced major change
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Support's reply to your query re-confirms my suspicion that it consists of no more than HAL9000...
It's either a computer or one of those Magic Eight Ball kids toys. Sorry, ask again later... ;D