MicrostockGroup
Microstock Footage Forum => General - Stock Video => Topic started by: Rage on April 25, 2020, 02:27
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At one time it seemed every youtuber was talking about it and now suddenly nothing. Did they all get super rich and move to a private island? How have the results been in general?
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Please someone who joined do share your experiences
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Last year we talked the had some 10-20 P5 sales I think?
now they have 11711 sales priced from $25 to $99.
So much with "P5 had no sales for year 2019", right?
most valuable BB/P5 clip? aerial in Madrit sold 20 times for $79.
Although the contributor could have a better split $1580 if he uploaded by him/herself?
hm!?
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I now have 212 very mixed clips with a lot of editorial and so far I have earned over 700 dollars. Which is perfectly fine for normal content.
But I treat BB as an additional agency, I still upload to my own ports.
I was hoping to find a bb trend, i.e. maybe a theme that sells better through them, but the sales are basically randomly spread over all kind of themes.
So with every new series I have to decide if it goes to them or if it goes to my ports. At the moment they get around 30% of my video uploads, but that is partly because I have many series where I already uploaded something somewhere.
If I get back to a more regular production of new content, I will increase the percentage for bb.
But after my istock experience I am very reluctant to be exclusive anywhere.
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Is the 15% or so that they take for metadata and editing justified by the additional sales generated through them. Does the overall larger and more popular port they have help also?
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15% is just for distribution. If you want your files edited or metadata added you have to work with a curator and work out a royalty fee for them individually.
The results are certainly not less than I would have made by myself, and especially with editorial it seems to be slightly more. Hopefully when I reach 1000 clips I can see more trends.
The ranking of the files also seems to be much better than my own, I often find my bb files ranked higher than those from my own port on the same theme, for instance christmas video clips. I think that is certainly an effect that comes from being part of a high volume uploader group.
On the downside not all partners take everything, especially with editorial there seems to be a harder selection at Shutterstock or a long time lag before files go online. Commercial stock seems to be fine and goes everywhere eventually.
It saves me time and I like that my files can get better ranking.
I also really enjoy the very helpful bb community in their facebook group.
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Last year we talked the had some 10-20 P5 sales I think?
now they have 11711 sales priced from $25 to $99.
So much with "P5 had no sales for year 2019", right?
most valuable BB/P5 clip? aerial in Madrit sold 20 times for $79.
Although the contributor could have a better split $1580 if he uploaded by him/herself?
hm!?
Firstly, those numbers are WAY off... Salegt:0 gives you all clips with 1 sale OR MORE. You have to go up in numbers (salegt:1, salegt:2 etc.) and add in the results. And they did not just have 10 sales a year ago. :)
Secondly, (even if that number is wrong), 11,711 sales in one year from 1.4 million clips is incredibly bad - under 1% of the clips sold. Would you be happy with 10 sales per year from a 1,000-clip portfolio? I sell much more than that average per MONTH.
30,000 sales on 1.4 million clips per year is also very, very low.
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The accurate number of LIFETIME Blackbox P5 sales is 14,038 as of today. That is for 3+ years, an incredibly bad average when you have 1.4 million clips.
When we get up to clips with higher sales count even my own <1,000 clip portfolio has performed better! That is compared to a 1.4 million clip portfolio! Not even including membership sales. To me, that makes it insane to believe that Blackbox would give you any kind of advantage (when the truth is the exact opposite).
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What is the salegt:0 that you've mentioned
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Last year we talked the had some 10-20 P5 sales I think?
now they have 11711 sales priced from $25 to $99.
So much with "P5 had no sales for year 2019", right?
most valuable BB/P5 clip? aerial in Madrit sold 20 times for $79.
Although the contributor could have a better split $1580 if he uploaded by him/herself?
hm!?
Firstly, those numbers are WAY off... Salegt:0 gives you all clips with 1 sale OR MORE. You have to go up in numbers (salegt:1, salegt:2 etc.) and add in the results. And they did not just have 10 sales a year ago. :)
Secondly, (even if that number is wrong), 11,711 sales in one year from 1.4 million clips is incredibly bad - under 1% of the clips sold. Would you be happy with 10 sales per year from a 1,000-clip portfolio? I sell much more than that average per MONTH.
30,000 sales on 1.4 million clips per year is also very, very low.
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The accurate number of LIFETIME Blackbox P5 sales is 14,038 as of today. That is for 3+ years, an incredibly bad average when you have 1.4 million clips.
When we get up to clips with higher sales count even my own <1,000 clip portfolio has performed better! That is compared to a 1.4 million clip portfolio! Not even including membership sales. To me, that makes it insane to believe that Blackbox would give you any kind of advantage (when the truth is the exact opposite).
Perhaps I calculated or search wrong @ID. I will take your numbers as actually correct, no problem, apologies for possible misinformation!
No I don't support BB, I was trying to focus on P5 past year sales for the same period everyone said "no sales!".
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At one time it seemed every youtuber was talking about it and now suddenly nothing. Did they all get super rich and move to a private island?
That was of course due to a big marketing campaign. Those YouTubers didn't recommend it out of the kindness of their hearts, and most of them didn't even work with stock footage. They of course got paid (in one way or another - referrals, cash, better rates, etc.).
Be very aware that that's how it usually is - from the latest tripod that is a MUST have, to the newest coolest LED light - those YouTubers got paid (with free products, cash, or referral links).
Very few are honest unfortunately, because they like free stuff. And they like to keep receiving free stuff.
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Now, regarding the service.
There is one advantage: you save some time.
Disadvantages?
Everything else.
Less control, less money.
If uploading yourself, and keywording yourself is your worst nightmare, of course use them. In fact, it's better for me since that means less competition.
But if you care about maximizing revenue - keep as much control over your clips as you can.
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Of course, people working as "curators" will tell you that you should use them so that they can make some $$$ off of your clips and they don't have to film as much themselves. Browse the portfolio and you can see some of the quality of those titles and descriptions... Not good.
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A bit of a rant, but it just annoys me when stuff like this is so heavily marketed, essentially tricking people into giving them money.
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What is the salegt:0 that you've mentioned
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Pond5 gives you the sales numbers if you use a few advanced search methods.
If you write (EXACTLY, don't add or remove any spaces)
artist:blackboxguild salegt:0
Pond5 will show you all the clips from that artist with 1 sale or more.
If your name is izzikiorage on P5 -
artist:izzikiorage salegt:0
will show you all of your own clips with 1 sale or more.
"Salegt" stands for "Sale Greater Than".
So, salegt:99
will show you all the clips with 100 sales or more.
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It's a very fun and educative way to see through the bull**** of many forum posters. ;)
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As soon as I see a forum member (usually at P5) with very strong opinions on how everything new is bad, and how they know how things should be done because they are "old industry professionals active since day one" I check their actual results. Since my own average is almost always MUCH better than theirs, I can continue my way of working with confidence.
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Perhaps I calculated or search wrong @ID. I will take your numbers as actually correct, no problem, apologies for possible misinformation!
No I don't support BB, I was trying to focus on P5 past year sales for the same period everyone said "no sales!".
No worries!
You probably put
artist:blackboxguild salegt:0
right?
The right ID, but the number you get is the number of clips with 1 sale OR MORE, not the total number of sales.
You have to keep going up (salegt:1 gives you 1,422 clips for example) and add those results to get the total, until there are no more clips shown, after salegt:19 in this case).
The 10 sales number you mentioned was probably from the 2019 thread with the same subject... That was 10 clips with 5 sales or more (from my post). Today, that number is 93.
That just means that another 83 clips reached 5 sales or more since last year around this time. Nice if you have a personal portfolio of 500 clips... Not so nice if your portfolio consists of 1.4 million clips...
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I will say that the average has gone up since last year! But only from incredibly bad to slightly less incredibly bad. :)
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What is the salegt:0 that you've mentioned
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Pond5 gives you the sales numbers if you use a few advanced search methods.
If you write (EXACTLY, don't add or remove any spaces)
artist:blackboxguild salegt:0
Pond5 will show you all the clips from that artist with 1 sale or more.
If your name is izzikiorage on P5 -
artist:izzikiorage salegt:0
will show you all of your own clips with 1 sale or more.
"Salegt" stands for "Sale Greater Than".
So, salegt:99
will show you all the clips with 100 sales or more.
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It's a very fun and educative way to see through the bull**** of many forum posters. ;)
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As soon as I see a forum member (usually at P5) with very strong opinions on how everything new is bad, and how they know how things should be done because they are "old industry professionals active since day one" I check their actual results. Since my own average is almost always MUCH better than theirs, I can continue my way of working with confidence.
This is amazing, is there a list of these advanced commands.
BB seemed to push pretty hard on marketing. Thats usually a red flag since afterwards there seemed to be no one talking about it at all
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Absolutely - https://www.pond5.com/document/help_adv_search.html (https://www.pond5.com/document/help_adv_search.html) -
but the only ones that are really useful are artist:, salegt: (or salelt:) and maybe itemgt: if you want to limit the results to when a clip was uploaded.
You have to know the upload date of at least one clip (from your own portfolio probably) to be able to correctly see the results for the dates you want.
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Absolutely - https://www.pond5.com/document/help_adv_search.html (https://www.pond5.com/document/help_adv_search.html) -
but the only ones that are really useful are artist:, salegt: (or salelt:) and maybe itemgt: if you want to limit the results to when a clip was uploaded.
You have to know the upload date of at least one clip (from your own portfolio probably) to be able to correctly see the results for the dates you want.
Yup! now I see my error. Thank you :)
Curator rating seems also an interesting one,
whatever clip makes 5/5 seems to have a chance to be highlighted
in relevant frontpage collections they assemble from time to time.
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Absolutely - https://www.pond5.com/document/help_adv_search.html (https://www.pond5.com/document/help_adv_search.html) -
but the only ones that are really useful are artist:, salegt: (or salelt:) and maybe itemgt: if you want to limit the results to when a clip was uploaded.
You have to know the upload date of at least one clip (from your own portfolio probably) to be able to correctly see the results for the dates you want.
Yup! now I see my error. Thank you :)
Curator rating seems also an interesting one,
whatever clip makes 5/5 seems to have a chance to be highlighted
in relevant frontpage collections they assemble from time to time.
Really?
I've been in several collections but none of those clips were rated 5, and the ones that are are far from my best work (or best selling work).
I think it means pretty much nothing at all.
Fun fact: 8.9% of rated 4 clips have sold, and only 8.2% of the rated 5 clips. :)
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Anyway, looking at the newest rated 5 clips makes you quickly realize that there is not much logic to it, other than maybe some reviewers giving their friends or themselves a 5 on entire mediocre batches...
I would not spend even 1 second worrying about the curator rating on Pond5. :)
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And what is the average sell through rate of all of pond5 or Shutterstock?
BB is not an edited collection like Digital vision or stocksy. It is simply a distributor. The success depends on the individual quality of files. The majority of people on bb are like everywhere, casual uploaders who are not specifically shooting for the stock video market.
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And what is the average sell through rate of all of pond5 or Shutterstock?
I'm glad you asked.
The 1 sale and up average for Pond5 total for clips added since 2017 (excluding Blackboxguild) is 2%.
For Blackboxguild it is 0.77%.
Pond5 as a whole is 2.6 times better on average.
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The ALL-TIME corresponding numbers are 5.4% P5 and 0.8% BB.
So, 6.75 times better.
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As for Shutterstock, there is no public information so I don't know.
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The unfortunate truth is of course also that the better you are, the worse the deal gets.
Let's say your goal is $3,000 a month from stock footage. Suddenly, your "free" Blackbox community now costs you $450 per month. Quite steep in addition to all the other cuts you MUST accept. This one, you don't have to accept.
Let's say you also use a curator and those few minutes they spend tagging your clip could end up being the most expensive service you have ever used.
And being in a large portfolio on Pond5 is nothing but a gigantic disadvantage. If someone finds your style interesting and wants more from you, it is virtually impossible to browse and find those clips within the 1.4 million...
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If you are happy with it, then that's great! I just think that everyone should find out as much as possible about what it REALLY means.
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Pond5 is how old - 15 years?
And BB has been on the market for how long?...When I joined 18 months ago they had 4000 members, now they have over 45 000.
Which means...just being logical...the majority of content was uploaded recently.
And how long does it take for clips to establish a good sales pattern? For me many series only start selling regularly after around 18 months...so...
Perhaps check that average sales rate again next year, again in two years etc...just to get a correct picture of their development.
Again, don‘t like bb don‘t upload.
But to simply say if you upload directly you sell more, at least for me that is not the case. Sales rate for me personally so far is at least equal and for editorial better if I go via bb.
However, as of now it is just 200 files, I can say more when I have 2000 online.
Like everywhere, the more work you put into your files, the better they sell. BB cannot make miracle earnings out of lower quality content.
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Again, don‘t like bb don‘t upload.
Don't worry, I won't. But the OP wanted to know some opinions.
But to simply say if you upload directly you sell more, at least for me that is not the case. Sales rate for me personally so far is at least equal and for editorial better if I go via bb.
That's great! Since you don't have the same clips in both portfolios it is impossible to actually know that, but if you're happy, that's good.
But what happens when you find out that optimizing the metadata at Pond5 is not the same as doing at Shutterstock? Or at Adobe? What do you do then? What if you want to try the membership, exclusivity (don't), changing prices?
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The most valuable thing you can have is CONTROL over your clips.
Again, if you just want to put in the memory card, upload and forget about it, collect a few $ over the years, that is perfectly fine. And much better for me since that means I will sell more. But if you actually want to optimize the earnings for each clip, you need to be able to control them, change the metadata, pricing, put them into collections, etc.
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It is perfectly reasonable to defend your choices, we all do. I just think that the OP should get information (based on actual numbers) from both sides.
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By the way, from what time would you like a sales comparison? 2019? June? The last 6 months? I will make it happen, just let me know. The first numbers were ONLY for clips uploaded since 2017 (when BB started getting bigger). Not since P5 started.
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Here are the numbers from October 2019.
Only clips priced $79 and above (since that's where BB starts).
P5 - 1,388,862 new clips (excluding BB).
BB - 457,915 new clips.
P5 was 68.9% better for 3 sales and up. 52% better for 1 sale and up.
Considering the 15% BB fee:
3+ sales: P5 (without BB) was 98.7% better.
1 sale and up: P5 (without BB) was 78.8% better.
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Those are the numbers based on a little more than 1.8 million clips uploaded since October 2019 with a MINIMUM price of $79.
98.7% can be quite a bit of money.
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The important thing here was to see whether being with BB was an advantage (on average) or not. They would have to beat P5 by a bit to be worth the 15%. Clearly, they don't.
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thanks for clarifying for curator rating, I thought it meant something "good" and I was anxious to see ratings every time :D
The most valuable thing you can have is CONTROL over your clips.
Although I do mediocre work, +1000 from me
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Here are the numbers from October 2019.
Only clips priced $79 and above (since that's where BB starts).
P5 - 1,388,862 new clips (excluding BB).
BB - 457,915 new clips.
P5 was 68.9% better for 3 sales and up. 52% better for 1 sale and up.
Considering the 15% BB fee:
3+ sales: P5 (without BB) was 98.7% better.
1 sale and up: P5 (without BB) was 78.8% better.
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Those are the numbers based on a little more than 1.8 million clips uploaded since October 2019 with a MINIMUM price of $79.
98.7% can be quite a bit of money.
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The important thing here was to see whether being with BB was an advantage (on average) or not. They would have to beat P5 by a bit to be worth the 15%. Clearly, they don't.
Guess it comes back to the basics, make crazy good content, keyword and upload on your own. There is no magic shortcut
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Here are the numbers from October 2019.
a) how did you get specific time frame #'s? (or did you just look at it then?
b) and lol - I just realized... blackboxguild has ~1.5 ****MILLION**** clips? that's like 7% of ALL footage uploaded! wow... and yeah, they actually have a less than 1% sales rate... a 15% cut for sales for them is pretty good... but for the contributors, either they are uploading a ton of crap, or...
but yes, I agree lack of control is a big thing. if you want to set & forget it and don't care - then yes, they might be pretty good to use... but if you want to take this a little more seriously, I think you should be submitting your own work yourself, and/or find a more efficient way of doing so...
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It's not exactly a fire and forget solution though. Apparently you want someone to edit, keyword and upload your stuff you need to assign them close to 40% of your royalty income. The other is that you need to first send them the files via dropbox or something, then you need to choose a curator to do all the editing, metadata and all. The finally you get to upload the files, so it's a pretty involved process (which is good in a way since it gives you more control), but for many it might be the same as just editing and keywording yourself if the quality of keywording or editing is not significantly different from what a curator might give
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a) how did you get specific time frame #'s? (or did you just look at it then?
You need to find a clip that you know the upload date for (it can actually be any type of item - music, image etc.).
Then use:
itemgt:CLIPNUMBER (it only has to be close to that number since so many new items are added each day).
itemgt means "Item number greater than".
You can also use itemlt:CLIPNUMBER (less than) or combine both of them to look at just one month or one day (if you have the clip numbers) in 2019 or whenever.
If you want to EXCLUDE an artist's portfolio you put ! in front of artist, like this:
!artist:blackboxguild
Now you will see all P5 clips EXCEPT the BB clips.
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close to 40% of your royalty income.
Are you serious?
Wow. I would have guessed maybe 10% and thought that was way too much, but 40% is just robbery.
It is a very good way to make sure you will never make a significant income from stock footage, however.
Please learn how to write good metadata yourself if you want to make money. Because we want to make money, right?
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It's hard to avoid the 30-70% cuts to the agencies, but further cuts like these are quite easy to avoid!
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I recently edited some keywords of older clips to include some current relevant terms that fit them well, even if they weren't necessarily created with that in mind. They have since started selling very well.
And optimizing my metadata a number of years back on clips already uploaded when I learned more, quite literally raised my income to something I could live comfortably on.
Please learn to control your assets and optimize them as much as you possibly can on your own. I know many absolutely hate writing, but it's necessary in order to maximize earnings.
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close to 40% of your royalty income.
Are you serious?
You can choose how much you want to share, but thats the amount they've recommended in the FAQ files (20% for metadata & uploading about 20% for editing, grading). One thing they've mentioned is that the 15% cut they take makes no difference since they've negotiated a higher commission with the agencies (they sort of allude often to it).
Someone who's worked with them for sometime might be able to tell us more about this. Wanted to try this weekend but this whole process put me off
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One thing they've mentioned is that the 15% cut they take makes no difference since they've negotiated a higher commission with the agencies (they sort of allude often to it).
That might be true, but as far as I understand you just get a lump sum each month, and you have no idea what clips sold, or do you get the stats? Is it possible to see what percentage they're getting or do you just have to take their word for it?
Anyway, you would need a 17.6% increase to negate the 15% cut, which would mean roughly 35% at Shutterstock and roughly 47% at Pond5. That's not unlikely, but as we've seen that doesn't really matter since you still have all the other major drawbacks to deal with (along with much worse average performance at Pond5 at least).
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No, not really. You choose a curator and agree how to send them the files. Many people send them harddrives with tons of content. So the curator has to do everything, select from a large group of files that weren‘t intended for stock to begin with, then they process, edit, keyword and upload. Then you click on submit.
A full curator is a real working partner, so you just spend your time shooting. The advantage of bb is, that you can work with different curators, a drone specialist, a sports specialist or someone who does very creative and advanced editing.
It obviously takes time to get to know people and work with them, but it is the same process like hiring anyone else or sending files for processing to a company.
Many people choose a family member or a friend they collaborate with. You don‘t have to pay 40%, if you have great quality you can negotiate a different rate. Or maybe get a friend to do it for 10%. There is no fixed amount, if someone is ready to edit your files for 1%, that is not a problem.
The royalty sharing tools are also to share with models, location owners, camera people if you hire them etc...working with curators are just one of many options.
But so far I do it all myself.
As for the principle of working with a distributor:
I have photos on eyeem, westend61, stocksy...etc...all of these companies sell direct but also send my files for distribution.
Eyeem pays out 50% of whatever they receive...so...if they get 20% royalty from gettyimages, I get 10%...etc...
Then there is the „opt in to partner programs“ that many agencies offer where they send your files around the globe. There you get even less from what the buyer originally paid.
So from my perspective as a photo stocker, getting 85% from distribution, is extremly affordable, even if it is not perfect.
I am used to having a mix of uploading myself and working with distributors...it all adds up and the diversity protects me from individual dramas. I get more balance.
My pond5 files are also now appearing on vimeo, but pond5 only pays me 40% in general, not 85% like bb.
Everyone has to figure out what works for them, but of course the basis is always trying to create really useful clips.
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Still a fairly involved process. Though the idea and execution is definitely a good one it just seems like there are missing bits
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Work in progress I guess.
They are really interested in people who want to do more than stock. I think longterm the platform will evolve with a stronger focus on those who are interested in movie making. At least that i what I see in the community. Quite a few people showing their private movie projects who are now looking at their raw material what could be useful for stock clips.
They have a different crowd, there are a few familiar faces, but many are new to stock.
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That would be my thought as well. You have a good collaboration platform it could support the upfront payment or coownership options needed for film production or even other creative projects.
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I only recently started there and just have six approved clips online.
Is there a way to see at My Blackbox tab which agencies accepted them, or do I have to search online?
Otherwise, how can I know where my clips are?
Also, I suppose there is no way I can choose only selected agencies I wish they are sent.
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I've been submitting there for just over a year. The main reason I started was that I wanted to start submitting live-action content as well as animations, and it would look a bit weird to have cookery videos on a SpaceStockFootage account full of planets and spaceships and the like. Could have changed my username, but wanted to stick with the branding... and as most agencies don't let you have more than one account... using something like BlackBox was the only option.
Aside from the odd exception, my income has increased every single month since I've been submitting, but that's to be expected as I've been submitting a lot more content every month. Aside from March and April 2020... things have been pretty quiet since the middle of last month, but I guess that's to be expected. Seeing the same from my individual agency accounts.
Upsides:
Submit and tag once and they distribute to five agencies.
Payments are always on time
User interface is good when it comes to keywording and the like
Popular Facebook page with a lot of help and advice
FTP is fast, reliable and very few issues.
The ability to share revenue with partners, actors, curators etc
The ability to assign curators to handle your keywording etc.
Downsides:
15% cut. I guess that's not too bad though, especially as they seem to have slightly better royalty rates from one or more of the agencies. I think with SS you get pretty much the same as you would going direct.
Recently added a 10 clip per day upload limit
You can't alter the display image/thumbnail for a clip... it's always the first frame.
No ability to enter a 'description'. They call it a description like on SS for example, but if they're submitting to P5, the description becomes the title... and the description is just a duplicate.
Once you've submitted, there's no editing of anything. Stupid typo… it’s there forever.
They tell you if it's online at one or more agency, or if it's been rejected by all agencies. So when it says 'online', it may be online on one agency and rejected by the rest, or it might be online at all agencies.
You don't get any feedback on why a clip has been rejected.
Impossible to delete anything from your portfolio without contacting support... I'll double check but I think there might be a minimum duration you have to keep them on as well. They did say they'll take them down asap for any legal type issues though.
Can't set your own prices at P5.
Other downsides which I've not included in the list as they're more subjective opinions rather than facts... everyone's far too positive in their Facebook group! You've got people ordering all the BB merch and wearing it with pride, thanking the owner for everything he does and how amazing BB is, people brimming with excitement and being all hopeful about making their first sale. Negativity doesn't go down well in the group. Negativity as in facts though... not just unfounded negativity for no reason. It feels a tiny bit like a cult for some reason. Maybe I'm wrong! And don’t ever ask a question in the group unless you’ve double checked the user guide twice. The moderators will tell you to read the user guide. Your peers will post some kind of meme or inside joke about not reading the user guide. Call me crazy, but I just answer their question. Not exactly a recommended approach when it comes to customer service.
Does seem to be quite a mixture of abilities and experience when it comes to the people who submit there… from people who are just shooting on their phones to people all kitted-out with their Red cameras and the like. Then you’ve got another mixture… people with their Red cameras who already produce stock and know what stock is, and people with their Red cameras who have no idea about stock. So I guess their early marketing worked, it got plenty of people through the door. I do feel that a lot of their marketing is marketing the concept of selling stock itself, rather than marketing Blackbox (with a bit of collaboration features sprinkled in).
So they’re on about moving away from the gig economy, financial freedom, passive revenues etc etc. All stuff that the other agencies offer…. without the 15%. So in that sense, they’ve done a really good job of promoting the concept of stock itself.
And while the owner is obviously a talented guy who has set up a decent platform, I do get the feeling that he bends the truth slightly if it’s in the interests of the platform. Like when he said that there wasn’t any benefit to knowing why you’ve had your clips rejected. I mean, surely everyone here would agree that there’s more benefit to knowing why your clips have been rejected than there is to not knowing why your clips have been rejected? I’m sure you’d get the same answer if you asked why you can’t edit clips, why you can’t delete clips, why they don’t tell you which clips have been accepted where… I’m guessing the real answer is that it would take a lot of time, money and effort to install those features, but that’s probably not the answer you’ll get. It’ll be along the lines of… trust us to take care of all the business side of things for you, you concentrate on creating great content.
On a side note, one reason why you’ll notice a lot less videos promoting BB at the moment, is that they’ve suspended the referral program. I think it was two, maybe three months ago… give or take. They’re working on another one and will let everyone know when it’s ready.
Bottom line... if there was the possibility to open second accounts at all the agencies, then I'd probably just do that instead. Overall, I'm pretty happy with them though, but I would rather have a bit more control over editing, know what's been accepted and where, what's been rejected and why, pricing etc etc.
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I agree with everything you wrote.
They went from 4000 people to over 45 000 contributors in 18 months.
Their resources must be stretched and it will take time to improve the platform.
The community reminds me of a friendlier version of the old istock exclusive vibe. We had a cult like culture, but there was an amazing amount of drama. BB is catering to a very different crowd, I don‘t think their members would want the often quite direct discussions we have here.
They love their community and feel at home in their group which is refreshing to the doom and gloom elsewhere.
As for second accounts, you can always register a second business or company and set up additional accounts for that business. But I guess you already know that.
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Thanks spacestock that really helps. Although i guess you've been submitting fully edited, metadata filled clips to them. Have you had a chance to use check out the collaborative features? How convinient have you found them?
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I have submitted more than 130 files to BB. Used to have almost one sale a month, but with such a small portfolio, it is more about luck. It is beneficial for European customers to get videos to P5 without dealing with VAT (P5 pays from Ireland, BB payment are not). Nevertheless, complete lack of control is convincing me to stop submitting there. So, no videos at P5 for me anymore as I really want to know where are my files, why they have been rejected...
There is one more very interesting thing. Basically all my files (95%?) were accepted through BB to P5 but almost none (5%?) were accepted at SS, the last one maybe... a year ago. When I am submitting videos to SS using my personal account, my acceptace ratio is much much much much bigger. How it can be possible with similar quality of videos? So, for me, it is question of having videos at P5 and nothing at SS with 15% cut or at SS (but not on P5) without a cut but not on both platforms.
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There's something really fishy going on with SS and Blackbox.
Almost nothing seems to go through.
If you compare the Blackboxguild portfoilo on SS and P5, you'll see that only half of the files end up on SS and the gap is growing.
SS has 750000, Pond5 has 1,4 Million files
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There's something really fishy going on with SS and Blackbox.
Almost nothing seems to go through.
If you compare the Blackboxguild portfoilo on SS and P5, you'll see that only half of the files end up on SS and the gap is growing.
SS has 750000, Pond5 has 1,4 Million files
not sure if that is related to bb - shutterstock just seems to be doing a LOT of rejections lately...
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I notice my commercial files always show up on ss but not all my editorial files. some show up with a 3 month time lag, some never.
Maybe it is the heavy rejection change at SS.
In the beginning pond5 and ss always took the same bb files. So yes, that is frustrating.
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Thats scary, with the kind of random rejections SS has been giving lately its usually important to know and be able to resubmit stuff.
SS has often rejected shots that when reuploaded have sold on the first day and a lot. So resubmissions not happening makes black box pretty bad
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Just a couple of answers to a few things...
You get a breakdown of your sales, and get an email for every sale you make with the price, date, clip etc. You never know which agency you sold it at, but you can usually tell based on the price.
They don't make the percentages they get from the agencies public, as I guess it's a figure they've had to negotiate, so the agencies don't want BB to go advertising it. Could cause them issues if they try negotiating deals with other people.
They definitely have a deal with SS on the percentages, but that might just be it. Based on sales prices, I don't think they have a deal with P5 or Adobe, but I could be wrong. Maybe with Vimeo... hard to tell.
Yeah, the 20% for keywording and 20% for editing is just a recommended figure. You can negotiate with the person and if you have a track record of getting decent sales with your content then that's going to put you in a better position. I mean 20% for five minutes work is great if the clip sells 5 to 10 times in a year... not so great if it sells once a year or less.
Signing up with a curator is probably a good idea if English isn't your first language. While I'm not sure if great keywording makes that much more of a difference than good keywording, I reckon 20% could be worth it to avoid bad keywording. Otherwise, probably best to do it yourself unless you're super busy.
Collaboration features are good... have used a couple of people for keywording and allocated a share for a model in some shots. The keywording ones were mainly with people I know to get the hang of it so they could do keywording for other people. Obviously they signed up using my referral code, so I get 1% from every one of their sales!
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Maybe if you shoot footage for clients Black Box may be useful. However if your primary income is stock footage you'd have to have rocks in your head to use dilute your royalty even further by using Black Box. I am amazed at how many people have jumped on board.
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Well, how many people do stock full time?
Less than 10% of all uploaders? BB has a lot of new faces, so it seems to work for them.
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I almost joined BB and then pulled out for two reasons. First is terms and conditions for exiting their platform(18 months lock-in). Second, even if you come out of it, you will need to post those videos from your account and it will again go under the approval process. I see as a producer or creator of content, I get nothing except money here and there while BB builds its portfolio. It would have been really great if BB would tag the the videos in existing portfolios of the creators and sell under agreements. The prime reason for not joining them is lock-in period and BB not using creator's portfolio accounts in these agencies. I am not really sure of how much percentage of creators have abandoned their own portfolios for BB.
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I have been a member of BB for 16 months. In late 2018, early 2019, I sent them a little over 1000 clips. Starting in March 2019, I switched to using Microstock Plus to upload all my media. Since that time I have uploaded about 1100 more clips to various agencies, including the ones that BB supports (and which you cannot upload to personally if those same media are sent via BB).
I have about 30% more revenue from the non-BB clips than I do from the BB ones, even though BB has had all their clips longer.
BB takes 15% off the top as their commission. They then take another 2% when they pay you, claiming that "every agency does this." Uh... I have worked with some 20 agencies over the years, and NOT ONE of them charges me to pay me. Thus, their commission is really 17%, which comes off the top of what SS, Adobe, etc paid in the first place.
With BB, you do not have any idea which agency accepted (or rejected) your media, and have no idea which agency sold the media. You do get an email for each sale, and they pay very quickly on a per-sale basis (no holding until the balance reaches some special level, as the other agencies do).
BB might be useful for far-flung transient teams that work on one project together, then reform into different teams for future projects. That is because they support assigning different percentages to different people for a specific media. For those of us that are lone operators though, that benefit does not really help.
I tried 5 different BB members to do editing/keywording for me when I was on the road for 6 months straight. Of those, 4 were absolute complete wastes of time, where the person was clearly doing the least possible effort to grab 60% of the take. 1 was good, but then stopped doing that work after only a couple weeks.
When I asked the owner of BB about some form of vetting of editors, and some form of voting on them, so we would have some idea which ones were competent, I was blown off, and he just said it was my responsibility to vet the people (which I did by giving them each a small one-day's worth of shots to work on first). That was pretty much every interaction with him. He is a Dictatorship, taking down anything in his forum with the slightest sense of questioning His Wisdom. He is totally closed-minded to any input at all, thinking he knows exactly how everything should work.
Bottom line -- I dropped them a year ago. If I could remove my media, I would, but the initial agreement (which I read up front and knew at the time) says that I cannot. Once they have it, your media stays there.
They charge way too much for what they offer (which for lone operators, is about zero). They are non-responsive to any suggestions or requests for changes. Their forum is a rah-rah-ain't-we-great forum, because any post even very slightly off that theme is deleted within minutes.
Instead, go with Microstock Plus. They charge $10/mo to send 250 media to each of 30+ agencies (I only use 12 of them -- pick the ones you want). you can pay more for higher volumes, but that works for me. MS+ also handles both photos and video. I typically submit 1000 to 1500 media at a time (after traveling 4 or 5 months). I let MS+ submit 250 per month until the batch is complete. That means I can input all at once, and know my stuff will roll out over a 4-6 month period.
Oh yes, MS+ does not take one dime from your commissions. They are submitted under your name, so you know who accepted/rejected, and later sold them. The only place MS+ gets involved is submission. You upload once, and MS+ then sends to as many as 30+ agencies that they support.
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I would love to test MS+ I can get my video clip up to one site, all sites have a green check but on the upload page it says "ignored" by two of the agencies and I have no idea how to fix it, I can not find any support to ask on the site as well. The only reason I am not using it is because I can't get it to work and I have used a LOT of different services.
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Bumping this up, i made an account there and somehow wss never able to figure out the get another person to help with metadata. So not much up there at this moment and zero sales
Have any of you had more luck there? I'm guessing it makes a ton of sense with the shutterstock tier system
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I only use it to share revenue with a friend or someone else who helped me with a shot. I wish the agencies would allow shared revenue.