For the life of me I cannot find an E-Mail address to contact Envato (Photodune).

Does anyone have a contact E-Mail?

Thanks in advance.

@click_click Lots of good questions here, thanks for writing. I'll do my best to answer them all for you.


Is it fair to ask WHY there need to be two separate sites to handle ONE account?

You don't need to use the portal. It is a new tool that has been created in an effort to speed up the workflow of contributors but it is not mandatory for you to use. You can continue to use the Fotolia upload process as normal. Your content will still be available through Adobe Stock even if you never visit the Adobe Stock Contributor Portal.

I haven't done the activation on Adobe yet but I have seen here that apparently there is a limitation on Adobe when it comes to Extended License pricing...? Am I correct that if I submit on Adobe that I can only set the EL to 80 credits max, while on Fotolia I can set it to 100?

That is correct. Extended license prices are fixed at $79.99 on Adobe Stock for all contributors except for the Premium collection. The commission rate for all is 33% on these sales. At Fotolia if you are ranked silver or higher you can set your Extended license prices between 30 credits and 100 credits. Your commission is determined by your rank.


First, why is it different?

Are you referring to the Extended License prices? If so, I wasn't involved in those discussions so I can't be sure. I can see why it would be beneficial from a customers perspective to have a more consistent price structure across the system on content.

Secondly, is this the beginning of a planned transition to ONE Adobe account while Fotolia will be shut down in a year or two? Would that mean that this automatically will lead to a new EL pricing?

Not to my knowledge. Fotolia is still the #1 agency in Europe providing great service to a large customer base. Both sites are running independently of each other so as a contributor you get the advantages of both agencies.

Again, why two sites to handle one account? It just don't get it. Many questions.

See my answer above.

Also the wording to switch to Adobe ("(which we would highly recommend you to do so!)") makes me feel icky.


I think the quote you are referencing was regarding the sync process when you first sign in to the contributor portal. If you don't sync your Adobe ID to your Fotolia account the system will create a new account for you and you will be starting fresh at Adobe Stock. Your stats and rank will not carry over. Since you can only sync on the first visit I felt it was important to emphasize the importance.

Thanks again for the questions,

Mat Hayward

Thanks Mat for taking the time to answer my questions.

Regarding my question regarding the different EL prices on Fotolia and Adobe.
As you have mentioned from a buyer's point of view it would make more sense to be consistent as it is ONE collection which is accessible on two completely different domain names. I would expect Adobe to be quite aware of such a discrepancy - hence the follow up question if this is an indication that eventually one site (I would assume Fotolia) would be shut down just so that the one collection can only be accessed through Adobe at one price point without any confusion.

I don't want to see Fotolia go away, I just don't get the one collection,  two sites (and price points) decision.

Just my two cents.

In most places, you can get away with paying tax in your original country, until you've been in the new country for six months. That's why you don't need to pay tax to a dozen different countries if you do a round the world trip for a couple of months. Perfectly legal.

Yes, that would be ok if I was touring the world using my tourist Visa which I could be doing for even a longer period of time than 6 months (as a citizen of Germany and being German for example).

However, I actually moved to Switzerland so I had to get my situation sorted out eventually anyway, so I did it right away. Hopefully it makes me look less suspicious to tax authorities etc. - just trying to play by the rules.

Regarding your other comments:
Yes, I've been looking at the "Royalties" section.

The category does play a role, that's correct. So in my W-8BEN that I filed online on SS for example it automatically states images at 0% and the footage at 30%. I didn't even thave to "think". So it appears to be pre-configured in their tax center database.

Isn't that tax rate a matter of a citizenship? Or you've changed yours one and your IDs recently?

I have to pay taxes where I live not where I was born.

There are countries where you have to pay taxes to the government where you were born, regardless where you live but only under certain circumstances.

I recently moved from Germany to Switzerland and now it appears that I will lose 30% of my footage sales due to the paragraph 12(1) (W-BEN) regarding Motion Pictures.

Needless to say that this is a real bummer as footage is my bread and butter and I was wondering if it's true.

I found online a PDF from Corbis to help photographers fill out their W-BEN forms with a list of countries and their respective tax withholding rates. Switzerland is listed with both 0% for images and motion picture. What gives?

How is that possible? I got hit with this 30% deduction at SS, VB, 123RF so far.

Does anyone here know a photographer/videographer in Switzerland that I may be able to get in touch with? It appears that photographers in Switzerland do not sell stock photos or footage - at least I couldn't find any.

Oh and does anyone have a link to the IRS website that lists all the countries with their respective rates of tax withholding? I just seem to be unable to find it.

I don't know if it's just me but since a few days now I have big issues accessing their contributor site (from Switzerland).

Sometimes it just takes a long time to load a page but right now it's like an endless loop.

All other sites work fine for me.

It's Belize. Not Brelize.

Freedom wrote "Berlize" not "Brelize"!!!

- Make sure you have a sturdy tripod, all screws tightened
- Make sure the tripod is standing rock solid (not on a slope, sand or uneven ground which may cause slight slipping of the tripod legs)
- try not to extend the tripod all the way. Keep the tripod low to make it even more stable.
- Wind can cause camera shake even on the best tripods
- Autofucs was never a problem for me even when there were bright lights. 30 second exposures and more are no problem at all.
- Do not release the shutter by pressing the shutter button. Either use the timer to release it or use a remote trigger (preferably Infrared)
- Turn off IS or VR on your lens
- No idea if your camera is mirrorless but even the movement of the mirror moving can cause blurriness (especially if the camera is not mounted tightly)
- Obivously do not touch the camera during exposure

... But I imagine for some of you who have huge portfolios with 10K+ images, losses of 50-100 files could have gone unnoticed. It seems SS not only ran the bot to scan our images for supposed spammy titles, but what is worse, they actually silently deleted some images. And the worst part is that they did not even tell us which ones they deleted and there is no way to figure it out because it is not reported anywhere. I urge you to check your portfolio because this stuff is getting really ugly.

I get that feeling as well. I have around 5000 items on sale and I upload almost on a daily basis. My numbers keep changing all the time so I don't remember what my actual count was before this email.

Now I cannot figure out if any images have been removed. 

Has anybody's additional info been "approved" after they requested it?

Why are some of you mentioning that you "have to" upload your ID?

I got the email as well and I was able to provide links to my personal web site and social network which was an option on that Pond5 form.

Of course I wouldn't send sensitive information over an unsecure connection.

I only shared what I would share with a stranger or what anyone could find on Google anyways.

I also thought it's a fishy way to address contributors using a "click here" button. All major companies (Paypal, ebay etc.) emphasize that thex would NEVER ask you that information in an email using a link!!! This should be mentioned in the contributor panel on Pond5.com.

I'll write them anyways to let them know that this is a suspicious way to get additional info about someone.

Did you check if that link to the Motion Elements website is actually taking you there and not re-routing you to a fake Motion Elements phishing page?

Is this your first payout at ME?