MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Adobe Stock => Topic started by: graficallyminded on September 26, 2008, 14:56
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All of the affilliates I have are less than 2 years old. As far as I know, they expired after 5 years...
Why are they all red now? I just saw them the other day, and they were all green. Can you guys check your accounts?
I just contacted support. I'll let you know what I find out. I really hope they didn't decide to take back what they said they'd give us.
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http://www.fotolia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=14300
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affiliation is only 1 year. my affiliation partners expired after 1 year also. I thought it is 5 years, but aparently, it is 1 year
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Even some of my affiliates that are over 1 year old that I have signed up say they expire in 2013...so the one year thing isn't necessarily true depending on when you signed up with Fotolia. But 3/4 of the rest of them are now deactivated - RED.
For example - this one is in the green on my account:
Sign up date:
06-26-2007 12:43:58 am (This is more than 1 year ago)
Expiration:
06-24-2012 12:43:58 am (This date is exactly 5 years later)
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maybe it depends when your affiliates signed up on FT.
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You would think so, but even my most recent signups don't say they expire for 5 years.
So far I know 3 people that this "glitch" has happened to. Anyone else experiencing this?
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All of my affiliates are fine, including three that originated in early 2007.
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I have this problem as well. I contacted support to find out what's going on.
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I have received a response to my support ticket, that they will answer me soon - but to please wait. Ok, I'll wait. ???
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I received this from Fotolia support:
My question:
Why have these affiliates expired on my account? I have read posts that I am not the only person dealing with this? What happened? These are suppose to be for 5 years.
I had about 100 removed, many of them making money.
Their response: (totally false cause a lot of mine I personally refered! the rest are from my website)
Hello Brandon,
We recently discovered a bug in our system that linked affiliates to your account that do not belong. These affiliates have been paying you incorrectly as a result we have removed these affiliates. We will however allow you to keep the past money you accidentally were paid. This decision came directly from the President and CEO of Fotolia and will not be reconsidered.
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I sent another email. If this does not get worked out soon, I will be pulling all links I have to Fotolia. No more refs from me.
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Looks like most, not all, but most have been set back to normal. Anyone else?
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Yes, me too. Thankfully I at least have some of mine left. The best affiliate is gone though :( I guess they got there by mistake due to a major error. I got this directly from Chad, the director of US operations.
There's no way to dispute this, even if I wanted to. I trust that they are telling the truth, though. It's a shame we didn't have an advanced warning that this was going to happen to our accounts, instead of us having to suddenly find out for ourselves. That would have cleared up a lot of the stress and confusion.
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Personally, I would like more details about this "bug" and how they figure we were affected. This "blanket" disable of affiliates makes me wonder about the actions being taken and their true motive. If the ones I still have disabled are truly "bug" related, why did the others get disabled before someone really looked into it? Sounds kinda fishy to me. This is one of the major problems of microstock. I feel we are more like cattle in the field.
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I've experienced the same thing. I read this post, but didn't think to check. Only when I noticed my referral income was down about 50% did the penny drop! I've emailed support and hopefully they can restore mine as well.
The ones that have been erroneously expired are also all my earliest ones which only started appearing after I started my blog. So I won't be believing the they-were-assigned-to-you-by-mistake excuse.
I'll await their official response, but from the experiences reported here by AreaPhotography, it looks awfully suspicious.
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I just got this from fotolia:
"We apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately we no longer pay affiliation revenue for new photographers. How ever we do pay out affiliation for new buyers that are recruited."
how come they are not going to fix mine?
Melissa
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"We apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately we no longer pay affiliation revenue for new photographers. How ever we do pay out affiliation for new buyers that are recruited."
They can't be serious! If this is a change in policy how can they let it first hit the streets via a support response? If this is an error, how can they let a representative say something so monumentally erroneous?
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Man this sucks...I am so mad!
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why are some people getting there accounts fixed and not me?
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Me too Mel, no resolution yet, but I only submitted my support ticket a few hours ago. Still, my referral earnings are down about 50%. I'm quite upset too. Why do Fotolia's "bugs" always seem to cost us money?
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Ya...All I am getting is it is a bug!
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I emailed Chad. The next day it was sort of back to normal. If that is the case, that they no longer pay for photographers, don't they still have to honor your existing affiliates? They can't just cut you out, can they? That is a 5 yr contract.
If that is true, I am pulling my links. This is not being handled well. It makes me think differently of Fotolia. I feel left standing with no cloths on. Its not cool. This kind of change needs to be announced well before.
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Have'nt they stopped giving bonus for referred photographers? Someone told me they signed up under me a couple weeks back and he's had sales already, but I have no new affilates. From what I can tell they are only giving bonus on sales now. Am I wrong?
Area posted as I was writing this. Hm... pull my links?
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same problem here, many photographers were deactived prematurely on 10-01-2008 12:00:00 am
I have send a message to fotolia support
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I just got the same response to my support requests as Melking:
We apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately we no longer pay affiliation revenue for new photographers. How ever we do pay out affiliation for new buyers that are recruited.
If that is true, Fotolia are not honoring their own contract for anyone who signs up now and refers photographers as they haven't updated the agreement their website - it still reads that they *do* pay for referred photographers.
On the assumption that the contract we've all signed says something to the effect that they can 'change the contract at any time without notice', then they've screwed us big time.
If it's in fact not true and what support have told me and Melking is erroneous, then Fotolia have support people giving out false information to their customers.
I'm looking forward to finding out which one it is. Breach of contract, screwing customers, or giving out False information.
Maybe it's a combination.
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Has anyone other than me contacted Chad?
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yeah, i did and heard this
We had to remove affiliates that were collected as a result of a bug in our system a long time again. We have removed the affiliates but will not require you to pay back the money you incorrectly earned.
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Has anyone other than me contacted Chad?
I phoned Chat late on Friday evening but no answer and I didn't leave a voicemail. I then sent him an email, but no response (it is the weekend).
I phoned their global press rep and he answered, but was running out the door and told me we could talk on Monday. I insisted it was important and rushed a mention of the problem, which came out very wrong. Anyway, he insisted he had to go, so we left it at that. I returned to my computer at 1am to see an IM message from him saying he'd postponed his plans to deal with my complaint, but my rushed mention of the problem was too off-track and he didn't know what problem I was talking about. I imagine if he had already been aware of the issue he would have guessed. Anyway, hat tip to the guy for getting back to me, and head slap to the guy for not changing his response until after he'd hung up.
So, no progress.
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same stuff here...
inconclusive and contradicting support replies, left with the response 'Let me get back to you on this'
the clock is still ticking, I've gone from very frequent referral earnings down to Zero!
It seems like they only removed the good paying referrers!!! The situation sucks!
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thanks for making the calls Lee - Hopefully this gets straightened out asap
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It seems very strange to me that our financials at Fotolia can be altered without any communication from them whatsoever. Why did we not get an announcement? What is this "bug" (or is this an excuse to cut us out)? Are they no longer paying for photographers (different pages say different things)? Was the affiliate plan agreement altered (again, different on different pages of the site)?
In the past, I have had no issue trying to get proper information from Fotolia. Now, what’s the deal? Not even a reply email?!? I feel something very wrong is going on at Fotolia, and no one is giving it to us straight.
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I phoned their global press rep and he answered, but was running out the door and told me we could talk on Monday. I insisted it was important and rushed a mention of the problem, which came out very wrong. Anyway, he insisted he had to go, so we left it at that. I returned to my computer at 1am to see an IM message from him saying he'd postponed his plans to deal with my complaint, but my rushed mention of the problem was too off-track and he didn't know what problem I was talking about. I imagine if he had already been aware of the issue he would have guessed. Anyway, hat tip to the guy for getting back to me, and head slap to the guy for not changing his response until after he'd hung up.
So, no progress.
I got a reply by IM from the press rep (actually on Saturday afternoon) and he says that both Chad and Oleg are aware of the situation and are working to resolve it. Chad's daughter was born yesterday (Congratulations Chad!!), so communication with him is understandably not straight forward. So, they're aware of the situation and understand how serious it is, and they're working to resolve it "quickly", though we'll get more information when Chad comes back online.
I had directed him to this thread which has more detail of the situation and conflicting responses than the Fotolia thread or other forums, so I expect they've got all the relevant information. This is good news, and a good sign that the Fotolia we've grown to love and trust is at work to resolve the situation.
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Heard back from the Fotolia press rep with the official Fotolia line. Not good news:
True: Fotolia no longer pay for 'new' referred photographers, only buyers. The press rep said that this had already been updated on the website and was surprised when I showed him that it hadn't.
True: They're blaming a bug that mistakenly assigned affiliates, so the removed affiliate will not be restored. Apparently when affiliates are affiliated to an account on a different date to the affiliate's registration date, they've been removed. Some affiliated accounts were older than the account that referred them - meaning it was impossible for the affiliate to have actually referred the new account.
Fotolia has, apparently, lost tens of thousands of dollars due to this bug. Affiliates were getting paid for accounts they didn't refer, but now that money has been stopped. Generously, they're going to let you keep the money they paid you by mistake! :-\
I told the press rep straight up that I didn't believe the explanation. I told him I thought it was awfully convenient that correcting a bug will save them lots of money, and that my referral earnings at Fotolia were previously in proportion to the size of the agency and the structure of their program but now were lower than smaller agencies with less generous referral programs.
I asked for the date the referral program was changed to exclude paying for referred photographers - he's going to get back to me. I also asked if they know how long this 'bug' has been erroneously assigning affiliates.
So, conclusion. Fotolia has been accidentally paying us more than they needed to, which means their affiliate program was actually very weak. Now that they've stopped paying for referred photographers, it's REALLY weak! They are also yet to notify affiliates of the change or update the appropriate parts of their website.
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That sounds rather crap!
I've gone from 100% down to 0% in referrals at FT now.
I don't believe it either, I know I have referred those affiliates, the amount of referrals I have had to other sites also backs me up on this!
All sounds very ' convenient ' ! >:(
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Don't forget the big contest this spring where they decided not to award a prize.
Announcing the Unleash Your Creativity contest
http://blog.fotolia.com/us/news/contest/fotolia-_quark-_contest-_desig.html (http://blog.fotolia.com/us/news/contest/fotolia-_quark-_contest-_desig.html)
Announcing that they aren't giving away any prizes.
http://blog.fotolia.com/us/news/contest/unleash_your_creativity-_conte.html (http://blog.fotolia.com/us/news/contest/unleash_your_creativity-_conte.html)
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I think this is enough for me to pull my referral links to Fotolia. I hate to do it, but I am tired of the games in this industry. We have to keep track of the return on our time and this looks like it’s going to fall below the bar.
This will make my referrals worth 50% less or greater. With bad/no communication, the "bug" excuse, and the disregard for the contact we entered into when signing up, I will no longer refer photographers or buyers there. It’s no longer worth it for me.
I agree they may have found a bug, but for it to be this widespread is too convenient. Luckily most of mine were resolved and the ones still expired I will toss up to the "bug". But to go and disable almost all affiliates in a person’s account without communication with the user is just wrong.
I may change my mind if this gets addressed in a professional manner, but for now the almost daily referrals from me will stop.
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Why aren't new legitimate referrals even being registered? I get it that they don't kick back a percentage on photographers - but if they aren't even registering them once they tick the photographer's box we also never get credit if that photographer purchases something.
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Why aren't new legitimate referrals even being registered? I get it that they don't kick back a percentage on photographers - but if they aren't even registering them once they tick the photographer's box we also never get credit if that photographer purchases something.
Didn't someone say:
Fotolia no longer pays for 'new' referred photographers.
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Is that fair to you that you placed a banner on your site, I discover Fotolia through you, bought $1000 in credits, but I checked the photographer box on signup because that is where my heart is?
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Is that fair to you that you placed a banner on your site, I discover Fotolia through you, bought $1000 in credits, but I checked the photographer box on signup because that is where my heart is?
I'm still getting new affiliates appearing in my list. I presume they're photographers because I just don't attract many buyers. I presume the 'Total Revenue' column will just never get off zero if they're photographers (and don't ever buy).
Why don't you think they're not being assigned to you?
Also, since yesterday Fotolia have updated their website to exclude the terminology that refers to paying affiliate revenue for referred 'sales'.
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well that is really too bad they changed that :( disappointing... and disappointing we had to find out through the grape fine and not from the source.
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Also, since yesterday Fotolia have updated their website to exclude the terminology that refers to paying affiliate revenue for referred 'sales'.
How come the other sites post a statement of change to their Terms & Conditions and Fotolia just changes things?!
I'm still getting referral sign ups to FT but the earnings are practically nonexistent!
You've got to presume that everyone just rolls over and forgets about it, and FT must have something wrote into their / our contracts to cover themselves for changing things overnight without any consultation?! (Or if they didn't, they will have just added a few lines to the contract last night!)
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Why don't you think they're not being assigned to you?
Someone took the time to tell me they signed up under me in Sept and he reported sales shortly after, but no new affiliates appeared on my page. (Not hard to tell when you've only got a couple to start with.) So that leads me to believe that I must be wrong if recent photographer affilates are appearing for others - he must have had a cookie already.
On another note, I have always been the one who thought that Fotolia sales were no where near what others claim. I noticed Peter mention a change in the search system last month, and since about the 3rd week of September my sales have become very healthy. The best they've been for me since shortly after V2 and I reordered my keywords = sales virtually stopped. It's very early in the month and Fotolia is in the lead for me, normally they come in 5th or 6th. Sure SS and IS are down so more easy to pass, but Fotolia is doing better than ever. I feel like I have finally become a member of the Fotolia clique that I've heard about. Fingers crossed that this is the new norm.
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I've stood behind someone and watched them register at Fotolia via my referral link and they never appeared in my affiliates list. It wasn't enough of a controlled environment to prove affiliate scraping, but makes me wonder. It could have been the same thing that happened to you Lorraine.
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Yes, it DOES make you wonder, doesn't it?
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So I guess that's it? Slapped then they walk away. Why say sorry when you can say nothing at all?
At least most of mine are back to green. I guess I could have pulled my site logs for the last few years if I had to argue the point. Glad I did not have too. Sorry to hear there are others still in the red.
Oh well. I pulled my links. That's about it from me. Seems to be a trend in microstock.
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Partially, yes. They've given us the information about the changes to the affiliate program and updated their website in accordance with the changes.
However, I was contacted by the PR rep again today who asked me if I had everything I needed to understand the situation. This was a great sign as up until now he'd been very defensive and not very forthcoming. Hopefully it's indicative of what's going on inside the company.
Anyway, I asked him a lot of questions about the situation and provided some evidence of one affiliate that Fotolia had canceled who is my affiliates on another agency. Hopefully they can investigate and discover there was a problem in how they've implemented the affiliate cancellations. If they do it'll lend some believability to their explanation too.
I'll keep you posted.
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thanks for the update posts
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I posted a polite reminder in the Fotolia forums this morning, I have just got home from work now and I find my thread has been deleted??? what is the deal with them?!
I was polite too, just facts and calling for obvious courtesy in regard to telling its customers when things change in the T&C's... I mean, most other sites out there consult its members when they change something.
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Well I really wonder when we will hear something.
I don't like the fact that a company can just update their contract with us, and not let us know what we are now agreeing to.... without knowing it!
Microstock Diaries just made a blog post about this topic - so if you are still in the dark about where things are at, it is a good place to get caught up.
[MicrostockDiaries (http://www.microstockdiaries.com/fotolia-updates-affiliate-program-but-sees-no-need-to-tell-affiliates.html)]
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I've just had a look through my list of affiliates, and none of them have turned red, I can't believe that all 1800 of them are buyers and none of them photographers? (it's possible but i think highly unlikely given the nature of the sites the links are on)
have fotolia removed the photographers from my affiliate listing so don't notice the problem? or was I somehow never affected by the bug?
and unless I missed this before they are no longer paying 15% on sales it's now calculated as (sales price – photographer commission) x 15%
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WOW! I can't believe that we STILL have not heard anything about this from Fotolia.
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I guess this will have to do for a response from Fotolia. The thread in their forums now shows, "Topic closed".
Anyone heard anything else?
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Still not official site news, It really is just RUDE with their lack of respect!
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this seems crazy - It will soon be a month with no news. I am begging to think they are not planning on announcing it and just letting it slide by. I am guessing there is a lot of photographers who still don't know what the 'new contract' is. I really think that if they change our contract without asking us, they should at the very least inform us of the change!
Anyhow, I changed the topic of this thread so that it reflects what it is about, and not just a simple bug. I thought about starting a new topic, but thought it may as well be all in one thread.
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if they don't pay for referrals anymore ....how come I still get new affiliates?
"Hello Melking,
We are pleased to inform you that member id ******* has joined Fotolia as your affiliate. For privacy issues we can not share additional personal information with you. However you can view a list of all your affiliates and watch your affiliation revenue by logging into your Fotolia account and clicking on the affiliation link.
Thank you for promoting Fotolia we appreciate your support.
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why don't they just remove the program
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well apparently the referral program still applies to buyers, so if that photographer buys some credits then I guess you would get a % of the sale??!!
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still no news?! ???
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So strange. My referral earnings are better than ever, and a friend who I referred on Oct. 8th registered just fine in my affiliates list. His status is pending, but he also doesn't have any images online yet.
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What a slap in the face this is!
I was bringing them daily referrals. Because of this, I pulled all my links to Fotolia.
There does not seem to be a bug for me; because now I am getting the extra boost for my Dreamstime links.