Its an old post, but i have old experience with Photo Crowd.
Its honestly a money making scheme that is bent upon making money from people desperate to have attention.
The website was setup in a way that EVERY IMAGE uploaded was per the terms of use, allowed for them to use for any purpose they wanted. However they claimed that ownership of the images stayed with the person who uploaded them, despite the fact the photocrowd people could make money off of them.
The payment scheme is a joke, all members get 1 free photo submission to each contest. Each subsequent photo submission for that contest costs 2 pounds each. And sadly you cannot get enough points to maintain a RANKING unless you submit multiple photos.
each photo submitted get a specific point value given to you, then each photo gets an extra point value based upon how it is ranked when the contest ends, and then if you have any SINGLE image submission get ranked over a certain spot by number of photo entries for that contest, each submitted image gets a point value boost applied to it.
Having any photo end up in the final 10 judged photos, and top 20 crowd rated photos gives each photo submitted to the contest even more points and so on. However the system is flawed as a paid membership with a single photo submission to a contest who only ends up in the 50% of the crowd vote, can end up with more points then an unpaid membership who WINS the contest and has multiple photo submissions to it.
And if you are a paying member, the photo point values are HIGHER depending upon each level of paid membership. And the point values go up even further for paid members if the contest was created by a paid member and even depending upon the judging style for the contest.
Ultimately, an PAID MEMBERSHIP cannot be ranked below the highest number of people with that membership level. Meaning if "bronze" membership level is ranking 3,000 to 5,000. You can never be ranked lower then 5,000