Quote from: gostwyck on February 03, 2010, 17:46

Quote from: arquiplay77 on February 03, 2010, 17:35

I�m a contributor from Spain, and i get paid in dollars from fotolia and from anyother site. I wish 1 credit would be 1 euro though that is not true.

If you live in Spain how come you're not paid in Euros? I see they've got an office/website in your country.

The plot thickens!

I seem to remember some old discussions about this. Depending on when someone signed up - and I think in some cases where from (IP address) - FT assigned each contributor a 'home'. In the early days FT had fewer sites.

People had asked in the past to get moved to somewhere more appropriate - generally to get a more favorable exchange rate. AFAIK the answer was always "no". I can see why they wouldn't want someone switching weekly trying to play currency trading games, but if someone moves from the US to Spain, or UK to US, it would seem reasonable to let them switch. Then they get paid in local currency.

Of course, when the Euro was less than the US Dollar, people were happy to be paid in dollars, but these days, not so much

When I joined 2 years ago, there were a few options: Join US and get paid in USD, join UK and get paid in GBP with 60 pence credits,
join Germany or France sites and be paid in Euro but have to complete registration in either German or French. Now, I live in a eurozone country and if it hadn't been for the language barrier, I would have gladly signed up for Germany to be paid in euros (also missing preypal's 4% commission on currency conversions). So, I chose UK and even at 60 pence credits the currency cross rates at that time meant that there wasn't much difference between payment in � or GBP.
About 8 months after joining UK, FT introduced the EU site for anyone preferring payment in euro but registration in English. At that time the cross rate GBP/euro had gone from 70% to almost parity, making payment in 60 pences to be converted to spendable euro, a very bad deal. FT would not allow transfer of a UK account to a EU account and the only way to achieve that would be to start from scratch: delete the UK portfolio and resubmit images as an EU contributor. I considered this to be too risky, having already suffered the whims of the 'rejectors' in the past!

The only advice I would give to recent members who deem themselves in a disadvantageous position with regard to country/currency is to start afresh. Pull everything from the present location (especially if you don't have too many uploads/sales) and re-submit to the country/site of your choosing.

Quote from: photoshow on February 03, 2010, 13:03

Anyone expecting fair and honest business practices in thier dealings with Fotolia has not been paying attention the past four years. They have a long history of self serving business practices that have shown little to no regard to the wlefare of their greatest asset (the contributor) and have always paid full service to their greatest concern (their greed)

Fotolia has always been known to bait and switch at the contributors expense.

True enough Bobby but this one really does take the biscuit. In particular it's the sleight of hand (or 'cut by stealth' as another poster put it) that really grates. When is a 'percentage' not actually a percentage? When it's at Fotolia.

Maybe they're are already gearing up to sell the company and both the slow payments and these further erosions of commissions are intended to boost cash and profitability.

You might just have something there. Standard practice at corporations getting ready to sell.

OM,

I havent taken all my images off Fotolia ( I need the income !) just took them from exclusive images so I can sell the same images elsewhere. 

I understood what you wrote, Warren. I think that is a sensible course for me to follow too. I'm too old to cut off my nose to spite their face.

Thanks for posting Warren. I find that last reply showing total disdain for you as contributor/writer of the email and for Fotolia contributors in general. Really rather shocking.

Cashed out yesterday too............I think for GBP0.75/credit. One small sale today and the credit is indeed now increased GBP 1.00/credit. Ooh, that's nice.

Quote from: gbcimages on January 30, 2010, 13:54

sub sites will always be here and growing,that's where all the buyer  do most of their shopping. The economy is down and will be for awhile.

You wouldn't know it from my sales.  40% of my sales still come from IS, which doesn't have an "all you can eat" type subscription model at all.

Thanks. I just looked at the IS credits subs system and it it much less generous to the buyer than the 'all you can eat system' of FT. Effectively, you buy credits in bulk and 3 months in advance at a discount of 70% but you have to use your number of credits each day or they turn into pumpkins at midnight. If a buyer with subscription buys a 10 credit image of yours, how much do you get as contributor?

Must be the only industry where the wholesale price is so absurdly out of whack with the retail price.
Especially considering  that the buyer can download those L files for the same price(effectively) as XS, M etc.
I'm most surprised that whoever started the subsclub, started with such an exceptionally good deal for the buyers and such a rotten one for the contributors (although contributor rewards have never figured much in the calculations of some sites). Offering an immediate discount of 90%+ for forward payment is not exactly common practice in industry generally.

As to whether contributors can do much about it, I don't know. Sometimes after getting a subs sale from a new image, I get some downloads of the same image for regular rates (XL) which dissuades me from removing my contributions to subs. Do subs act as badly paid advertising for an image? Don't know that either. I agree that the minimum reward for a subs sale should be more in the region of $1, rather than the 30 cents it is now. On the other hand, if the buyer were only able to download to "M" as a maximum size in subs, I think that this may encourage more PPD's for the larger sizes from the same subs buyers.

Ideally, subs would disappear overnight but lacking that option (which is unrealistic), I could live with a system in which subs were limited to M max and, that should the subscription customer require a larger file for download, they could do this at a not too substantial discount to the PPD rate.
But as I'm fairly new to all this WTHDIK.

I just wrote a more detailed procedure how to solve this problem.
http://www.microstockgroup.com/site-related/isp-can't-find-site-since-changeover/
Hope it helps! :-)

Many thanks, simsi. Works a treat.

Thanks leaf. Stoopid of me to post that...works the same if a US buyer buys an image through FT.com.

Posted a query about PhotoClubs on the FTeu message board last night but it's vanished this morning.
No trace of  the message.

Most people starting out in photography as a profession need to get some cash flow going and stock/micro can take a long time to build up before the payments arrive on a regular basis. Do something else first to guarantee a regular income and see if you have the time/desire and innate ability to do it once you are earning money some other way. Stock is essentially a medium-term investment in your future and not an immediate  cash flow generator.

Someone doing something already. Price of a credit on UK goes from 60p to 75p per 1st July.
Oh, maybe that message was only intended for buyers and not subscribers but since I'm both............

Get a lightly-used Canon 5D and 50mm f1.8 lens + adapter for old Olympus OM/or Leica R lenses. Those lenses now cost buttons on feebay (stay away from the real exotica) and as long as you don't mind manual, stop-down operation, you're init2winit for optical quality.IMHO.