I joined Fotolia in 2006, and am Emerald in rank.  My sales graph for FT shows a perfect bell curve from 2006 to now - sales initially grew rapidly, peaking in 2010, and have since declined just as dramatically, currently back to my 2008 levels and still falling.  Since the decline started my sales have not improved at all whether I've uploaded regularly or not. 

I'm very glad for all the newer contributors who are doing well - just a word of warning that you should be wary of doing too well - if you work like crazy and manage to climb their mountain, instead of supporting your efforts they give you a boot up the backside and push you back down the other side.  Oh, and they deny doing it, of course.

Quote from: robynmac on November 12, 2013, 15:19

I joined Fotolia in 2006, and am Emerald in rank.  My sales graph for FT shows a perfect bell curve from 2006 to now - sales initially grew rapidly, peaking in 2010, and have since declined just as dramatically, currently back to my 2008 levels and still falling.  Since the decline started my sales have not improved at all whether I've uploaded regularly or not. 

I'm very glad for all the newer contributors who are doing well - just a word of warning that you should be wary of doing too well - if you work like crazy and manage to climb their mountain, instead of supporting your efforts they give you a boot up the backside and push you back down the other side.  Oh, and they deny doing it, of course.

To be honest I doubt if they've done themselves any favours either. Most times that significant contributors lose out then so does the agency. I suspect that one of the major reasons that Yuri and Andres recently defected to 'pretend exclusivity' was their inability to grow their income at FT. If they, like you and I, were back down to 2008 levels of sales then it is hardly surprising.

You make good points.  I live in hope that as a company they achieve the level of success they deserve.