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Author Topic: Shutterstocks new pricing structure  (Read 24174 times)

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derek

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« Reply #50 on: April 18, 2017, 07:03 »
0
I can't really voice an opinion on this I am not 100% involved in video prod. All I know a friend of mine with thousands of clips and thousands of stills bailed out of SS and he was sort of complaining about all pricings etc said its just leading nowhere at this rate and be giving them away.

Prior to that he had made some deal with some agency on a much higher percentage commission!
--------------------------

Speaking for myself I was recommended to upload footage to Adobe-Ft and uploaded plenty some months back and well?? that was a complete waste of time both on the stills and video side.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2017, 07:08 by derek »


« Reply #51 on: April 18, 2017, 08:02 »
+1
Isnt this the result of the pond5 membership program? they are offering files extremly cheap, incuding lots of very high quality files. So of course SS has to offer something.

I wish Adobe was stronger with video sales, would be great to have a strong third player in the market.
Totally agree: P5 membership hurts the video market big time. SS and FT had to respond (FT has not done it yet).
And I am glad they are doing it: at least from SS sales we do get something, while in P5 membership artists get absolutely nothing, just loads of sales stolen from us

« Reply #52 on: April 18, 2017, 09:54 »
+4
Have any of you ever actually done real searches for content on Pond5, comparing regular results to the membership clips? Because if you did, you'd notice that it's not very extensive and not "very high quality" or inclusive of the best options by a long shot. One piece of criteria for inclusion was that the clips had to be a poor sellers to begin with, did ya know that? I do not participate in the program so cannot comment further, but I can say that when searching for clips relevant to mine, I do not feel the slightest bit threatened by the competition of the membership options. These "loads" of lost sales are pure imagination.

Considering Shutterstock, Videoblocks, Fotolia (and everywhere else for that matter) already had subscription programs in place, doesn't it make more sense to speculate that Pond5 was responding the them, not the other way around? This latest action is just Shutterstock taking it further and squeezing more profit for their shareholder reports and to pay for their unnecessarily lavish real estate needs.

Disheartening how the reaction for some is being "glad" that Shutterstock is lowering their price and not anger and resistance to all price drops like this by any company. So many pessimists around here believe the trend is ultimately going downward, but instead of kicking and screaming and making it at least uncomfortable for them to marginalize our livelihoods, you choose to lay down and justify it.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2017, 10:06 by Daryl Ray »

« Reply #53 on: April 18, 2017, 13:13 »
0
The sales has decreased from Pond5 lately. However, the recent sale was a 4k which I set the price at around $200.

Just had two sales from SS, which I got over $200. I cannot tell which one was sold at what price. Can anyone tell me how to check?

Thanks!

« Reply #54 on: April 18, 2017, 13:29 »
0
@Daryl Ray, +1

it's just some people don't have balls to admit they are run only by "profit" and not looking around what long run costs that short run profit will have.

« Reply #55 on: April 18, 2017, 14:19 »
+1
Have any of you ever actually done real searches for content on Pond5, comparing regular results to the membership clips? Because if you did, you'd notice that it's not very extensive and not "very high quality" or inclusive of the best options by a long shot. One piece of criteria for inclusion was that the clips had to be a poor sellers to begin with, did ya know that? I do not participate in the program so cannot comment further, but I can say that when searching for clips relevant to mine, I do not feel the slightest bit threatened by the competition of the membership options. These "loads" of lost sales are pure imagination.

Considering Shutterstock, Videoblocks, Fotolia (and everywhere else for that matter) already had subscription programs in place, doesn't it make more sense to speculate that Pond5 was responding the them, not the other way around? This latest action is just Shutterstock taking it further and squeezing more profit for their shareholder reports and to pay for their unnecessarily lavish real estate needs.

Disheartening how the reaction for some is being "glad" that Shutterstock is lowering their price and not anger and resistance to all price drops like this by any company. So many pessimists around here believe the trend is ultimately going downward, but instead of kicking and screaming and making it at least uncomfortable for them to marginalize our livelihoods, you choose to lay down and justify it.
I respect your point of you and I was with you 100% until P5 started their MS program.
Now things have changed completely.
Don't get me wrong, I really like P5 for a lot of reasons, but their MS has really done a lot of damage.
Videohive is not an issue in the video market: they sell files for very low prices, but volumes are ridiculous: they are not interested in video, they just have 1 reviewer, there is 4-5 months wait for review and they refuse most files as they cannot afford the cost of bandwidth. And anyway I didn't even know they existed until a few weeks ago.
Videoblock is a bit of a nuisance with their weird business model, but their membership collection is very, very poor.
P5 MS collection is excellent. I have browsed it zillions of times. They started it as a leader in the video market. so they could choose excellent files with a very broad collection covering most of customer's needs.
Yes, they said they have chosen clips with less than two sales, but that is extremely easy to overcome. You know that at P5 it takes several months for a file to start selling, so if you choose a new file... Or else you choose a slightly different take from an excellent shooting and you get a clip that has not yet sold, but is just as good as a best seller.
At the moment I have 5 times more sales at SS than P5, and 3 times more sales at FT than at P5. I am not part of the bloody MS so I am heavily penalised in the search engine.
At SS I do get the occasional $6 or $8 sale, but they are quite rare, most of them are aver $20 and sometimes over $100 for whatever reason.
As I said I am pretty much sure that the P5 MS is absorbing not only 70-80% of previous P5 sales, but also an important part of sales from other agencies and P5 scheme is the only one that doesn't give the artist even a sniff of the money collected (at least as far as I know)

« Reply #56 on: April 18, 2017, 15:47 »
0
I respect your point of you and I was with you 100% until P5 started their MS program.
Now things have changed completely.
Don't get me wrong, I really like P5 for a lot of reasons, but their MS has really done a lot of damage.
Videohive is not an issue in the video market: they sell files for very low prices, but volumes are ridiculous: they are not interested in video, they just have 1 reviewer, there is 4-5 months wait for review and they refuse most files as they cannot afford the cost of bandwidth. And anyway I didn't even know they existed until a few weeks ago.
Videoblock is a bit of a nuisance with their weird business model, but their membership collection is very, very poor.
P5 MS collection is excellent. I have browsed it zillions of times. They started it as a leader in the video market. so they could choose excellent files with a very broad collection covering most of customer's needs.
Yes, they said they have chosen clips with less than two sales, but that is extremely easy to overcome. You know that at P5 it takes several months for a file to start selling, so if you choose a new file... Or else you choose a slightly different take from an excellent shooting and you get a clip that has not yet sold, but is just as good as a best seller.
At the moment I have 5 times more sales at SS than P5, and 3 times more sales at FT than at P5. I am not part of the bloody MS so I am heavily penalised in the search engine.
At SS I do get the occasional $6 or $8 sale, but they are quite rare, most of them are aver $20 and sometimes over $100 for whatever reason.
As I said I am pretty much sure that the P5 MS is absorbing not only 70-80% of previous P5 sales, but also an important part of sales from other agencies and P5 scheme is the only one that doesn't give the artist even a sniff of the money collected (at least as far as I know)

I think you've claimed that the P5 search is affected by the MS program 20 times already, and it's still not true. It may have affected overall sales, but NOT the search.

And just so you know, Envato (VideoHive) is a multi-million dollar business with profits higher than Shutterstock, P5, Fotolia and the rest. They can afford to pay for bandwidth. Why they don't have more reviewers is another story, but it's not lack of money.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2017, 16:00 by increasingdifficulty »

« Reply #57 on: April 18, 2017, 16:01 »
+1
I respect your point of you and I was with you 100% until P5 started their MS program.
Now things have changed completely.
Don't get me wrong, I really like P5 for a lot of reasons, but their MS has really done a lot of damage.
Videohive is not an issue in the video market: they sell files for very low prices, but volumes are ridiculous: they are not interested in video, they just have 1 reviewer, there is 4-5 months wait for review and they refuse most files as they cannot afford the cost of bandwidth. And anyway I didn't even know they existed until a few weeks ago.
Videoblock is a bit of a nuisance with their weird business model, but their membership collection is very, very poor.
P5 MS collection is excellent. I have browsed it zillions of times. They started it as a leader in the video market. so they could choose excellent files with a very broad collection covering most of customer's needs.
Yes, they said they have chosen clips with less than two sales, but that is extremely easy to overcome. You know that at P5 it takes several months for a file to start selling, so if you choose a new file... Or else you choose a slightly different take from an excellent shooting and you get a clip that has not yet sold, but is just as good as a best seller.
At the moment I have 5 times more sales at SS than P5, and 3 times more sales at FT than at P5. I am not part of the bloody MS so I am heavily penalised in the search engine.
At SS I do get the occasional $6 or $8 sale, but they are quite rare, most of them are aver $20 and sometimes over $100 for whatever reason.
As I said I am pretty much sure that the P5 MS is absorbing not only 70-80% of previous P5 sales, but also an important part of sales from other agencies and P5 scheme is the only one that doesn't give the artist even a sniff of the money collected (at least as far as I know)

I think you've claimed that the P5 search is affected by the MS program it 20 times already, and it's still not true. It may have affected overall sales, but NOT the search.

And just so you know, Envato (VideoHive) is a multi-million dollar business with profits higher than Shutterstock, and most likely P5, Fotolia and the rest. They can afford to pay for footage storage.
I started at P5 about 2 years ago and I was having decent sales, constantly increasing as my portfolio increased. I was having about a dozen sales per month, not a lot but better than a punch in the eye (as my sister would say).
Then the bloody MS started in May 2016. After that I did not have a single sale for about 8 months, my portfolio became practically invisible, not a single view for the same period.
Than a couple of months ago there was a very heated discussion in P5 forum about people in the MS being incredibly pushed up in the search engine. After that a moderator in P5 came up saying: we don't do this sort of thing.
After that, as magic, my sales went up and I had an excellent month of March.
This is my genuine experience, you can believe it or not. All I can do is to tell you what happen to me, you are free to think what you want

« Reply #58 on: April 18, 2017, 16:03 »
0
I believe that YOUR sales have gone down, absolutely.

But I test the search engine very frequently and non-MS files are simply not pushed down in the search results. It's quite easy to test yourself... Only takes a couple of minutes. I mean, there is no mystery to it. Just search "berlin" or anything else and see what happens. I'm not in the MS program and my files are easy to find (logged in and logged out). They mostly even show up before MS files.

Sales and upload date matter.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2017, 16:08 by increasingdifficulty »

« Reply #59 on: April 18, 2017, 16:07 »
+1
As far as Envato is concerned, I believe that they do most of their business in motion graphics, animations, templates and other weird things that I do not understand, but certainly not in footage.
And anyway I have tried their insane uploading system.
After trying to upload 15 video to their system I get constant nightmares. I wake up every night several times sweating and I have to take all those little green pills that the doctor gave me.
Maybe one day I will be the same me as I was before attempting to upload a file at Videohive, but the doctor tells me I have little chances

« Reply #60 on: April 18, 2017, 16:11 »
+2
Yes, Wordpress and After Effects templates (also big at P5 + VB) are their big business, followed by music. But they are a VERY profitable company.

You must be stuck in the old upload system (which is a nightmare, yes). The new upload system is faster than P5.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2017, 04:35 by increasingdifficulty »

« Reply #61 on: April 18, 2017, 16:14 »
0
I believe that YOUR sales have gone down, absolutely.

But I test the search engine very frequently and non-MS files are simply not pushed down in the search results. It's quite easy to test yourself... Only takes a couple of minutes. I mean, there is no mystery to it. Just search "berlin" or anything else and see what happens. I'm not in the MS program and my files are easy to find (logged in and logged out). They mostly even show up before MS files.

Sales and upload date matter.
I have done another test:
I have monitored all people in P5 forum who were complaining of poor sales (there were a lot until a couple of months ago) and they were all people not part of the bloody thing (including video-stock-org, who posted just above).
On the other end people boosting good sales were all part of the bloody thing.
Again, you don't have to believe me, you can always tell me: "please, stop making sense", or "please, don't confuse me with facts"

« Reply #62 on: April 18, 2017, 16:22 »
0
I believe that your sales have gone down.

I don't believe that the SEARCH is responsible. It isn't. It doesn't push non-MS clips down. That is just a fact.

If customers choose to buy MS clips instead, that's another story.

There are maybe around 30-40 active posters at the P5 forum, out of thousands of contributors. Who do you think is more likely to be vocal in the forums? People who want to complain or people who are happy? Basing theories off of forum posts instead of spending 1 minute with the search engine isn't really the best way to see what the search does.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2017, 17:24 by increasingdifficulty »

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« Reply #63 on: April 18, 2017, 20:04 »
+4
it's just some people don't have balls to admit they are run only by "profit"

What else would anybody do microstock for? So you can impress you family?

"You get twenty cents for a photo? Oh, that's lovely dear. What time are you coming round for dinner?"

« Reply #64 on: April 19, 2017, 15:10 »
+1
To evaluate a forum post and complaints, you just look at peoples portfolios. If someone has a high quality port, or a very, very large port with over 10 000 files, then I take them more seriously than a newbie with 500 files who has been there less than two years.

My own sales on pond5 are fine, volume went down a bit when they raised their minimum price, but so far it is balanced if i do get sales. Sales on the higher end havent really changed.

However shutterstock has seen a very strong increase in video sales, so since both get the same files, i conclude that SS is maybe doing more advertising or marketing to improve growth.

The pond5 membership collection has over 200 000 excellent quality videos and over 400 000 files in total. It is literally a world on its own and a very nice collection.

Lovely quality and excellent value for money.

However  - only when the artist get the sales data how many times these videos sold for the 3-8 dollar price pond5 charges on average, will the artist know if it is really a good deal.

So far that data hasnt been released.

What if pond5 instead had a "ultracheap" videocorner with 6 dollar files, but where the artist gets their usual 50%, i.e. 3 dollars. Wouldnt that make the artist 10 times more money, than the current membership plan?

The program is only open to a select few, but since nobody is sharing data, we all dont know if it is working.

What we do know, it is one of the cheapest offers for good quality video content in the industry.

Like I said, i dont feel my sales have been affected. Overall pond5 is certainly one of the most friendly places to work with. Ive just had several exchanges with their contributor support about a tax issue and they have been just lovely, sometimes they reply in 10 minutes. Never had an experience like that.


« Reply #65 on: April 19, 2017, 16:19 »
0
Yes, Pond5 staff members are very friendly and easy to work with. Can't say the same for many other sites.

It's a good site if you got in early and collected the sales to give you exposure. For new contributors it's a very hard market with way, way, way too many good files to be seen.

It is only number 3 or 4 for me when it comes to footage (I started relatively late), but a clear winner for the other things I sell. Author pricing helps a whole lot.


 

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