Went exclusive on P5 not sure if it was a smart idea...  Starting to question every decision I have made lol.   
How long should you give it?  Sucks because I deleted all my videos on 3 other sites.

yea so far

Did Pond5 sales account for 80% or more of your total stock sales? If not, then it was probably a bad idea to go exclusive!

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It would probably take 3 to 6 months to get new uploaded footage to decent search rankings and google SEO, so after that you'd need to wait a bit longer to see if sales are coming and if it's worth it.

Can someone please share a link to a REALLY good lifestyle port that has gone exclusive?
You don't have to if you don't want to, its a metaphorical question.

My point is, I just can't find any really good lifestyle portfolios that have gone exclusive.
Apart from one artist that was mentioned in the Artist Town hall meeting of course.

All I've seen so far are very mundane exclusive portfolios.

I think its the content which is most important, not whether it is exclusive or not.
I'm sure if a client sees an exclusive clip of frog spawn, for instance, they aren't going to be thinking I'm so pleased this clip is exclusive.

I think its the content which is most important, not whether it is exclusive or not.
I'm sure if a client sees an exclusive clip of frog spawn, for instance, they aren't going to be thinking I'm so pleased this clip is exclusive.

Exactly, exclusivity doesn't mean anything to a buyer. It has no advantage to contributors either. It only means something for the agency itself, who is happy to see new content not going to their competitors. Which theoretically would result in more sales, more market share and more marketing possibilities.

Until a certain point marketing is based on words. Strong words.
Words don't add any value to a (low or higher value) product,
they just drive (or try to catch) buyers attention.

Not sure if this will reflect to contributors, sales and prices.

Exclusive program was a scam/red-herring to mask the 10% (20%) commission cut.

Quote from: pkphotos on June 03, 2019, 03:51

Exclusive program was a scam/red-herring to mask the 10% (20%) commission cut.

Well the major takeaway/headline of the exclusive program was (and is), 'go exclusive and we'll increase your cut to 60%, don't and we'll drop it to 40%'. I mean that was in the main announcement email, as clear as day, so if the intention was to mask what was really going on... then they failed on a momentously miserable scale. Not sure where the scam lies in that?

It's blatantly obvious. Exclusivity, even if it does begin producing sales, will never compete with spreading clips across multiple agencies. At least that's what my stats tell me 100% with my own clips.

Quote from: pkphotos on June 03, 2019, 03:51

Exclusive program was a scam/red-herring to mask the 10% (20%) commission cut.

Well the major takeaway/headline of the exclusive program was (and is), 'go exclusive and we'll increase your cut to 60%, don't and we'll drop it to 40%'. I mean that was in the main announcement email, as clear as day, so if the intention was to mask what was really going on... then they failed on a momentously miserable scale. Not sure where the scam lies in that?

Yes I'd agree that allowing anyone to be exclusive and not at the same time, while reducing the commission 10%, or raising it 10% at the same time, was hardly hiding what they are doing. There could be more but what I see is:

1) Getting Exclusive content that they can market to other outlets, as "only from Pond5"  which is to their advantage.

2) Giving us a small incentive, which is paid for by the cut from standard, and added to the exclusive, at no added cost.

Anyone who wants can have exclusive video or not and raise their prices to make up for the lost income on non-exclusive video.

Basic match: 50% of $100 = $50, 40% = $40 and 60% = $60 so the $10 they aren't paying for standard video, goes to the exclusive person, and no cost to Pond5. For those who like to look at the same numbers a different way, non-exclusive loses $10 and exclusive gains $10. Hey that's the same, oh yeah... only is you deal with dollars and not percentages.

10% less is 20% less commission, because $50 just became $40. I'll add that the raise is $10 more commission and an 8.3% gain, not 10%.

Doesn't matter, it's a personal choice, anyone can decide to be non-exclusive, partially exclusive or full exclusive, depending on how they personally feel about the value and marketing of their work. I'm a full exclusive and now I get 60% of nothing, instead of 40% of nothing.  But I did eliminate the uploading, the work and being paid 15% - 20% (or less) by others. Or $1.25

3) My accepted files are marketed to two additional agencies and maybe in the future more? I do nothing additional for this benefit.

If everyone understands up front, what the change is and how it works, it's not a scam, or underhanded.

Everything that gets communicated by the stock agencies is marketed as exciting and new, but it's not like they promised increased sales... they just promised a 60% cut rather than a 40% cut, which is what they're delivering.

Quote from: SpaceStockFootage on June 03, 2019, 06:23

Quote from: pkphotos on June 03, 2019, 03:51

Exclusive program was a scam/red-herring to mask the 10% (20%) commission cut.

Well the major takeaway/headline of the exclusive program was (and is), 'go exclusive and we'll increase your cut to 60%, don't and we'll drop it to 40%'. I mean that was in the main announcement email, as clear as day, so if the intention was to mask what was really going on... then they failed on a momentously miserable scale. Not sure where the scam lies in that?

It's blatantly obvious. Exclusivity, even if it does begin producing sales, will never compete with spreading clips across multiple agencies. At least that's what my stats tell me 100% with my own clips.

Well yeah... I know that and you know that, and most people know that. I'm sure Pond5 even know that, but they never said anything to dispute that. It would only be a scam if they'd said that going exclusive with them would earn you more money than distributing your content to as many different agencies as you like. And they didn't!

I can't see any filter for "exclusive". The exclusive files have the "E" watermark right? they aren't all listed first, so that's also not giving any advantage to exclusive files,

Well, they said Exclusive files wouldn't rank higher, so no surprise there. They also said a filter might come later on.

a quick few searches reveals that the top line of "popular" is often very low price points.

Popular sorts files by the number of sales, so that is quite expected. There are about zero regular people who would ever pay $150 for one clip, only businesses.

However, Best match (default for me at least) sorts by revenue (with a touch of newness + some other factors), so a $199 sale will rank higher than five $25 sales.