here is a link again for the fotolia thread to so you time digging for it
http://us.fotolia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=289422

I just went to look for news - and saw Madelaide's post looking for news, but that was about it

It's doing exactly what they were waiting for...dieing down. I noticed there hasn't been nearly as much activity about it here on the forum either. Just what they want!

Unfortunately, for something like that to change we would need massive continuous participation from hundreds of members. Just a few of us will never make a dent. Maybe in time.... Denis

I'm trying to keep the topic at the top, or near the top of the forum until we get some kind of official news from Fotolia so we will see  

thats the Fotolia forum sorry !

We deleted my husband's portfolio today. No sales,  very few pics uploaded, but we don't want to support the system.

They also got lucky the whole Thinkstock disaster is distracting peeps away from this i think; makes it die even faster.
My portfolio is deleted now too, also because i'm not supporting their trickeries and am fed up with their attitude.
Website is a few days away from being finished and on my 'stockpage' i'll be posting a notice to buyers about how FT treats it's contributors.
I know the impact will be little to zero, but if it puts even one buyer away from there i'll still feel like i've won

Just be careful what you say because they could get you for slander so make sure you \ print out any thing said by them on the forums or in person...not that they would do it, but with them, you never know what to expect.

I looked over all my sales this year and it's subs, subs, subs and more subs. I was pretty worked up over this deal, but if FT is becoming a subs site maybe I should just give up.

I looked over all my sales this year and it's subs, subs, subs and more subs. I was pretty worked up over this deal, but if FT is becoming a subs site maybe I should just give up.

Just over one third of my sales are subs/premium subs there but these amount to a total of about 1/10th of my yearly earnings. Only got a small portfolio and have just canceled subs last week.........give it a month and see how it affects regular sales. Sometimes with new uploads, I get the impression (never applied the rigors of statistical analysis to it) that subs sales may lead to real sales sometimes.
Often a subs sale is followed a few hours later with an L or XL sale. Cannot be the same buyer because they already get L size in their subscription. It's puzzling. I'm wondering if subs buyers maybe get a daily view of all new accepted files that are in subs whereas regular buyers have to search for them??

Just over one third of my sales are subs/premium subs there but these amount to a total of about 1/10th of my yearly earnings. Only got a small portfolio and have just canceled subs last week.........give it a month and see how it affects regular sales. Sometimes with new uploads, I get the impression (never applied the rigors of statistical analysis to it) that subs sales may lead to real sales sometimes.
Often a subs sale is followed a few hours later with an L or XL sale. Cannot be the same buyer because they already get L size in their subscription. It's puzzling. I'm wondering if subs buyers maybe get a daily view of all new accepted files that are in subs whereas regular buyers have to search for them??

(my emphasis)
What do you mean you "cancelled subs"?  AFAIK you can't cancel, or opt out of subs on Fotolia unless you are exclusive.  Are you exclusive at Fotolia?  l

For most of us we are stuck with subs on the sites that have them.

Yes. I'm getting a feel for things slowly and I have neither the time nor inclination to submit to the other larger agencies just yet.

Ah - that explains it.  Thanks for clearing up my confusion . 

I have a feeling that soon the only way to avoid subs will be to go exclusive somewhere.

Quote from: OM on February 16, 2010, 16:25

Yes. I'm getting a feel for things slowly and I have neither the time nor inclination to submit to the other larger agencies just yet.

Ah - that explains it.  Thanks for clearing up my confusion . 

I have a feeling that soon the only way to avoid subs will be to go exclusive somewhere.

Hi Lisa,

I have to say that I'm still having my doubts about canceling subs. I'm nearly 2 weeks into a subsless existence but it seems like the rate of PpD is dropping off from its previous tempo. It's too short a time to judge and, quite honestly, my portfolio is too small but I'm keeping a wary eye on it. I have noticed that the views/newly uploaded images is slower than it was with subs. But I just hate getting 30+ pence for an "L".............that's robbery.

Quote from: OM on February 17, 2010, 05:49

I'm nearly 2 weeks into a subsless existence but it seems like the rate of PpD is dropping off from its previous tempo. It's too short a time to judge and, quite honestly, my portfolio is too small but I'm keeping a wary eye on it.

I'm pretty sure that opting out of subs, even if you could, would impact on the sort-order position of your images and therefore affect PPD sales too. As far as I'm aware a sub-sale still counts for the purposes of assessing the popularity of an image. I doubt that the impact would become evident within a couple weeks though.

The fact that FT were relatively slow to introduce subs (as indeed were IS via Getty/Thinkstock) suggests to me that agencies, generally speaking, don't like subs any more than their contributors do. However there is obviously a significant market for subs and presumably the agencies find them profitable.

Thanks for that info about sort order of images. I've checked on views/per day and there is no detectable change yet. On the other hand, from my tiny portfolio, I was often getting 2 or 3 PPD per day and the odd subs download. PPD sales were regular until I stopped subs. Now I have the feeling that they're less regular. I give it a month and report back with some figures.

The thread was closed at Fotolia.

http://us.fotolia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=25258&p=5

Sad; very sad. 

I guess this is why most of the big players do not get involved.  Now I just need to figure out what I want to do since most seem to have given up.

I already deleted all but about 100 photos....I'm waiting for my payout. I won't upload to them any more. What has happened is exactly they wanted...for it to die down and everyone just forget about it.

There's a weirdness to this that's hard to fathom.  The questions were straightforward.  It would have been easy to answer them, even if the answer was basically "that's the way it is, we hope you'll stay on".   The obfuscation and avoidance imply something else is in the works - or maybe interpersonal conflict within Fotolia.

Exactly...by them avoiding the subject just made matters worse in my mind...maybe not in everyone's.....but in mine. Like you said they should have at least explained what happened and had a response that made sense rather than the run around we got. We still don't have a straight forward answer and doubt that we ever will....at least not until the next price cut!!