Where do I go for excellent photos at an affordable price? Fotolia, of course!

1. What’s Fotolia?
It’s the first worldwide social marketplace for royalty free stock images, allowing individuals and professionals to legally buy and share stock images and illustrations. In fact, it’s the largest image bank of free and most affordable royalty free photos and illustrations perfect for any medium, web or print.

2.What are Fotolia’s advantages?
- Time is money! Fotolia’s services will save you time, as you are much more likely to find what you need quickly. Plus you don’t get poor search functionality on Fotolia. If you look for baby photos you can be sure you’ll get baby photos and not puppy photos. When you look for a photo and can’t get it fast enough you’ll be stressed. Fotolia will help eliminate this kind of stress so you can dedicate your strength to create just brilliant work!
- Many times I used free photo sites. I had to read about every photo I used! Sometimes I had to contact the photo’s owner. Some photos had no restrictions, some were for non-commercial use and some required the name of the photographer attached to the work I created. Fotolia has a clear licensing agreement – a standard royalty-free license for every photo you want. And more: what if you want to use a photo of a person? You must have a signed release and that’s guaranteed with a paid service. So, choose Fotolia.
- You can buy vector art on Fotolia. If you know about vectors you know that it takes some time to create a good one. Illustrated graphics can give a unique look and feel to a work but sometimes you don’t have the time to create one. Or maybe you aren’t too comfortable on how to use Illustrator or Corel or Freehand. Fotolia is here for you with a wide variety of vector art.
- Fotolia's site is so well organized and easy to use you’ll be amazed. Preview works fast has a good size so you can fully appreciate the art or photo you want and make a good choice.
- Forget the idea that Art is easy to create and a glamorous and fun activity. Artists do work very hard to obtain good results and should be paid for their effort. So when you choose Fotolia’s you’re helping photographers and illustrators to live a decent life. They deserve it, don’t they?!
- Many people don’t know enough about intellectual property rights. I had my vectors stolen a couple of times myself. They were available on the internet and people used it. I contacted the person and she thought it was ok to do that because they were available on the internet. But some other times people also grab images because they refuse to pay exaggerated prices for it. To fight illegal use of protected images can be done if they are offered at a good price. Fotolia offers you a good price. Thanks to a collaborative online model, Fotolia is able to offer individuals and professionals (advertising agencies, press, small business, graphic artists, designers) the greatest image collection in the world for free or as little as $0.75.
3. How many members have Fotolia?
Over 2,393,660 members around the world.
4. Who started it?
Oleg Tscheltzoff, Patrick Chassany and Thibaud Elziere started Fotolia in November 2005.
5. What languages Fotolia speaks?
Fotolia is in 12 languages and has offices in 14 countries.
6. Fotolia gives freebies by any chance?
Free photos and vectors are offered daily to Facebook fans! That’s good news, isn’t it?
7. Where’s Fotolia’s headquarters?
New York City and offices in Seattle, Washington and Paris, France.
8. What can Fotolia do for you?
All images offered on Fotolia are royalty free, they can be used for all kinds of professional documents with no limit on time or copies: creation of advertising media, creation of professional documents, illustration of press articles, illustration of websites, blogs, newsletters, web banners, illustration multimedia documents, illustration / decorations on TV shows or movies and creation of derivative products (Extended license)
9. What’s Fotolia’s credit system?
Credits are Fotolia's form of currency. Credits are used to buy images on the website. (Credit from $0.75) Image prices are given in credits; the price depends on the size and use of the purchased image. Image prices are from:
XS – 0.12 MP – 1 credit
S – 0.5 MP – 3 credits
M – 2MP – 5 credits
L – 4MP – 7 credits
XL – 8MP – 8 credits
XXL – 16MP – 10 credits
10. What’s Fotolia’s subscription system?
Fotolia subscriptions allow you to download between 25 and 250 images a day during the period of your subscription. Images downloaded using the subscription system are equal to the L size (4MP). The subscriptions are offered from:
1 Month $ 199 - 750 images
3 Months $ 499 – 2250 images
6 Months - $ 899 – 4500 images
1 year - $ 1,649 – 9125 images

For everything you want to know about Fotolia, please go to Fotolia's FAQ.