Fotolia 2010 Pricing and Royalty Structure

Fotolia has published the price structure for the next year. They are going to cut royalties but to increase prices with the result that “a majority of contributing artists will continue to see increases in the total dollar amounts earned as we are raising prices”. Royalties for videos and subscriptions plans will remain unchanged from 2009 pricing. Here I post the last Fotolia newsletter (with some good performance data) and then I'm going to compare the present structure with the new one.

Dear Fotolia Contributor,

2009 has been an amazing year for all of us – through aggressive marketing and promotion efforts, we were able to more than double photographer payouts! We're planning on repeating that trend in 2010 – and effective January 1, 2010, we're implementing some changes to help us towards that goal.

File Prices:
While XS downloads will remain at 1 credit, other downloads will increase between 1 and 2 credits per file. In addition, we'll be simplifying the file structure and combining the XXL and XXXL categories. For more information on file pricing, click here.

Commission Structure:
To accomplish our marketing and promotional goals, we've adjusted our artist commission structures. While some levels have increased and others have decreased in terms of percentages, a majority of contributing artists will continue to see increases in the total dollar amounts earned as we are raising prices. In comparison, Fotolia continues to pay artists one of the highest royalty rates in the industry, and we've been cited by many top photographers as one of the fastest growing and most important stock photography sites on the internet! For more information, click here.

Marketing and Promotions:
Fotolia has been aggressively marketing and promoting your images, vectors and videos, both online at various designer sites, and offline in the world's most influential design magazines and tradeshows. Typically, we offer customers a combination of free credits and discount on credits. Rest assured that these discounted and free credits earn you the exact same royalty as regularly priced credits – Fotolia bears the entire cost of the promotion. In 2010, we expect to be even more aggressive in our marketing activities for the entire community's benefit.

Performance 2008 –> 2009
+47,51 % New Buyers
+52,96% Credit Purchases
+53,92% Contributor Earnings
+56,287% Contributor Payouts
+203% API Calls
+15 Trade Shows

Let's compare the two pricing structure, we use the non-exclusive tables to exemplify

Here the results, from white to emerald level, of the percentage variation of commissions (for XXL/XXXL comparison: XXXL value is used for 2009 reference, so we have the worst case). As we can see, there is an overall royalty increase, if you don’t sell just XS files… We we’ll be waiting for the buyers reactions.

For a comprehensive comparison of the subscription plans among the agencies, I suggest to read the Tyler's article on Microstockgroup Blog, Which Microstock Agency has the Best Subscription Plan?