Review of Fotolia Microstock
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The microstock agency Fotolia, and recently Adobe Stock – is a relatively young international French stock photo agency operating since early 2005. You may ask, how can it be called young if it has been around since 2005? True, its experience is quite extensive, but leading stock photo sites appeared even earlier. Therefore, compared to top microstocks, Fotolia is still considered a relatively young platform.
Despite its youth, Fotolia (Adobe Stock) operates quite stably and almost always ranks among the top three highest-paying microstock agencies.
Fotolia Contributor Exam
The Fotolia (Adobe Stock) agency is generally recommended for beginners starting their microstock journey, as there is no entry exam on Fotolia, and the site’s reviewers are quite loyal when moderating the submitted works.
Fotolia accepts images with a minimum size of 4 megapixels, so keep that in mind.
What Can You Sell on Fotolia?
On this microstock you can sell JPG photos, 3D visualizations, and vector illustrations in EPS format (packed as a ZIP archive together with a JPG preview).
Image sales through the stock photo site are carried out under the following license types:
- Royalty Free (RF)
- Extended Royalty Free (ExtRF)
The prices for images range from $1 to $80 under the standard Royalty-Free license, and from $20 to $200 under the Extended Royalty-Free license. In addition, Fotolia introduced a contributor ranking system depending on the number of completed sales.
Therefore, income on Fotolia (Adobe Stock) depends both on your rank and the type of license sold.
Earnings represent a percentage of the sale price, with the percentage level tied to the contributor’s rank.
| Number of Sales | Symbol | Rank |
| Up to 100 |  |
White |
| From 100 to 1,000 |  |
Bronze |
| From 1,000 to 10,000 |  |
Silver |
| From 10,000 to 25,000 |  |
Gold |
| From 25,000 to 100,000 |  |
Emerald |
| From 100,000 to 250,000 |  |
Sapphire |
| From 250,000 to 1,000,000 |  |
Rubis |
| More than 1,000,000 |  |
Diamond |
As you can see from the table above, the more sales you have, the higher your rank on Fotolia (Adobe Stock). The following table shows royalty rates for each rank on the microstock platform:
| Maximum Sale Price | ||||||||||
| Rank | Contributor’s Royalty Percentage | Standard License | Extended | |||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
| White | |
30 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 20 |
| Bronze | |
32 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 | 50 |
| Silver | |
34 | 3 | 6 | 12 | 15 | 18 | 21 | 24 | 100 |
| Gold | |
36 | 4 | 8 | 16 | 20 | 24 | 28 | 32 | 150 |
| Emerald | |
38 | 5 | 10 | 20 | 25 | 30 | 35 | 40 | 200 |
| Sapphire | |
40 | 6 | 12 | 24 | 30 | 36 | 42 | 48 | 200 |
| Rubis | |
42 | 7 | 14 | 28 | 35 | 42 | 49 | 56 | 200 |
| Diamond | |
44 | 10 | 20 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 200 |
Thus, contributor royalties on Fotolia range from 30% to 44% of the sale price of each image.
How to Withdraw Earnings from Fotolia?
Earnings on Fotolia can be withdrawn via Moneybookers electronic payment system and PayPal (processing takes about 15–20 days). In addition, you can withdraw money from Fotolia via a personal check (sent by mail, can be cashed in most banks).
The minimum payout amount is only $50. Among leading stock sites, Fotolia (Adobe Stock) has one of the lowest withdrawal thresholds, which is great news, since reaching the first payout takes time for beginners, while the desire to get money comes fast.
A Small Downside of Fotolia
After describing how great Fotolia is, it’s worth mentioning a small drawback. To withdraw your first earnings from Fotolia, you’ll need to send them a scanned copy of your international passport.
As an alternative, if you don’t have such a document, you can use a relative’s or friend’s scan – but in that case, the registration on Fotolia must also be done under their name, and the check will be issued to them.
However, once you start withdrawing funds via Moneybookers or PayPal, after you receive the money from Fotolia into your wallet, you can transfer it later to your own accounts. So, that small drawback isn’t too bad after all.
This article is available in the following categories: About Microstocks, Fotolia
It seems to me that Fotolia is some kind of scam; let’s start with the fact that until you pay for points or a subscription, you can’t upload anything, and the photographer cannot understand whether he meets the professionalism standards or not. The uploaded photos are apparently checked by a robot because the reason for rejection is always the same (the formula) – allegedly many defects, lack of focus, excessive processing, and the photo check takes at least 3 days. I understood that the check for plagiarism only includes photos from this site because I downloaded a very high-quality photo from the internet, uploaded it to Fotolia, and it was rejected for lack of focus, even though this photo featured a city view (there is no focal object, in principle). The site has an unclear interface. Upon initial registration, I could not find the link to the “Author Zone”; I found it by chance on the forum. As a result, not a single photo was accepted, and I spent 11 dollars.
Honestly, I am very disappointed with Fotolia. I sent photos there that sell on Shutter, particularly a texture – brown leather. Everything is clear, the color is perfect, no lighting issues, 15MB.
They rejected it. They write some nonsense:
* Out of focus/blurred image
* Excessive/insufficient exposure
* Image cropping
Do not crop the object/background too close to the edge of the image.
* Colors too saturated or insufficiently saturated
* Unbalanced contrast
* Noise/Pixels
* Interpolation issues
* Issues with effects
Use effects with caution (buyers often prefer to add effects themselves).
* Size issue
The image size must be between 4 to 50 megapixels.
It’s pure idiocy! How can you crop too close to the edge? What size issues are there?
If it continues like this, I might delete my entire portfolio((
Fotolia seems more like a scam than a honest stock agency. They look for good shots worldwide, then reshoot them themselves (through their photographers) and sell them to end users. Your works just get rejected. In Russian.
I can’t say anything about that since I’m an illustrator and don’t work with photos. If you have specific facts, I’d be interested to hear them.
That makes sense)))
But in that case, is it possible to find similar sites where a foreign passport isn’t required? Or do such sites not exist?
Oh, there are such sites, but sales there are lower than on the top photobanks.
Well, that’s a bit much)) People create their own conditions to bend the rules) In my case, it’s just laziness stopping me from going to the passport office)))
Well, if someone is just starting out and passport fees are an issue, it could be a problem. Again, the standard processing takes some time, during which you can already start earning. So why waste that time?
Can you do that on all photobanks?
Yes. Moreover, some don’t even require a passport.
Of course, it’s better to be honest, but life is such that sometimes you have to bend the rules. 🙂
So, if you use someone else’s passport, can you use your own e-wallet? And does it matter that they are registered to different people?
Yes. To work with a photobank, you can use someone else’s passport, but register the account in Bookers in your name.
Sorry if this is not the right place, but how can I contact the site admin?
Check the email at https://microstock.top/reklama-na-bloge/