Fotolia Reviews – Legit or Scam

Fortolia is a photo site that provides royalty-free images, illustrations, graphics, and video clips. Members of the site can buy or sell images on the site. Furthermore, if you want to use the site to buy photos, graphics, or video clips they have a monthly package. Otherwise, you can purchase the items individually and use them on your website, presentation, blog, or business brochure.

How Does it Work?

1. Create an account on the site. It is free to join and there are no monthly membership’s fees.
2. Upload your images to the site. Choose if you’d like to offer these as free images or paid images.
3. If you want to sell your images, determine the price of each image. The price has to fall within the guidelines of the company.
4. If you add an AdThumb to your free images, the company shares the revenue with you. Any image in the free section that is downloaded they share the ad revenue with yours.

About the Site:

1. The site was founded in 2005 in New York City.

How Do You Earn on the Site?

1. You are paid a commission on the images you sell on the site. The site offers you a 33% commission on photos and vector art. You’ll receive a 35% commission for videos.
2. Once your account reaches $50 you can request a payout. The company pays you through PayPal.

Buyers Complaints:

1. As a buyer, you can purchase a monthly package so you can download images from the site. However, when you purchase this package the site continues to automatically bill your credit card month after month.
2. If you don’t renew your monthly package, the unused credits in your account disappear. You never receive the number of images that you paid for.
3. If you pay for a subscription and a few months later cancel this subscription, the company wipes your account clean and you can’t download the rest of the images you paid for.
4. When you sign up for a subscription the company marks the automatic renewal option on your account. You don’t have a say so if you want to use the service or not. You are still billed for the service even if you cancel it.
5. You can’t get anywhere with their customer service. If you call to complain about the automatic billing, you are referred to a massive legal document and told there is nothing they can do to help you.
6. If your credit card is stolen and used to purchase photos on the site, they won’t refund your money. They claim you aren’t their customer and there isn’t anything they can do to help you.
7. If you want some of the nicer images from the site, you’ll have to pay more for these images.
8. The site has way too many popup ads on the site, which makes it difficult to use, find images, or edit the images you need to use.
9. After paying for an image there are some that won’t download. When you try to contact customer service for help, they refuse to help or give you a refund.

Seller Complaints:

1. If you are a contributor the company will refuse to take your best images. They will take your bad images and post them on the site.
2. If you don’t use Adobe photo products, the site refuses to post your images.
3. Many sellers cancel their account because the company doesn’t sell their images. When they move the same images to another agency online, their sales go up and the images sell.
4. The search function on the site has changed and now doesn’t display all the images for sale. It only selects images that have a higher selling rate on them. Therefore, if you haven’t sold an image this isn’t displayed for the client to see.
5. You can’t sell images on the site quickly. Other images sites sell their images faster and you’re paid for the images.
6. It takes way too long to prioritize the keywords on your images to fit the site criteria.

Conclusion:

The site is legitimate and does pay you a commission on the sales of your images. However, it takes too long to sell your images on the site. Furthermore, the site has many issues with the buyers. They have a reoccurring charge on their credit cards and continue to charge their credit cards when they don’t want to download images from the site. If you’re a seller, the site is OK to use to sell your image. There are better sites online and you can sell images faster on these sites.

Warning:

1. If you want to buy an image from the site check closely before submitting your credit card number. They have a box checked automatically that allow them to charge your credit card monthly.
2. The company won’t refund the charges on your credit card, even if you dispute the charges and don’t want to use their service.
3. If you cancel their service all your photo credits are removed from your account. You won’t be able to download the images you’ve paid for.