like istock, yay! a boom year so we have to cut commissions.... what crap
emerald and above stay the same

Dear Fotolia Contributor,
2010 was another record year for the Fotolia community. We set new all-time highs for the number images in our collection, the number of members, and photographer royalty payouts. For 2011, we're implementing some changes in efforts to continue this trend.

Competition in the market is increasing, both amongst the photographers in the community, and amongst stock photography agencies. We've been monitoring the situation carefully, and have continued to increase our marketing spend in the number and frequency of ad campaigns. In addition, Fotolia continued its international leadership in new markets, with the opening of the Russian and Chinese web sites. With the increase in sales, the velocity of the rank changes has also accelerated. In order to sustain our continued efforts in marketing, we are making some changes to the royalty structures at the mid and lower tiers next week.

Fotolia continues to maintain photographer commissions at a significantly higher than those of our major competitors, and our increased efforts in marketing will result in an even higher velocity towards increased rankings.

Please note also that our new recency filter gives some priority to newer and fresher content, which means that the best new photographers with fresh content will have a better chance of rising to the higher ranks.

Thanks for your continued support, and we look forward to a great 2011 together.

Sincerely,
Fotolia.com

new rates (but I dont know the old)

Here is the price and royalty chart for non-exclusive files

Ranking    Contributor royalty (%)    
White    20    
Bronze    23    
Silver    25    
Gold         31
Emerald    37    
Sapphire    40    
Rubis    43    
Diamond    46    

Was just about to post that, great - they've lopped 5% or 6% off the bottom few ranks for non exclusive earners.

old rates are

White       25    
Bronze       28    
Silver       31    
Gold               34    
Emerald       37    
Sapphire       40    
Rubis       43    
Diamond       46

currently still at http://us.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors

Fotolia has the power to do so and probably was encouraged how the commission cut with iStock went through. Still this came as a surprise for me. WOW
Gold does not stay them same. It became the silver comission just when I am about to reach Gold..

Quote from: Phil on January 20, 2011, 09:48...In order to sustain our continued efforts in marketing...

Or, in other words, it would be unsustainable?   *spits on the ground*

Oh boll*cks.  I half-expected them to follow iStock on this, but it's still a blow to see it.

Thank God for SS and DT.  (Don't prove me wrong SS and DT!)

Quote from: rubyroo on January 20, 2011, 10:00
Oh boll*cks.  I half-expected them to follow iStock on this, but it's still a blow to see it.

Thank God for SS and DT.  (Don't prove me wrong SS and DT!)

*

I frightened by this statement
With the increase in sales, the velocity of the rank changes has also accelerated.

Are they going to change the rank levels again?

Two years ago they upped the rank levels considerably, saying people were reaching them too fast.  I was a couple months away from being emerald at the time.  Once again... I am a couple months away from being emerald.  If they move the goal posts again it appears that they are moving the goal posts at a very similar rate as the photographers are moving up the ranks which makes for very few people actually ever reaching emerald and above.

I gathered some of the old pricing and commissions back to 2007 on the Fotolia wiki page

IN the end, if all of them keep cutting our commission, we are the one who lose, they will keep getting more and more.

Well let's try to give our worst to FT and not our best! I actually never liked FT although it is my third earner. They can't handle criticism and their search machine is very strange (to say it mildly). And they pay lousy (even more now!)

It seems really transparent that they just saw IS get away with it and thought "great we'll have a bit of that shafting pie too"

Read this line:
"Fotolia continues to maintain photographer commissions at a significantly higher than those of our major competitors"

QuoteTwo years ago they upped the rank levels considerably, saying people were reaching them too fast.  I was a couple months away from being emerald at the time.  Once again... I am a couple months away from being emerald.  If they move the goal posts again it appears that they are moving the goal posts at a very similar rate as the photographers are moving up the ranks which makes for very few people actually ever reaching emerald and above.

Ditto - I was very close to Emerald last time and I am 800-900 sales away now. They better not change it again.

This is sickening but it's no surprise.  I have to sell a lot more just to get back to the commission I'm unhappy with now.  Looks like microstock is going to be unsustainable for me, unless something drastic happens and we all leave the sites that pay ridiculously low commissions.  I just can't see that happening, the vast majority will continue to accept more and more commission cuts.  Now I'm even more motivated to find another way to make a living.

Quote from: sharpshot on January 20, 2011, 10:26
Looks like microstock is going to be unsustainable for me

If this trend continues, it will be unsustainable for all but the protected uppier tier.   Those who feel shafted and disrespected will pull out, and the agencies will have a lot of images with similar-feel, or will have to resort to a Getty-style intake of old RM works to bump up their numbers.

As LisaFX often says, attacking the vast numbers of 'little guys' will dilute the variety of their collections - and variety of choice is the reason that many buyers supposedly enjoy using microstock.

As others have said, if all the agencies focused on perfecting the search, taking out the old dross that is no longer up to standard (I think they should approach photographers who have vastly improved their standard, and ask them to re-shoot those images), and dealing effectively with keyword spam, they'd probably see a huge increase in sales overall and possibly wouldn't have to keep killing people's aspirations after all their investment in time, equipment and skill-building.

This move was actually very clever from Fotolia.
They upset mainly those with smaller portfolios and who produce lower quality images, while keeping the succesfull contributors which mostly have high quality images happy.
If those smaller contributors stop uploading out of protest or occassionaly delete their portfolios, Fotolia probably really does not care much about it.

I think this is where I start handing out some i-told-ya-so's.

Quote from: leaf on January 20, 2011, 10:08
I frightened by this statement
With the increase in sales, the velocity of the rank changes has also accelerated.

Are they going to change the rank levels again?

Two years ago they upped the rank levels considerably, saying people were reaching them too fast.  I was a couple months away from being emerald at the time.  Once again... I am a couple months away from being emerald.  If they move the goal posts again it appears that they are moving the goal posts at a very similar rate as the photographers are moving up the ranks which makes for very few people actually ever reaching emerald and above.

Same here, 1 month away from gold and a couple of months last time... I hope they aren't going to change the rank system...

This is not the end, its not even the beginning of the end  but  it might be the end of the beginning. Blood, sweat, toil and tears. Cheer up everyone!!

I'm speechless. I need about 1,000 sales to get the same royalty (31%) as before. And my dream of better royalties just went 15,000 sales farther away.

I set some goals for me for 2011. I son't see them happening. This is sickening. I'm really seriously thinking about dumping microstock alltogether, I haven't seen any macros pulling stunts like these (IS, FT)

I really hope SS and DT don't jump on the bandwagon.

b*strds

I bet the base commission level is even lower than iStock's 15% now (remember, they pay a percentage on a magical fotolia widget which has no relationship at all to what the customers are paying for credits).

just posted a handy roll-over comparison thingy - shame it won't make you feel any better
http://microstockinsider.com/news/fotolia-new-commission-rates

The worst cast scenario is this

Buyer buys credits in Euro with the smallest package size .. which is now 1.20 Euro /credit for 25 credits ($1.61860 USD/credit)

The buyer then buys an image from a white ranked photographer with a USA account and the photographer gets (with 2011 commissions) 20% of a credit, which is US$1.00, so $0.20

So the buyer spent $1.62 and the photographer gets $0.20 = 12.3%

Here is the blog post explaining it in a bit more detail with more calculations (albeit older numbers)

I really hate Fotolia and IStock now.

Instead of attacking contributors, they should all cooperate and increase the price for buyers.

Buyers don't really care if it is $249/month or $299/month.

But contributors feels the pain when you decrease the revenue by even 5%.

SS, don't you dare to follow them. If SS has exclusivity now (yes, I know exclusivity is bad), but I will just join SS exclusivity as a sign of protest again IS and FT.

Quote from: microstockinsider on January 20, 2011, 11:20
just posted a handy roll-over comparison thingy - shame it won't make you feel any better
http://microstockinsider.com/news/fotolia-new-commission-rates

thanks for the roll over.. that makes it nice to compare

Quote from: microstockinsider on January 20, 2011, 11:20
just posted a handy roll-over comparison thingy - shame it won't make you feel any better
http://microstockinsider.com/news/fotolia-new-commission-rates

Nice page. To make it even nicer, put the rankings there too http://www.fotolia.com/Info/Contributors#item_3