The reason why I deleted my account at 1x.com

1x deleted account

In recent days I have noticed a big step backwards from the popular photo portal 1x.com. The entire portfolios of excellent photographers around the world are now circulating on the internet and their photos are being sold for ridiculous money.

Curation of the photographs

For those who have yet to come in contact with the 1x.com website. The 1x.com photo portal is one of a kind because all the pictures that are shown on the web passed through the curator, because you can find only a selection of the best. Only about 3% of all photos are published after the curation process. In the past, being published at 1x.com meant a great deal to us. Unfortunaely this is not the case for me anymore.

Uploading digital files of your photographs

Website 1x.com benefits from its traffic. The traffic came quite naturally, because you will not find a bad photo there. If you decide to sell photos through 1x.com, you need to upload a full resolution of your photos, suitable for printing. If you want to sell your photos through this website, you must sign the User agreement.  Most of us signed these user agreement without reading them, which is a big mistake. Read on.

User Agreement

In the current user agreement you can see for example the following paragraphs:

1.9 “Customer” shall mean an individual or entity buying printed copies or digital image files of Your Photograph(s) made available for sale.
By making photos available for sale on 1x’s website you grant to 1x the right to market and sell and distribute or have distributed printed copies and digital image files of Your Photograph(s). 1x is also granted the right to sublicense the right to market and sell and to distribute or have distributed printed copies of Your Photograph(s) to 1x’s Partner(s), solely chosen by 1x. The license and sublicense(s) are non-exclusive. 1x will not sell printed copies and digital image files of Your Photograph(s) not made available for sale by you. 1x will not sublicense your Photograph(s) not made available for sale by you. 1x will not sell Your Photograph(s) as digital image files in greater resolution than 2,5 megapixels unless you have given written consent in an email.

6.1 Once Your Photograph(s) has been uploaded to 1x’s website and published in the Gallery, it is not possible to delete it unless you end your membership. Your Photograph(s) posted to social network sites will not be deleted even if your account is deleted. If you have special circumstances, like copyright issues or personal issues, contact support and state your reasons for deletion. 1x decides exclusively if Your Photograph(s) will be deleted in such a case. A copy of all Your Photograph(s) sent to the Curators will be saved as a history of your uploads for the curators and are not possible to delete unless you end your membership. Your Photograph(s) not sent to the curators or published in the Gallery can be deleted by you at any time.

7.9 1x has the right to offer digital image files of Your Photograph(s) in different formats and sizes as decided by 1x in it’s sole discretion. 1x will not offer digital image files of Your Photograph(s) in greater resolution than 2,5 megapixels. 1x might offer multiple formats to Customers for a single price when selling digital image files of Your Photograph(s).

7.19 If you wish to stop selling digital downloads or printed copies of any of all of Your Photograph(s) you may deselect them (indicated by a red cross) in your “Select photos to sell”-page in your “Account settings”-page at 1x’s website. If Your Photograph(s) are already being marketed, distributed and sold or offered for sale by 1x’s Partner(s) it may take up to 6 calendar months until 1x’s Partner(s) will cease to market, distribute, sell and offer Your Photograph(s) for sale after you have made your Photograph(s) unavailable for sale. 1x’s Partner(s) still have the right to sell photos

The disadvantages of digital photos at 1x.com

This is the worst situation that could occur to us. Although the user agreements is: 1x.com will not offer digital image files of Your Photograph (s) and greater than 2.5 megapixels resolution. None of us want to sell digital files of our photographs! 2.5 megapixels are still enough for someone to manipulate our photographs. And for what price? A photographer who signs such an agreement has no impact on the price which their photos will be sold at.

If the portal decides to sell your portfolio for $ 5, you can´t control it. I have sold a few photographs to my clients in case they wanted them on their website, but it was far less than 2.5 megapixels. In this case, I am able to dictate the price of my photographs. Do not forget that if your picture is sold through the partner portal of 1x.com, you will only get a fraction of the price.

What´s the price for your best picutres?

From-10-EURI deliberately avoided mentioning the names of the partner portals. It is important to realize that our best photos deserve more. We have invested a lot of time and money into our photography which made us the photographers we are today. Why should we give our photos for free to someone else? If you want to continue to sell your pictures in this way, you must not value your portfolio.

Benefits for direct sale

The greatest advantage when it comes to selling your own work directly to a client is that you have complete control over the terms of agreement of the sale. For example, you choose the price and you have direct communication with your client. In this way you know exactly where your pictures are going. This method helps to build strong relationships between both photographers and clients, which ensures excellent recomendations from your clients.

I finally deleted my account at 1x.com

Untill now the photo portal 1x.com was selling prints for reasonable prices. However, the situation has changed. They are selling all the pictures through 12 partner portals. Personally, I didn´t sign the new User agreement and I canceled the entire 1x.com account right away. Fortunately, I uploaded only 10 photos and they didn´t appeared on their partner portals. I hope they won´t in the future. Whatever you decide, that’s up to you.