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Fotolia - how is this place from a vendor's POV ?

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David Zeno

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Hi everyone,

I came across a website called Fotolia.com , it's a stock photography website, and I guess there are many of them.

My question: they have many plans available to a photographer, one of which locks you into selling your work ONLY THROUGH them.

If somebody chooses this option, then you cannot sell the same image, to iStockPhoto, or FotoSearch, or ShutterStock.

If you lock in exclusively, from what I understand, you make more profit off of each photo you sell, however, is this good locking yourself to only one service like this ?

If you have any ideas, suggestions, etc, I'd like to hear from you

Thanks !

Dave.
 
Hello and good morning. It was suggested to me to post this in this forum,
instead of the original forum I posted in ( retouching )

Thanks for any help, for those who use these online places to sell your photographs.

Dave.
 
You will be selling images for pennies. Before entering microstock, you'd better do your research, and a lot of it. There are some who make an ok income at micro, but only because they know how to shoot for that market and have some strategies in place. For those entering this arena blindly, shooting microstock is in 9 out of 10 cases a huge disappointment.

Fotolia is generally down on the list of preferred agencies for many microstockers because of the way they have shafted their contributors via lowered commissions and offering of low priced subscription plans. With sub plans at Fotolia, I think images can go as low as 14 cents.

My sister does some micro, that's how I get the dirt. It's only a very small part of what she does though. She gave Fotolia the boot earlier this year - not worth her time. She now is exclusive with iStockphoto.

For micro stuff you can go here

http://www.microstockgroup.com/

but it's mostly a lot of whining.
 
hi david,

ray is right, there is hardly any money to make in micro stock, I see micro stock either as a stock photographers learning ground, or a place where people can dump their photos. there are a couple of really nice pictures on many micro stock sites, but in my job as advertising art director i find myself more often searching on getty images than on istockphoto, simply because the quality is much better (not in a technical sense, but in an artistic sense). veer has even better images, and i recently discovered gallerystock.com which just blew my mind.

i would suggest you take a really good look at the whole thing, and think about the fact that you can not make a living from microstock... do you have a plan B? or is it just a hobby of yours?

--
Joergen Geerds
http://luminous-newyork.com
http://joergengeerds.com
http://newyorkpanorama.com
 
Exclusivity is of absolutely no value in the Micro Stock Market because it is a penny ante market. No one goes to Microstock to license a unique photo. Exclusivity is only of value when your images are not generic, that is, like a million other images. The Micro stock agencies deal in high volume - low priced images. Very, very, very few people make good money supplying images for Micro Stock. The Micro Stock agency does not care if you make a dime. If you supply a "seller" it makes money, if you do not, it does not lose money. And besides that, you probably can make more money selling prints at a local flea market.

--
Richard Weisgrau
http://www.weisgrau.com
 
I think only one in a thousand makes a useful return from microstock and that is probably too optimistic. Unfortunately it has forced down the price of stock in general so now even the higher end images are sold for far too little, but remember your costs and time spent preparing images are still there, so stock is a great way to lose time and money for a photographer these days.

The previous comment about making more money selling prints at a flee market wasn't sarcasm. I know a few photographers who sell a few prints in markets or at coffee shops etc. who earn far more that way than they do with 1000+ images selling online as stock around the world.

--
http://www.ashleykaryl.com
http://www.nudephotopro.com/blog
 
wow, some great responses there, and I thank everyone for them.

I am doing this as a hobby, I am not a professional, but I was looking at Fotolia and saw many photos I was capable of shooting, I do some product photos for fun, and some of them were pretty good, I and figured it would be fun to post them on these sites, if it doesn't cost me anything.

My eyes are open now, and I thank everyone for their input.

so when the term "micro stock" this refers to ALL the online agencies that will try and sell your works for you, and this includes istockphoto I'm guessing.

I did do some searching with google and found out that even Fotolia is very very picky with what images they even select from your uploads, and 95% of them can be rejected. So even if you have a great image, they could deem it as something they already have, and not allow it into their database, even if it is a truly great photo.

microstockgroup is the place to go to hear horror stories I guess :-(

Thanks for the eye opener !

Dave.
 
well, istockphoto belongs to gettyimages.com, so that may give you an opportunity into "real stock photography". Veer.com also has a microstock option called marketplace, and they promote it very heavily by displaying them along regular stock in each image search. i would say that those 2 might be your best bet, otherwise i would keep my fingers off it.
(disclaimer: I am not a (micro) stock photographer)

--
Joergen Geerds
http://luminous-newyork.com
http://joergengeerds.com
http://newyorkpanorama.com
 
As a keen 'in free-time only' photographer, I thought I'd try out microstock about a year ago.

You can see how my earnings have been going by looking at the top-right of my blogsite, where I update it with my earnings - http://richardwatersphotography.blogspot.com/ . As you can see, for me, Fotolia is well behind the others.

As others have suggested, going exclusive is unlikely to be beneficial unless you're very sure you have a unique/rare aspect to your imagery. If you avoid the exclusive contracts, you can upload the same image to as many microstock sites as you like (as royalty-free images).

My conclusion so far is that it's probably not worth the effort required to upload and keyword the images from a purely financial sense. However, there are great upsides in improving ones photography (rejected images usually come with useful commentary), as well as a nice feeling that someone, somewhere, is happy to pay for one of my images (albeit only $0.25 !!)

Richard.
 
Alamy has been good for me.

Not a micro but you can sell RF if you wish.

David L. Moore
--
Professional Photographic Services
http://www.moore-photo.com
 
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