MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Pond5 => Topic started by: rimglow on February 05, 2013, 15:27
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Can anyone suggest photo pricing for Pond5? The other threads seem to concentrate on video, but I'm curious about photos. $10? Is that the highest or lowest someone pays? What percentage do we get? What about the checkboxes that say "Set price for me", "Same price for all sizes"? Should I check one of them, and what happens if I don't check any of them?
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I've just started uploading in the last few days, so everything is still pending.
The first images that I've clicked through, I set for $10 and hit 'set price for me'. Waiting for review to see how this breaks down prices for various sizes etc.
There is a fair bit of discussion on ponds forum but I didnt really find any good answers, I didnt see the point in being any more expensive than my images that are there from fotolia.
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I thought I'd set $10 for the 25 trial images I uploaded directly (I have some there from Pixmac which will come down if ever Pond 5 reviews my content) but I apparently set $12
I assumed the prices came down from that for the top size (mine are 21MP images) and the default was $1!!
I didn't want to undercut GL stock where I set the top price as $10
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I don't think you can actually set the price at $1. I forgot to change that one time and I got an error saying the price was too low.
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The licensing terms are very broad... simular to extended licenses for all. I hope they adjust their business plan and create extended license price variations. Meanwhile, I'm considering raising my prices to compensate.
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I have all my images set to $10...
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As has been said, I don't believe they have EL type licenses yet, so include that when factoring in your pricing.
I personally feel $10 on a site that allows us to set our own prices is too low. Why should we willingly choose to sell at a low-ish price? Just think what customers are paying in $$ terms at places like iStock for Vetta files.
Also, it seems that the scaling of file sizes and prices works best if you have very large files (say, over 20-25mp). If they are small to begin with, it doesn't break down the sizes too well and you end up having a blog size image for only 2 bucks less that your biggest high-res size.
Personally I have been setting all my images so far at $12 (for 8-12mpx files) and they have been selling. Now with my new D800 and the bigger file sizes, I will be setting them at something like $20 for the high-res from now on.
Hope that helps
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I had a closer look at the license agreement and it isn't really like an EL, but does differ in a couple of respects from several of the other agencies.
- no reproduction limits for print runs
- up to 10 users included in the basic license and you have to be working on stuff for the licensee. If you need more users you buy another license (versus an EL)
- no products for sale
- no templates
I want to see how the prices break down for the smaller sizes from $12 which I guess I'll see when they approve my files? Right now I can only see my Pixmac mirror (300 files) which is $10.67 - $3.88
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I have all my images set to $10...
Feel I have the same questions on pricing. Are you finding good success with the $10 price?
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I set $20
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Just another thought, I've seen quite a few people on Pond5 selling their high-res images for amounts like $3 and $5, for full 21mp+ files...Unbelievable...!
Pond5 is giving us the opportunity to set our own market price, and then some are of their own volition joining the race to the bottom?! I don't understand the logic. We would be all over Pond5 if they set the prices for us and had them at $3 or $5 for max file size.
Let's not turn P5 into another site that operates only on "cheapest images around" type mentality, we've got enough of those already.
Just my 2cents..
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Just for interest sake (not that I'm recommending it), blendimages have their images priced at up to $525!
http://www.pond5.com/photo/11468674/african-mother-and-son-driving-in-car.html (http://www.pond5.com/photo/11468674/african-mother-and-son-driving-in-car.html)
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I see your $525 and raise you $260! Image source is at $785
http://www.pond5.com/photo/10944696/mother-and-son-with-shopping.html (http://www.pond5.com/photo/10944696/mother-and-son-with-shopping.html)
I think $200 for a blog size is a bit of a stretch - it's a fine stock image, but not really anything special
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Just another thought, I've seen quite a few people on Pond5 selling their high-res images for amounts like $3 and $5, for full 21mp+ files...Unbelievable...!
Pond5 is giving us the opportunity to set our own market price, and then some are of their own volition joining the race to the bottom?! I don't understand the logic. We would be all over Pond5 if they set the prices for us and had them at $3 or $5 for max file size.
Let's not turn P5 into another site that operates only on "cheapest images around" type mentality, we've got enough of those already.
Just my 2cents..
is it individuals or an agency, it wont let me put less than $10
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I see your $525 and raise you $260! Image source is at $785
[url]http://www.pond5.com/photo/10944696/mother-and-son-with-shopping.html[/url] ([url]http://www.pond5.com/photo/10944696/mother-and-son-with-shopping.html[/url])
I think $200 for a blog size is a bit of a stretch - it's a fine stock image, but not really anything special
Wow! You always gotta win jsnover.. ;)
I humbly withdraw my measly $525 :)
Is this kind of revealing though do you think? Is there something in this? I mean, should we be making the most of sites like Pond5 and trying to turn them into midstock type markets, like these big guys are doing? I've noticed with video for instance on P5 that many sell for $50-ish, but then there are lots for $500 too. And they are making sales!
Where is the balance between not killing P5 by making things too high to get sales, but making the most of an opportunity such as a site that lets you set your own price and gives 50%? If I knew how to make a poll I think this would make for an interesting one... "What should be the price per size on P5?"
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Well I hope $785 is the high water mark - and not just 'cause I'd lose then :)
I do think that for a while, raising prices at iStock from the $1-$2-$3 that they started with (after being free), was a good move. Images were still very reasonable and buyers were plentiful. The trick is figuring out where that line is where you go from reasonable to either too complex - too many collections and tiers and credit bundles and... - or just too expensive.
I think if you can show some clear differentiators - simple isolated objects versus multi-ethnic group shots in expensive settings, for example - you can even have a couple of price tiers on one site and make it work. I just don't see why you'd have those high price trad collections and stuff from 123rf (although that's now gone) and pixmac on one site without any clear distinction between the groups.
Of course it's possible that no one's buying the Blend and Image Source work at Pond 5...
I think CanStock and 123rf are too cheap. The upside on CanStock is the Fotosearch sales (although they've been a bit thin on the ground of late, except for subscriptions). There is no upside on 123rf - cheap prices and lots of discounting on top of that.
People have said Photo Dune is too cheap, but they're from $1 ($2 if you match to CanStock's smallest size) to $9
versus
$2.50 to $6 for CanStock
versus
1 to 5 credits at 123rf (which is often less than $1 a credit)
I'm in the process of uploading at GL Stock where I have $2-$5-$10 pricing. Too early to say how that will pan out.
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I see your $525 and raise you $260! Image source is at $785
[url]http://www.pond5.com/photo/10944696/mother-and-son-with-shopping.html[/url] ([url]http://www.pond5.com/photo/10944696/mother-and-son-with-shopping.html[/url])
I think $200 for a blog size is a bit of a stretch - it's a fine stock image, but not really anything special
Wow! You always gotta win jsnover.. ;)
I humbly withdraw my measly $525 :)
Is this kind of revealing though do you think? Is there something in this? I mean, should we be making the most of sites like Pond5 and trying to turn them into midstock type markets, like these big guys are doing? I've noticed with video for instance on P5 that many sell for $50-ish, but then there are lots for $500 too. And they are making sales!
Where is the balance between not killing P5 by making things too high to get sales, but making the most of an opportunity such as a site that lets you set your own price and gives 50%? If I knew how to make a poll I think this would make for an interesting one... "What should be the price per size on P5?"
I'm all for higher prices but is there much point when they millions of images from fotolia?
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I see your $525 and raise you $260! Image source is at $785
[url]http://www.pond5.com/photo/10944696/mother-and-son-with-shopping.html[/url] ([url]http://www.pond5.com/photo/10944696/mother-and-son-with-shopping.html[/url])
I think $200 for a blog size is a bit of a stretch - it's a fine stock image, but not really anything special
Wow! You always gotta win jsnover.. ;)
I humbly withdraw my measly $525 :)
Is this kind of revealing though do you think? Is there something in this? I mean, should we be making the most of sites like Pond5 and trying to turn them into midstock type markets, like these big guys are doing? I've noticed with video for instance on P5 that many sell for $50-ish, but then there are lots for $500 too. And they are making sales!
Where is the balance between not killing P5 by making things too high to get sales, but making the most of an opportunity such as a site that lets you set your own price and gives 50%? If I knew how to make a poll I think this would make for an interesting one... "What should be the price per size on P5?"
There are a few things you ccould try.
Put your new work only on Pond 5, and try some higher prices.
Put your niche subjects only on Pond 5, the kind of things people need to search around for, and charge higher prices.
Ex IS exclusives could remove their Vetta and Agency files from IS, put them only on Pond 5 at higher prices. Putting ex V & A files on sub sites isn't really appealing, when you know how much people have beem willing to pay.
I'm trying a few at $100 dollars, but that's just recent. They haven't sold at that price.
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I am trialing with newer and 'premium' files at $90. Some more unique ones at $50. Then the common and generic ones at either $25 or $10, depending on how generic and common they are. Still early days, so can't say whether it works or not.
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My first 50 uploads are priced at $49 for max size. I will lower them eventually if sales are too slow. I get fairly regular video sales, so I would expect to see some image/photo sales too if the prices are agreeable.
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I'm pricing my material at $15 on Pond5. I've only had a couple of sales, but I think it may be due to the fact that photos are such a recent addition to the Pond5 lineup. I'm leaning heavily toward macro and rights-managed, and away from micro and royalty-free. Last month, I made almost as much on Alamy with two sales as I did on SS with 82 sales! And that was all royalty-free on both sites! It also includes a couple of twenty-dollar video sales on SS. I'm so sick and tired of seeing my work sell XL for 21 cents on Fotolia and 36 cents on SS. I recently uploaded a batch to Alamy as RM, and it was so refreshing to upload it to a single web site and be done with it. If the sales volume could make up for the lower price, it might be viable, but that hasn't been my experience.
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I hope you aren't worried about selling images at maximum size for $10? Right now Blend Images has sold more than 12,000 images at Istock, their largest size is priced at $345 and the smallest sale for any image is $95. Please don't devalue your work, it's worth much more than $10 for a full sized license.
Uhhh, is anyone here contributing to an agency called Shutterstock? I've heard they sell images for 25-38 cents to the contributor.
I better stay far away from that shabby agency that pays us peanuts.
I have to start pricing all my images at $1000 for the largest size at Pond5 to make sure my work is valued appropriately! ::)
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I hope you aren't worried about selling images at maximum size for $10? Right now Blend Images has sold more than 12,000 images at Istock, their largest size is priced at $345 and the smallest sale for any image is $95. Please don't devalue your work, it's worth much more than $10 for a full sized license.
Uhhh, is anyone here contributing to an agency called Shutterstock? I've heard they sell images for 25-38 cents to the contributor.
I better stay far away from that shabby agency that pays us peanuts.
I have to start pricing all my images at $1000 for the largest size at Pond5 to make sure my work is valued appropriately! ::)
not to mention that BI has a collection at SS too ;D
http://www.shutterstock.com/g/blendimages (http://www.shutterstock.com/g/blendimages)
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When you set the price. On what file size are you setting against?
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Uhhh, is anyone here contributing to an agency called Shutterstock? I've heard they sell images for 25-38 cents to the contributor.
Crazy isn't it?
it's more than crazy - it's purely unethical. boycott the site. i would never undersell myself like that.
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When you set the price. On what file size are you setting against?
The largest.
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I've made myself a bunch of templates called "bargain" "everyday" "special" "unique"
I dropped all xmas stuff to bargain prices, which hopefully i'll remember to change back in september :)
anything that's been done a lot is $10 or $15, although I don't try to undercut others as I don't believe in racing you to the bottom.
"everyday" (or my other one "people") is $15 or $19. .
last two are $49 and $99. basically just my fave images that hurt me to sell at 25c elsewhere. sure they may never sell, but they are my favourites and you've got to treat them right :D
edit: oops, I *don't* want to undercut others
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I've made myself a bunch of templates called "bargain" "everyday" "special" "unique"
I dropped all xmas stuff to bargain prices, which hopefully i'll remember to change back in september :)
anything that's been done a lot is $10 or $15, although I try to undercut others as I don't believe in racing you to the bottom.
"everyday" (or my other one "people") is $15 or $19. .
last two are $49 and $99. basically just my fave images that hurt me to sell at 25c elsewhere. sure they may never sell, but they are my favourites and you've got to treat them right :D
This is why Pond 5 is really set to be a differentiator. You can set your pricing wherever you want and test the waters to see if buyers are willing to pay that amount in any kind of volume. If not, you are free to tweak them down (or up)....FREEDOMMMMMMM.....Just need buyers there.
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I've got mine set between 30$ and 60$. I'm not interested in adding another site that sells a few images a month for a couple of dollars each. If I don't sell anything then I'll rethink but I've had the same images sell on Alamy for over 400$.
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Initially i set all my images to 20$ (same price for all sizes) but i quickly realized that Pond5 license is more like an Extended license, so i increased it over time , and now they are at around 25$ (smallest size) to 90$ (largest size), and the volume sale so far is not changed too much. Granted, i dont sell as many as on other sites (far from it), but every sale here makes me feel really happy. I love Pond5.
I think buyers go to Pond5 for, either unique images that they may not find at other agencies, or for Extended license that might be cheaper at Pond5, so such a pricing would be adequate.
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I've made myself a bunch of templates called "bargain" "everyday" "special" "unique"
I dropped all xmas stuff to bargain prices, which hopefully i'll remember to change back in september :)
anything that's been done a lot is $10 or $15, although I try to undercut others as I don't believe in racing you to the bottom.
"everyday" (or my other one "people") is $15 or $19. .
last two are $49 and $99. basically just my fave images that hurt me to sell at 25c elsewhere. sure they may never sell, but they are my favourites and you've got to treat them right :D
I'm playing around over there. Where can you make a "photo template"? I only see video, audio and AE.
The site is very confusing and poor UI work.
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I've made myself a bunch of templates called "bargain" "everyday" "special" "unique"
I dropped all xmas stuff to bargain prices, which hopefully i'll remember to change back in september :)
anything that's been done a lot is $10 or $15, although I try to undercut others as I don't believe in racing you to the bottom.
"everyday" (or my other one "people") is $15 or $19. .
last two are $49 and $99. basically just my fave images that hurt me to sell at 25c elsewhere. sure they may never sell, but they are my favourites and you've got to treat them right :D
I'm playing around over there. Where can you make a "photo template"? I only see video, audio and AE.
The site is very confusing and poor UI work.
I ran into the same issues, and they keep saying they are working on it. The site is a mess and they should start paying attention to photographers, for some reason, they dont care.
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yes, it's really confusing to use, and as I don't go there more than once a fortnight I feel like I have to relearn how to use it every time I return.
ok, so I went back in and spent 5 mins looking around and I found the templates tab.
It's under "uploads"
there's a line of soft grey text - this is also where you find the Releases bit.
I felt like I was going around in circles to find it.
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Thanks gillian. That's very helpful! :)
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yes, it's really confusing to use, and as I don't go there more than once a fortnight I feel like I have to relearn how to use it every time I return.
ok, so I went back in and spent 5 mins looking around and I found the templates tab.
It's under "uploads"
there's a line of soft grey text - this is also where you find the Releases bit.
I felt like I was going around in circles to find it.
But there still is no photo template
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yes, it's really confusing to use, and as I don't go there more than once a fortnight I feel like I have to relearn how to use it every time I return.
ok, so I went back in and spent 5 mins looking around and I found the templates tab.
It's under "uploads"
there's a line of soft grey text - this is also where you find the Releases bit.
I felt like I was going around in circles to find it.
But there still is no photo template
You can use the other one. I think it was video one (or perhaps audio?). I don't remember. Yet you can use it because it is possible to apply it on photos. Confusing, but works.
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yes, it's really confusing to use, and as I don't go there more than once a fortnight I feel like I have to relearn how to use it every time I return.
ok, so I went back in and spent 5 mins looking around and I found the templates tab.
It's under "uploads"
there's a line of soft grey text - this is also where you find the Releases bit.
I felt like I was going around in circles to find it.
But there still is no photo template
You can use the other one. I think it was video one (or perhaps audio?). I don't remember. Yet you can use it because it is possible to apply it on photos. Confusing, but works.
Last time I tried it gave me an error and said I was using the wrong template
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^ I checked. It is a video template. I've just tried to apply it on photos and submit something I had in queue and it works fine. Perhaps it depends on what fields you fill in your template, don't know.
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Looks to me like they shouldn't have added something like photos unless they had a tight integration and simple workflow. This looks like a mess!
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This looks like a mess!
If all you want to do is to upload your images, set a standard maximum price (I use $40) and submit to the curator, it is very easy. Two or three steps and you are there.
You can also split your images up in your own folders, then upload all those that you want to assign a specific price to, set that price and submit, then ftp the rest of the images. I do that with images that need model releases - sort them, upload all the images with a particular model, set the price, add the MR and submit.
Easy!
Steve
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I was looking at the video prices few are priced very high like $2000, $5000 up to $50 000 :)
teh record is 10 millions bucks a video of a pond5 team member ;D
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I think for video it is great that you can set your own prices. Some videos might be worth 5000 dollars to license, simply because it is such unique material.
What really bothers me though, are the visible download numbers. This means if you have a clip that sells well, it will be copied really fast and probably offered at a lower price.
These numbers only help the idea thieves. They have no value for the customer, because the video is not exclusive and could have sales elsewhere as well.
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What really bothers me though, are the visible download numbers.
indeed but looking at top agencies only SS ain't showing them
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I know, but it really is a curse. I had people in my creative network on istock that quickly copied all my new selling files. It got a little better when they introduced "fuzzy" numbers. But once a file erupts in "flames" it just screames "copy me".
Getty doesnīt do it either, I think it is obvious that visible download numbers lead to endless duplications in the database. Idea thieves copy your files, which means next season you are forced to reinvent the bestsellers of your portfolio so that you have something showing up in newer searches, these then get copied again etc...it is an endless vicious cycle.
And so easy to break - just donīt show individual file numbers. I have no problems with total sales volume on the profile page. A little something for the ego...
SS has tremendous success without them. So it obviously isnīt necessary to reward copy cats.
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Using those very same download numbers, I was looking at commonly downloaded images and sorted by "most downloaded." The vast majority of images on Pond5 have less than 3 sales; I don't think people are buying images on Pond5 yet.
Even though Pond5 is my #2 agency (in terms of total revenue), I've only had two image sales on Pond5 so far.
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That is precisely why pond5 could start with an improved system. No need to copy the mistakes of other sites.
They have so much fantastic things going for them, I think making individual download numbers private would make them even more popular. There are many good portfolios coming on the market right now. Pond5 could attract a lot of great stuff.