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Author Topic: Fotolia Joins Adobe  (Read 30800 times)

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« Reply #75 on: March 10, 2015, 13:09 »
0


« Reply #76 on: March 10, 2015, 13:11 »
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are you bronze level?

Gold.

maybe that has something to do with it

I send them to change to the maximum price for all my photos and vectors, so no problem (I didn't sold extended licences)

but I didn't like it when I check the prices.

Uncle Pete

« Reply #77 on: March 10, 2015, 14:28 »
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I'll just watch, until this storm passes.  ;) I don't know all the levels, credits, or how these changes are being made with no announcement. Maybe it will stabilize by next week, for everyone.

Good or bad, nice or nasty, still waiting for something to officially be announced about the Adobe deal and taking over.


A bronze X sale went from 50 to 60 and so on. Nice move!

For photos went up from 50 to 60, but from vector down from 80 to 60, and looks like if someone had maximum of 80 credits, like me, fotolia put new 30 credits price to all vectors(bronze)

so everyone check it out in your portfolio

 >:(

OM

« Reply #78 on: March 10, 2015, 17:29 »
+1
Uncle Pete, yes, I see this now, too. I noticed the change to 30 while I was uploading yesterday. I think you can still set it to 20, but the default price during uploading process is 30 now.

Uploaded yesterday and noticed too that the default setting had gone from 20 to 30.

Better sales at FT last month and this but despite the extra dl's my 7-day ranking is still lagging my overall ranking. Suggests to me that FT as a whole is doing well.

« Reply #79 on: March 21, 2015, 08:47 »
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I haven't bothered to find out more about this deal. What exactly does it mean to customers? Can Adobe CC users search and download Fotolia images directly in some CC product?

Rinderart

« Reply #80 on: March 25, 2015, 13:34 »
-1
My sales have doubled there in the last Month. about time.

« Reply #81 on: March 25, 2015, 14:09 »
+2
My sales have doubled there in the last Month. about time.
I'm set to have the best month for earnings since the beginning of 2011 (at fot only)
« Last Edit: March 26, 2015, 03:07 by fotografer »

« Reply #82 on: March 26, 2015, 01:35 »
+3
My income from FT are almost as on SS  :)

« Reply #83 on: March 26, 2015, 16:24 »
+3
My income at FT is double of that on SS. And it has been so for the last 6 months. I sell approximately the same number of files though.

But on FT I get a lot of credit sales which gets me more money. Actually 1/3 of all of my sales on FT are credit sales.

And this month is going to be my record month on FT. About 100 with 488 files.

« Reply #84 on: March 27, 2015, 03:02 »
+2

« Reply #85 on: March 27, 2015, 04:11 »
+4
My earnings are still abysmal.

« Reply #86 on: March 27, 2015, 04:25 »
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That's some scary chart Sharpshot.  Any idea why that happened?

« Reply #87 on: March 27, 2015, 04:36 »
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My graph is about the same as Sharpshots, peaking at 2010 but has gone up a bit in the last few months.  This month I should earn just under half what I did in my peak months but   I've had many months where I have earnt only a seventh . I used to be able to easily live off stock alone but now it's a supplement to my  earnings.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2015, 04:49 by fotografer »

« Reply #88 on: March 27, 2015, 06:19 »
+2
That's some scary chart Sharpshot.  Any idea why that happened?
Probably some search changes killed off my best selling images.  They cut commissions a few times and I stopped uploading because there was no incentive to carry on.  Then there's the increased competition, especially when istock exclusives dropped the crown and started to use FT.  I'm not sure why some of us have seen a big earnings drop while others have been OK.

My earnings have stayed fairly stable with SS, even though I haven't uploaded much for a long time now.

« Reply #89 on: March 27, 2015, 06:21 »
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Yep, my chart also looks similar to sharpshot's. On the other hand- I can also claim that my sales in March doubled to that of last month (after Feb being WME). Performance is far off the level still reached in 2013 and light years away from 2010/2011 levels.

StockPhotosArt.com

« Reply #90 on: March 27, 2015, 08:09 »
+2
My income on Fotolia peaked in 2010 where I made several thousands of euros.

After a slight drop in 2011 I saw my income drop more than 50% to 2012, and then another 50% from 2012 to 2013!

So, from 2010 to 2013 I lost about 82% of my Fotolia income, which is an absolute loss record in any agency!!! Could this have to be with the fact that I'm paid in euros so my photos get hidden on the searches compared to contributors receiving in dollars?

This year, I'm seeing a slight increase in the income compared with the same months from previous two years, but only a small fraction of what I earned in 2010/2011/2012.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2015, 08:12 by StockPhotosArt »

« Reply #91 on: March 27, 2015, 17:30 »
+5
I see the same trend with my earnings at Fotolia. My only explanation for that is that as your rank goes up (I am sapphire) and you can set higher prices for your images, your search position goes down. Fotolia clearly demonstrated that their strategy to compete is by slashing prices, so why would they want to show buyers images with more fair pricing. Somebody new with lower priced images get better position and better earnings.

« Reply #92 on: March 27, 2015, 19:41 »
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That's some scary chart Sharpshot.  Any idea why that happened?
Probably some search changes killed off my best selling images.  They cut commissions a few times and I stopped uploading because there was no incentive to carry on.  Then there's the increased competition, especially when istock exclusives dropped the crown and started to use FT.  I'm not sure why some of us have seen a big earnings drop while others have been OK.

My earnings have stayed fairly stable with SS, even though I haven't uploaded much for a long time now.

As I recall, FT had a policy starting years ago that the search results would punish contributors who did not submit new images. When I stopped submitting, my sales at FT started to fall and they are still falling, compared to SS and DT.

« Reply #93 on: March 27, 2015, 19:58 »
+4
That's some scary chart Sharpshot.  Any idea why that happened?
Probably some search changes killed off my best selling images.  They cut commissions a few times and I stopped uploading because there was no incentive to carry on.  Then there's the increased competition, especially when istock exclusives dropped the crown and started to use FT.  I'm not sure why some of us have seen a big earnings drop while others have been OK.

My earnings have stayed fairly stable with SS, even though I haven't uploaded much for a long time now.

As I recall, FT had a policy starting years ago that the search results would punish contributors who did not submit new images. When I stopped submitting, my sales at FT started to fall and they are still falling, compared to SS and DT.

I still upload regularly. Sales are still going down. My hope is Adobe will get rid of Fotolia's search engine shenanigans and makes the system simple and transparent - with searches, payments, rankings and such. I can compete on the level playing field - so, fingers crossed...

« Reply #94 on: March 29, 2015, 23:06 »
+1
Some pretty awful stories here about falling sales.  I understand completely how becoming Emerald or Sapphire with higher prices might affect sales, and of course it's always possible that Fotolia changed the search because it didn't want to pay out the higher rates of commissions to the higher ranking suppliers. 

I did, however, read a note on Fotolias forum recently where someone mentioned the 'database crash that happened three or four years ago and affected sales for a lot of people, including many bronzes'.  Apparently they had a database crash and 'lost' or corrupted a large part of the keyword ranking system, which resulted in a sharp fall in sales for previously popular files.

It's a long shot, but I wonder if that database crash is a contributing factor in some of the decline in sales for previously successful suppliers.  It must be worth checking some files using the manage files - indexing feature to see if the keywords order is complete nonsense.  I suppose it's also possible that many files have keywords missing, or perhaps none at all.

I mention this because although I'm aware that Elena and some others are at the higher levels, I don't believe Sharpshot and Mellimage are Emerald or Sapphire, yet they are telling the same story, which suggests some other factor might be at least partly to blame.
« Last Edit: March 29, 2015, 23:48 by hatman12 »

OM

« Reply #95 on: March 30, 2015, 04:48 »
0
Some pretty awful stories here about falling sales.  I understand completely how becoming Emerald or Sapphire with higher prices might affect sales, and of course it's always possible that Fotolia changed the search because it didn't want to pay out the higher rates of commissions to the higher ranking suppliers. 

I did, however, read a note on Fotolias forum recently where someone mentioned the 'database crash that happened three or four years ago and affected sales for a lot of people, including many bronzes'.  Apparently they had a database crash and 'lost' or corrupted a large part of the keyword ranking system, which resulted in a sharp fall in sales for previously popular files.

It's a long shot, but I wonder if that database crash is a contributing factor in some of the decline in sales for previously successful suppliers.  It must be worth checking some files using the manage files - indexing feature to see if the keywords order is complete nonsense.  I suppose it's also possible that many files have keywords missing, or perhaps none at all.

I mention this because although I'm aware that Elena and some others are at the higher levels, I don't believe Sharpshot and Mellimage are Emerald or Sapphire, yet they are telling the same story, which suggests some other factor might be at least partly to blame.

Such a database crash would explain a lot. Indeed, I had good selling files that went from hero to zero within the space of 2 weeks. They never came back.

« Reply #96 on: March 30, 2015, 06:32 »
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I can still find what used to be my best selling image on the first page when I search for relevant keywords.  I can't find another one and would like to change the keywords but they don't seem to be editable.  Not sure if it is worth the time deleting and uploading again, as new images don't seem to do well.

They haven't done a good job of tackling keyword spamming.  The search results look horrendous to me, lots of the images have nothing to do with what I am searching for.

The other problem is the copycats.  Any original idea gets copied to death and eventually the original sinks down the search and the copycats get all the sales.

« Reply #97 on: March 30, 2015, 07:06 »
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I haven't heard the theory of the database crash yet. Could be an explanation.

Or possibly they just did some drastic change to their search algorithm (or better: to the algorithm that determines the "relevance" order, which is the default sort order on FT).

When I look at the relevance search order for some specific search terms, my older images (from 2007 / 2008) seem to appear almost in the same place as in the order by date. And number of sales does not really make a difference.

My formerly best selling image is still number two on Fotolia (for it's main keyword, which is pretty specific and delivers only 155 search results) when ordered by number of downloads (it has over 100 downloads).
The same image is almost the last one (number 149 of 155) when ordered by date.
When ordered by relevance it is only marginally better (around number 120 of 155).

Same pattern can be seen for other images: for old images the number of downloads is almost irrelevant for their "relevance" search position, the biggest factor by far is age.

It looks to me that they increased the weighting of "newness" and decreased the weighting of past performance so that old files will be moved down no matter how much sales they had.

The file I mentioned above sold regularly until early 2011, after that only a handful of sales (only two in 2012, nothing since).


 

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