MicrostockGroup
Microstock Footage Forum => General - Stock Video => Topic started by: morning.light on March 23, 2013, 09:11
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I'm selling a lot of subscription footage on Fotolia lately. I sold like 5 this month. I'm annoyed to get only a dollar for each sale and I know I have an option to to take my files out of the subs program, but I don't know what to do. I have the same files on SS and Pond5 and NEVER had a sale. So I'm thinking they are selling on Fotolia because they're cheap. If I take them out of the subs program and they'll have the normal price maybe they won't sell even there. So in that case 1 dollar is better than 0...
Please tell me your opinions! Should I leave them like this or not?
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My opinion? I'd rather have $0 than $1. Honestly.
You have to set your own personal minimum that you value your work at. Would you be ok to sell photos at $0.01?
You didn't say whether this was HD or web-sized; it makes a difference. I personally don't like to accept web-sized commissions less than about $2.50 (preferably $4-5), and HD size at less than $12 (preferably much more).
It's possible that if the buyers need your clips they'll purchase them with credits if they aren't available by subscription. But if not, you literally have (almost) nothing to lose, IMO.
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I don't bother with FT for footage. I get enough sales with Pond5 and SS and a few from other sites that pay good commissions. How much are you losing when you get $1 when a buyer would of been willing to pay $40?
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Fotolia is not worth it. I have zero sales there (opted out of subscription, not wanting to sell clips for peanuts) and I had clips rejected which were accepted at SS and Pond5.
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I also get hit with subscription sales. The royalty is low but it is only for medium sized files, you will from time to time get the odd HD subscription sale but i believe that is for customers using older credits bought before the change came into effect, these will run out in time.
In order to entice you to opt-in to subscription sales they put your portfolio nearer the beginning of the search so that both subscription and non-subscription customers will see your port, and it works. Once i opted out and my sales dropped dramatically. It's not a nice tactic on their behalf, it's either opt in or tough crap.
Fotolia buyers generally are cheapskates, they hardly ever purchase full HD videos, its either non-sub small or medium sized video or sub medium sized video with the odd full priced HD but that's quite rare.
There are things you can do though for damage limitation. For example, only upload your worst clips and then cut them to half the size and encode them down so that they are just passable, i usually have to really compress my videos anyway to get them under the ridiculous 300MB limit. That way people get what they pay for, sounds fair if you ask me.
I would like to upload my best work and make my customers happy but they don't really leave me with a lot of choice.