http://www.fotolia.com/id/8801232

How is that image possibly allowed?  It's in the INFINITE collection *!  Shouldn't it be checked? Am I missing something obvious?

Many of the Infinity collection images that I've seen are old and dated. I've even seen one with a 1990's laptop in the shot. I reckon they are often  cast-offs from old RM and RF collections and receive little or no scrutiny from the 'rejectors'. The price level must be hugely off-putting to anyone searching for an image at microstock prices. There are usually two or more on every search page and I regard them as visual dilution of genuine microstockers' images. Cannot imagine that any are sold at those prices when a buyers is looking for micro.

The Labour Charter of 1927, promulgated by the Grand Council of Fascism, stated in article 7:
"The corporative State considers private initiative, in the field of production, as the most efficient and useful instrument of the Nation," then goes on to say in article 9 that: "State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when are at stakes the political interest of the State. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement or direct management."

Or take one contributor at FT, Ioannis Kounadeas, sapphire with 246 images of plasticine man. Amazing.

Had a good Feb too. Despite having stopped subs for about 2 weeks..........restarted because I thought  ppd's were going down too. Uploaded no more than 8 images since start of 2010/no rejections but also not a single sale on any image uploaded since beginning of January (mostly food but perhaps a little too specific).

The FT case for subs.............from their Newsletter this month........can also be read on their blog:

"Visibility
By following the rules above, you will achieve a better visibility. But there are further tips to increase your visibility:

1. By allowing the sales in subscription you will improve the ratio sold/views for each one of your contents. When a subscription customer wants to buy your image and you don�t allow the sale in subscription, your content will be marked at 0 sold for 1 view. The ratio sold/view is an important criteria within our search engine. Images that are sold each time they are viewed receive a better visibility in the results page."

So, subs can be regarded as a bit of personal promotion. The price may be low but you're lucky we don't charge you for it.

Eventually, there will be no monetary commission. Instead we'll receive Fotolia Credits, which have no cash value, but can be accumulated to get cool prizes like maybe a Fotolia tote bag or a Fotolia coffee mug.

Perhaps instead of credits they will be called Chad.............."Chad are more commonly seen in mundane, everyday settings. When a hole punch of the functional or decorative type is used, it removes a small amount of paper - a chad. Chad are also common in stores, where holes are punched so that merchandise can be hung on pegs or clips. Chad are also the small strips, pieces of paper or shred waste that remain of the documents fed through a paper shredder.[3] Chad can also be the result of punching holes in any sort of thin material, such as cloth, plastic, or even sheet metal."

Wiki
 

Quote from: OM on February 19, 2010, 17:59

As Gostwyck suggested a couple of weeks ago, they could be preparing to get 'absorbed' by aliens.

This would be the second law of thermodynamics applied to �stock. Ultimately, we will all end up as subs on thinkstock.

Excellent! 

It would be funny if it weren't true.

As Gostwyck suggested a couple of weeks ago, they could be preparing to get 'absorbed' by aliens. Boosting the bottom line and (maybe it's just me) acceptance rate has been remarkably high since Oct/Nov 2009. "All the better to be eaten with, grandmama."

Beam me up, Scotty.

Quote from: OM on February 17, 2010, 05:49

I'm nearly 2 weeks into a subsless existence but it seems like the rate of PpD is dropping off from its previous tempo. It's too short a time to judge and, quite honestly, my portfolio is too small but I'm keeping a wary eye on it.

I'm pretty sure that opting out of subs, even if you could, would impact on the sort-order position of your images and therefore affect PPD sales too. As far as I'm aware a sub-sale still counts for the purposes of assessing the popularity of an image. I doubt that the impact would become evident within a couple weeks though.

The fact that FT were relatively slow to introduce subs (as indeed were IS via Getty/Thinkstock) suggests to me that agencies, generally speaking, don't like subs any more than their contributors do. However there is obviously a significant market for subs and presumably the agencies find them profitable.

Thanks for that info about sort order of images. I've checked on views/per day and there is no detectable change yet. On the other hand, from my tiny portfolio, I was often getting 2 or 3 PPD per day and the odd subs download. PPD sales were regular until I stopped subs. Now I have the feeling that they're less regular. I give it a month and report back with some figures.

Quote from: OM on February 13, 2010, 07:39

Just over one third of my sales are subs/premium subs there but these amount to a total of about 1/10th of my yearly earnings. Only got a small portfolio and have just canceled subs last week.........give it a month and see how it affects regular sales. Sometimes with new uploads, I get the impression (never applied the rigors of statistical analysis to it) that subs sales may lead to real sales sometimes.
Often a subs sale is followed a few hours later with an L or XL sale. Cannot be the same buyer because they already get L size in their subscription. It's puzzling. I'm wondering if subs buyers maybe get a daily view of all new accepted files that are in subs whereas regular buyers have to search for them??

(my emphasis)
What do you mean you "cancelled subs"?  AFAIK you can't cancel, or opt out of subs on Fotolia unless you are exclusive.  Are you exclusive at Fotolia?  l

For most of us we are stuck with subs on the sites that have them.

Yes. I'm getting a feel for things slowly and I have neither the time nor inclination to submit to the other larger agencies just yet.

I never read much of the sales information in FT since they stopped showing the buyer's name (so I would see if I could find it in use).  Then today I entered that page and noticed a "Credit for subscription based photo sale by reseller", and found out this subs earnings came from a Norwegian company called Scanpix.

http://scanpix.no/

I can't see the prices in the English page, but there is something in the Norwegian page (Leaf, can you check that?). I also wasn't able to find my imagethere.

The only images I could find on the scanpix site appeared to be designated 'folio RM' when I ran the mouse over them. They had a total of around 21,000 images.

I've now moved my images out of subs with FT. Payment for the contributor was just too derisory for the size of image. That won't affect them in any way and I'll have to see if it affects my regular downloads.

I'm on UK, requested payment last month, got Paypal through yesterday. No deductions because I filled out W8 (or something form) last year. No ITIN requested. No probs.

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.