Again, Alamy shows the correct way to do it: You can choose if you want your Paypal payment in US Dollars, Euros or UK Pounds instead of getting the currency converted by Paypal with its poor rates.

I will continue with direct funds transfer though.

Haha... Social Media marketing FAIL

And it's really, REALLY annoying that FT can't write a list of the "bad" agencies but still they keep blackmailing us. It's almost Kafkaesque.

I think FT is miscalculating just how valuable they are to the average contributor.   IS forced us to go to Thinkstock or leave IS.  Most people earn so much money with IS, they can�t afford to leave, so IS won.

FT seems to think they are in a similar enough position that they can do the same and win too.  A year or two ago, I�m sure they would have, but now, based on what I�ve seen in sales threads, FT is less and less important to many contributors. 

If FT actually starts busting contributors down to white, they are probably just about done as an agency and will be sold in the near future. 

+1

I am sure there are a few macro agencies that would consider anything under a few hundred bucks to be destructive.

Yes. And that's one piece of evidence why the "Fotolia logic" is faulty. They don't seem to know the old phrase "The pot calling the kettle black". Here's a reminder for Chad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_calling_the_kettle_black

This nothing more than blackmail for squeezing some extra bucks from the backs of poor contributors. Do they really think we wouldn't see their real motives?

If FT is having financial trouble (could be because their current low sales volumes), they are doing a major mistake trying to make us pay for their bad business decisions.

While in Spain a few years ago I have pic of my wife in the foreground and two naked (attractive) ladies in the background. Funny how I had my camera set to F18 - purely accidental of course...

I think my camera would have mis-focused in the same situation. "Sorry honey for the blurry pics, some weird back-focus issue!"

You just have to wait, usually one day, sometimes a bit longer.

Chad, just so you know how poorly your agency pays, my 2011 stats tell the truth.  

My 2011 return per download averages so far:
  $U.S.00.60 at Fotolia
  $U.S.00.61 at Shutterstock
  $U.S.01.73 at Dreamstime
  $U.S.02.02 at Istock

So, its not me - it's you who is pushing me into the arms of someone new and promising.

I have uploaded only a part of my portfolio to PhotoDune (I had to start uploading there to compensate for my FT ranking change , and so far my revenue per download has been $0.73.
Fotolia's revenue per download this month has been $0.72.
It definitely can't be PhotoDune Fotolia is talking about.


(SS last month $0.66   IS (inclusive ThinkStock etc.) last month $0.87   DT last month $1.44)

If FT is truly worried about the pricing/royalties on the "cheap" sites but would like to do the right thing, it would be: Make a tick box "I hereby promise that my images are not for sale in the following low-price agencies: ThoughtStock, PhotoSahara etc. etc." and give those contributors that have ticked the box MORE royalties/better canister lever. Punishing without a good reason is just bad business. As someone said earlier, "Honey catches more flies than vinegar."

Don't forget that SS have two aces aces up his sleeve that are kept there for ''bad times''...

1. some sort of exclusivity program.
2. implementation of a credit based system.

I have no idea why they don't already have the "2.". They have Bigstockphoto and On Demands, but no "regular" credit download possibility

Fotolia logic:

When a contributor sells on sites with significantly lower pricing and commissions, we will reset their rank to white to allow for competition. -> By cutting the photographer's royalties we will sell more and get more profit!

The real world logic:

When a contributor sells on sites with significantly lower pricing and commissions, we will reset their rank to white to allow for competition. -> The Photographer will remove his/her portfolio from Fotolia and we don't get ANYTHING. ZERO! ZILCH! NOTHING! (And the customers will go shopping elsewhere)


In a strange way I wish they would put me back at white ranking. It would be the last straw. The final push. I would pull my portfolio and cancel my account. I really don't like the *insult removed* at FT think they can screw everybody the way they like. Then I could freely give them some feedback with some harsh wording and really start a campaign to move customers from FT to... at least somewhere else....

Are the people at FT totally clueless they have been screwing their contributors for a long time and that there is a limit to everything?

P.S. I'm currently uploading my first batches to PhotoDune. I need to compensate for my dropping rank at FT

unknowingly you've created what could be (and obviously is) a very commercially viable image.

At micro sites this image would still be rejected because its "low commercial value"...

C'mon... you sell ELs on FT for 100 and on PD for 5... and you don't see a connection
In my day job I work for a major wholesaler in our field. If a supplier in wholesale did the kind of stunt that you have been doing, they would just get a kick in the a55. I wouldn't touch this kind of suppliers with a 10 foot pole.  

You can't compare physical products with "zeros and ones"