Microstock agency Fotolia seems to be dedicated to expand their offer in the video section. As they just announced, they will reward video downloads with a faster rise in the ranking system, allowing contributors to earn more money quicker.
Video downloads worth five downloads
As was announced in Fotolia's blog, from now on video downloads will count as five downloads towards their ranking system which defines the percentage a single contributors earns from their licensed content. So far each credit based image download counts towards a raise in the system while a subscription download only counts 1/4 of a regular download.
With the new system, Fotolia wants to make its video system more attractive to contributors as it will allow them to advance quicker to higher royalty levels. The video royalties are already higher than those for images, ranging from 30% on the base level to 40% on the Sapphire Level for contributors with more than 100,000 downloads.
But the change also comes handy for multi-media contributors as they will help to advance image royalties quicker which start at 20% for the base level but, for example, the gold level requires 10,000 downloads already pays 31%. With video downloads counting towards that ranking, they might add up much quicker to help contributors also earn better from their image licenses.
Changes might challenge Pond5 and Shutterstock as market leaders
This is after Fotolia already had unofficially said last year that they removed video from their standard subscription and introduced new subscription plans only for corporate clients at a minimum price of 25 credits per video. The low royalty fees paid for subscription download on videos had put off some contributors from uploading to Fotolia. Now they might have extra motivation to catch up with Pond5 and Shutterstock in that area.
