What happened to Pond5?
Since Pond5 was acquired by Shutterstock, my sales have been steadily declining�until they virtually stopped. I used to make 2 or 3 video sales per day, and now it's been over 17 days without a single sale.
Has anyone else experienced a dramatic drop in sales lately?

I've made $50 so far this year. I typically make $700-$1,000 a year.  So I am on a trajectory to make $100 for the entire year.  It is dead for me and it happened literally after SS took them over. 

At my peak, I was making between $6K and $8K per month on Pond5 alone.  So far this month, I'll be lucky to break $1K.

And if I don't break $1K this month, it will be the first time in over 10 years where I didn't earn over $1K in a month on Pond5.

Probably several things coming together to trash Pond5 sales.

Pond5 sold to SS, internal personnel turmoil, entertainment/movie industry decline, AI, and now the pending swallowing of P5/SS by Getty,

This happens when amateur driver is sitting in formula 1 cockpit Same bad for me, far behind AS, SS, MA, IS...

Agree, SS laid their death finger on it.

They probably also stopped marketing p5, so it cannot have growth.

I sold 5 files this year, which is lower than before but I also barely upload.

Curious what will happen after the merger.

There are still less than 60 million videos on agencies, so compared to photos there is no oversupply, ai is not a workable threat, most who try to do ai for Adobe have given up, because sales are too low to pay for ai creation.

There is an endless amount of content missing.

Behind the scenes - Blackrock/Vanguard owns/has significant ownership shares in ALL of those companies, either directly, or via hidden shell companies (if you trace it 2-3 layers deep). And since (one of their goals) is to make everyone else "poor" while making themselves rich - it makes sense that they would be deliberately trashing any contributor based sites in order to steer/move customers to their midjourney/runway/etc owned assets

Blackrock and Vanguard are huge financial asset managers.  They offer investments such as mutual funds, exchange-traded-funds, financial advisory services and other investment products that are available to the public. They are fiduciaries to their clients.

It's not clear that they directly own any kind of companies - AI or otherwise - directly or hidden.  As huge financial asset managers they are subject to intense government and public scrutiny.

It's for sure their investment funds, etc. own equity shares in AI companies as well as thousands of other companies.  And they may exercise shareholder voting rights for those companies.

But I'd have serious doubts that any trashing of stock contributor sites is a result of direct meddling on their part.   They have much much bigger fish to fry.
 
As for making "everyone else "poor" while making themselves rich" - investing in their products and participating in getting "rich" is available to anyone with a little $$ to invest.  Try it. 

Disclaimer - I'm a long time investor with Vanguard and have been very pleased. 

Quote from: SuperPhoto on July 24, 2025, 05:06

Behind the scenes - Blackrock/Vanguard owns/has significant ownership shares in ALL of those companies, either directly, or via hidden shell companies (if you trace it 2-3 layers deep). And since (one of their goals) is to make everyone else "poor" while making themselves rich - it makes sense that they would be deliberately trashing any contributor based sites in order to steer/move customers to their midjourney/runway/etc owned assets

Blackrock and Vanguard are huge financial asset managers.  They offer investments such as mutual funds, exchange-traded-funds, financial advisory services and other investment products that are available to the public. They are fiduciaries to their clients.

It's not clear that they directly own any kind of companies - AI or otherwise - directly or hidden.  As huge financial asset managers they are subject to intense government and public scrutiny.

It's for sure their investment funds, etc. own equity shares in AI companies as well as thousands of other companies.  And they may exercise shareholder voting rights for those companies.

But I'd have serious doubts that any trashing of stock contributor sites is a result of direct meddling on their part.   They have much much bigger fish to fry.
 
As for making "everyone else "poor" while making themselves rich" - investing in their products and participating in getting "rich" is available to anyone with a little $$ to invest.  Try it. 

Disclaimer - I'm a long time investor with Vanguard and have been very pleased.

1. Re: scrunity, things don't quite work the way you think they do if you believe there were some misgivings that the 'govt' would fix it. Not quite how it works (although the movies & mainstream news may try to convince you otherwise). One of the goals of what's going on is to try and make 'everyone else poor' and consolidate services into "ai" stuff. (The 'longer' game).

2. The wealth I am talking about is not the same as the proportionately small dividends you may have seen from whatever you've invested in Vanguard. But - obviously if they've been doing quite well for you - there is a reason for that - and it doesn't really have much to do with how they can see how they can be fairer/payout more to contributors/etc.