Author Topic: Fotolia partner sales (Read 10314 times)

BaldricksTrousers · « **on:** October 13, 2011, 06:23 »

Has anybody ever had a sale from Fotolia listed as a partner sale at a different rate from normal?
I notice that sites such as Pixers.fr are selling our work as posters at prices of up to 23 euros (or over 200 euros for an "impression numerique sur toile" ... not sure how that works). A lot of Fotolia PP sites just refer back to Fotlolia, but Pixers shows that some of them don't. So shouldn't we be seeing occasional sales that are not priced at credit or subscription rates, but as partner sales? I don't recall ever seeing one, have you?

gostwyck · « **Reply #1 on:** October 13, 2011, 06:58 »

Good point. No, I don't recall ever having had a sale other than the 'standard', subscription or an EL priced accordingly.

Maybe someone (who isn't banned) could enquire on their forum?

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #2 on:** October 13, 2011, 08:07 »

This has been posted over there

I'm just wondering how partner sales at sites such as Fotoatape.de are reported. I see my fotolia file here http://www.efototapeten.de/getMediaData.php?id=28739294 on sale for over 200 euros, so any sale from there should deliver a good return, but I cannot recall ever seeing anything but credits or subscription sales. Can we have some information on this, please?

sam100 · « **Reply #3 on:** October 13, 2011, 08:27 »

If I remember correctly you (only) get a highest xl, xxl, xxxl sale from those print sales, no EL.

Patrick.

click_click · « **Reply #4 on:** October 13, 2011, 08:40 »

Quote from: patrick1958 on October 13, 2011, 08:27

If I remember correctly you (only) get a highest xl, xxl, xxxl sale from those print sales, no EL.

Patrick.

Correct, the partners charge that much for the product but not the license. They buy the image for you so you don't have to do that and send it to them in order to print it (which you would be allowed to do under the regular license).

Unfortunately, once an image has been ordered and delivered in high-res to the partner, no one knows if the image will be re-used for future customers without any sales reporting...

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #5 on:** October 13, 2011, 08:54 »

So for print sales of maybe hundreds of dollars, we get a standard DL price? I wonder what Fotolia gets paid for it. Anyone know that?

Then there is other stuff which doesn't involve print sales. For example, look at the prices on a normal microstock partner site they use is www.fotkyfoto.hu/

There are about $4.3 per 1,000 Hungarian forints and the prices here are
XS = 1,198ft (0.1MP) = $5 (roughly)
S = 3190ft (0.5MP) = $15
M = 4968ft (1MP) = $22
L = 6556ft (3MP) = $27
XL = 7350ft (9MP = $32

These prices are about three times Fotolia's rates (even for European buyers) so if the agent is taking 40% commission (as Alamy does), Fotolia will still be getting close to double the normal price per sale. So what are we getting credited with? Is it just going as credit sales at XS, small, medium etc., so we get, say $2 for an XL sale that netted $32 and probably gave Fotolia something like $20? Is it 25c for a $5 sale, where Fotolia took $3?

Obviously, you have to allow for the percentage that the partner takes before looking at how the remainder is split. But I don't see how you could reasonably convert a cash sale into a credit when no credits were involved.

If fotolia gets a $3 slice of another site's sale, how should it calculate that? Should it say "Well, that site called the sale XS, so we'll call $3 one credit, regardless of whether the XS is the same size as ours or not", or should it say "$3 is double to price of a euro credit, so we'll call it two credits", or should it say, "we call $1 one credit so this is three credits", or should it say "We say we pay 25% commission, so this is worth 75c to the photographer"?

I seem to notice plenty of room for smoke and mirrors in this one.

fujiko · « **Reply #6 on:** October 13, 2011, 09:01 »

You will only see credits or subs.
It's Fotolia, the cheapest of all.

Sadstock · « **Reply #7 on:** October 13, 2011, 09:10 »

I have full faith and confidence in FT doing the right thing by giving us a sizeable chunk of every partner sale, since they are so concerned that we get a good deal on other sites.

dirkr · « **Reply #8 on:** October 13, 2011, 09:25 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on October 13, 2011, 08:54

So for print sales of maybe hundreds of dollars, we get a standard DL price? I wonder what Fotolia gets paid for it. Anyone know that?

Then there is other stuff which doesn't involve print sales. For example, look at the prices on a normal microstock partner site they use is www.fotkyfoto.hu/

There are about $4.3 per 1,000 Hungarian forints and the prices here are
XS = 1,198ft (0.1MP) = $5 (roughly)
S = 3190ft (0.5MP) = $15
M = 4968ft (1MP) = $22
L = 6556ft (3MP) = $27
XL = 7350ft (9MP = $32

These prices are about three times Fotolia's rates (even for European buyers) so if the agent is taking 40% commission (as Alamy does), Fotolia will still be getting close to double the normal price per sale. So what are we getting credited with? Is it just going as credit sales at XS, small, medium etc., so we get, say $2 for an XL sale that netted $32 and probably gave Fotolia something like $20? Is it 25c for a $5 sale, where Fotolia took $3?

Obviously, you have to allow for the percentage that the partner takes before looking at how the remainder is split. But I don't see how you could reasonably convert a cash sale into a credit when no credits were involved.

If fotolia gets a $3 slice of another site's sale, how should it calculate that? Should it say "Well, that site called the sale XS, so we'll call $3 one credit, regardless of whether the XS is the same size as ours or not", or should it say "$3 is double to price of a euro credit, so we'll call it two credits", or should it say, "we call $1 one credit so this is three credits", or should it say "We say we pay 25% commission, so this is worth 75c to the photographer"?

I seem to notice plenty of room for smoke and mirrors in this one.

Not that I am a lot more trustful regarding Fotolia, but when I look up one of my pics on that site the prices shown seem to be roughly in line with the Euro-conversion of the regular FT prices. Maybe you looked at an example that has increased pricing on FT (either exclusive or emerald and up)?
And as the prices are so weird in the local currency (instead of somewhat rounded) it may well be that they use some kind of automatic currency conversion...

That obviously does not address the whole topic of missing transparency on FT's side.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #9 on:** October 13, 2011, 09:38 »

Yes, I'm seeing lower prices now, but that wasn't a higher-priced file. Maybe there was some sort of usage filter I'd activated. It's hard to know when you don't speak the language.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #10 on:** October 14, 2011, 00:54 »

Interestingly, Fotolia has seen fit not to bother replying to the question on their own forum about their partner sales (except for Mat removing the link to their own partner, on the grounds that links aren't allowed, though he has left the name of it there).

OM · « **Reply #11 on:** October 15, 2011, 08:47 »

The highest prices you see on that site are for large canvas 'art prints' which are effectively inkjet prints using chromogenic inks (very expensive). Now, if you look at the price of posters from the same image you'll see a price of around €60 for a 160cm print. These are presumably printed with normal printers inks which do not have archival longevity and are much cheaper to produce. However, there's no way the printer can be paying the FT EL rate as that's usually more than the print price for silvers, golds etc. So, my conclusion would be that they're using XL/XXL downloads for these prints, canvasses etc and if they can use this type of download, they can just as easily use a subscription to get that file size from which they can download 750 files/month and for which the artist receives between 25-45 cents/ download depending on status.

You see, images are effectively free these days!

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Author Topic: Fotolia partner sales (Read 10314 times)

BaldricksTrousers

gostwyck

BaldricksTrousers

sam100

click_click

BaldricksTrousers

fujiko

Sadstock

dirkr

BaldricksTrousers

BaldricksTrousers

OM

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