Fotolia v2 - upgrades and payrise [updated]

[update - Fotolia have delayed the launch of their new site. They hope to get it up this weekend now. At least they postponed the upgrade rather than go through with it in an imcomplete state. Hopefully it will be up this weekend as it has been painfully slow their for the past week.]


30/5/2007 - The long awaited upgrade to Fotolia is nearly here.

The biggest news is that there is a payrise. While commission % are not changing, 1 credit which use to be worth US$1 is now worth US$1.36. Time will tell whether this effects the amount of downloads (ie. people buy less because it costs more) but it shouldn't which means that we get a 36% payrise - GREAT!

Other changes at Fotolia include more servers, a recode of the site, scrapping the exclusive buy out, a Database clean out and vector support. There have been a few complaints about the speed of the website (which can be extremely slow - very off putting for buyers - so hopefully this upgrade will address this issue.

I will give some more feedback once it is online.

From Fotolias blog:

Exclusive Buy Out license

Due to fraud issues and declining buyer interest, we have removed the Exclusive Buyout licenses. New licensing models will be introduced soon

Credit Value

We finally feel it is time to raise our prices however it will not be a drastic change. 1 credit will now cost $1.36 . This value is more accurate and equal to our other international countries who use the Euro as a basis of payment. This should be good news for photographers who will now see a 30% increase in commissions overnight.

Data base clean up

It is time for us to clean the database. Since the beginning of Fotolia, the quality of images has really increased. We have received millions of images and it is now the time to clean the database and give a chance to new images that sell as good as the oldest ones. Quality is and always will be the key to attract good buyers. After the launch of V2, images with no sales for 18 consecutive months will be removed from the Fotolia database.

Prices Changes

To simplify and improve the efficiency of the customer experience we have developed a new pricing system in V2. This new pricing model will bring in more customers and thus more commissions for all photographers.



New version

The Fotolia team is very excited about the V2 release. We have totally rebuilt the core code and infrastructure of the Fotolia website however maintaining pretty much the same design. V2 will increase stability, performance, and allow for new future opportunities. Searching, editing, and uploading have all been optimized to increase speed, accuracy, and performance. Some of the new features will include Vector support (SVG Files), image folder organization, and a flash upload system. Additional details will be published immediately following the V2 release to more fully describe the new features.