In December 2014, Adobe announced plans to purchased Fotolia. By January 2015, the purchase was complete. However, Adobe has maintained Fotolia as a separate business entity. It has its own website with its own rules and its own logo. You would never guess that is owned by Adobe if it were not for a small Adobe logo in the upper left-hand corner of the Fotolia website.
As Adobe was entering the stock photo world, they did more than just purchased Fotolia. They also have a new service for their Creative Cloud. They call it Adobe Stock. Creative Cloud customers can now buy Adobe Stock images with the royalty-free license from directly within their Creative Cloud desktop apps.
They have over 40 million images to choose from. These photos come from contributing artists. How do you become a contributing artist to Adobe’s image library?
Since Adobe’s entrance into stock photo started with Fotolia, the contributing artists sign-up page is on Fotolia.com. Once you create an account, you can upload your images to be included in Fotolia’s library. You earn a commission on those images when one of them gets sold. There are different commission rates depending on the subscription plan and the platform where it sold. You may find the commission schedule here.
For every dollar you earn in commission, you earn one credit. Once your account reaches 50 credits, you may ask for a payout to your PayPal account.
To create a seller’s account on Fotolia, you must meet the following minimum qualifications.
- You must be 18 years of age or older.
- You must be the exclusive author for everything you upload.
- You must either own or have the authorization to use every element of every photo you upload. This includes intellectual rights such as products, people, and property.
- Your account must be confirmed. What this means is when you sign up for an account, you must check your email and click on the link in your email to confirm your
A photographer’s life is spent taking pictures. Truth be told, in order to earn a living off of your photos using stock imagery, you must contribute thousands of photos. For the photographer who makes a living off of his photos this way, this requirement should be an easy one to reach. Once you reach the point of earning a steady commission, you can continue to earn residual income off of the photos. This means you will receive a commission not just when the photo sells, but every time the photo sells. Get crackin’ and go shoot some photos!