I just deleted a few more. Will probably do some more later too. Good to see that total going down on FT. Hope the American contributors can make a difference as the hours pass...

Just done a batch of deletions. Might do some more in the morning...

EL's at FT are as rare as Hen's Teeth. What makes you think the bargain hunters at DPC are suddenly going to want to splash out on EL's?

The issue here is very clear. FT is trying to gain market share and disrupt the market at contributors expense.

I've opted out of DPC and I'll be deleting files from FT tomorrow in a show of support.

I've not been in Microstock long enough to harbour the resentment that many here hold for FT. I have my portfolio with them because of the reasonably healthy Credit sales. With their new DPC offering they threaten to decimate that market - not just at FT but also at the agencies that currently produce most income for me and most other contributors. 

 Alamy's payment threshold is still $175, right? 

No, Alamy reduced payout threshold to $75 a while back.

Quote from: bymandesigns on April 28, 2014, 14:34
Fotolia response to the closure of my portfolio at Dollar Photo Club :


""First, I would like to say that we appreciate your work and our collaboration.
Regarding our latest project "Dollar Photo Club", it is slightly a new business model, but basically it is just a new subscription model. The project is aiming to improve our contributor's exposure and sales.

Our contributors are important to us and under no circumstances we will jeopardize our relationship with them, we share a common interest and goal with you!

Dollar Photo Club is not aimed for one-time image purchases, on the contrary, it is aimed for serious buyers, who need large numbers of images and need them often.

The membership in Dollar Photo Club is limited and it was done in the way that we could choose the customers, fitting our business model.
The project is monitored daily, every membership request from a potential customer is treated as a separate order. Only requests from serious buyers are admitted and validated.

With this new model we are selling more subscriptions and making sure the clients will return to us for future transactions.

Dollar Photo Club offers more exposure, distribution and the possibility to increase your revenue.
Dollar Photo Club is based on the Fotolia commission programme, so your royalties will stay the same, but your revenue will grow. Every image downloaded at Dollar Photo Club is paid to the artist through Fotolia immediately.

For now the license sold via Dollar Photo Club is a Standard license and will be limited to 500.000 copies as well. Members that need Extended licenses are referred to Fotolia to purchase them. Soon an Extended License will be made available to Dollar Photo Club members at rates similar to those at Fotolia.

As well I would like to mention that Dollar Photo Club subscription rate, $1 per image, is not the lowest one in the stock market. Daily subscription on and other agencies offer images from $0,33 per image, which is much cheaper then the price of Dollar Photo Club.

And Dollar Photo Club membership actually is more beneficial to the contributors than traditional subscriptions. In a traditional subscription if the sub expires, unused downloads also expire. As a result, no commission is paid. At Dollar Photo Club, even after a member cancels their subscription they can use their unused downloads. As a result, a higher percentage of money spent goes to the photographer. We've been seing some great results on the markets where Dollar Photo Club exists for some time and expecting to have even better in the nearest future.

Our goal is to double your revenue with Fotolia and Dollar Photo Club in next 3 years with the aim that in next 12 months you will see a 20% growth in sales. We kindly ask for your patience and trust.
If your revenue will not grow during the next 12 months, we will be glad to discuss again and find a solution. But we are certain it will.

Fotolia team cares very much for the photographers and respects your opinions and feedback. Your concerns about being in Dollar Photo Club have been heard and soon an option for contributors to choose will be made available to all Fotolia contributors. In the meantime if you do not want your images sold through Dollar Photo Club send your request via a Fotolia customer support ticket and you will be manually removed. Your new works will not appear on Dollar Photo Club.
As I mentioned before our contributors are very important to us and we do our very best that they will get the highest earnings possible in the current market situation.
Feel free to contact us regarding any of the above or other issues

Kind regards  ""


this is the official opinion of the Fotolia

It is quite possible that DPC will increase FT earnings by 20% over a year if they manage to grow their customer base with this cheap offer. However, it might have the simultaneous effect of reducing SOD's at SS by 20%. Which scenario is preferable...?

Niakris is right. A few dozen contributors here asking for an opt out won't prevent FT from doing serious damage to the industry and hastening the race to the bottom... FT might gain market share from this initiative but we will almost certainly lose income.

Quote from: stocked on April 07, 2014, 21:11
It's a cheap game they play, they couldn't get a foot in the American market so they undercut it with their Dollar Photo Club. They don't advertise the Dollar Photo Club in Europe their main market, maybe we should

I'm based in the UK. I've seen *lots* of ads for Dollar Photo Club.

Hmmm, that's very curious. Stacey was a very active participant in the Stocksy community. I'm quite surprised she left without explanation. Anyone know why...?

That's gotta be Leaf pulling an April Fool!

Yay in the top tier - ha ha ha..

Quote from: PryorMan on March 17, 2014, 11:58
Um... So I thought the Dollar Club was exclusive invite only? I saw this ad while reading the news this morning.

Why then can you pay $99 can join right now? No invite necessary.

http://www.dollarphotoclub.com/Member/choose/plan

deleted

Cutcaster? I just went to have a look and discovered my last sale was in August 2013. I wonder if I'll manage a whole year without a single sale?

Quote from: lisafx on February 28, 2014, 22:03
I requested payout before receiving the mail that they were taking the money out.  My balance before they took the money out was showing as .76.  I don't see any balance showing now - not negative numbers, not anything.  Weird. 

I assume either they will take it out of the request I made, or I should be in negative numbers at the moment.

I too requested a cashout around an hour before I got the email confirming they were going to deduct money. Under "financials" my account is now showing a negative figure. I replied to their email stressing that they weren't to deduct anything from my account without an itemised explanation of their 'recoupment'. Of course, they just ignored it...along with the support ticket I sent a few days ago.

Quote from: ShadySue on February 25, 2014, 14:44

Quote from: nopow on February 25, 2014, 14:09
I'm curious, has anyone here thought of filing a Better Business Bureau complaint against iStock? They have an A+ rating somehow, which means they've settled all of their complaints in a way that was satisfactory to the customer. My guess is, whoever files a complaint online would get to keep their "overpayment" money simply because it won't be worth it to them to tarnish their BBB status.

But we're not 'customers', we're suppliers.

Yep, the customers will receive refunds on request to maintain an A rating - at our expense, of course! We're suppliers and we are totally expendable.

Just got my recoupement email too. I am f***ing incandescent. The f***ing incompetent b***ards!

I've asked Linda from Yay more than once in this forum if she will pay out my (pitiful) earnings if I close account. To date she has failed to reply to any of my requests.

Indeed, I'd be really curious to know how OFFSET perform. They seem like a bit of a closed book at the moment. I've been accepted but am reluctant to send anything until I hear some positive vibes...

My single biggest license was just short of $16,000. I was fairly new to stock photography at the time and figured I was going to be rich. It never happened again.

Sean, I know several photographers who shoot to spec for IB. Where an image isn't shortlisted or selected it goes off to stock..

Quote from: Mantis on January 20, 2014, 21:52

Quote from: Monty-m-gue on January 20, 2014, 21:40

Quote from: marthamarks on January 20, 2014, 21:25

Quote from: Pixart on January 20, 2014, 19:27
Yes, that is unbelievably for every size.  I assume that they will throw us a sub,

So... it will be $.25 (twenty-five cents) for each sub sold, regardless of size. Forever.

I started at that stage with SS and have happily moved up in the royalty rankings since then. But it doesn't sound like FT plans any increasing royalties with its swanky new "Dollar Club." The photographer will get $.25 forever.

Good grief. I am definitely outta FT.

As I understand it, you will make the same from a DPC sale as a regular sub on FT. I make 29 Cents per regular sub. I expect to receive that for sales on DPC.

But how many credit sales is that going to steal from you? Assuming that at least some of these "special exclusive" customers (which in my mind is everyone they can pump into it) purchased credit packs, and now are on a subs program, we lose way more that the peanuts for a .20-.29 cent sub.

Hi Mantis, I wasn't supporting Fotolia's DPC, merely correcting an inaccurate assumption made by the previous poster (Marthmarks) that all payments would be 25 cents forever. I share your concern that this initiative will eat into credit sales. I'll wait and see how this affects the balance of sub / credit sales on FT before making a decision to drop them..

Quote from: marthamarks on January 20, 2014, 21:25

Quote from: Pixart on January 20, 2014, 19:27
Yes, that is unbelievably for every size.  I assume that they will throw us a sub,

So... it will be $.25 (twenty-five cents) for each sub sold, regardless of size. Forever.

I started at that stage with SS and have happily moved up in the royalty rankings since then. But it doesn't sound like FT plans any increasing royalties with its swanky new "Dollar Club." The photographer will get $.25 forever.

Good grief. I am definitely outta FT.

As I understand it, you will make the same from a DPC sale as a regular sub on FT. I make 29 Cents per regular sub. I expect to receive that for sales on DPC.

Quote from: Mantis on January 19, 2014, 14:23
I wonder if these sales will be reported in such a way that we know where the sales came from: FT or FT-Dollar Club, or if they are simply going to hide it all under one mysterious umbrella.

There won't be any way to identify sales from DPC, I asked.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on January 17, 2014, 18:51

Quote from: bunhill on January 17, 2014, 18:32
...The site needs posters representing a variety of different perspectives and experiences.

True, but I hardly think tickstock's ranting qualified as perspective and I don't recall him/her sharing actual experiences much. To be fair, I had this poster ignored, but as so many people I don't ignore kept quoting his/her knee-jerk responses I saw a lot of it anyway.

There are plenty of iStock exclusives who can and do make their perspectives known here (and on FB where I also interact with them).

It isn't useful at all when someone posts about a negative regarding iStock and people like tickstock jump in with a "Shutterstock sucks" or other irrelevant comment. That's not free speech - it's trolling.

I've no idea who tickstock is but I can't imagine anyone at iStock or Getty caring enough about what's said here to send anyone in to participate. If they cared about community involvement, they wouldn't have destroyed the iStock forums, rendering a once vibrant place a virtual desert. And not even Getty's daft enough to think that sending in a troll is going to do squat to overcome the negative opinions of them their own policies and behaviors have brought about.

Pieman makes his voice heard here from time to time - he at least is keeping an eye on what is said on this Forum. I suspect he reads more than he comments - and if he's reading, he's reading for a reason. It wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that Getty are prepared to pay someone to try and put a gloss on all the negative views that are expressed here of iStock and Getty.

Some agencies will allow a name change. Others wont, 123rf for example.

Quote from: Mantis on January 16, 2014, 02:12

Quote from: Allsa on January 16, 2014, 01:54
I checked and my entire portfolio is on the site. Should I insist they take them down? Or would that just get me banned from FT? They aren't one of my better earners anymore, so I suppose it's worth considering.

it's probably a partner site that you are on.  I would email them to find out who that partner is and first see if there is an opt out.  It could be that the only way you can remove your images is by closing your account with the partner site.

No, I don't think images are drawn from a partner site. I believe DPC is an offshoot of Fotolia itself and there is no opt out. Email from Fotolia Support: "photos sold earn the same commission as a subscription sale."

Their FAQ makes no mention of exclusive images. Merely that membership is exclusive for buyers (they are proposing a limit). TechCrunch appear to have got the wrong end of the stick in that respect.