Hi,

Was just wondering if there is any point at all in letting the agencies have 'unnaccepted' images for FREE.  Aren't there ANY perks to it at all?

cheers,

Chris

When one artist a week was chosen to offer a free download from the collection it was effective advertising. Systems where whatever rubbish doesn't make it into the collection is pushed out for free are actually counterproductive, I would have thought.

Great artists hide their mistakes, so what does that say  about people who draw attention to their rejects?

Even though I have offered some images for free over the years for the purposes of promoting my portfolio (don't know if it's been effective overall, but I have seen a bump in sales if my image was free image of the week at a given site). 

But the idea of saying in advance that an image can go to the free section if it's rejected always bothered me.  I would be concerned that if they needed images for the free section, they might reject an image that they otherwise would have accepted.  Maybe that's not how it works, but I prefer my images be accepted or rejected on their merits alone.

The point is to help the agencies build huge collections of free images off of which they'll make money and you won't. 

Quote from: stockastic on October 04, 2012, 17:43

The point is to help the agencies build huge collections of free images off of which they'll make money and you won't.

So true.  I was browsing photoXpress the other day, for the first time.  Isn't this the site that Fotolia sends "free" images?  You have to buy a subscription to download them.  So they are making money on images donated for "free" by contributors.  And as far as I could see there was no link back to the paid Fotolia site, much less the portfolio of the donating contributor.  Struck me as obscene.

I don't know much about photoxpress, but I went there out of curiosity, and I saw you have there many of your photos, some of them bestsellers. I.e.:

http://www.photoxpress.com/stock-photos/people/person/men/725133

Quote from: stockastic on October 04, 2012, 17:43

The point is to help the agencies build huge collections of free images off of which they'll make money and you won't.

So true.  I was browsing photoXpress the other day, for the first time.  Isn't this the site that Fotolia sends "free" images?  You have to buy a subscription to download them.  So they are making money on images donated for "free" by contributors.  And as far as I could see there was no link back to the paid Fotolia site, much less the portfolio of the donating contributor.  Struck me as obscene.

Maybe they didn't intend this when they opened the free site, but I truly believe they discovered how great it is to be a distributer AND a partner at the same time.  We signed up with Fotolia.  They open up a 2nd legal independent corporation, shift our work there and sell it on behalf of Fotolia.  They take their commission, then Fotolia takes their commission of what is left, and we get our pennies. 

Quote from: lisafx on October 05, 2012, 09:51

Quote from: stockastic on October 04, 2012, 17:43

The point is to help the agencies build huge collections of free images off of which they'll make money and you won't.

So true.  I was browsing photoXpress the other day, for the first time.  Isn't this the site that Fotolia sends "free" images?  You have to buy a subscription to download them.  So they are making money on images donated for "free" by contributors.  And as far as I could see there was no link back to the paid Fotolia site, much less the portfolio of the donating contributor.  Struck me as obscene.

Maybe they didn't intend this when they opened the free site, but I truly believe they discovered how great it is to be a distributer AND a partner at the same time.  We signed up with Fotolia.  They open up a 2nd legal independent corporation, shift our work there and sell it on behalf of Fotolia.  They take their commission, then Fotolia takes their commission of what is left, and we get our pennies.

Now they need to open up a 3rd and 4th site and shuttle the images through all of them so that they can skim 99% out of each sale.

Lisa, you are actually correct - PhotoXpress is the free site they started. I don't know if is was the intent from the beginning, but as it gained more traffic, the free content went away, replaced by low cost subscription plans. It's still Fotolia's site, but now it's another model.

Thanks, it's a relief to know I wasn't totally off base.  I must say, with the scope of what's on there, I am relieved it wasn't free after all.  Initially, thinking it was all free, I was horrified at the good quality images on there. 

My friend who was looking for freebies eventually discovered what we all know - there is no free lunch.  She ended up paying for a very nice vector on one of the micros. 

Yay!  Another freebie hunter has been turned into a paying customer