What a SHAME!!!!

I can't believe it... StockXpert was still my 2nd best earner.  Very consistent, and FAIR to his contributors.

How can they kill this site   Very sad day indeed.

Quote from: tdoes on January 06, 2010, 03:52
I need to ask Fotolia that once the forms have been reviewed and approved will sales be credited appropriately that were made while the form was pending in their queue?

I already asked them and they replied no, because according to them the money goes directly to the IRS and there will be NO refund.

Quote from: GeoPappas on January 05, 2010, 23:28

Quote from: lisafx on January 05, 2010, 21:54
In the US I was asked to submit form w-9.  I submitted on the first and it still isn't approved yet. 

Does nobody any good to submit forms and then not have them reviewed.

I submitted my W-9 on 01/01 as well and it is still pending approval.

Same here, submitted on 1/1/2010, as soon as I received the email.... still PENDING!
I'm really pissed because I have a legal business in the US, and I'm already paying taxes to the IRS on all my earnings.
So now I'm being DOUBLE taxed!!!
And to make it worse Fotolia support said that they won't reimburse any of the already deducted taxes (%30) because it's already gone to the IRS.

Thanks Yuri,

I can't live without it, the most useful keywording tool!

Quote from: Iriz on December 04, 2008, 23:15

Quote from: RT on December 04, 2008, 23:00
I've just been sent this, it was posted by Chad Bridwell on the Yahoo micropayment forum:

"Hello Everyone,

Would any of you continue to do business with a grocery store, restaurant, beauty salon, airline, etc who continued to call you names and use derogatory language against you publicly?
No logical person would do this. Why should Fotolia be any different? What
Bobby Deal has done over the years is appalling and Fotolia has been
very  tolerant until now. Calling us F**kers, *insult removed*, and Rapists, is
not professional and we do not have to tolerate this any longer.
After giving him many warnings we decided close his account.
Chad Bridwell
Director of US Operations
Fotolia.com"

Clearly there is a history involved here that goes way beyond the issue of recent changes.

If what has been quoted above is correct and if someone referred to me or my business using that sort of vocabulary I would kick their account from here to the other side of Mars and then sue their sorry ass for libel.

Count yourself lucky that the only thing you've lost is your account!!

The actual post that Chad was referring too is this one:

"They did nothing but blow smoke up are asses on this one. Giving us
> > an opt out does nothing to solve the greater issue of undermining an
> > already undermined industry. Allowing print resale for a 30 cent
> > commission simply shows what greedy *insult removed* all these agencies are
> > becoming. I swear if just one agency would step up and prove that
> > they knew there place in the industry and would treat the content
> > providers like clients (which we are) then I would give serious
> > consideration to providing exclusive content to that agency. Of
> > course that will never happen so I will continue to whore my elf out
> > to all the pimps for my penny here and my penny there."

To me that's just straight talk and to the point.  No personal attack and a valid personal opinion.  What's wrong with that?

Quote from: photoshow on December 04, 2008, 03:59

Quote from: jsnover on December 04, 2008, 03:44

Quote from: Iriz on December 04, 2008, 00:28

Quote from: jsnover on December 03, 2008, 23:52
Calling things by their true names and shining the light of publicity upon shameful practices is generally helpful in reining in unsavory behavior.

I totally disagree. There are very few MS sites that seem to handle adverse commentary well and fotolia is definitely not one of them. DT is another in case you 're interested....

I think my experience with all these agencies over the last 4 years says you're mistaken. They don't like it when contributors speak out and work as a group to further our interests, but we have, as a group, managed to make a number of changes happen or not happen by refusing to just say "Yes sir!!" when a site tried to unilaterally change something that hurt contributors.

The sites don't like it, but up to a point they put up with it - it's a power struggle pure and simple. FT threatened to close my account, but they didn't go through with it. Hence my complete lack of surprise that they actually did it this time. If we keep quiet about this sort of stuff it just emboldens the agencies to pull an even bigger one next go around - and you know that there will be a next time, especially as the economy's not in great shape.

It is just about impossible (IMO) to get a regular group acting for contributors, but on an ad hoc basis you can often find enough people to work together to try and even the balance of power out a little when dealing with the agencies.

And this is why they have tried to eliminate me from the move this time because they know I was at the heart of the push against the subscription plan they originally announced, and I was at the heart of the push with StockXpert when they tried to screw us around with the Jupiter Unlimited fiasco as I have been at the heart of the issue everytime an agency (even DT) has tried to make a change that I believed to be adverse to the contributing community.

I have to say that Dreamstime has proven to be one of the few that truly seems to have a desire to see to it that we are treated fairly. They may run their forum with an Eastern Block Iron fist but their business practices are definately above board. I can not say the same for Fotolia.

What I love is that Oleg and Chad think they have silenced me but the truth is that they have actually given me voice. They have already done the worst to me thay can do, as long as I play by the rules from here forward there is really nothing else they can hit me with.

I wonder how they are going to respond to my request for an Audit?
or to my demands for continuation of payments for referral sales from Emerald level photographers I referred to them that they are still obligated to pay me for the next 2 years? Yea the referral program had no mandatory tie to a contributor account I do believe that regardless of their desire to cease doing business with me they have no legal ground on which they can wiothold those earnings.

Bobby, I'm really sorry to hear that Fotolia reached a new low today.  It's really a shame.

I only wish that the other top contributors would have raised their voice like you did everytime those agencies introduced a new way to make more money on our back.  I think the industry would be very different today.

My last recorded sales with Photos.com were on October 2nd.

Since then, NOTHING, even after site upgrade.  Before October 2nd I was getting 6 sales on average.

For JI: sales stopped after October 2nd, but came back after October 17th.

I have the feeling we are being ripped off: almost 1 month of unrecorded sale at Photos.com, that's a hell a lot of money and looks like Jupiter Image will never pay us, since obviously they don't even have records in their own system.

Sorry guys but you misread the news:

Alamy will increase it's OWN commission by 5% to support the opening cost of new offices in US and hopefully grow their market share there.
That means our commission will decrease by 5%, from 65% to 60%, but more sales in US will hopefully compensate for that.  This has been discussed in their blog.

-Chris

Quote from: grp_photo on September 11, 2008, 18:46
How can one be glad that they closed!
They tried it to change for the best but because of microstock they couldn't accept microstock-styled images or even the same images that should be understandable. They tried the best but it didn't work i guess this was the last chance the future from now on its solely subscription.
It's sad!

I agree.  They brought a fresh perspective to the stock business and I wish they were successful.

Quote from: sharply_done on September 11, 2008, 18:08
Given their very bad sales performance, this isn't exactly coming out of nowhere. I always got a chuckle at their upbeat PR stuff and at the (far too many) "I love Photoshelter" postings. Personally, I wrote them off when they made the unwise decision to prohibit microstock imagery.

I hope those of us who managed to make a few sales there will see our money.

I liked them them, I think they brought a fresh perspective to stock.
I did have a $300 sale with them and my paypal account was credited within a couple of days.

Quote from: cphoto on September 04, 2008, 20:56

Quote from: jsolie on September 04, 2008, 20:50

Quote from: Vonkara on September 04, 2008, 20:37Same thing here.

It seems like the photos that made it to photos.com are also on JIU+.  Is that site completely sub, or do they have PPD?

They have another HUGE bug: all sizes including XL and XXL are available in the subscription program, so that's even worse than the Photos.com + bug.

So looks like it's not a bug after all, from the StockXpert forum:


...
The JIUnlimited.com subscription includes all resolutions and there are no Pay Per Download options on JIUnlimited (JIU). JIU and StockXpert share the same royalty model of $.30/download.

As we explore new opportunities to leverage our StockXpert collection across our JupiterImages properties, we will be experimenting with new business models. We fully intend to evaluate all of these new models in the upcoming months to ensure that there is value for everyone -- both StockXpert contributor and JI customer. We fully intend to involve the StockXpert community more openly as part of this upcoming evaluation but in the short term, we need to see how our JI customers respond to our StockXpert collection.
...

All sizes including XL and XXL are available with sub and no PPD.

Quote from: jsolie on September 04, 2008, 20:50

Quote from: Vonkara on September 04, 2008, 20:37Same thing here.

It seems like the photos that made it to photos.com are also on JIU+.  Is that site completely sub, or do they have PPD?

They have another HUGE bug: all sizes including XL and XXL are available in the subscription program, so that's even worse than the Photos.com + bug.

I'm not happy with JI right now.

They knew they had the "size" bug where a good 50% of 8MP images are available as sub when they should not, but they still launched JIU+, breaching their contract agreement with us.

Now I have a bunch of my 8MP pictures available with subscription plan even in XL size, and I already lost a PPD opportunity with photos.com + where someone got one of my XL image at sub price.

-Christophe

Quote from: jsolie on September 03, 2008, 22:10
Just had a sub sale---for a Large image.  Probably should have been PPD... 

Me too, a 8MP image was sold with subscription and not with PPD because of the bug.
If they don't fix this bug quickly I'm going to pull out my portfolio.

Quote from: melastmohican on September 03, 2008, 06:07
It's beta, in other words a preview. When it hits 1.0 we can compare it to anything else out there.

Yep, and it's more an alpha version than a Beta.
I installed it, opened 4 tabs, closed one tab, and it crashed

Also I noticed that the memory management seems pretty bad: if you go in windows task manager you'll notice that it creates many instances of "google chrome", but it does not seem to kill the processes properly when tabs are being closed.

I found about 50% of my 8MP images NOT available as PPD and EL on photos.com, even though their longest size is 3504 pixels.

This is also really bad because the largest size (XL - 8MP) is available for SUB !! 
I think you guys should check your portfolio too...

If that does not get fixed soon I'll pull out from photos.com.

Some examples:
http://www.photos.com/en/search/close-up?oid=9335124&hoid=e0510cd199898572784a99e726f84f7f&eqvc=1031190&vidx=0
http://www.photos.com/en/search/close-up?oid=9334851&hoid=31d39236e162930282e2c03571d7f13a&eqvc=554264&vidx=0
http://www.photos.com/en/search/close-up?oid=9335215&hoid=e59539dd89fd610d57c9a2c5f4c37f2d&eqvc=1031221&vidx=0
http://www.photos.com/en/search/close-up?oid=9335216&hoid=3238c70f1e0a2bfcf857cc0ea9c42507&eqvc=1031222&vidx=0
http://www.photos.com/en/search/close-up?oid=9334840&hoid=539ae4e3196d6be712ffeb735adc0fb3&eqvc=554253&vidx=0

....

Quote from: DanP68 on August 23, 2008, 00:12
Nothing yet, but very high hopes.  What I really want to hear is that someone had a PPD sale through Photos.com.   

Well I encourage you to check your images over there because some of mine does not show available as PPD and EL, even though they meet the image size requirement.

This is my image, 8MP, but only available as SUB
http://www.photos.com/en/search/close-up?eqvc=551038&oid=9334850&a=a&pt=&k_mode=all&k_exc=&t_plus=1&cid=&date=&ct_search=&k_var=9334850&first=1&ofirst=&srch=Y&hoid=90f40a286b5874fb1528163a02ad0c24&bl=%2Fen%2Fsearch%2Findex%3Fa%3Da%26k_var%3D9334850%26k_mode%3Dall%26f_plus%3D1%26first%3D1%26

Quote from: jsnover on August 20, 2008, 23:43
Images are up there but I'd suggest those of you with images there check your search placement - a couple of checks that I did had the StockXpert images way, waaaay at the back of the bus. Things on page 1 of search results at StockXpert on page 16 at Photos.com plus, for example.

Well at least you found some of yours   I could not find any of my 600+.

I searched on keywords that were pretty unique with only 2 pages results and the image was not there.  May be they did not finish to index all of our images...

Also I could not find a way to purchase an EPS file coming from StockXpert.  It was just on sale as a regular image or as an extended licence, but not as an EPS file.

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on August 16, 2008, 20:43
Voted. A great image.

Thank you Clivia, Takestock, Sharply_done and PaulieWalnuts.  Much appreciated!

Quote from: patrick1958 on August 16, 2008, 18:22
You got my vote, great picture.

Patrick H.

Thanks Patrick!

Quote from: UncleGene on August 16, 2008, 18:15
Done 

Thank you very much!

Quote from: Pixart on August 16, 2008, 18:04
That was an easy one to vote for.  Beautiful!

Thanks Pixart for your support!

Quote from: Karimala on August 16, 2008, 17:49
Done!   

Looking forward to seeing you next weekend, Christophe!

Thanks Karin! Yes, can't wait for next week-end, should be a lot of fun again!

Quote from: cdwheatley on August 16, 2008, 17:44
Voted. Great image!  best of luck!

Thanks man!  Really appreciated!

Best,
-Chris

Hi guys,

I need your help to win the Canon/Microsoft photo contest. My picture "God Beam" made it to the final top 40 and I think it has the potential to be #1 and published in Outdoor Photographer!

There is some terrific work out there, you can see the Top 40 Finalists Gallery here:
http://www2.outdoorphotographer.com/top100/contest/finalists_gallery.php

If you think my picture should be the winner, please go to:
http://www2.outdoorphotographer.com/top100/contest/gallery-fin-lg.php?gal=Top%20100&id=2982#j
and click on the "Click to vote for this image" link below the picture.

Thank you!

The picture is this one: