One of the outcomes of our meetings with Pond5 has been their agreement to create a special Stock Coalition Collection that will be featured on the main page of Pond5.

If you are a contributor to Pond5 and wish to have your work featured in the Stock Coalition Collection, you obviously need to have joined the Stock Coalition first.

Join us here: https://stockcoalition.org/join-us/

Find out more about the Pond5 collection on our public forums here:
https://stockcoalition.org/forums/topic/partnership-between-pond5-and-the-stock-coalition/

*** Update *** The standard membership application form now also includes and option to participate in the Pond5 collection.

Pond5 will do the same as Shutterstock when it has the conditions to do so.
After Oringer's low blow, it was not the time to team up with your competition, but to embark on a new adventure in a market made up of all contributors worldwide.

Quote from: cathyslife on August 14, 2020, 16:25

But on the other hand, the coalition doesn�t have anything in writing regarding contributor commissions. Plus, they can reset your price to whatever they think is right, defeating the whole �set your own price� sales pitch. If I am mistaken, and the coalition DOES have a price guarantee in writing, please let me know. I was thinking the whole point of the coalition was to negotiate things like this. I know they just got paperwork done to become an �official� organization, so maybe it�s in the pipeline.

Cathy, I say�

We all need to give the fledgling Coalition leaders representing us a chance to get their footing, and then grow and (we hope) flourish � and finally show what some kind of cooperative effort like this can accomplish � before we start jumping down their throats over what they have not yet been able to deliver.

Quote from: cathyslife on August 14, 2020, 18:43

Quote from: marthamarks on August 14, 2020, 16:36

Quote from: cathyslife on August 14, 2020, 16:25

But on the other hand, the coalition doesn�t have anything in writing regarding contributor commissions. Plus, they can reset your price to whatever they think is right, defeating the whole �set your own price� sales pitch. If I am mistaken, and the coalition DOES have a price guarantee in writing, please let me know. I was thinking the whole point of the coalition was to negotiate things like this. I know they just got paperwork done to become an �official� organization, so maybe it�s in the pipeline.

Cathy, I say�

We all need to give the fledgling Coalition leaders representing us a chance to get their footing, and then grow and (we hope) flourish � and finally show what some kind of cooperative effort like this can accomplish � before we start jumping down their throats over what they have not yet been able to deliver.

First of all, I�m not jumping down anyone�s throat. Good grief, you too, Martha? 🙄 I was trying to get some info. I guess you don�t have an answer. Read more carefully.

But hey, you got a +2! 👍

Calm down, Cathy. One can still express one's opinion in this forum (and this country) without seeking to engage in street warfare.

I know they just got paperwork done to become an �official� organization, so maybe it�s in the pipeline.

This is Pond5�s formal letter to the Stock Coalition:

Dear Members of the Stock Coalition,
Greetings! My name is Greg and I�m the Head of Content at Pond5. To those of you who are unacquainted with me or with Pond5, I want to extend a hearty welcome. We�ve been in close dialogue with your leadership over the last few months and thought the time was right for us to reach out directly and fill you in on some of those discussions.
Pond5 wants to be your agency. We pay the highest royalties in the industry � both for exclusive and non-exclusive content. We allow our contributing artists to set their own prices for their work, and we allow you to opt in or out of the programs that make sense for you. Recently we�ve been actively assisting Coalition members in on-boarding large portfolios with the help of personal Account Managers. We�re bumping your customer service tickets to the top of our inboxes and making sure your content gets prioritized treatment in our curatorial queue.
But we also understand that, as a video-first marketplace, we have work to do to grow our photo and illustration business. Step one, of course, is getting the content, and you�re helping us out with that just fine. Looking ahead, we�ve budgeted out development resources to deliver, over the next several months, improvements to our image experience including a search U/X overhaul, collection clean up and algorithm enhancement, and SEO tweaks that will help boost organic traffic to our photo and illustration pages. This will be coupled with appropriate marketing efforts to effectively �relaunch� our image offering and put us on the map when it comes to stills licensing.
In the even nearer term, we�re working with Coalition leadership to put together a branded collection on our homepage featuring the work of coalition members, and will be looking to feature members� content as frequently as possible in our social media channels.
Great partnerships are built on communication, so we�re going to be meeting regularly with the Coalition to assure alignment and receive your feedback. In the end, we�re all going to win if we can shift the market towards agencies that pay a fair rate and allow creators the choice to represent their content how they see fit.
If you have any questions, our support lines are open and we�re happy to hear from you. I know we can make great things happen by working together.
All the best,
Greg Andreacchi
Director, Head of Artists & Content