Yep, its a bit complicated to come up with a fair price
For one thing, other contributors are in a fairly wide range of pricing. On another point, I couldn't really find EL type licensing option which leads one to believe that a buyer has fairly liberal usage rights - thus price should be on higher side.
It also seems that Pond5 sells footage a lot more than images at the moment. Does a lower expectation of sales volume justify higher pricing? I tend to think so.
And the final push - it has to be said - microstock is eating itself down to the bone with such miserable rates at many (most) agencies that its nearly not worth the effort of shooting, processing, keywording and uploading images any more - not too much longer anyway if this trend continues ...
Here then is an opportunity to price to more decent levels, and to try get a fair return on the creativity and work involved in the production of microstock images. Kudos to Pond5 for that !! and I hope more agencies follow a reversal of the rate-dumping that's become pretty rampant at the moment. Instead of chasing rates DOWN there's a need for the agencies to start building rates back up based on their individual market strengths and content style/ quality, whatever! So that they can make money easier and, just as importantly, contributors can get a much more fairer return.
Plus.. the subscription model needs to die - unless it can be supported with huge (and I mean really HUGE) volume of sales. Or at least the contributors should have an opt out option on it.