This may have been discussed or details posted somewhere before but I missed it.

I had a conversation with a company that uses Fotolia's API to license images for POD products.

The company claims to use the Small size of the images for their products and that the API requires to use credits (and NO subscription) for licensing.

So I tried to do some math on how much I would receive for such an API sale. I'm Emerald and in the best case (2 credits base price) a Small size is listed at 6 credits.
A "big" customer may get 6,400 credits for $5,600 which equals to $0.88 per credit. So in my example, 6 credits = $5.28 (as a high discount example).

According to the company, using the API, they pay between 1 and 3 � per image. Where is this price coming from? Needless to say that in that case my royalties are considerably smaller.

This post is not arguing whether Fotolia's license should not be used for PODs etc.

I just want to know if API prices are generally lower (approx. 50% or more). Why would API prices be lower?

I'd greatly appreciate any information regarding this before I ask Fotolia.