MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Adobe Stock => Topic started by: luissantos84 on July 24, 2013, 08:04
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Dear contributor,
In order to give a second chance to images that have not sold for over 6 months, we have decided to update our sales conditions slightly.
After 6 months without sales, the content price will now be set according to this new pricing chart:
- XS & S = 1 Credit
- M & L = 2 Credits
- XL, XXL & V = 3 Credits
We hope that this new pricing for unsold images will help increase sales for these images. Once the image has sold 3 times, the contributor will have the ability to reset his image price once again.
We are sure these new conditions will give new life to unsold content and will help you to generate even more revenue by increasing the visibility to your unsold content.
Kind regards.
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I think this is brilliant. I hope they call it the BetterValueThaniSTock Collection. Hopefully fotolia will market this similarly to iStock: Over half our library available for 3 credits or less, something like that..
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Like at iS, it'll just stop people from uploading less in-demand images, which have a higher chance of going for giveaway prices, yet lowering the prices won't lead to more sales. So buyers might have to go to other sites to get the less usual images, which is always risky.
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before even discussing this announcement it isn't working properly, I have files with 1 download with this new pricing which makes them SOLD files, not UNSOLD
or does this mean really 6 months without a sale and need to have another 3 so we can get back to the regular price?
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Why not move rates back up if it sells one time? Because they know most unsold content in that time period will likely not reach 3 downloads. Why don't they fix the search? Does a tad cheaper make images more marketable? No. Keep all images the same price and give them all a fair chance in the search. We know FT has their thumb on search results as it is so to me this is just another way to cut commissions. A lot of images don't sell because FT makes it so by the placement they force on the images.
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Hm, I was preparing to upload quite a few files exclusively to fotolia. But a lot of those are seasonal images and they would obviously keep going up and down in price over the year.
I guess I will send those now to Alamy or maybe exclusive to Dreamstime, we will see. Or maybe I just keep them on my own website for the time being.
I have content that does not sell in high volume but wanted to leave exclusively with them for the higher price points.
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...Once the image has sold 3 times, the contributor will have the ability to reset his image price once again.
We are sure these new conditions will give new life to unsold content and will help you to generate even more revenue by increasing the visibility to your unsold content.
Just gotta love this part, even if the photo sells at the lower price you have to reset it manually :P
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...Once the image has sold 3 times, the contributor will have the ability to reset his image price once again.
We are sure these new conditions will give new life to unsold content and will help you to generate even more revenue by increasing the visibility to your unsold content.
Just gotta love this part, even if the photo sells at the lower price you have to reset it manually :P
like it is a bad thing for them selling files for higher prices, what a joke!
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I think this kind of price decreases should be optional.
It seems wrong. I mean. I upload a batch of 10 pictures. All are good, but we know how microstock. One or two are sold far, three or four pictures a bit, and and other pictures, nothing.
Within six months they will begin to sell not previously sold. And that used to be sold much, now sold less. The result? In a long run, I win less.
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i just imagine what happens when they are changing their search engine (best match again) and suddenly bestsellers stop selling - it's a way to reduce large parts of the collection to prices between 1 and 3 credits.
*DISLIKE*
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It has been proven that the customers are not price sensitive at all at these prices, so that 'visibility thing is fotolia managent -a bunch of crooks who belong is prison for fraud- lying thru their teeth again, and again.
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i just imagine what happens when they are changing their search engine (best match again) and suddenly bestsellers stop selling - it's a way to reduce large parts of the collection to prices between 1 and 3 credits.
*DISLIKE*
Right. They have simply spun this into "we will generate more sales for you by doing this, honest, that's why we are doing it." Like I said above they have their thumb on the search so they will simply manipulate, and effectively cut our commissions.
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i just imagine what happens when they are changing their search engine (best match again) and suddenly bestsellers stop selling - it's a way to reduce large parts of the collection to prices between 1 and 3 credits.
*DISLIKE*
They can reduce the whole collection with a bit of search rotation.
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
Well, if an image sells well the contributor can only raise the price to how far his contributor level allows - with higher ranked contributors to raise images to higher prices than lower ranked ones.
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
Are you kidding me? Control? Do you think that we have time to go mine our images, search for those that have 3 new DL's, isolated them and manually change the pricing back to where we have already took the time to set the price? And then if they don't sell again for 6 months they are automatically reset to cheapskate pricing. Then we keep doing this "control" on a perpetual basis?
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
unless they change searches and you end up having 3 XXL sales for 75 cents each (25% my case) and then manually higher their pricing
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
Are you kidding me? Control? Do you think that we have time to go mine our images, search for those that have 3 new DL's, isolated them and manually change the pricing back to where we have already took the time to set the price? And then if they don't sell again for 6 months they are automatically reset to cheapskate pricing. Then we keep doing this "control" on a perpetual basis?
I was thinking in contrast to what iS has done where prices were lowered with no clear mechanism or timeframe for raising the prices if an image showed some success at the lower pricepoint.
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I have files with 7 downloads with this new pricing, oh man :o
every single upload we do it has to have at least a sale every 6 months, shall we download them ourselves? ;D
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I understand the problem with istock lowering prices so drastically, that this forces other agencies to look at their options. And of course unsold files are the first ones that will be looked at. I just think that 6 months is much too short a time frame.
It would be better if there was an automatic procedure to move files back up in price once they sell, or to give contributors better tools to identify them.
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I think this is brilliant. I hope they call it the BetterValueThaniSTock Collection. Hopefully fotolia will market this similarly to iStock: Over half our library available for 3 credits or less, something like that..
do you know what is brilliant in FT? perhaps selling your files as EL for less than XXL? ;D
http://www.fotolia.com/id/29994284 (http://www.fotolia.com/id/29994284)
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
It does matter mr. genius, because if you have thousands of files you can a have a reasonable amount of daily downloads, while each individual file is getting a download seldomly, and this will severely cut the whole income on those. (I bet you can't follow the logic here : )
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adding to this sweet announcement we have no clue of what we haven't sold in the last 6 months
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I think it is time that contributors stand up and remind agencies what their function is - they are agents to US contributors.
They get a huge share of our commissions but they do not tell us what they do with that. I want them to be accountable to me!
Agent - what have you done to promote my imagery on the market. Don't lower the prices on my assets just because you have failed to do your work.
Also give me tools to decide whether or not I let YOU (the failing?) agent reduce my image prices -or remove these images from your collection.
And I agree with cobalt - the timeframe 6 months is way too short. 18 or 24 months seem more appropriate. In that regard I like DT's system of notifying me of unsold content - where I can decide whether i offer them for free, have them rekeyword, or remove them from the collection.
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
It does matter mr. genius, because if you have thousands of files you can a have a reasonable amount of daily downloads, while each individual file is getting a download seldomly, and this will severely cut the whole income on those. (I bet you can't follow the logic here : )
Fair point. Perhaps it should be longer than 6 months.
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I haven't uploaded there in a long time. I'm now deleting what was left from my last tantrum.
One image at the time! ::)
They do have some crappy tools. Any idea how to delete multiple files? Do you think I might get what is owed?
Curses.
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I believe I have figured this one out, later today they will announce they have HALF collection at 1-3 credits, that reminds me of other agency...
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Yes, the other agency is behaving like the school yard bully and fotolia is responding with an even better value proposition.
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Yes, the other agency is behaving like the school yard bully and fotolia is responding with an even better value proposition.
sweet ain't it? BRILLIANT like you have said ;D
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So the "Price War" has started?
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So the "Price War" has started?
and once again iStock leading it! started with the 15% royalties and then FT put white rank at 20% from 25%! can't wait for next announcement by iStock, they really run this all industry no doubt there
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Its crazy how they follow istock with their price rises and commission cuts, now they follow them with a price cut. Haven't they noticed that istock has suffered from all the changes while SS has kept things simple and is doing well? If buyers weren't that concerned about prices during a big economic downturn, why start cutting them now? Makes no sense to me.
6 months is a very sort time, especially seeing how badly FT sells my new images now. I was starting to upload again and they soon came up with another reason for me to stop.
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Not doubting this announcement...
But has anybody else gotten that email - I haven't.
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Its crazy how they follow istock with their price rises and commission cuts, now they follow them with a price cut. Haven't they noticed that istock has suffered from all the changes while SS has kept things simple and is doing well? If buyers weren't that concerned about prices during a big economic downturn, why start cutting them now? Makes no sense to me.
precisely my thoughts!
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Not doubting this announcement...
But has anybody else gotten that email - I haven't.
No, but i just discovered that i was unsubscribed to the newsletter (even though i remember subscribing to it.)
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Not doubting this announcement...
But has anybody else gotten that email - I haven't.
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No, but i just discovered that i was unsubscribed to the newsletter (even though i remember subscribing to it.)
I am subscribed - not something that should come from a newsletter. Changes like this should be sent to everyone via email as well.
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Its crazy how they follow istock with their price rises and commission cuts, now they follow them with a price cut. Haven't they noticed that istock has suffered from all the changes while SS has kept things simple and is doing well? If buyers weren't that concerned about prices during a big economic downturn, why start cutting them now? Makes no sense to me.
6 months is a very sort time, especially seeing how badly FT sells my new images now. I was starting to upload again and they soon came up with another reason for me to stop.
lets say that most agencies are the worst strategists that any business has ever seen, they don't seem to learn with other mistakes and even worst they keep on doing more very prejudicial stuff
this constant change in royalties/pricing is just hurting them and giving advantage to other (SS) that maintain their contributors happy making them submit fresh content every single day and doing that they are building their business very successfully with plenty of satisfied clients and many coming from the other agencies
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I'm going to delete all my images... oh wait, I already did that. It's very kind of Fotolia to reaffirm I made the right decision.
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Not doubting this announcement...
But has anybody else gotten that email - I haven't.
http://us.fotolia.com/Newsletter/2/2013-07-11/42?utm_source=contributors&utm_medium=email (http://us.fotolia.com/Newsletter/2/2013-07-11/42?utm_source=contributors&utm_medium=email)
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Wasn't it FT saying if we sell our files elsewhere (certain percentage) cheaper than their price,than they would down rank us or suspend (if i recall correctly) what if that unsold files performing better on other places, that might drive customers for cheaper options in the end it will be us who will be suffering from loss of money.(and them too)
I agree at least they need to raise the prices automatically,if not giving us the choice to opt out.and 6month period is far too short, I think DT has a better policy on that with two years.
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time to leave....
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Not doubting this announcement...
But has anybody else gotten that email - I haven't.
[/quote
No, but i just discovered that i was unsubscribed to the newsletter (even though i remember subscribing to it.)
I am subscribed - not something that should come from a newsletter. Changes like this should be sent to everyone via email as well.
Of course it should, because it is a major change in the relationship between agent and contributor. But, just like with many things, SHOULD does not always mean it IS done. And at FT it appears that what SHOULD be done is often miles away from what IS done.
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I'm so glad I set up my symbiostock site.
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So the "Price War" has started?
and once again iStock leading it! started with the 15% royalties and then FT put white rank at 20% from 25%! can't wait for next announcement by iStock, they really run this all industry no doubt there
Yeah, but an iS 15% is actually 15%, whereas a Fotolia 20% is some notional value that might be 12% due to the fact that they refuse to recognise that there is a relationship between the cash value of money that they receive and the value of the money they pay out.
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So the "Price War" has started?
and once again iStock leading it! started with the 15% royalties and then FT put white rank at 20% from 25%! can't wait for next announcement by iStock, they really run this all industry no doubt there
Yeah, but an iS 15% is actually 15%, whereas a Fotolia 20% is some notional value that might be 12% due to the fact that they refuse to recognise that there is a relationship between the cash value of money that they receive and the value of the money they pay out.
yep just another BRILLIANT thing from FT, adding to that my US account instead of EUR ::)
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Wasn't it FT saying if we sell our files elsewhere (certain percentage) cheaper than their price,than they would down rank us or suspend (if i recall correctly) what if that unsold files performing better on other places, that might drive customers for cheaper options in the end it will be us who will be suffering from loss of money.(and them too)
I agree at least they need to raise the prices automatically,if not giving us the choice to opt out.and 6month period is far too short, I think DT has a better policy on that with two years.
Actually DT drops images with no sales in 6 months down to level 0, but at least if there is a sale they won't drop and if there is a sale of a level 0 image it moves up.
This is a very poor move for contributors on FT's part.
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;
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I think we need another deactivation day!
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Yeah, but an iS 15% is actually 15%, whereas a Fotolia 20% is some notional value that might be 12% due to the fact that they refuse to recognise that there is a relationship between the cash value of money that they receive and the value of the money they pay out.
Apropos of nothing: How did you go about deleting your account at Fotolia? Did you just delete the photos or did you send them an e-mail to delete it completely?
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I would always tell them the reason why.
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So now Istock is leading the industry? I thought you all were saying Shutterstock was number 1. Interesting that you don't think lower prices has anything to do with SS even though they are still much lower than Istock and Fotolia. Is it possible that Istock and Fotolia are lowering prices to compete with the king of low prices, Shutterstock?
If you know what's going on, feel free to explain it to me because I don't get it. It looks like they all are just trying to spite contributors and drive us all away. But instead of running for the hills we just take it.
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So now Istock is leading the industry? I thought you all were saying Shutterstock was number 1. Interesting that you don't think lower prices has anything to do with SS even though they are still much lower than Istock and Fotolia. Is it possible that Istock and Fotolia are lowering prices to compete with the king of low prices, Shutterstock?
why can't you understand that SS haven't changed a single thing in over 10 YEARS? (actually only increased royalties)
while other agencies will keep on doing their nasty thing SS is laughing their a-ss to the bank ;D
SS isn't guilty for all evil you enjoy putting them, they are pretty much the salvation to all this crap we are into
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The announcement was sent around today? I have an image, an older one, that sold for the first time in a while last week. But it needs to sell two more times to be back at old prices. HUH????? So the new pricestructure (time measurement) was implemented BEFORE the announcement was made??
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The announcement was sent around today? I have an image, an older one, that sold for the first time in a while last week. But it needs to sell two more times to be back at old prices. HUH????? So the new pricestructure (time measurement) was implemented BEFORE the announcement was made??
looks like! 2pm UK
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;
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So now Istock is leading the industry? I thought you all were saying Shutterstock was number 1. Interesting that you don't think lower prices has anything to do with SS even though they are still much lower than Istock and Fotolia. Is it possible that Istock and Fotolia are lowering prices to compete with the king of low prices, Shutterstock?
If you know what's going on, feel free to explain it to me because I don't get it. It looks like they all are just trying to spite contributors and drive us all away. But instead of running for the hills we just take it.
Just look at the post below, Luis calls SS the salvation. Shutterstock has some of the lowest prices and royalties around, gets 200,000 new images a week and has contributors calling them the salvation.
I will say it again, SALVATION!
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Divide and Conquer.
This is getting silly. Why don't we concentrate on the problem. We can argue about which site is the best (or worst) in a separate thread ... can't we?
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Well thats the final nail in the coffin for me with them. My images are almost all gone from there (after some furious deleting this morning). Now to spend my paltry balance on some images I can use for web design....
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Divide and Conquer.
This is getting silly. Why don't we concentrate on the problem. We can argue about which site is the best (or worst) in a separate thread ... can't we?
you can always step out if you are going to cry
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Divide and Conquer.
This is getting silly. Why don't we concentrate on the problem. We can argue about which site is the best (or worst) in a separate thread ... can't we?
you can always step out if you are going to cry
Thanks, Luis, I would never step aside without your permission. ::)
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Yeah, but an iS 15% is actually 15%, whereas a Fotolia 20% is some notional value that might be 12% due to the fact that they refuse to recognise that there is a relationship between the cash value of money that they receive and the value of the money they pay out.
Apropos of nothing: How did you go about deleting your account at Fotolia? Did you just delete the photos or did you send them an e-mail to delete it completely?
I asked them for payment, they suspended my account, I threatened to inform the FBI and then Chad sent me payment in full and agreed to delete my account.
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Divide and Conquer.
This is getting silly. Why don't we concentrate on the problem. We can argue about which site is the best (or worst) in a separate thread ... can't we?
you can always step out if you are going to cry
Thanks, Luis, I would never step aside without your permission. ::)
do you wanna add something to this thread or is that all?
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Yeah, but an iS 15% is actually 15%, whereas a Fotolia 20% is some notional value that might be 12% due to the fact that they refuse to recognise that there is a relationship between the cash value of money that they receive and the value of the money they pay out.
Apropos of nothing: How did you go about deleting your account at Fotolia? Did you just delete the photos or did you send them an e-mail to delete it completely?
I asked them for payment, they suspended my account, I threatened to inform the FBI and then Chad sent me payment in full and agreed to delete my account.
Did you get paid out before reaching payout? I'm thinking of closing my account but I thought I'd lose my balance...
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Yeah, but an iS 15% is actually 15%, whereas a Fotolia 20% is some notional value that might be 12% due to the fact that they refuse to recognise that there is a relationship between the cash value of money that they receive and the value of the money they pay out.
Apropos of nothing: How did you go about deleting your account at Fotolia? Did you just delete the photos or did you send them an e-mail to delete it completely?
I asked them for payment, they suspended my account, I threatened to inform the FBI and then Chad sent me payment in full and agreed to delete my account.
Thanks, I like the FBI part, I think I will copy that ;)
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So now Istock is leading the industry? I thought you all were saying Shutterstock was number 1. Interesting that you don't think lower prices has anything to do with SS even though they are still much lower than Istock and Fotolia. Is it possible that Istock and Fotolia are lowering prices to compete with the king of low prices, Shutterstock?
If you know what's going on, feel free to explain it to me because I don't get it. It looks like they all are just trying to spite contributors and drive us all away. But instead of running for the hills we just take it.
Just look at the post below, Luis calls SS the salvation. Shutterstock has some of the lowest prices and royalties around, gets 200,000 new images a week and has contributors calling them the salvation.
That just isn’t true. My highest commission sales now come from SS. I wish FT and istock would sell as many EL's and I now get commissions in the $75 to $120 range. One sale on SS this month has made me more than twice all my sales with FT.
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time to leave....
So glad I left!
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Did you get paid out before reaching payout? I'm thinking of closing my account but I thought I'd lose my balance...
I got a final payout under the payout amount when I closed my account. I had to pay a small fee, but they were pretty friendly and helpful about it.
I recommend sending them an email to ask.
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before even discussing this announcement it isn't working properly, I have files with 1 download with this new pricing which makes them SOLD files, not UNSOLD
or does this mean really 6 months without a sale and need to have another 3 so we can get back to the regular price?
It means if they haven't sold in 6 months, not if they haven't sold ever. For emeralds and above a similar policy has been in place for years (reducing our base price to 1 instead of 2), only it took 5 sales at the reduced price to be able to reset.
I'm not happy about this at all, but not surprised. Every time Istock does something stupid there are always other sites that rush to go over that cliff with them. ::)
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Race to the bottom at full speed. Each time someone was whinnig about how "ridicously expensive" had got the prices at istockphoto, each time that someone "informed" their designers friends where to find the stuff cheaper, a little step towards this situation was done. Look at your feet to see if you shot yourself there.
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Did you get paid out before reaching payout? I'm thinking of closing my account but I thought I'd lose my balance...
I got a final payout under the payout amount when I closed my account. I had to pay a small fee, but they were pretty friendly and helpful about it.
I recommend sending them an email to ask.
Thanks, will do. Otherwise I'll go shopping with my credits. :)
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Did you get paid out before reaching payout? I'm thinking of closing my account but I thought I'd lose my balance...
I got a final payout under the payout amount when I closed my account. I had to pay a small fee, but they were pretty friendly and helpful about it.
I recommend sending them an email to ask.
Thanks, will do. Otherwise I'll go shopping with my credits. :)
No, I had about $800 owing but I couldn't get paypal, I needed a cheque. The FBI has a special internet fraud section in NY, by the way, and they do handle complaints from overseas. There were aspects of what happened to me that made it more than just a slow payment issue.
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For emeralds and above a similar policy has been in place for years (reducing our base price to 1 instead of 2), only it took 5 sales at the reduced price to be able to reset.
Have you ever reset any of yours Lisa? I'm guessing that the only way to find out which images can be reset would be to click on every file and check and nobody has time for that.
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Not doubting this announcement...
But has anybody else gotten that email - I haven't.
[/quote
No, but i just discovered that i was unsubscribed to the newsletter (even though i remember subscribing to it.)
I am subscribed - not something that should come from a newsletter. Changes like this should be sent to everyone via email as well.
+1
I didn't get the message either. Reading this thread, I assumed I'm "too new" at FT to have any skin in this particular 6-months game and so wasn't advised. But I don't think I've ever gotten a newsletter from them yet, so maybe I'm not signed up for that. Hmmmm.
I'm soooo very new at FT, just a few weeks, but I may pull out there along with others from this group. Too few images there and too few sales to worry about, so not much to lose by leaving. I'm feeling good about my new SYS site. :-)
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+1
I didn't get the message either. Reading this thread, I assumed I'm "too new" at FT to have any skin in this particular 6-months game and so wasn't advised. But I don't think I've ever gotten a newsletter from them yet, so maybe I'm not signed up for that. Hmmmm.
I'm soooo very new at FT, just a few weeks, but I may pull out there along with others from this group. Too few images there and too few sales to worry about, so not much to lose by leaving. I'm feeling good about my new SYS site. :-)
https://us.fotolia.com/Member/Modify/Preferences
watch out for your EL prices, you are selling them for 10$
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maybe SS should start strictly exclusive ?
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
I agree. I have 519 files and only 200 sold once or more. Say 100 are not 6 months old, that means I have 200 non sellers. If their is a chance that they will get sales now then its a win win situation. The only problem is that when images start to pick up sales, I need to manually edit 200 images. Ugh.
I also agree that this system is perfect for manipulating search results to make sure files are not sold for 6 months. If fotolia is that evil, I'll leave in the middle.
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
It does matter mr. genius, because if you have thousands of files you can a have a reasonable amount of daily downloads, while each individual file is getting a download seldomly, and this will severely cut the whole income on those. (I bet you can't follow the logic here : )
I am sorry, but I also miss your logic.
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
It does matter mr. genius, because if you have thousands of files you can a have a reasonable amount of daily downloads, while each individual file is getting a download seldomly, and this will severely cut the whole income on those. (I bet you can't follow the logic here : )
I am sorry, but I also miss your logic.
it is not that hard, I have over 20 different files downloaded for the 1st time this month (older than 6 months) that means I will have a 50% cut next month (actually from now on)
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I'm so glad I set up my symbiostock site.
You can say that again
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I'm pretty confident this is a deal breaker for me. I'll sleep on it tonight and email them tomorrow if my mind has not changed.
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
It does matter mr. genius, because if you have thousands of files you can a have a reasonable amount of daily downloads, while each individual file is getting a download seldomly, and this will severely cut the whole income on those. (I bet you can't follow the logic here : )
I am sorry, but I also miss your logic.
it is not that hard, I have over 20 different files downloaded for the 1st time this month (older than 6 months) that means I will have a 50% cut next month (actually from now on)
I dont get that either.
If they got downloaded this month, then you have 6 months for them to go without sales before they drop in price.
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
It does matter mr. genius, because if you have thousands of files you can a have a reasonable amount of daily downloads, while each individual file is getting a download seldomly, and this will severely cut the whole income on those. (I bet you can't follow the logic here : )
I am sorry, but I also miss your logic.
it is not that hard, I have over 20 different files downloaded for the 1st time this month (older than 6 months) that means I will have a 50% cut next month (actually from now on)
I dont get that either.
If they got downloaded this month, then you have 6 months for them to go without sales before they drop in price.
nop, we need 3 downloads on a file older than 6 months so we can put it back on the regular pricing
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Well at least it is well defined and give some control to the contributor. If an image has a few sales, the contributor has the power to raise the price. If it doesn't sell at all, well then it doesn't really matter anyway.
It does matter mr. genius, because if you have thousands of files you can a have a reasonable amount of daily downloads, while each individual file is getting a download seldomly, and this will severely cut the whole income on those. (I bet you can't follow the logic here : )
I am sorry, but I also miss your logic.
it is not that hard, I have over 20 different files downloaded for the 1st time this month (older than 6 months) that means I will have a 50% cut next month (actually from now on)
I dont get that either.
If they got downloaded this month, then you have 6 months for them to go without sales before they drop in price.
nop, we need 3 downloads on a file older than 6 months so we can put it back on the regular pricing
Yes, but thats not what you are saying,
You had a file which downloaded 6 months, so you have 6 months time to get another download, if not it will drop in price. Once it has dropped in price you need 3 downloads to change the price again.
So if a file sells once within every 6 months, nothing is going to happen to the pricing.
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every single upload we do it has to have at least a sale every 6 months, shall we download them ourselves? ;D
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If the selling price eventually was split 50/50 we could give it a try. If not, this "try out" should be sponsored by fotolia entirely as the contributor was not consulted about this.
It can not be that this is a one way decision.
As my employer can not cut my wage without prior contract negotiation fotolia can not do it.
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If the selling price eventually was split 50/50 we could give it a try. If not, this "try out" should be sponsored by fotolia entirely as the contributor was not consulted about this.
It can not be that this is a one way decision.
As my employer can not cut my wage without prior contract negotiation fotolia can not do it.
agencies reserve the right to do anything they want, they have that written on their agreement terms, not that exact words ;D
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In Europe these issues can become very complicated with unpredictable results.
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They aren't your employer.
looks like we are trapped in semantics ;D
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the terms we've agreed to:
2. General Acknowledgments and Agreements
Your use of the Website constitutes your acknowledgment and acceptance of the terms and conditions of this Agreement, and you shall be bound by such terms and conditions. If you do not agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Agreement, do not use or access any portions of the Website or use any services offered on the Website.
Fotolia shall have the right, in its sole discretion, to amend the terms and conditions of this Agreement, in whole or in part, at any time, and any such changes shall be effective immediately upon member notification and publication of such changes on the Website. Your continued use of the Website after the effectiveness of such changes and notice constitutes your acknowledgment and acceptance of the terms and conditions of this Agreement, as so amended. If you do not agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Agreement as so amended, do not use or access the Website.
15. Miscellaneous
This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of New York, without regard to any conflict of laws principles. Any legal action, suit or proceeding arising out of or relating to this Agreement shall be instituted in a court of competent subject matter jurisdiction in the federal or state courts of the State of New York, and you and Fotolia each submit to the personal jurisdiction of such court and waive any right each might otherwise have to claim lack of personal jurisdiction or inconvenience of forum.
The relationship between Fotolia and you under this Agreement is that of independent contractors. For clarification purposes, the parties are not joint venturers, partners, principal and agent, or employer and employee. Neither party shall have the power to bind or obligate the other in any manner. You agree that you shall be responsible for all use, sales, value-added and similar taxes and duties imposed by any governing authority in any jurisdiction in connection with your use of the Website.
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I'm dutch speaking
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Of course I assume changing prices will be extremely difficult as usually with Fotolia. I was asking many times to fix default price for Extended license which allowed range is 10-100. Auto-magically it is always set to 10 :-) Finally after lengthy tread rep said they will not do this because management do not want them to do that. When I asked to run a query and set all prices of my images to 100 they said no too. So the only option is to go to every single image and fix it :-) I would be it would be the same in this case.
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They aren't your employer.
looks like we are trapped in semantics ;D
Yep just semantics. Employers have certain legal responsibilities, just like agencies in the other thread. It matters what words you use because the words mean something. If you are an employee you get certain legal protections while if you are not an employee you may not get those protections. I know you aren't as dumb as you act, maybe stop trolling?
sorry but who is trolling here? saying we are trapped in semantics is attacking you or diverging this discussion? you can say they aren't our employer because this and that but in the end we depend on agencies so its really semantics
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Of course I assume changing prices will be extremely difficult as usually with Fotolia. I was asking many times to fix default price for Extended license which allowed range is 10-100. Auto-magically it is always set to 10 :-) Finally after lengthy tread rep said they will not do this because management do not want them to do that. When I asked to run a query and set all prices of my images to 100 they said no too. So the only option is to go to every single image and fix it :-) I would be it would be the same in this case.
unfortunately they have those submission "bugs" for a long time (which they cannot fix) but this change is already live, check your own portfolio
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maybe SS should start strictly exclusive - to stop all this crap
SS has said repeatedly that they have no interest in exclusive contributors or content in their primary collection. No idea how Offset is doing or what the rules there are, but they could only do exclusive images at higher prices - to afford to pay the extra they'd have to to obtain images exclusively.
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They aren't your employer.
looks like we are trapped in semantics ;D
Yep just semantics. Employers have certain legal responsibilities, just like agencies in the other thread. It matters what words you use because the words mean something. If you are an employee you get certain legal protections while if you are not an employee you may not get those protections. I know you aren't as dumb as you act, maybe stop trolling?
sorry but who is trolling here? saying we are trapped in semantics is attacking you or diverging this discussion? you can say they aren't our employer because this and that but in the end we depend on agencies so its really semantics
Dependence is not the definition of employer, that's just one small part. You depend on your computer, is that your employer too? Employer and employee have relevant legal meanings and whether or not fotolia is your employer makes a difference in this thread: "As my employer can not cut my wage without prior contract negotiation fotolia can not do it. "
If an employer can't cut wages without contract negotiations and you are an employee of fotolia then fotolia can't cut your wages without contract negotiations.
If you are not an employee of fotolia then maybe fotolia can cut wages without negotiations.
Understand how the word makes a difference?
yeah but ain't that a bit too much? its just a word, let it go ;D
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The images on offset are not exclusive. Many of them are also available at other sites and come from Westend61, Blend etc...
It looks like artist looking for higher end returns or even midstock returns will be forced to work with "aggregators" who take exclusive content and then work with agencies that have higher price bands.
This is a great pity, because the more levels there are between supplier and customer, the smaller the cut is that is left for the artist and the customer also has to pay higher prices.
I thought the exclusive images that Fotolia offers and that can be set to higher prices by the contributor are a very clever system. It attracts more high end content that might not be placed on the micros.
Or so I thought...
Guess we all have to work on our own little shops, or encourage pond5 where we can set our own prices. At least for content where we feel we can get higher prices.
Again, I don´t mind having a sensible system in place for content that doesn´t sell. But 6 months is just much too short.
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maybe SS should start strictly exclusive - to stop all this crap
SS has said repeatedly that they have no interest in exclusive contributors or content in their primary collection. No idea how Offset is doing or what the rules there are, but they could only do exclusive images at higher prices - to afford to pay the extra they'd have to to obtain images exclusively.
In this moment I can not go through all implications if SS go with strict exclusivity -
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For emeralds and above a similar policy has been in place for years (reducing our base price to 1 instead of 2), only it took 5 sales at the reduced price to be able to reset.
Have you ever reset any of yours Lisa? I'm guessing that the only way to find out which images can be reset would be to click on every file and check and nobody has time for that.
I just check the ones that sold that day. I would never bother to go over the whole back catalogue. It is a PITA, but I don't know of a better solution.
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maybe SS should start strictly exclusive - to stop all this crap
SS has said repeatedly that they have no interest in exclusive contributors or content in their primary collection. No idea how Offset is doing or what the rules there are, but they could only do exclusive images at higher prices - to afford to pay the extra they'd have to to obtain images exclusively.
In this moment I can not go through all implications if SS go with strict exclusivity - but two things are for sure - agencies like FT and 123 RF will not exist any more - and that is something ...
If Shutterstock would offer exclusivity they would wipe out a lot of agencies indeed. Jon has the power to do that. If he wanted to.
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I really can't believe how you "pro" people can take this for granted. Me as amateur frankly I don't care. I don't have to pay rent from my photography. On the other hand if I have a agreement with someone (e.g. a plumber) and we negotiate a price I will make a lot of fuss when he doesn't stick to it. And for one thing I'm sure all these sites with their tick boxes "yes I agree" where you have to click it or you even can not read the next page their "agreements" will not stick up in any European court.
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Folks, check your sold files. I had images reduced in priced based on the today announced system that I have sold back in June. Sure enough some of them aren't high sellers, but they have been sold at least once before this change was implemented.
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I really can't believe how you "pro" people can take this for granted. Me as amateur frankly I don't care. I don't have to pay rent from my photography. On the other hand if I have a agreement with someone (e.g. a plumber) and we negotiate a price I will make a lot of fuss when he doesn't stick to it. And for one thing I'm sure all these sites with their tick boxes "yes I agree" where you have to click it or you even can not read the next page their "agreements" will not stick up in any European court.
if you believe that would be so easy why haven't we seen at least 1 top contributor doing so?
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Folks, check your sold files. I had images reduced in priced based on the today announced system that I have sold back in June. Sure enough some of them aren't high sellers, but they have been sold at least once before this change was implemented.
They even reduced my bestseller in price (it has over 300 sales) even though it sold in June!
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Folks, check your sold files. I had images reduced in priced based on the today announced system that I have sold back in June. Sure enough some of them aren't high sellers, but they have been sold at least once before this change was implemented.
yes but in fact you need to have 3 downloads if they were older than 6 months, were they submitted before that period?
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If Shutterstock would offer exclusivity they would wipe out a lot of agencies indeed. Jon has the power to do that. If he wanted to.
It might be nice for the rest of us because we'd probably be able to negotiate better rates with the other agencies. I might send out letters the day of the announcement to the other agencies asking if they want to negotiate. ;D
SS doesn't seem to have any interest in it though.
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I really can't believe how you "pro" people can take this for granted. Me as amateur frankly I don't care. I don't have to pay rent from my photography. On the other hand if I have a agreement with someone (e.g. a plumber) and we negotiate a price I will make a lot of fuss when he doesn't stick to it. And for one thing I'm sure all these sites with their tick boxes "yes I agree" where you have to click it or you even can not read the next page their "agreements" will not stick up in any European court.
if you believe that would be so easy why haven't we seen at least 1 top contributor doing so?
^^Yeah, exactly.
I have to admit, I find it confusing that someone would slam the "pros" for putting up with these changes, but then make the point that they themselves neither need, nor rely on the income, and so are totally fine with being screwed over.
Seems like it would be a lot EASIER to stand on principle if you didn't need the money. What does that make you if you accept a raw deal without even needing to?
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Folks, check your sold files. I had images reduced in priced based on the today announced system that I have sold back in June. Sure enough some of them aren't high sellers, but they have been sold at least once before this change was implemented.
yes but in fact you need to have 3 downloads if they were older than 6 months, were they submitted before that period?
Luis, the anouncement says:
In order to give a second chance to images that have not sold for over 6 months, we have decided to update our sales conditions slightly.
Well the images that I talk about have sold at least once in the past 6 months and were reduced still. I understand that FROM TODAY ON (as the announcement was made today) the conditions are new: if images do not sell for 6 months from now on, they will be reduced in price and then need 3 downloads to go back to normal pricing (if I set it back to that). But this rule was NOT in place until the announcement that was made today, so all images that sold within the past 6 months at least once SHOULD not be reduced in price. I find it mindboggling that images that have over 300 sales to them and sold at least once within the past 6 months are reduced in price!
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Folks, check your sold files. I had images reduced in priced based on the today announced system that I have sold back in June. Sure enough some of them aren't high sellers, but they have been sold at least once before this change was implemented.
yes but in fact you need to have 3 downloads if they were older than 6 months, were they submitted before that period?
Luis, the anouncement says:
In order to give a second chance to images that have not sold for over 6 months, we have decided to update our sales conditions slightly.
Well the images that I talk about have sold at least once in the past 6 months and were reduced still. I understand that FROM TODAY ON (as the announcement was made today) the conditions are new: if images do not sell for 3 months from now on, they will be reduced in price and then need 3 downloads to go back to normal pricing (if I set it back to that). But this rule was NOT in place until the announcement that was made today, so all images that sold within the past 6 months at least once SHOULD not be reduced in price. I find it mindboggling that images that have over 300 sales to them and sold at least once within the past 6 months are reduced in price!
yep must be a bug, checking mine also
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If Fotolia keeps this new system in place, in many ways they have given up the midstock section for more interesting, more high end content. There are many files that will only sell a few times a year, but can get a higher price. But if they stick to this system, contributors will be forced to produce ultrageneric content.
It wouldn´t make much sense to shoot localized, for instance.
You also have to be ultraselective when uploading a series, otherwise your bestsellers will be cannibalized by the lower selling files after 6 months. Or you deactivate the rest of the series that hasn´t sold in six months, if you feel the files deserve different returns.
Certainly makes it more complicated to decide what to send to fotolia.
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*facepalm*
There are even images affected that sold more than once in the past 6 months!
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same here Mellimage ::)
have a file that sold for the first time on 06-21-2013 01:00:52 pm (over 2 years old)
which makes me thing that we need 3 downloads on files older than 6 months or there is a bug
its not one but many...
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If Shutterstock would offer exclusivity they would wipe out a lot of agencies indeed. Jon has the power to do that. If he wanted to.
It might be nice for the rest of us because we'd probably be able to negotiate better rates with the other agencies. I might send out letters the day of the announcement to the other agencies asking if they want to negotiate. ;D
SS doesn't seem to have any interest in it though.
And WHY?!!! SS doesn't have any interest in that - I don t understand - can you give some explanation - it is in their interest - and probably in our interest too...
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same here Mellimage ::)
have a file that sold for the first time on 06-21-2013 01:00:52 pm (over 2 years old)
which makes me thing that we need 3 downloads on files older than 6 months or there is a bug
To work this in retro-actively would be a breach of contract (and a misleading announcement, because then they should say, if an image has not sold within the past six months at least three times...) - or an image needs from now on to sell at least 3 times to stay at the price level it is introduced at... so it probably is bug - and i will report it to FT
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same here Mellimage ::)
have a file that sold for the first time on 06-21-2013 01:00:52 pm (over 2 years old)
which makes me thing that we need 3 downloads on files older than 6 months or there is a bug
To work this in retro-actively would be a breach of contract (and a misleading announcement, because then they should say, if an image has not sold within the past six months at least three times...) - or an image needs from now on to sell at least 3 times to stay at the price level it is introduced at... so it probably is bug - and i will report it to FT
I have more than 10 so far, guess there must be over 100, this is just ridiculous!
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Certainly makes it more complicated to decide what to send to fotolia.
Or incredibly easy... nothing. Because the file needs to earn its cost back within the first 6 months or it is unlikely it ever will.
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I have more than 10 so far, guess there must be over 100, this is just ridiculous!
Same here... . I have very few sales generally and a small port, which means I am through checking till March, but there are files in there that have more than 3 downloads totally, and sold at least once in the past 6 months that are reduced in price. On the other hand, I have seen files that have one single download to their name in the past six months, are older files too - and still keep their price level for now.
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I have more than 10 so far, guess there must be over 100, this is just ridiculous!
Same here... . I have very few sales generally and a small port, which means I am through checking till March, but there are files in there that have more than 3 downloads totally, and sold at least once in the past 6 months that are reduced in price. On the other hand, I have seen files that have one single download to their name in the past six months, are older files too - and still keep their price level for now.
did the same, I am with over 20 so far, believe I am done looking for more
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what a joke!
I have one file sold for the first time today 4 hours (over 6 months old) before their announcement with the new pricing ;D
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Certainly makes it more complicated to decide what to send to fotolia.
Or incredibly easy... nothing. Because the file needs to earn its cost back within the first 6 months or it is unlikely it ever will.
No, there are files for every price point. But I thought the system with a mix of indie and partly exclusive content was a brilliant move to attract localized content and more high end stuff.
Let´s see if they rework this system. Otherwise, they will really only attract all the things that can sell in superhuge quantities.
And since Fotolia shows visible downloads for each file - this will lead to even more copying because as soon as a file has sales, it will be copied by someone else who hopes to get the same success.
At least they should remove visible downloads to avoid endless duplications between contributors if they want everyone to shoot ultrafast selling generic content.
I mean, now all you have to do is look at what sold in the last 6 months from the new uploads...and copy...
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Certainly makes it more complicated to decide what to send to fotolia.
Or incredibly easy... nothing. Because the file needs to earn its cost back within the first 6 months or it is unlikely it ever will.
No, there are files for every price point. But I thought the system with a mix of indie and partly exclusive content was a brilliant move to attract localized content and more high end stuff.
Let´s see if they rework this system. Otherwise, they will really only attract all the things that can sell in superhuge quantities.
And since Fotolia shows visible downloads for each file - this will lead to even more copying because as soon as a file has sales, it will be copied by someone else who hopes to get the same success.
At least they should remove visible downloads to avoid endless duplications between contributors if they want everyone to shoot ultrafast selling generic content.
sorry but that is the least important thing at this moment, we talking about 50% slash in pricing, don't think that today there is one person concerned about copy cats
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So what is your solution? Just not upload until they change things?
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Certainly makes it more complicated to decide what to send to fotolia.
Or incredibly easy... nothing. Because the file needs to earn its cost back within the first 6 months or it is unlikely it ever will.
No, there are files for every price point. But I thought the system with a mix of indie and partly exclusive content was a brilliant move to attract localized content and more high end stuff.
There certainly is, but the question is - is fotolia the one.
They really have a sweet spot in my heart, because they were the first i signed with and had sales with eons ago, but things have gone from good to bad and from bad to worse and i wonder if the time has come to reconsider sending any work to them.
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So what is your solution? Just not upload until they change things?
yep something like that
is removing the number of downloads the solution? we aren't here talking about the solution because there isn't one, we are trying to understand what is going on, at this moment this bug that is affecting most pictures doesn't matter how old or how many downloads it has
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I too only wish SS would offer special terms for exclusives, because if they did they would hold all of the content, can you say monopoly? They'd have what Getty use to have in RM. With everything going wrong at IS and now FT why would any photographer not jump at it. After a few months they could even raise the rates a bit because they'd be the only ones with content as all other agencies would loose anyone that is on SS. But alas, they apparently don't want to even if they can be the driver! :(
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I emailed them asking about applying the changes to files that havent sold in 6 months PRIOR to the announcement, if anything it needs to start from today.
If the answer is not satisfactory I will email the BBB or whoever.
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If Shutterstock would offer exclusivity they would wipe out a lot of agencies indeed. Jon has the power to do that. If he wanted to.
It might be nice for the rest of us because we'd probably be able to negotiate better rates with the other agencies. I might send out letters the day of the announcement to the other agencies asking if they want to negotiate. ;D
SS doesn't seem to have any interest in it though.
And WHY?!!! SS doesn't have any interest in that - I don t understand - can you give some explanation - it is in their interest - and probably in our interest too...
Because Jon said so. He is not going to offer exclusivity.
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Forgot to say. I've only been with them for a couple of months and have under 200 images with them. I will not be uploading any more and at the 6 month point will go through and delete any unsold images.
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If Shutterstock would offer exclusivity they would wipe out a lot of agencies indeed. Jon has the power to do that. If he wanted to.
It might be nice for the rest of us because we'd probably be able to negotiate better rates with the other agencies. I might send out letters the day of the announcement to the other agencies asking if they want to negotiate. ;D
SS doesn't seem to have any interest in it though.
And WHY?!!! SS doesn't have any interest in that - I don t understand - can you give some explanation - it is in their interest - and probably in our interest too...
Because Jon said so. He is not going to offer exclusivity.
yep and many times but I also woke up today and FT still haven't announced this brilliant thing ::)
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So what is your solution? Just not upload until they change things?
yep something like that
is removing the number of downloads the solution? we aren't here talking about the solution because there isn't one, we are trying to understand what is going on, at this moment this bug that is affecting most pictures doesn't matter how old or how many downloads it has
Removing the numbers will at least give you the privacy you need when you upload new files now.
I don´t want to stop uploading. I want to keep on working.
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Of course I assume changing prices will be extremely difficult as usually with Fotolia. I was asking many times to fix default price for Extended license which allowed range is 10-100. Auto-magically it is always set to 10 :-) Finally after lengthy tread rep said they will not do this because management do not want them to do that. When I asked to run a query and set all prices of my images to 100 they said no too. So the only option is to go to every single image and fix it :-) I would be it would be the same in this case.
They used to sell a few EL's for me but that dried up, so I don't think it really matters what price they set for them. SS has no problem selling $100 EL's and higher priced SOD's. Just shows how incompetent FT are. They're now focusing on lowering prices when they could make much more money selling higher priced licences.
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So what is your solution? Just not upload until they change things?
yep something like that
is removing the number of downloads the solution? we aren't here talking about the solution because there isn't one, we are trying to understand what is going on, at this moment this bug that is affecting most pictures doesn't matter how old or how many downloads it has
Removing the numbers will at least give you the privacy you need when you upload new files now.
I don´t want to stop uploading. I want to keep on working.
again that is a thing that doesn't bother me that much and less at this exact moment
I wonder what Robert thinks about this...
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Yes, his next blog posts will be interesting...
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Wow it's RCs for individual images...
Bit like DT's level 0 at a lower price, except no automatic increase when sales come, they won't go beyond original base price and can drop over and over again - sweet deal.
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I mean, now all you have to do is look at what sold in the last 6 months from the new uploads...and copy...
Lol! I recall that just under nine years ago someone was banned from iS for recreating the main elements of a famous 17th or 18th century painting - and he did a shameful mea culpa and departed with his head hanging in shame.
Of course, there was copying back then, too, but people needed to take care that they weren't spotted .... well, apart from some of the in-crowd who seem to have been immune.
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Once the image has sold 3 times, the contributor will have the ability to reset his image price once again.
... ... I really don't have the time and/or energy to start resetting my image prices file by file :(
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exactly as i predicted long time ago : agencies are forced to do something against oversupply and to give more visibility to sandboxed images that could have potential but have been buried for whatever reason.
i'm curious to see how this will translate in the real world, in my opinion it could be very good for some contributors and disastrous for others.
besides, it could be a total fiasco as Fotolia's theory is that if an image never sells is because it's too pricey or not on par with similar images at the same price.
so, we will see but in my opinion if a photo never sold once is because there's either zero demand for that or it looks good enough but not as good as the other similars, or finally it just su-cks and nobody would buy it even as a gift !
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If Shutterstock would offer exclusivity they would wipe out a lot of agencies indeed. Jon has the power to do that. If he wanted to.
It might be nice for the rest of us because we'd probably be able to negotiate better rates with the other agencies. I might send out letters the day of the announcement to the other agencies asking if they want to negotiate. ;D
SS doesn't seem to have any interest in it though.
And WHY?!!! SS doesn't have any interest in that - I don t understand - can you give some explanation - it is in their interest - and probably in our interest too...
Because Jon said so. He is not going to offer exclusivity.
Yep, he has said no exclusivity, although I guess you never know when things are going to change. ;)
I don't think SS has a ton of extra cash to offer contributors though, so I'm not sure where the money would come from to sweeten the pot for exclusives. I guess they could implement the Bigstock model and exempt exclusives. But, that would be more of a threat than a perk.
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To be honest, I can't see why anyone would want to go the artist exclusive route anymore. We've all seen what stock sites will do if they feel they have contributors over a barrel.
If SS did indeed wind up with a large number of exclusives and managed to get a monopoly or even close to it, who's so say they won't start pulling the same sh*t?
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Well there are all these smaller agents that take exclusive content, prefilter it and then send it off to the macro agencies. istock used to do it direct with the exclusive content.
SS could easily open up a portal for more specialized content and let contributors submit exclusive series. Instead of sourcing from external agents, they could have their own "blend collection".
Exclusive images is a useful idea. It doesn´t tie the artist down the way artist exclusivity does and the artist is free to work with different companies, especially if they have different styles.
Fotolia could probably do a lot more with their exclusive content, or just invest in a better search experience to help the customers find more unusal images. There are many things they can do bevor they just drop the price.
But of course, you don´t know what is really going. Maybe in the last 10 days fotolia has already lost a lot of customers to istock and their half price campaign. Or just enough to make them panic and so they come up with these extreme systems.
I believe there is a good market there for edited midstock and high end content. I would have thought that to give the customer the best possible search experience and choices from well edited lightboxes and collections is more important than the lowest price.
But maybe the agency owners read this and think we are incredibly naive and price trumps everything, I don´t know.
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if SS goes for exclusive photographers only - not photos... only IS would survive -
...and then we have new problems - of course - but - something has to change drastically - situation in MS becomes unsustainable...
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if SS goes for exclusive photographers only - not photos... only IS would survive -
...and then we have new problems - of course - but - something has to change drastically - situation in MS becomes unsustainable...
Ah, perchance to dream....
With SS's current client and photographer lists they should offer 50% commissions on exclusive content and raise the sub price to $1/image. I doubt many photogs would not jump at this because it would take out all the competition where we are competing with ourselves and both us and SS would earn more money. Someday maybe Jon will change his mind.... Ok time to wake up....
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exactly as i predicted long time ago :
no, really, you predicted this too?
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6 months does seem short, there's a lot of annual events where I assume a lot of images are only popular for the 3-4 months leading up to it. Aren't Fotolia missing out on revenue by forcing all their highly seasonal content to be sold at the lowest price, regardless of quality, year after year?
Lack of automation is painful too. If it's possible to automate an image price dropping, it's perfectly possible to automate an image price rising again after three sales, but they clearly want to encourage low prices.
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6 months does seem short, there's a lot of annual events where I assume a lot of images are only popular for the 3-4 months leading up to it. Aren't Fotolia missing out on revenue by forcing all their highly seasonal content to be sold at the lowest price, regardless of quality, year after year?
Lack of automation is painful too. If it's possible to automate an image price dropping, it's perfectly possible to automate an image price rising again after three sales, but they clearly want to encourage low prices.
They should at least flag an image when its ellegible for a price change again
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It just isn't worth the time wading through my portfolio there. They either need to change this or I'll delete most of my images to make it more manageable. My earnings there are pathetic compared to how they used to be. It might be easier just to leave but I don't like doing that. The way things are going, SS might pick them up cheap one day.
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To be honest, I can't see why anyone would want to go the artist exclusive route anymore. We've all seen what stock sites will do if they feel they have contributors over a barrel.
If SS did indeed wind up with a large number of exclusives and managed to get a monopoly or even close to it, who's so say they won't start pulling the same sh*t?
it woud make sense if the whole agency was exclusive but they all mixed up exclusives and random shooters so that buyers are just confused and maybe many dont even know the difference.
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I could probably live with it if a) period would be two years b) it is not fotolia.
My earnings on FT differ from other sites - thanks to their best match or whaterver we call it - 5% of my images make 90% of earnings.
I suppose that 75% of my portfolio belongs / sooner or later will belong to "six months unsold" category.
I will consider deleting images that sell well on other sites but are not sold on FT so far.
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To be honest, I can't see why anyone would want to go the artist exclusive route anymore. We've all seen what stock sites will do if they feel they have contributors over a barrel.
If SS did indeed wind up with a large number of exclusives and managed to get a monopoly or even close to it, who's so say they won't start pulling the same sh*t?
it woud make sense if the whole agency was exclusive but they all mixed up exclusives and random shooters so that buyers are just confused and maybe many dont even know the difference.
yes - no indies - whole agency has to be exclusive - SS should not reject this option - at least because of tactical reason - never let your competition to sleep peacefully - and - then - one day ....
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The more I think of it the less I understand the reductions of prices. I don't know what research "agencies" made to come to this decision. They lose money as well.
Maybe I'm surrounded by weirdos but no client (and I don't work for rich corporations) has ever wanted to know price of image in advance. Sure, we have initial discussion: "I have to buy this image - this is only comp preview" "But I cannot afford to spend hundreds for image". "Don't be afraid, it's only few dollars." Period. Nobody wants to know how many dollars - one, three, seven - no one cares.
Those who need lot of images are subscribers, those who need few images a month really don't care if it's one or five dollars and the rest just steal images. At least in my personal experience.
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The more I think of it the less I understand the reductions of prices. I don't know what research made "agencies" to come to this decision. They lose money as well.
Maybe I'm surrounded by weirdos but no client (and I don't work for rich corporations) has ever wanted to know price of image in advance. Sure, we have initial discussion: "I have to buy this image - this is only comp preview" "But I cannot afford to spend hundreds for image". "Don't be afraid, it's only few dollars." Period. Nobody wants to know how many dollars - one, three, seven - no one cares.
Those who need lot of images are subscribers, those who need few images a month really don't care if it's one or five dollars and the rest just steal images. At least in my personal experience.
As an occasional buyer for small businesses, I agree that the client doesn't care much what the image costs with the proviso that once the price rises above the high teens and when they need a few images, they would prefer a cheaper alternative. If I had to acquire, say, 20 images and the majority were priced at emerald contributor rate of 3X credits for an XL (18+ credits), then I would give serious consideration to a subscription package.
Now, with this new policy, I might delve into the portfolios of selected contributors to see whether that contributor hadn't uploaded many near duplicates of the desired file. ( Everyone experiences this......if you upload say 10 similar from a series, one may become a good seller but the other 9 vanish into the pit, never to be seen again). If you can find an acceptable alternative the chances are that it will be priced at 3 for an XL instead of 18+. Maybe that's the thought behind the change but I'm probably over-thinking this as I'm 98% contributor and 2% buyer. I doubt that major buyers have the time for this sort of time-wasting!
However, as a contributor to FT, these changes are simply further justification for a radical scorched port policy in my already limited portfolio. Remove everything that sells elsewhere but not at FT and remove any non-selling near duplicates of any good sellers. Performed sans mercy I could decimate my portfolio there by 90-95%. ;D
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Apparently, my 4th best seller with over 500 downloads hasn’t had one for 6 months (it’s an old file) so…I have deleted it and started deleting the other reduced files.
Or maybe I should close my account totally. A few months ago they started selling my vectors for less than an ‘M’ size jpeg so I already stopped uploading vectors to Fotolia.
As long as so many of us spread our work across the board then the competition between microstock sites is just for customers, driving prices lower and lower. If we were more selective where we submitted then the sites would have to compete for both customers AND contributors.
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In the Fotolia forums I read that prices have changed to 1 - 6 credits instead of 1-3. Can anyone confirm that?
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yes - that's right ... confusion!
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In the Fotolia forums I read that prices have changed to 1 - 6 credits instead of 1-3. Can anyone confirm that?
Yes. No. Not necessarily.
I checked few files. Photos are priced 1 - 6. But it seems that vectors (incl. S - XXL raster versions) are still sold for original price.
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In the Fotolia forums I read that prices have changed to 1 - 6 credits instead of 1-3. Can anyone confirm that?
It is not the contrary?
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I checked this morning around 9 o'cl belgium time and then unsold photo's were set 1-3
I just checked again and now they are at 1-6
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In the Fotolia forums I read that prices have changed to 1 - 6 credits instead of 1-3. Can anyone confirm that?
can you link us? haven't found that!
pretty much I see no respect from FT not even replying on forum or explain the "bugs" mellimagine found yesterday
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a link to one of my unsold pictures
http://www.fotolia.com/id/47921686 (http://www.fotolia.com/id/47921686)
This morning price range was only 1-3
In the Fotolia forums I read that prices have changed to 1 - 6 credits instead of 1-3. Can anyone confirm that?
can you link us? haven't found that!
pretty much I see no respect from FT not even replying on forum or explain the "bugs" mellimagine found yesterday
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so now it's 1-6 LOL wonder what will be tomorrow, have they at least told people deleting their accounts?
how about the bug mellimagine found out?
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It´s in the thread of the German fotolia forum:
http://de.fotolia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=43451&p=6 (http://de.fotolia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=43451&p=6)
Lots of confused people there and apparently not everyone gets the newsletter.
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It´s in the thread of the German fotolia forum:
[url]http://de.fotolia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=43451&p=6[/url] ([url]http://de.fotolia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=43451&p=6[/url])
Lots of confused people there and apparently not everyone gets the newsletter.
looks like I can´t see that, it redirects to the US forum ::)
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sorry.
It has people posting examples of files that sold for 3 credits yesterday and higher credits today.
But apparently also files that are bestsellers with over 500 downloads, that didn´t have a sale in the last 6 month, have been lowered in price.
No official communication from fotolia, the moderators don´t know more than the contributors (where did I hear that before...)
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OK, let's suppose that they have figured out overnight that they went too far with prices reduction.
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yep total joke! I have tons having those issues too
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Well at least they don´t stubbornly ignore all critique for 6 months because the people at the agency need to convince people outside when things don´t work.
Reacting overnight at least gives you hope...but yes, why not think it through first or discuss it openly with the community before going through with it.
Now let´s see what they do with the 6 month time frame...and otherwise it is back to work...
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people closing accounts while they were still making up their minds, this is crazy, what a lovely way to run business
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On the German fotolia home page they now have this text:
http://de.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing (http://de.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing)
Bitte beachten Sie, dass bei Werken, die sich innerhalb von 6 Monaten nicht verkauft haben, der Verkaufspreis automatisch auf 1 Credit (XS), 2 Credits (S), 3 Credits (M), 4 Credits (L), 5 Credits (XL) sowie 6 Credits (XXL) gesetzt wird. Wenn sich ein solches Werk anschließend 3 Mal verkauft hat, wird die Preis automatisch auf den minmalen Verkaufspreis gesetzt.
Diese Staffelung ist Gegenstand der Regelung zur Anpassung der Preisgestaltung.
i.e. prices drop von 1-6 credits if there are no sales after 6 months. When the file sells 3 times, it gets moved to the lowest price level.
Now do the 3 sales have to be in a certain time frame?
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Well, thats no so bad then IMHO.
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To be honest, I can't see why anyone would want to go the artist exclusive route anymore. We've all seen what stock sites will do if they feel they have contributors over a barrel.
If SS did indeed wind up with a large number of exclusives and managed to get a monopoly or even close to it, who's so say they won't start pulling the same sh*t?
it woud make sense if the whole agency was exclusive but they all mixed up exclusives and random shooters so that buyers are just confused and maybe many dont even know the difference.
What is the difference? Oh, yes, I remember, exclusive files are more expensive.
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This is right strategy. It's important to scare contributors first. Now we're going to celebrate despite the fact that majority of our images are cheaper.
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Now do the 3 sales have to be in a certain time frame?
if there is no bug I would say yes
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This is right strategy. It's important to scare contributors first. Now we're going to celebrate despite the fact that majority of our images are cheaper.
its still a harsh measure even pricing our files from 1-6 once we need to have 3 sales every 6 month (if there is no bug)
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+1
I didn't get the message either. Reading this thread, I assumed I'm "too new" at FT to have any skin in this particular 6-months game and so wasn't advised. But I don't think I've ever gotten a newsletter from them yet, so maybe I'm not signed up for that. Hmmmm.
I'm soooo very new at FT, just a few weeks, but I may pull out there along with others from this group. Too few images there and too few sales to worry about, so not much to lose by leaving. I'm feeling good about my new SYS site. :-)
https://us.fotolia.com/Member/Modify/Preferences
watch out for your EL prices, you are selling them for 10$
I don't have an option to change that in preferences. Unlike the way it used to be, I have to change that with every upload
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+1
I didn't get the message either. Reading this thread, I assumed I'm "too new" at FT to have any skin in this particular 6-months game and so wasn't advised. But I don't think I've ever gotten a newsletter from them yet, so maybe I'm not signed up for that. Hmmmm.
I'm soooo very new at FT, just a few weeks, but I may pull out there along with others from this group. Too few images there and too few sales to worry about, so not much to lose by leaving. I'm feeling good about my new SYS site. :-)
https://us.fotolia.com/Member/Modify/Preferences
watch out for your EL prices, you are selling them for 10$
I don't have an option to change that in preferences. Unlike the way it used to be, I have to change that with every upload
I was talking about the newsletter
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will delete - reupload work?
or I need just delete files fotolia doesn't know how to sell well
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"Dear contributor,
We're really desperate and need to cut your income some more, so we can make more money. Please enjoy this complimentary, fresh jar of Vaseline."
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In the Fotolia forums I read that prices have changed to 1 - 6 credits instead of 1-3. Can anyone confirm that?
Thanks for bringing this up Jasmin. I had noticed the same thing this morning when I was going over some of my recently sold files.
It's an improvement over the 1-3 scheme, at least.
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I deleted 75% of my port yesterday evening. Maybe they got scared ;)
In the Fotolia forums I read that prices have changed to 1 - 6 credits instead of 1-3. Can anyone confirm that?
Thanks for bringing this up Jasmin. I had noticed the same thing this morning when I was going over some of my recently sold files.
It's an improvement over the 1-3 scheme, at least.
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I had informed support as I had several images that were reduced in price even though they sold within the past 6 months. The announcment states: images that haven't sold within 6 months will be reduced in price. etc.
The answer I received from support indicated that an image needs to be sold 3 Times within 6 months in order not to be reduced in price. (I knew it needed 3 sales to get back to minimal pricing (not the price you had previously set) after a reduction) - but I did not read their statement as meaning if an image does not sell three times within 6 months it will be reduced in price.
With the search engine as it is - and the market situation as it is (and the results research has shown) - I am pretty sure sooner or later 80%+ of the images will be locked in price at the 1-6 credits price range (and I am pretty sure if that does not go fast enough search engine tweaks will ensure that this applies to pretty much the whole FT collection sooner or later). This is a step this specifically will target gold status contributors and higher, exclusive contributors as well as contributors who provided image exclusive content - for as long as they set the base price to their images at 2 and higher. They see the largest reductions in income on existing files.
My personal consequence from this is - no uploading to FT of any new images for the time being - and removing files who sell well elsewhere. Further steps to be considered. >:( >:( >:( >:(
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Already deleted 200 images, would have done more, but lack of time. In fact I cancelled 3 agencies yesterday with my whole port.
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... an image needs to be sold 3 Times within 6 months in order not to be reduced in price. (I knew it needed 3 sales to get back to minimal pricing (not the price you had previously set) after a reduction) - but I did not read their statement as meaning if an image does not sell three times within 6 months it will be reduced in price.
With the search engine as it is - and the market situation as it is (and the results research has shown) - I am pretty sure sooner or later 80%+ of the images will be locked in price at the 1-6 credits price range (and I am pretty sure if that does not go fast enough search engine tweaks will ensure that this applies to pretty much the whole FT collection sooner or later). This is a step this specifically will target gold status contributors and higher, exclusive contributors as well as contributors who provided image exclusive content - for as long as they set the base price to their images at 2 and higher. They see the largest reductions in income on existing files.
Seriously??!!! That's a whole different ballgame. You're right, only steady best sellers will sell 3 times in 6 months. This will absolutely kill seasonal images and all but the highest selling images. And it will decimate incomes.
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Fotolia really knows how to shoot themselves in the foot! Check another one off of the upload list.
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The answer I received from support indicated that an image needs to be sold 3 Times within 6 months in order not to be reduced in price. (I knew it needed 3 sales to get back to minimal pricing (not the price you had previously set) after a reduction) - but I did not read their statement as meaning if an image does not sell three times within 6 months it will be reduced in price.
I wouldn't believe support has any clue on what's going on.
I am sure their system screws up those changes. I have just checked, I found two of my files, both of them have exactly one download, both of these downloads are newer than six months. One file has still the original pricing (1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10), the other has reduced prices (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
No logic there...
At least the change they did to the amount of price reduction (not anymore giving out XXLs for 3 credits) makes it a little easier to take.
But certainly no new uploads from me.
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I Was going to drop a few low selling agencies, like CanStockPhoto, DP, GL and PD. And only continue uploading to 123, FT and SS. But if this is the case at FT, it will drop my earnings, so its no longer worth my time there as well. So I guess I am down to 2 agencies then.
ANd for some reason it feels good. I just leave my portfolio generate the small change while I focus on SS and my own site for new content.
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I Was going to drop a few low selling agencies, like CanStockPhoto, DP, GL and PD. And only continue uploading to 123, FT and SS. But if this is the case at FT, it will drop my earnings, so its no longer worth my time there as well. So I guess I am down to 2 agencies then.
ANd for some reason it feels good. I just leave my portfolio generate the small change while I focus on SS and my own site for new content.
+1 Symbiostock is the only way forward for most contributors
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Is it possible that they want people to clean out their portfolios and delete files with lower sales volume?
How can you give them higher end exclusive files with these expectations? Or seasonal images?
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This is just another way of lowering prices using indirect means
I will purge my port of all zero sale files
I always thought as a contributor my job was to produce the image and it was the agencies job to sell it, not give it away.
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The microsites are telling us that they don't want those low selling, niche images, and they don't want a lot of similars.
We know what to do :)
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So only ultra generic stuff will be supplied and all the agencies will look exactly the same...
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I wouldn't believe support has any clue on what's going on.
I am sure their system screws up those changes. I have just checked, I found two of my files, both of them have exactly one download, both of these downloads are newer than six months. One file has still the original pricing (1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10), the other has reduced prices (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
No logic there...
At least the change they did to the amount of price reduction (not anymore giving out XXLs for 3 credits) makes it a little easier to take.
But certainly no new uploads from me.
I am not saying they are implementing this policy in a flawless matter. This is just what support indicated to me - which is in contrast to their own announcement. Their own announcement, how poorly ever it was distributed, does not indicate an amount of sales a file needs to keep its originally set price level. So I protested their decision not to reinstate those images that were reduced in pricing even though they sold at least once within the past 6 months.
In the end all of this is cosmetic operation, as it saves only a few files and if they wanna really lower more files in price they just need to tweak the search engine and these files move to the back of the search, never to be found, unless the artist does the marketing for the images him/ herself - precisely the job the agency is to do with the ammount of commission they receive from us.
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This was my question
I understand its for old and new files, but you reduced the pricing on images that havent sold PRIOR to the announcement. You cant do that. The 6 month period needs to start from the day you announce the price cut. You cant just change the rules and then apply it to a period where a different TOS was uphold.
This is their reply
We understand that you would prefer the clock to start from June 24. There are many images that have sat idle for 6+ months and we can not wait any longer. Fotolia may make any changes to it's Standard Pricing and Payment Policies at any time. We will be evaluating the feedback of this change over the coming weeks and months from contributors and customers. We will certainly pass on your concerns to our management team for review.
This is what I told them
Hi team, thank you for your explanation. Please let your management also know that I will no longer contribute new images to fotolia until you treat us with respect and stop cutting our earnings.
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I fully understand if agencies want to clear out old content that hasn't sold for years. Or hasn't had a sale in 18 months.
But 3 times every 6 months?
Doesn't this hurt their own revenue, especially on the seasonal images?
Anyway, I am on the lowest rank and not yet affected. I will continue to upload to Fotolia, but this means that I have to think much more carefully about the timing of files.
I guess the pressure from istock and the new half price policy is having a very drastic effect although it has only been marketed for 2 weeks.
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I fully understand if agencies want to clear out old content that hasn't sold for years. Or hasn't had a sale in 18 months.
But 3 times every 6 months?
Doesn't this hurt their own revenue, especially on the seasonal images?
Anyway, I am on the lowest rank and not yet affected. I will continue to upload to Fotolia, but this means that I have to think much more carefully about the timing of files.
I guess the pressure from istock and the new half price policy is having a very drastic effect although it has only been marketed for 2 weeks.
Well im going to help them clear out some of their content.
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I still don't see how this makes them more money? Lots of contributors leave, they tell buyers to go elsewhere. Many of those that remain wont upload anymore. I didn't use deposit photos much until now but this will give me more time to upload my portfolio to them.
Whoever came up with this stupid idea needs to be replaced by someone that can focus on selling more images. It might be too late for them already.
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will delete - reupload work?
I have tried to do this one hour ago.
I have deleted the photo that is my best seller on SS, but with 0 sales and 2 views on FT [!!!!]……
And then I have reuploaded it…
Let's see if they will accept it…
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that could be the only solution for xmas images, if you could be bothered.
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will delete - reupload work?
I have tried to do this one hour ago.
I have deleted the photo that is my best seller on SS, but with 0 sales and 2 views on FT [!!!!]……
And then I have reuploaded it…
Let's see if they will accept it…
Yes you can try this, but now the images have to be accepted again.
I dropped fotolia long time ago, but I remember how silly the process is. And most important to me, is the fact that if you have a small portfolio you can perform this task but when you reach maybe 700/800 files, is time consuming, is a huge waste of time.
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will delete - reupload work?
I have tried to do this one hour ago.
I have deleted the photo that is my best seller on SS, but with 0 sales and 2 views on FT [!!!!]……
And then I have reuploaded it…
Let's see if they will accept it…
Yes you can try this, but now the images have to be accepted again.
I dropped fotolia long time ago, but I remember how silly the process is. And most important to me, is the fact that if you have a small portfolio you can perform this task but when you reach maybe 700/800 files, is time consuming, is a huge waste of time.
«C'ho fatto una proposta che [questi picciotti] non possono rifiutare» :D
(I made them an offer that they cannot refuse)
Baciamo le mani…
(Thank you for the minus :) and my congratulation for the acute sense of humor :D )
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Warning for Emerald and above contributors.
Just noticed that when uploading new images the price now automatically defaults to the minimum 1 credit for XS. You can still set it higher (as you have to do with EL's) but you have to remember to do it manually for each image uploaded.
It's funny how FT, having incentivised contributors with a ranking system and escalating prices based on those rankings, they now do everything they can to minimise how we may benefit from it.
It seems that FT, like Istock, have become acutely aware that customers are indeed far more price-sensitive that they used to assume. There's no doubt that my downloads at Istock, if not my revenue, have significantly increased since the prices were cut.
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Warning for Emerald and above contributors.
Just noticed that when uploading new images the price now automatically defaults to the minimum 1 credit for XS. You can still set it higher (as you have to do with EL's) but you have to remember to do it manually for each image uploaded.
I noticed the same. However in my case, after I set the first image I submitted to 2 credits, the others had 2 credits as a default. Still have to bump up my EL prices to 100 on each image individually, though.
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Warning for Emerald and above contributors.
Just noticed that when uploading new images the price now automatically defaults to the minimum 1 credit for XS.
After you set it one time it should stay like this as it is recorded by the cookie.
It is possible that you have a problem with the Fotolia cookie.
Try to delete it (and clean your browser's cache too). After you will have set the price one time again it should turn normal.
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I fully understand if agencies want to clear out old content that hasn't sold for years. Or hasn't had a sale in 18 months.
But 3 times every 6 months?
Doesn't this hurt their own revenue, especially on the seasonal images?
Anyway, I am on the lowest rank and not yet affected. I will continue to upload to Fotolia, but this means that I have to think much more carefully about the timing of files.
I guess the pressure from istock and the new half price policy is having a very drastic effect although it has only been marketed for 2 weeks.
Images idling there is not a price issue. They simply suck at selling images, the site has way too low traffic for it's volume of stock.
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will delete - reupload work?
I have tried to do this one hour ago.
I have deleted the photo that is my best seller on SS, but with 0 sales and 2 views on FT [!!!!]……
And then I have reuploaded it…
Let's see if they will accept it…
Well, they have approved the re-uploaded photo 10 minutes ago…
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will delete - reupload work?
I have tried to do this one hour ago.
I have deleted the photo that is my best seller on SS, but with 0 sales and 2 views on FT [!!!!]……
And then I have reuploaded it…
Let's see if they will accept it…
Well, they have approved the re-uploaded photo 10 minutes ago…
So now you just have to wait for them not to sell for 6 months and you can do it all again :)
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Deleted all the pics that i care about and that had less than 5 sales (just to be on the safe side), they can have all the old generic junk though. I can see more of this kind of things coming. At some point in near future my port with them would just contain pure junk that dont sell anywhere else, well, that exactly what they want, they got it.
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will delete - reupload work?
I have tried to do this one hour ago.
I have deleted the photo that is my best seller on SS, but with 0 sales and 2 views on FT [!!!!]……
And then I have reuploaded it…
Let's see if they will accept it…
Well, they have approved the re-uploaded photo 10 minutes ago…
So now you just have to wait for them not to sell for 6 months and you can do it all again :)
Ah ah! +1
You want to bet? :D
If now I will begin to sale this image on FT too I will surely delete and re-upload most of my photos at them 8)
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I told Fotolia I would stop uploading, the reply was that I would be pushed back in the search results now. Cutting my sales even further. And this is going to make me submit more and better images how? I was happy with sales there, but now they've become insignificant.
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Already deleted 300 from my port there
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I told Fotolia I would stop uploading, the reply was that I would be pushed back in the search results now. Cutting my sales even further. And this is going to make me submit more and better images how? I was happy with sales there, but now they've become insignificant.
that is interesting, I wonder how many files we need to upload weekly/monthly to continue "high" on searches, I am having lower sales with less uploading, let's say half of 2012 numbers
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I told Fotolia I would stop uploading, the reply was that I would be pushed back in the search results now. Cutting my sales even further. And this is going to make me submit more and better images how? I was happy with sales there, but now they've become insignificant.
that is interesting, I wonder how many files we need to upload weekly/monthly to continue "high" on searches, I am having lower sales with less uploading, let's say half of 2012 numbers
Whatever the value it wont work in our favour
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even more arguments for me to delayed uploading.
Currently I delay fro them 6-9 months
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Fotolia is the biggest agency here in Europe and especially in Germany. I also like that they offer exclusive images, so if you feel you have a niche that sells better with them than elsewhere you can push that niche higher with a certain percentage of exclusive images.
It is a smart concept that works especially well for localized images. Europe is a small region with many languages and loads of local quirks and cultural nuances.
Exclusive images give you better trade off than trying to upload them everywhere and hope you can get your investment back while they compete with all the generic stuff.
So yes, I will keep uploading.
But these unscheduled, abrupt dramatic kind of changes are scary and disturbing. It reminds me of istock and I really would prefer a smoother and balanced way to do business.
Anyway, I am new to how they work, but here in Germany many artists are doing well with them.
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They wont take any of my Irish landscape photos, too many on site. They dont care about the location at all. The Antrim region of Northern Ireland is not really covered in the data base but they dont take my images. They have accepted a few floodplain images from The Netherlands, but they dont sell.
I am seeing none of what you describe, but that might be entirely up to the quality of my images as well.
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Fotolia is the biggest agency here in Europe and especially in Germany. I also like that they offer exclusive images, so if you feel you have a niche that sells better with them than elsewhere you can push that niche higher with a certain percentage of exclusive images.
It is a smart concept that works especially well for localized images. Europe is a small region with many languages and loads of local quirks and cultural nuances.
Exclusive images give you better trade off than trying to upload them everywhere and hope you can get your investment back while they compete with all the generic stuff.
So yes, I will keep uploading.
But these unscheduled, abrupt dramatic kind of changes are scary and disturbing. It reminds me of istock and I really would prefer a smoother and balanced way to do business.
Anyway, I am new to how they work, but here in Germany many artists are doing well with them.
This only works in theory this well - the thoughts you present are definitely correct, but the reality is a different matter. I tried to bank on this, providing localized content. I used to have a share of images that were exclusive to FT of above 10% and wanted to increase this. But my exclusive files, designed specifically for the German market have usually been pushed to the back of the search, while the generic ones tend to take off (if at all). With FTs new price strategy going for cheap prices I doubt that exclusive images at a higher price will continue to sell well. Interestingly, if I set some of these as non-exclusive and send them to other agencies later on, they sell better there than at FT.
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That is sad to hear, I've heard other things from several people. And Fotolia has a lot of very typical German content that is hard to find at the other agencies.
I'll have to try it myself, but I agree that the policy of expecting files to sell at least 3 times in 6 months sounds like they are now focussing on the ultrageneric stuff that has a superfast turnover.
Anyway, I still just have 350 files with them, so le'l's see how things go in a few months.
But there is a market for niche images that can justify prices above subscription and are not available everywhere. Otherwise all agencies are the same and they really can only fight on price.
Otherwise, I've been reading on the forums, that people are not happy with the quality of the search results. Some say, the contributors are to blame, too many spammy keywords. But the contributors upload the same keywords everywhere, don't they?
I do keyword manually in German for Fotolia, but I am not usng other keywords than I would in English.
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They wont take any of my Irish landscape photos, too many on site. They dont care about the location at all. The Antrim region of Northern Ireland is not really covered in the data base but they dont take my images. They have accepted a few floodplain images from The Netherlands, but they dont sell.
I am seeing none of what you describe, but that might be entirely up to the quality of my images as well.
Last year, in France, was a little scandal about an advertising for the beaches of Brittany. The advertising was targeted to the UK market.
They used the photo of a beach with the sea and typical rocks.
The photo was the one of a well known beach…… from South Africa (Llandudno beach)!
http://www.macandphoto.com/2012/03/photo-dafrique-du-sud-pour-les-plages-de-bretagne-.html (http://www.macandphoto.com/2012/03/photo-dafrique-du-sud-pour-les-plages-de-bretagne-.html)
(Sorry I have only one link in French)
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I might of considered uploading some exclusive images to FT at one point but they changed the search and my earnings crashed. With that, the commission cuts and moving the credit targets to get a commission raise, my earnings there are appalling now. I refuse to reward a site that has crippled my portfolio with exclusive images.
I think they made a huge mistake following the bad moves istock made. They would of made much more from me by giving me an incentive. I would be making more and they would be making more from me if it was possible to increase my earnings. Instead, I make a fraction of what I used to and I have absolutely no incentive to build my portfolio with them.
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Thats what I told them as well.
When they told me they would push me down the search if I didnt upload regularly I asked how they can think that by punishing me twice, slashing my earnings, I would reward them by uploading more and better content?
Thats completely backwards. So I told them to consider; a happy worker produces more and better work then an unhappy worker.
I am afraid its to deaf ears.
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That is sad to hear, I've heard other things from several people. And Fotolia has a lot of very typical German content that is hard to find at the other agencies.
I'll have to try it myself, but I agree that the policy of expecting files to sell at least 3 times in 6 months sounds like they are now focussing on the ultrageneric stuff that has a superfast turnover.
Anyway, I still just have 350 files with them, so le'l's see how things go in a few months.
But there is a market for niche images that can justify prices above subscription and are not available everywhere. Otherwise all agencies are the same and they really can only fight on price.
Otherwise, I've been reading on the forums, that people are not happy with the quality of the search results. Some say, the contributors are to blame, too many spammy keywords. But the contributors upload the same keywords everywhere, don't they?
I do keyword manually in German for Fotolia, but I am not usng other keywords than I would in English.
At the moment, i think you'd have a good (better) chance at selling such images - first you are lower ranked (which means FT gets more from sales you make), secondly, as a newbie with a backlog catalogue you can also upload higher volumes (I have a tough time to get to 20 a month). So maybe your experience will be better. :) Best of luck and may it be worth the extra effort.
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In my opinion there is only one solution. Delete you images and stop uploading.I have stopped uploading already quite some time ago and have deleted hundreds of my images since yesterday. It's like Istock, you have to show that you will not tolerate this. I have images who have sold 350+ and are now being sold for pittance. I have deleted them. They can have my old stuff and I will sell my new and good ones elsewhere.
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Eh, uut Grunning :)
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In my opinion there is only one solution. Delete you images and stop uploading.I have stopped uploading already quite some time ago and have deleted hundreds of my images since yesterday. It's like Istock, you have to show that you will not tolerate this. I have images who have sold 350+ and are now being sold for pittance. I have deleted them. They can have my old stuff and I will sell my new and good ones elsewhere.
Already deleting, 300 so far out of 1300
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will delete - reupload work?
I have tried to do this one hour ago.
I have deleted the photo that is my best seller on SS, but with 0 sales and 2 views on FT [!!!!]……
And then I have reuploaded it…
Let's see if they will accept it…
Yes you can try this, but now the images have to be accepted again.
I dropped fotolia long time ago, but I remember how silly the process is. And most important to me, is the fact that if you have a small portfolio you can perform this task but when you reach maybe 700/800 files, is time consuming, is a huge waste of time.
«C'ho fatto una proposta che [questi picciotti] non possono rifiutare» :D
(I made them an offer that they cannot refuse)
Baciamo le mani…
(Thank you for the minus :) and my congratulation for the acute sense of humor :D )
The minus wasn't mine
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Hi there,
It sounds like either someone at support spoke out of turn or what they said was misunderstood. Regardless, the information Mellimage shared is not true.
If an image has not sold at least one time within six months it's price is reduced. Photos do not need to sell 3 times every six months to maintain current pricing. I would encourage you to go straight to the source for any questions like this: http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing (http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing)
Thanks,
Mat
I had informed support as I had several images that were reduced in price even though they sold within the past 6 months. The announcment states: images that haven't sold within 6 months will be reduced in price. etc.
The answer I received from support indicated that an image needs to be sold 3 Times within 6 months in order not to be reduced in price. (I knew it needed 3 sales to get back to minimal pricing (not the price you had previously set) after a reduction) - but I did not read their statement as meaning if an image does not sell three times within 6 months it will be reduced in price.
With the search engine as it is - and the market situation as it is (and the results research has shown) - I am pretty sure sooner or later 80%+ of the images will be locked in price at the 1-6 credits price range (and I am pretty sure if that does not go fast enough search engine tweaks will ensure that this applies to pretty much the whole FT collection sooner or later). This is a step this specifically will target gold status contributors and higher, exclusive contributors as well as contributors who provided image exclusive content - for as long as they set the base price to their images at 2 and higher. They see the largest reductions in income on existing files.
My personal consequence from this is - no uploading to FT of any new images for the time being - and removing files who sell well elsewhere. Further steps to be considered. >:( >:( >:( >:(
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Hi Mat, too bad it took you a week to show up here and talk about this matter, anyway I am glad you did it, cheers :)
can you tell us if there is a bug that is reducing pricing on files that have sold before the 6 months period, I have literally tons of them
the following is quite confusing as well, if we need just 1 sale, why is FT talking about 3 sales? is it that 3 sales make it back to the regular price? 1 or 2 won't?
We hope that this new pricing for unsold images will help increase sales for these images. Once the image has sold 3 times, the contributor will have the ability to reset his image price once again.
thanks in advance!
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Hi there,
It sounds like either someone at support spoke out of turn or what they said was misunderstood. Regardless, the information Mellimage shared is not true.
If an image has not sold at least one time within six months it's price is reduced. Photos do not need to sell 3 times every six months to maintain current pricing. I would encourage you to go straight to the source for any questions like this: [url]http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing[/url] ([url]http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing[/url])
Thanks,
Mat
Thanks for clearing that up Mat. :) Somewhat good news.
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So let's check if I understood well :
For new files :
1. I upload a new file on 1st January : regular price
2. After 6 months, it has sold 1x : price stays the same
3. After 6 months, it has not sold at all : price goes down
4. If the price has gone down, it needs to sell 3x, and then the price will AUTOMATICALLY go up again.
Question for (4) : does it need to sell 3x IN 6 MONTHS? Or just 3x ?
For old files :
1. An old file has sold at least 1x the last 6 months : regular price (IS THIS CORRECT??)
2. An old file has not sold the last 6 months : price goes down
3. If the price is down, it needs to sell 3x for the price to go up again = AUTOMATICALLY
Same question here : does it need to sell 3x in 6 months, or just 3x ?
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I don't think the price goes back up automatically, you have monitor all of that yourself.
um, what are they doing for their agency% if I have to manually go back, look for sellers and non-sellers, and keep adjusting the price (or deleting).
it's just way too time consuming.
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With my current earnings, it would be a complete waste of time for me to monitor what's sold and manually put the price back up. They need to automate it or have a page where we can do it quickly. I'm more inclined to just give up on them, as they've crippled my earnings and I've much better things to do.
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I don't think the price goes back up automatically, you have monitor all of that yourself.
um, what are they doing for their agency% if I have to manually go back, look for sellers and non-sellers, and keep adjusting the price (or deleting).
it's just way too time consuming.
Well, they SAY it will go up AUTOMATICALLY. See this quote :
Please note that after 6 months without a sale, content prices are automatically set to this price: XS = 1, S = 2, M = 3, L = 4, XL = 5, XXL = 6. If the file has sold 3 times or more, it will be automatically reset to the minimum price (see pricing chart below).
(I added the BOLD). You can find the quote on this page :
http://www.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing (http://www.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing)
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Hi there,
It sounds like either someone at support spoke out of turn or what they said was misunderstood. Regardless, the information Mellimage shared is not true.
If an image has not sold at least one time within six months it's price is reduced. Photos do not need to sell 3 times every six months to maintain current pricing. I would encourage you to go straight to the source for any questions like this: [url]http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing[/url] ([url]http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing[/url])
Thanks,
Mat
Just as an info - I translated directly what German support told me - I have asked for further clarification as their own Website does not make this clear - have not heard from them since.
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So let's check if I understood well :
For new files :
1. I upload a new file on 1st January : regular price
2. After 6 months, it has sold 1x : price stays the same
3. After 6 months, it has not sold at all : price goes down
4. If the price has gone down, it needs to sell 3x, and then the price will AUTOMATICALLY go up again.
Question for (4) : does it need to sell 3x IN 6 MONTHS? Or just 3x ?
For old files :
1. An old file has sold at least 1x the last 6 months : regular price (IS THIS CORRECT??)
2. An old file has not sold the last 6 months : price goes down
3. If the price is down, it needs to sell 3x for the price to go up again = AUTOMATICALLY
Same question here : does it need to sell 3x in 6 months, or just 3x ?
This is how I understood it as well, only that I'm unsure about new uploads. Do they start with the regular or the reduced pricing? Anybody who uploaded recently can clarify (I not uploading to them...)?
And to the bolded part above: as stated earlier in the thread, I do have two files fulfilling that condition (old file, one download within the past six month), one has regular pricing, one has reduced pricing.
However they mean to do it, there seem to be bugs in their processing...
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They create confusion deliberately so that nobody has any clue what is going on. Tactics. All agencies do it. I have never seen an announcement from an agency that was clear and understandable from the get go. It always leaves room for interpretation and many questions left unanswered.
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And to the bolded part above: as stated earlier in the thread, I do have two files fulfilling that condition (old file, one download within the past six month), one has regular pricing, one has reduced pricing.
However they mean to do it, there seem to be bugs in their processing...
Yep, that is my experience too. Implementation is inconsistent - to say the least.
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it is really annoying that agencies do this kind of stuff, changes are "inevitable" and unfortunately we cannot control that, it would make sense if agencies spent some time explaining us what is involved and clarify our doubts, I believe that is the minimum that we contributors deserve
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Just sold my first non seller for 4 credits. When I click on indexing it says
Due to low sales, you cannot modify the price until it sells at least 2 more times
After these sales, your content prices will be reset as follows:
But the actual pricing is different. So it is an automated process
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this is so annoying, so it's looks like mellimage was right.... Maybe next week we will know ::)
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So let's check if I understood well :
For new files :
1. I upload a new file on 1st January : regular price
2. After 6 months, it has sold 1x : price stays the same
3. After 6 months, it has not sold at all : price goes down
4. If the price has gone down, it needs to sell 3x, and then the price will AUTOMATICALLY go up again.
Question for (4) : does it need to sell 3x IN 6 MONTHS? Or just 3x ?
For old files :
1. An old file has sold at least 1x the last 6 months : regular price (IS THIS CORRECT??)
2. An old file has not sold the last 6 months : price goes down
3. If the price is down, it needs to sell 3x for the price to go up again = AUTOMATICALLY
Same question here : does it need to sell 3x in 6 months, or just 3x ?
This is how I understood it as well, only that I'm unsure about new uploads. Do they start with the regular or the reduced pricing? Anybody who uploaded recently can clarify (I not uploading to them...)?
And to the bolded part above: as stated earlier in the thread, I do have two files fulfilling that condition (old file, one download within the past six month), one has regular pricing, one has reduced pricing.
However they mean to do it, there seem to be bugs in their processing...
Well, their inconsistency in applying this new policy obviously goes both ways. I just had a sale with the old (regular) pricing (7 credits for a L size) of a file that has not sold for more than one year...
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They're changing it again...
By accident I found the following paragraph:
"Please note that after 6 months (180 days) without a sale, content prices are automatically set to minimum price (see pricing chart below). Afterwards, if the file sells 3 times in a period of 6 months, the contributor will once again be able to update their prices. After 24 months (720 days) without a sale, content prices are automatically set to these prices: XS = 1 Credit, S = 2 Credits, M = 3 Credits, L = 4 Credits, XL = 5 Credits, XXL = 6 Credits. Afterwards, if the file sells 3 times in a period of 24 months the content prices are set back to the minimum price (see pricing chart below). If these 3 sales are made in a period of 6 months, the contributor will once again be able to update their prices."
To be found here (http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing).
So now the six months only affect exclusive files or emerald or above contributors, reducing the price to the standard price starting with one credit for XS.
And every file is reduced in price if it is not sold for 24 months.
That all sounds a lot more reasonable to me. Not great, but way better than the first version.
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"Please note that after 6 months (180 days) without a sale, content prices are automatically set to minimum price (see pricing chart below). Afterwards, if the file sells 3 times in a period of 6 months, the contributor will once again be able to update their prices.
I have tons of files older than 6 months but sold after 6 months and before 24 months with reduced pricing, so the 3 times is official, again Mellimage was right and Mat wrong, this is becoming a gigantic joke and we deserve some respect, I am done discussing this matter, heading to the beach because this is pathetic and not worth the headache
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Forgive my ignorance here Luis, I don't get what you are saying. Can you be more specific about what I said that wasn't true? Please be sure to quote me verbatim.
Thanks,
Mat
"Please note that after 6 months (180 days) without a sale, content prices are automatically set to minimum price (see pricing chart below). Afterwards, if the file sells 3 times in a period of 6 months, the contributor will once again be able to update their prices.
I have tons of files older than 6 months but sold after 6 months and before 24 months with reduced pricing, so the 3 times is official, again Mellimage was right and Mat wrong, this is becoming a gigantic joke and we deserve some respect, I am done discussing this matter, heading to the beach because this is pathetic and not worth the headache
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Hi there,
It sounds like either someone at support spoke out of turn or what they said was misunderstood. Regardless, the information Mellimage shared is not true.
If an image has not sold at least one time within six months it's price is reduced. Photos do not need to sell 3 times every six months to maintain current pricing. I would encourage you to go straight to the source for any questions like this: http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing (http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors/ImagesPricing)
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FT announcement on Jul 27th 2013
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8294845/first%20example%20FT.JPG)
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8294845/second%20example%20FT.JPG)
I have a ton like these, the last example shows that we really need 3 downloads every 6 months
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But what does the photo of dentures have to do ith the 3 sold photos of tissue?
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But what does the photo of dentures have to do ith the 3 sold photos of tissue?
that one was sold 15 times, its just another example
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I have examples for everybody's taste, this one is a picture that haven't sold in over 10 months but still with the regular pricing
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8294845/FT%203rd%20example.JPG)
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OK, after reading the Fotolia price page 7 times, I think I've got it now :
Fotolia uses the word "minimum" price but really means the "standard" price = 1-3-5-7-8-10$
An image starts at the minimum/standard price (unless you're Emerald or higher, then you can double it from the start).
Let's call the lowest price (1-2-3-4-5-6) the "bottom price" :
A minimum/standard priced image only goes down to the bottom price if it did not sell at all in 24 months.
It needs 3 sales in 24 months to go back to minimum/standard price automatically.
(So this means that even seasonal photos still make a chance)
As for Emeralds or higher, who set their starting price at 2-6-10-14-16-20$ from the beginning :
If the image has not sold in 6 months at all, the price goes to minimum/standard price (not to the bottom price).
If it does not sell at all for 24 months, it will go to bottom price.
It needs 3 sales in 24 months to go back to minimum/standard price automatically.
It needs 3 sales in 6 months for the Emerald contributors (or higher) to be able to raise/double the price manually again.
(side note : what's worse : Fotolia setting non-sellers at bottom price after 24 months, or Dreamstime asking us to choose between "giving away for free" or deleting the image after 36 months?)
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Well I am non-exclusive bronze contributor at Fotolia and I have 2 images uploaded in May 2012 (so not yet 24 months old), which never sold. One of the images has the standard pricing (XS 1 until XL 8 ) and the other the reduced pricing (XS 1 to XL 5)...
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It needs 3 sales in 24 months to go back to minimum/standard price automatically.
(So this means that even seasonal photos still make a chance)
this isn't happening, if that is true there is a bug affecting thousands of files
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It needs 3 sales in 24 months to go back to minimum/standard price automatically.
(So this means that even seasonal photos still make a chance)
this isn't happening, if that is true there is a bug affecting thousands of files
Yes. That is what several people here are stating. What they write at their website and what they actually do are two different things.
And on top of that what they say they do (what's on their website) is constantly changing.
It's a mess.
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I looked up one of my best sellers on FT (hundreds of DL's) and it is nowhere to be found...buried in the doldrums to get it priced lower. I looked it up in my port and low and behold, the highest price was reset from 100 credits to 50. What a bunch of greedy sponges over at FT.....and when I say FT I mean FOTOLIA!! I hope they fold soon, we can start an FUFT thread:)
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It needs 3 sales in 24 months to go back to minimum/standard price automatically.
(So this means that even seasonal photos still make a chance)
this isn't happening, if that is true there is a bug affecting thousands of files
Yes. That is what several people here are stating. What they write at their website and what they actually do are two different things.
And on top of that what they say they do (what's on their website) is constantly changing.
It's a mess.
exactly...
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OK, after reading the Fotolia price page 7 times, I think I've got it now :
Fotolia uses the word "minimum" price but really means the "standard" price = 1-3-5-7-8-10$
An image starts at the minimum/standard price (unless you're Emerald or higher, then you can double it from the start).
Let's call the lowest price (1-2-3-4-5-6) the "bottom price" :
A minimum/standard priced image only goes down to the bottom price if it did not sell at all in 24 months.
It needs 3 sales in 24 months to go back to minimum/standard price automatically.
(So this means that even seasonal photos still make a chance)
As for Emeralds or higher, who set their starting price at 2-6-10-14-16-20$ from the beginning :
If the image has not sold in 6 months at all, the price goes to minimum/standard price (not to the bottom price).
If it does not sell at all for 24 months, it will go to bottom price.
It needs 3 sales in 24 months to go back to minimum/standard price automatically.
It needs 3 sales in 6 months for the Emerald contributors (or higher) to be able to raise/double the price manually again.
(side note : what's worse : Fotolia setting non-sellers at bottom price after 24 months, or Dreamstime asking us to choose between "giving away for free" or deleting the image after 36 months?)
I have to admit after reading this thread my head was spinning. Thanks, Anyka, for giving a clear, understandable explanation :)
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The whole place is a mess anyway. ;D
I used to be exclusive but dropped it to join SS last year and informed FT of my total non-exclusive status. Nevertheless, I still sold the occasional file that was priced at double credit value ( exclusive privilege) long after my exclusive status was terminated. They're confused, contributors are confused and no doubt the buyers are also confused.
Little point in trying to figure it out........when I reach payout, I cash out.....wash, rinse, repeat.
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Did they give up on this notion? It dawned on me that commissions still look "normal" and even old files the never sold are at the normal price.
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Did they give up on this notion? It dawned on me that commissions still look "normal" and even old files the never sold are at the normal price.
I noticed the same, but when you try to edit the pricing of an unsold file, you still cant. Its blocked, but the pricing looks like the normal one.
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Did they give up on this notion? It dawned on me that commissions still look "normal" and even old files the never sold are at the normal price.
no, still on
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Old thread alert, but:
Did FT do away with those reduced prices for unsold content?
Today I had a first time sale of an old image (uploaded five years ago), and it sold for 6 credits for M size (that's the standard after their recent price changes).
Looking at other old images with zero sales the reduced pricing (1-2-3-4-5-6) does not seem to exist any more...
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Old thread alert, but:
Did FT do away with those reduced prices for unsold content?
Today I had a first time sale of an old image (uploaded five years ago), and it sold for 6 credits for M size (that's the standard after their recent price changes).
Looking at other old images with zero sales the reduced pricing (1-2-3-4-5-6) does not seem to exist any more...
I had sales that were at 1 credit base as recently as this morning.
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Old thread alert, but:
Did FT do away with those reduced prices for unsold content?
Today I had a first time sale of an old image (uploaded five years ago), and it sold for 6 credits for M size (that's the standard after their recent price changes).
Looking at other old images with zero sales the reduced pricing (1-2-3-4-5-6) does not seem to exist any more...
I had sales that were at 1 credit base as recently as this morning.
My bad, I wasn't precise enough. I am not talking about the ability to set higher base prices (which is available from emerald on for non-exclusive).
In addition to setting unsold files back to base price they did lower the prices for content without sales in two years.
Instead of the usual prices of 1-3-5-7-8-10 (for XS-S-M-L-XL-XXL) those were lowered to 1-2-3-4-5-6 (that was talked about in this thread).
That does not seem to be the case any more.
Maybe that was done together with their recent (small) price increase.
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Very good to know Dirk. I guess because both price changes happened at the same time I didnt remember there was a difference. Any improvement in fotolia pricing is welcome news. Maybe they will eventually stop downgrading two credit files. The lower prices never resulted in higher sales for me. Quite the opposite.
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Any strategy to get pricing up is good so long as
1. Customers don't defect to DP
2. They don't lower out royalties to keep a bigger share of the higher pricing
Knowing FT I suspect the latter is a realistic possibility.