Extremely heavy competition among contributors, sales drop despite heavy uploading, tricky stock agencies manipulating our royalties, and the devaluation of our stock vectors and photos have been among all the bad news we have had in the past 2 years. We are demoralized by all these and got very fed up. Every other time when a stock agency wrote to us, we will be expecting for another cut. Not this time, though :)
First, ever since Adobe has taken over Fotolia, good news have been limping over and over again for contributors. Adobe raised our royalty ranking to one level higher for everyone - a very generous move. This is a big increase to our overall earning. Apart from that, Adobe has "cut ties" with the ludicrous DPC (DollarPhotoClub). I have also been witnessing an increase of Extended License and total number of sales at Fotolia too. I really hope this trend can continue for a longer period of time.
Secondly today, IStock-Getty is giving us a raise to our subscription royalties rate. Although, I really don't like the idea of "mini-subscriptions", but a raise, is nevertheless, still a raise. Furthermore, a credit sales download at iStock only yield us about $1.60. Given that iStock is now "forcing" buyers to commit to 10 or 25 downloads a month which yield $1.00 per mini subscription download, it may actually result in a higher total revenue at the end of the day.
