So when Author Driven Pricing is implemented on Video, and I increase my prices from $8 to $50... are you saying that instead of making $2000 a month, I'll be making $12,500 instead? Should I go for $250 per clip and sit back as $62,500 comes rolling into my account every month?

In fact, if the general consensus is that clients will pay whatever, everyone should put their prices up, quality doesn't really matter that much when it comes to pricing, and high prices won't reduce in less sales... maybe I should go for $2500 a clip. $7.5m a year would be pretty sweet. I'll get on it!

So when Author Driven Pricing is implemented on Video, and I increase my prices from $8 to $50... are you saying that instead of making $2000 a month, I'll be making $12,500 instead? Should I go for $250 per clip and sit back as $62,500 comes rolling into my account every month?

In fact, if the general consensus is that clients will pay whatever, everyone should put their prices up, quality doesn't really matter that much when it comes to pricing, and high prices won't reduce in less sales... maybe I should go for $2500 a clip. $7.5m a year would be pretty sweet. I'll get on it!

If you increase your prices form $8 to $50 you won't make $12500, but it's very possible to make $2050 or more with less sales! Isn't it good enough reason to do it?

Quote from: SpaceStockFootage on October 09, 2016, 04:44

So when Author Driven Pricing is implemented on Video, and I increase my prices from $8 to $50... are you saying that instead of making $2000 a month, I'll be making $12,500 instead? Should I go for $250 per clip and sit back as $62,500 comes rolling into my account every month?

In fact, if the general consensus is that clients will pay whatever, everyone should put their prices up, quality doesn't really matter that much when it comes to pricing, and high prices won't reduce in less sales... maybe I should go for $2500 a clip. $7.5m a year would be pretty sweet. I'll get on it!

If you increase your prices form $8 to $50 you won't make $12500, but it's very possible to make $2050 or more with less sales! Isn't it good enough reason to do it?

Absolutely! It's a good enough reason, but there's nothing to say that's what will happen. My earnings could go up, they could stay the same... or they might go down. I don't know, and you don't know. Not for certain anyway.

It's just the continuous 'put your prices up' advice doesn't seem to take any of this into account.

By their reasoning, it comes across as $100 a clip is always better than $50 a clip, even if your overall income takes a hit. It just seems like people would rather cut of their nose to spite their face.

I mean if you're sat in the bank managers office trying to get a mortgage,  and he asks you how much you make a year... "I earn $199 per clip" just isn't going to cut it. His natural reaction would be... "Erm, yeah... that's lovely. But how much actual money do you make in a year?"

They then reply with "I get 50% of all my sales and I avoid the garbage companies" which is great, but will eventually result in the guy calling security.

Percentage's are nice. Gross sales prices are nice. But at the end of the day, nobody gives a flying puck if you're getting 100% royalties on $1000 clips if you're only selling half a dozen a year. Yes, everyone keeps saying that you'll earn more if you increase the price of your clips, but will they? Is that certain? My clips are $49 at Pond5 and $99 for 4K. Is anybody willing to guarantee my earnings if I double my prices, or put them up by 50%? We split the profit increase? I think I made $375 in September, so you'd get half of whatever I make over that if I earn more, but you have to top me up to $375 if I earn less?

Yes you WILL make more money.  How do I know?

8 years testing the non exclusive market with price and quality.  I'm still doing it now.  In the last year I've increased my prices by about 10% across all my 60,000 video clips.  They now range from $50 to $200.

There are clips in HD from 8 years ago that still sell well.  There are 4K clips that sell well too.

I have animated footage (including space and Earth) that continue to sell well for high prices - usually $79 to $100.  I also have easy peazy shots of landscape and cities etc. that sell equally well for $50-$69

I try to price my footage evenly across all agencies because I know customers are wise to finding the same material.

Yes $10 is a silly price. $25 is acceptable.

Let me also try and influence you by saying that some of my individual clips make at least $10K per year.  I wish that were true for all of them   I won't give out my name so you're going to have to trust me here Another reason that I'll stay anonymous is because I've also been part of the early Getty business (way back) so my experience is good.... very good!

I appreciate you chiming in, UKstock.  Great to hear perspectives from successful artists. As far as pricing clips goes, my biggest support of not pricing low is as I've said in previous posts on MSG about this subject: Look what happened to photos.  Look at the prices customers paid in days past. And today 38 cent subs and lower.  Look at agencies such as Envanto who is driving pricing down on videos. Supporting lowball sites as video demand goes up will condition customers to that pricing.  The rest of the good priced sites will slowly erode into nothingness or join the low pricing bandwagon.  I see video going down the same toilet Coriolis as images if we support $10 clips, even decent $25 clips. Probably a good blend of cross selling prices but clips would have to be curated well to ensure a robust cross selling mix.  Specialty clips like Spacestockfootage should never sell for anything less than $79 until the market adjusts for 4k and so on.  They are too good to be in the bargain bin.  If there's demand customers will pay.  But Envanto (among others like DP) is trying to win on price alone and that is the catalyst for impending price wars should they make a dent in the consumer base that other better priced agencies currently enjoy.  It's a hard argument to win, though, when the mantra for many is why shouldn't one clean up now on high volume, low price? Money is money and I need to feed the family. 

For me, I haven't uploaded any video to Envanto or DP or DT and simply will not support the low pay agencies. But many do for reasons besides what's right for the industry. That's, unfortunately, a cold, hard fact.   

Good idea Pablito. Let us know how you get on.  There are plenty of people who would love to see this working for you.  BTW what price did you begin with?  Are we talking $10 or vastly more?

How can you not conclude that less than $25 for any HD clip is absolutely ridiculous?

I wonder why some Gucci executive not imposing everyone around that selling jeans for less than $100 is absolutely ridiculous.

Pablito, Yes same strategy and it works.  I've increased from $69 to $79 HD and yes $149 for 4K

My prices are double the average pricing and I'm in the top sellers (revenue) every week/month. It's very hard to pinpoint exactly which number to go for but going way above average doesn't seem like something you need to be afraid of.

How can you not conclude that less than $25 for any HD clip is absolutely ridiculous?

I just feel that people make too much of a link between selling stock and creating custom shots for clients. Would I create a custom piece for a client and sell it to them for $8 or $25? Absolutely not! Most of my clips take between half a day and a day, sometimes two days if it's pretty fancy. The last ten second space clip I made for a client I charged $500. I think that was fair for the amount of work involved. I had integrity, valued my work and charged a decent rate for some decent work.

But would I set the price of such a clip to $500 on Pond5? No way. The whole concept of stock is that you get paid out for it several times. If you're not getting paid out for it several times, then you're not making stuff that's of a good enough quality and/or there's just not enough demand for it.

The Force Awakens cost $300m. Was JJ not valuing his work, not thinking of the industry or being unethical by letting the cinemas charge $10 a go? I appreciate we're not working in the motion picture industry, but there are similarities. I just don't think it's right to create ten shots in a day, charge $100 each for them and then you've made $500 for that day if they all just sell once. It would be easier to just hire a videographer for the day for $750 and get exactly what you need, rather than something that's very close.

(I appreciate that a day's shoot can and probably will cost a lot more than $750 if you're factoring in travel, props, talent, rental fees, location fees, crew, audio etc... but if it's a local shoot with no additional stuff required and you can get 10 shots wrapped up in half a day, then $750 is plenty.)

I mean, what does it cost to make one can of Coke from scratch? Let's say $5,000,000. What does it cost to make two cans of coke? Probably $5,000,002 give or take. So if they're making two cans of Coke, they can afford to sell them at just over $2,500,000 each. Add in a bit of profit and everyone's happy. Keep going down that route and you've got a $0.50 can of Coke which still makes them a whole bunch of profit. What if you don't get enough sales to offset the initial cost of your clip... well that serves you right for not making better stuff.

If I make an average of $10 per clip, per month, for a clip that took me one day... then I'm happy enough with that. That means I'll get $600 over five years, or $80 per hour for every hour I put in. So if I get less than $5 a month then I consider the clip a bit of a failure, $10 will do, $20 is good... and thankfully I have a few that get me $50 to $75 or a bit more. Plus my After Effects stuff which can get me over $300 a month per item, but that's a bit different.   

That's the way I see it. It is possible that pricing higher will bring me more profit even if there are slightly reduced sales. However, pricing lower will make my work more attainable for those that can't afford such stuff. I price at $50 or higher on every other site, but I'm happy to have my stuff on Videohive at $8 as it opens up that area of the market for me. There's a mass of people out there creating media that just don't have the money to pay $50+ per clip. Places like VideoHive gives them the ability to create that media, but without the hefty costs.

I think, although I could be wrong, that there's a slightly different clientele on VideoHive than there is on SS and iS and all that jazz. I don't think that ditching all my stuff on VH would mean that people would buy it on other sites instead, I think they just wouldn't buy it.

And last but not least, a lot of people keep mentioning price wars and erosion of the market and a race to the bottom... but VH have been around for ten years and I've not seen any of this yet. Has anyone seen a whole bunch of sites putting their prices down to compete with VH? Sure, there's the subscription offerings, but that's a bit different. It's not like Shutterstock changing from $79 to $69 is going to have all the VH customers jumping ship and heading to SS.

Anyway, that's the way I see it!   

My prices are double the average pricing and I'm in the top sellers (revenue) every week/month. It's very hard to pinpoint exactly which number to go for but going way above average doesn't seem like something you need to be afraid of.

How do you know you are in the top sellers every week?

I see what you mean.
You mean you have some videos which are in top grossing sellers of the week. That's great.

I thought you meant that YOU were in the top grossing sellers each week! Different thing altogether.

Sorry for my misunderstanding.

Either way, it takes some doing to appear in that list.....respect!

I got in it once - but that was before the invention of the drone