Hello Mat,

i think there are some msitakes.

First of all there is no new market, Fotolia target an existing market.

The customer can download the images on demand and thats no sub, ok. But we get sub paid. And the different to daily subs is immense. The custome load images he dont need, so he loads many images, at the dpc he loads only what he needs,...for on dollar and one sub sale.

Thats a big difference.

We need a midstock! Not more cheaper and cheaper.

Sorry for bad english.

I have a mail from fotolia:


    
 
       
    
Dear contributor,
 
You probably heard that we have launched Dollar Photo Club . We would like to share with you what we aim to do at Fotolia with Dollar Photo Club (DPC) and how it works. Lots of information have been circulated and first we would like to lay out the facts, so you can take the best informed decision. Whatever that decision might be we will always respect it and should you wish to opt out from DPC or stay, you now simply need to select the right option here.
 
Here are the facts about Dollar Photo Club
The offer
Dollar Photo Club is a subscription model. Clients register and pay with their credit card, subscribing for a monthly or yearly rolling contract. Renewal rate so far has been close to 90% meaning people use it as a real subscription
Price per image is $1 for a standard license, which means up to 5x times higher than the daily-quota or monthly-quota subscriptions sold by main actors on the market nowadays
Payouts
Dollar Photo Club payouts are the same than any subscription at Fotolia and basically depend on your rank. Payouts range from 25 cents to 40 cents, which is well in line with the market
Dollar Photo Club sales count towards your ranking at Fotolia, increasing your level of commission. Being part of Dollar Photo Club will increase both your sales AND your commission level
At Dollar Photo Club, contrary to standard subscriptions, unused downloads never expire. That is a very different model than standard subscriptions, where agencies get all the money from unused downloads. As a result, DollarPhotoClub is a subscription model where a higher percentage of money spent goes to the photographer.
Licensing
Photos at Dollar Photo Club are sold under a standard commercial license, with a recent update limiting the print-runs to just 500k, inline with the market. Full licence terms can be seen here: http://r.fotolia.com/redirect/h3w0hrn3yzm2bcpdrmcfzf/us.dollarphotoclub.com/Info/RoyaltyFreeLicense
All Dollar Photo Club licenses are mono-seat and do not grant any extended rights
Extended license (to come)An extended license will be added shortly that should be very similar to Fotolia�s in term of pricing, and payments to contributors.
Why did we launch Dollar Photo Club?

At Fotolia, our aim is to take microstock to the next level: going after the millions of companies around the world who don't purchase yet any license for the images they use, especially in new markets.  We estimate to millions of downloads a day what could be the market tomorrow. That's why we have launched DPC and we spend lot of time, efforts and money in educating markets and promoting your images.  We truly believe that the stock market is only at an early stage and we need you to build a sustainable win-win business profitable to all of us.
From monitoring of customer spend on Dollar Photo Club since we began trading three months ago we have confirmed that client spending has been consistently higher, than traditional on-demand client spend in an entire year. We firmly believe this proves how a simple affordable offer helps to increase usage and spend, all of which is good for the market. By converting illegal users of images to paying clients, the microstock market ten times bigger � imagine that! This is what Dollar Photo Club wants to achieve.

Please be assured that we highly appreciate your trust and are absolutely aware that this business would be nothing without the hard work, creativity and trust of all of you.

You have been one of the first to put your trust in the microstock model; hopefully you will trust our belief in the potential of the microstock market to grow and flourish to ten times its current size.

Thank you
 
The Fotolia Team
 
 

But he is not an official fotolia speaker, so they have say nothing.

Quote from: gostwyck on April 28, 2014, 15:51

Quote from: MatHayward on April 27, 2014, 12:27

Hi All,

I can tell you with 100% confidence that the Fotolia team cares very much for the photographers and respects your opinions and feedback.  Your concerns about being in Dollar Photo Club have been heard and I�ve been told that soon an option for contributors to choose will be made available to all Fotolia contributors. In the meantime if you do not want your images sold through Dollar Photo Club send your request via a Fotolia customer support  ticket and you will be manually removed.

A couple of points of interest.  Contrary to what has been posted earlier in this thread, every dollar spent by a Dollar Photo Club member goes towards a download.  Every image downloaded at DPC is paid to the artist through Fotolia immediately.  Monthly members pay $10 per month and receive 10 downloads.  Annual members pay $99 and receive 99 downloads.  Each of those downloads pay a commission to the contributing artist. 
 
Something you may not have considered is that the Dollar Photo Club membership actually is more beneficial to the contributors than traditional subscriptions.  In a traditional subscription if the sub expires, unused downloads also expire. As a result, no commission is paid.  At Dollar Photo Club, even after a member cancels their subscription they can use their unused downloads. As a result, a higher percentage of money spent goes to the photographer. 

Another misconception is the license.  The license sold via Dollar Photo Club is a Standard license.  Members that need Extended licenses are referred to Fotolia to purchase them.  Soon an Extended License will be made available to Dollar Photo Club members at rates similar to those at Fotolia.
 
The simple truth of the matter is this.  The only way for Fotolia and/or Dollar Photo Club to be successful is for the contributors to be successful.  Regardless of what has been written in msg, the interests of FT and of the contributors are aligned.  The goal for all parties involved is to drive sales.  Dollar Photo Club has already proven to be successful and has resulted in many sales paid out to contributors.  The site will continue to grow and to push sales in a positive direction for all of us. 

-Mat Hayward

I have to say I'm really disappointed that this post from Mat was marked down so many times it has been made 'invisible'. Mat's only trying to help us here by clarifying the issues and I appreciate his efforts in doing so.

Let's not 'shoot the messenger' so to speak just because we disagree with FT's somewhat desperate new policies.

I agree. I mentioned something along these lines earlier. Honestly Matt is doing us a favor by communicating with FT and cycling it back down to us.

But why is fotolia not communicating directly with us?

Are there agencies who built the symbiostocksites? I�m full-time photographer and have no idea in symbiostocksite building. Is there a service?

130 deactivated today

I think you are wrong. Everithing is good, its a protest. And a sign. If you delete the account, why istock would concern?

So stupid:

Google Drive users can indeed use these images for commercial work but it must remain within a Google Drive product.



And who will control this???

Hey, i want to deactivate my files too, but how can i do this?