Author Topic: Pond5: What should we improve? (Read 80240 times)

corepics · « **Reply #25 on:** July 11, 2013, 17:32 »

I think it would be great if the current predefined template system could be replaced by an opt-in type of system.

Currently, I need to create a template, save it, then go to my uploads, select an array of files, and then apply one of the templates I created in the past. I think it would be a huge improvement, if I could start with selecting the array of uploaded files, then click an "generic metadata" button, land on an opt-in form where I can specify the data I'd like to add to all files, and click apply.

Kudos for Pond5 being the only site (I'm aware of) to read the metadata added in FCP. That saves a lot of time!

ACS · « **Reply #26 on:** July 12, 2013, 00:46 »

@Download numbers should be invisible
@View numbers shoud be counted
@I wish I could be able to sort my files depending on the file types (photo-footage)

THP Creative · « **Reply #27 on:** July 12, 2013, 02:29 »

Thanks for this thread, Pond5 has GREAT potential but needs quite a few improvements. Listening to your contributors will help enormously.

My 3 top things to improve...

1. Allow the ability to set a price for EACH SIZE, not just a top price and let the algorithm do the rest. (e.g: using the current system, some of my tiny blog sizes are going for $10+, allowing us to set a price for each size setting would eliminate that problem)
2. Clean up the interface. Too much clutter.
3. PLEASE improve the preview image for photos/stills. It often has a very poor quality about it, and is relatively small, with no zoom option.

And 4. (sorry, had to add one more) - Please improve default search order. It's quite poor at the moment, often with many similars next to each other. This needs to be addressed asap.

ProImage · « **Reply #28 on:** July 12, 2013, 04:45 »

Indeed, Upload process is painful.

somethingpretentious · « **Reply #29 on:** July 12, 2013, 11:01 »

Pond5 need image buyers, so:

1) marketing
2) better search

WarrenPrice · « **Reply #30 on:** July 12, 2013, 11:03 »

Merge with DT.

EmberMike · « **Reply #31 on:** July 12, 2013, 13:09 »

Are you accepting vector uploads yet?

PhotoGirl · « **Reply #32 on:** July 13, 2013, 00:07 »

Clarification on whether or not your main office is in the U.S. so that both U.S. and non-U.S. contributors know how to handle taxes. Are you based out of the U.S.?

charlotteLake · « **Reply #33 on:** July 13, 2013, 02:17 »

Quote from: morning.light on July 11, 2013, 11:07

I have only two suggestions:

1. Clips should be automatically converted so they could be available in all sizes
2. For some reason, the capital letters from all my titles are displayed as normal letters after uploading. So I have to take each image one by one and rewrite the titles. I suppose the metadata is not being read correctly.

+1

hafakot · « **Reply #34 on:** July 13, 2013, 02:33 »

1. Set the minimum price for 1080 clips to 20 - 25$
2. Show contributors images before 123rf
3. Don't make us write camera model
4. No categories please...
5. Offer an option to send us those "you have a new sale" upon sale (not daily).

You are the best site out there!!!! Thanks!!!

Carl · « **Reply #35 on:** July 13, 2013, 04:58 »

I don't understand why others view the upload system as cumbersome. I think it's great! Especially since the photo templates are working. I customise an existing template or create a new one, then apply it to a batch of my uploads, and voila. I can apply a model release to a batch as well, although when working with a batch, it would be nice to see the releases in alphabetical order, just as they appear when managing them. Compared to the upload processes on other sites, I think the P5 system is the best. There's no question that it's the fastest for me, and that's the most important criteria because time is money. Perhaps others might benefit from spending some time with the upload tutorials to familiarize themselves with all of the features of the P5 upload system.

THP Creative · « **Reply #36 on:** July 13, 2013, 21:46 »

The more I thought about it, the more I came up with...

- Set a decent MINIMUM price for each size/type (as someone else mentioned. I see high res photos going for $3, why allow that!?)
- Get the Pixmac merge completed properly as you initially stated. Eg: Transfer our pricing to pixmac, get the vectors onto pond5, clean up both websites

Seriously guys, Pond5 has HUGE potential if you can get onto some of these important things that have been mentioned in this thread. Well done for asking the question. Let's hope it leads to some actual changes - it will benefit us all.

08stock08 · « **Reply #37 on:** July 14, 2013, 10:49 »

1. Upload system. Bring back FTP.
2. Cluttered interface.
3. keywording, price set, number of views etc are areas.

travelwitness · « **Reply #38 on:** July 14, 2013, 10:54 »

Turning the company into a CO-OP with exclusive images would be the best change you could implement.

djpadavona · « **Reply #39 on:** July 15, 2013, 07:07 »

Give us a script for setting prices for all of our images if we feel we need to change price points.

ShadySue · « **Reply #40 on:** July 15, 2013, 07:18 »

Is there any way of searching still images but returning only photos, not raster graphics?

My usual test for new sites, "blue whale" throws in even more than usual of images which are not of blue whales, but random images of whales and the colour blue.
The normal way of dealing with this is to search "Balaenoptera musculus", but most of your actual photos of Blue Whales don't show up on a search for the scientific name, but that presumably is the fault of your suppliers, not of your system.

Ron · « **Reply #41 on:** July 15, 2013, 11:20 »

Quote from: djpadavona on July 15, 2013, 07:07

Give us a script for setting prices for all of our images if we feel we need to change price points.

Cant you create a new template and update all image with the new template?

gillian vann · « **Reply #42 on:** July 15, 2013, 23:20 »

Quote from: Microstock Man on July 12, 2013, 02:29

1. Allow the ability to set a price for EACH SIZE, not just a top price and let the algorithm do the rest. (e.g: using the current system, some of my tiny blog sizes are going for $10+, allowing us to set a price for each size setting would eliminate that problem)

+1 to that. I'd be happy to set the blog size cheap but the only way to do that is to set the mega high price cheap too.

are those dl numbers right? a quick search across a few popular topics reveals that the top sellers have DLs in the single digits, and those top sellers have rock bottom prices. sadly even the contributors are racing themselves to the bottom.

djpadavona · « **Reply #43 on:** July 17, 2013, 08:05 »

Quote from: Ron on July 15, 2013, 11:20

Quote from: djpadavona on July 15, 2013, 07:07
Give us a script for setting prices for all of our images if we feel we need to change price points.
Cant you create a new template and update all image with the new template?

I have no idea. That is a convoluted way of doing things, although it probably works. Seems to me a simple script to set pricing for all images would be much simpler and more logical.

Julied83 · « **Reply #44 on:** July 17, 2013, 09:09 »

1- Faster review time for videos
2- More sales
3- Vector uploading working

Wichita · « **Reply #45 on:** July 17, 2013, 13:01 »

Being able to see which of my pictures/videos have been viewed in sales data, they all show zero. I think this has been going on for a while now for most users without being fixed?

zager · « **Reply #46 on:** July 18, 2013, 10:04 »

Hi everyone! Thank you for such an extensive re-assurance that what we're fixing now is the right thing. Even that some of you feel like Pond5 is the best, there's always a space for improvement. And as both Pond5 and Pixmac teams have several years of expereince, it greatly benefits everyone in the family (artists, customers, team).

Camera Model / Software used

Yes, this was a crazy required field. In the next release of Pond5 website, this would be using EXIF data and if that fails, you could enter it manually or simply keep it blank. In last few days I've tested the new upload, so this is now with developers to refine some last bugs I've found.

Also, the amount of input fields to bother with is lower. We agreed that the critical info is Title (3-200 letters), Decription (0-300 letters), Keywords (5-50 phrases)

Capital Letters to Lowercase

This is currently not fiexd, but already being worked on, so before we launch the next release, it would be fixed (or otherwise I'll slap my face).

Search Results Quality & Relevance

There's a lot to do on this front. Thank you for valuable feedback. One task is to finish the merger (in a meaningful way) of the metadata we have on both sites (Pond5 & Pixmac) and the other is really to use it better. We already use the same technology on both sites. And we've done significant improvements in recent months that were "approved" by higher sales.

As travelwitness mentions, there's tone of great work not being found. We'll find it and sell it. It's in ours as well as your interest.

Templates

Small note: You should be able to edit files without using a template.

Editing of existing template and saving it as new one was assigned to developers as well. Thank you KB & corepics & Carl for suggestions. This is something I should study more. Would you guys be willing to do a Skype call around this or a separate email discussion? My email: vita (at) pond5 (dot) com and the most important question is: "How you usually use it?"

The system should also remember your choices for previous file (for price, and elsewhere where it makes sense).

Also, I can see some potential in better navigation of CSV metadata imports. As Zeus mentioned. Such as if you provide a ist of files and metadata in CSV, it would simply ask you which column of that CSV goes to which field of the upload form. But that's not an easy task I believe. There's some CSV capability already, but I have to find out more how advanced it is. So if you have a lot of files to upload and also an Excel Sheet with all the data, a good system could help a lot.

I have to learn more about current capabilities of this for sure. It might be a hidden treasure of Pond5.

Vectors

Thank you cthoman for bringing this up. Vectors are working on Pixmac and I'm now in ping-pong game with developers to make it even better at Pond5. I've seen many systems - so I'll try to make Pond5 the best one. As for specification, it should take either EPS+JPG or ZIP with EPS+JPG+AI or whatever rich data you'll pack into the ZIP (SVG & PDF for example). We would stick to EPS v10 as the industry standard that gives artists enough creative options (transparency for example).

As for the timeline, right now the developers are actively working on it. Using the specification we finalized about 2 weeks ago. Hopefully we'll make you happy in reasonable timeframe.

No reply from support

Sorry to hear this a-b-foto, but if you have any issues with our support, please contact Kennon (head of support) directly at kennon (at) pond5 (dot) com. She's usually fast, but might have missed your email for some reason. If you'd be unable to reach her, ping me email to vita (at) pond5 (dot) com.

Files from Pixmac at Pond5

To be honest, as for your other questions a-b-foto, I'm also a bit unhappy that we're not yet perfectly displaying and selling all files on both sites. There are some technical and legal issues, that we need to fix. So for now, please use Pixmac and Pond5 as separate sites and we'll let you know when the time comes and the uploading/editing platform as well as "single database" will become fully integrated for P5 and PX. We have to do it right and it takes a bit more time than expected.

GL Stock Upload features

Thank you tab62 for suggestion. Can you briefly describe what you love there and what you miss at P5?

Hiding upload numbers

Thank you cobalt for this. We've not discussed this option before, but I'll keep this in mind for future discussions. Would you be ok with the iStock way, where big numbers are rounded? Because even if we hide the actual nubers or round them, you can always sort by downloads or even best match and get inspiration from the results.

More numbers for Artists

Also to cobalt: As for better numbers for artist, we're now working a lot in this area. Part of that would be better stats and more insight into what you should do to max your sales. I've also sent email to Luis and will try to meet with him at Microtock Expo in Berlin this September. It might not be an easy task to implement this, but I'll investigate it. I hope this answers jsnover's & ammentorp's question as well.

Clips automatically converted

As for your question morning.light, this would be possible. But was not yet discussed in terms of how much work it would require and if we have enough resources to do this soon. I've asked devs.

Sales

Thank you Ron & dbvirago for a nice suggestion ;-) I can say that there's noone at Pond5 who would not have the sentence "How we can increase sales quick?" question circulating in our minds. To Ron: The results I see are better and better every month, so consider at least watching our progress if you don't wanna upload now.

Who's in charge?

Thx JohnItalia for questions. The team at P5 and PX merged and it's more Pixmac being part of Pond5 than otherwise. So we basically kept each others responsibilities in the separate brands/products and we also work more closely together on overall improvements of our sites. With the main goal to become "The most artist friendly marketplace in the World". We're far from that in terms of User Experience and Design, so we are simplifying everyhing to make your life at Pond5 a pleasurable experience.

Right now we're US entity for all Pond5 contributors and Swiss entity for all Pixmac contributors. We're going to notify you in case there would be some changes or improvements on the tax front.

I hope this also answers PhotoGirl's question.

Model/Property releases

Thank you yuliang11, this is not perfect now and we'll keep it in mind for future improvements.

Original filename as identificator

You're exactly right icefront that this is crucial. I've already added as one of the requirements for the updated upload system. Not only Audio might get confusing, series of similar photos are sometimes also better to be identified exactly.

Sort my files depending on the file type

This should be part of the redesigned upload system. If not, please let me know ACS and I'll take care of it.

Thumbnail Quality

Thank you Microstock Man for your suggestions. Thumbnails need a lot of improvement overall. Sharpness is the main issue I have in this area. Also picture detail is far behind what it could be in terms of design and performance. It's in TODO screaming at us every day.

Each Size Price

This is also a nice suggestion as well as djpadavona's suggestion for scripts able to batch re-price content. I'll keep that in mind and if we work in that area, I'll use it to tune the system so it offers more flexibility.

FTP

As for your question pro_microstock - I believe FTP is working. Am I wrong? If it wasn't it was probably a temporary issue?

CO-OP

Although we're not going to get directly inspired by the idea Bruce introduced, we're definitely on the same side of the river and I personally like the CO-OP part of the business. In comparison to Symbiostock, where I have some doubts about its large scale success.

As for the content part of Stocksy, I'm not sure, but that's another discussion. Our long term strategy is to make you guys happy in the first place. Probably not overnigh, but we have some pretty surprising approaches to the calm waters of microstock in our heads. Thank you travelwitness for mentioning this.

Searching still images

To ShadySue: Unfortunatelly you're not able to search only for photos excluding JPG graphics. But we'll work on that so that raster graphics and vectors are under illustrations and therefor separate from photos. So you would be able to either pick photos, graphics or vectors.

DL numbers correct?

As for your question gillian, I'm now unable to get you accurate answer, but once we're done with the data merger between P5 and PX, we would definitely correct anything that seems consfusing or is not updated. It's not top priority, but it's good to have this fresh and constantly updated. Also, take in account, that most photos at Pond5 are there for just several months, so they need time to get to higher DL numbers. This is also realted to Wichita's comment so I hope we'll get the numbers right in reasonable time.

Thank you.

I've tried to adress all areas of questions here. In case you have further questions or I've missed answering the one you had, feel free to ask me again. In the meantime, I'll try to help our team to deliver the promises above.

cobalt · « **Reply #47 on:** July 18, 2013, 10:51 »

Thank you for taking me seriously, but unfortunately the rounded numbers don't really help. istock introduced them to prevent the automatic scraping of sales data of the top contributors, not to prevent seeing if a file has sold in general.

I have no problem if people can sort a search by "most popular" which in effect is a sort by downloads, as long as there is no number visible. It makes a big difference for the copy cats to see if a file has sold 10 times or 1000. It makes copying so much more successful when the number is high. And as I have repeatdly suffered from copy cats who would immediatly copy my work every 3 months, of course only the new files with sales, it is very, very frustrating.

So, a general "most popular" is fine, numbers of any kind, fuzzy or not, or flags etc...are not.

However, I don't mind if in my contributor profile you put a total number of files sold. This does help to reassure the customer that my work can be trusted to be bought.

But again, please don't split it up into how many photos or videos have sold, just one total.

To generally browse portfolios and images for inspiration is also not a problem, however there are people who specialize in copying to save on their own market research and although you cannot fully prevent, no numbers would be a major step forward.

I would definetly put more interesting work at higher prices on pond5 and I am sure, so would others.

Thank you for listening.

travelwitness · « **Reply #48 on:** July 18, 2013, 11:07 »

Quote from: zager on July 18, 2013, 10:04

Hiding upload numbers

Thank you cobalt for this. We've not discussed this option before, but I'll keep this in mind for future discussions. Would you be ok with the iStock way, where big numbers are rounded? Because even if we hide the actual nubers or round them, you can always sort by downloads or even best match and get inspiration from the results.

Wow, I'm impressed that you guys are really listening.

With showing downloads I would like to see them hidden completely - by all means fold them into a best match algorithm but I very much doubt buyers really care - they just want relevant images.

I don't think contributors should be encouraged to replicate download success - all you end up doing is diluting the library with poor copies of a good image. Getty and Corbis don't show downloads, to me it just seems to be redundant idea from the early Microstock days.

Wish you luck guys, look forward to seeing the changes.

cthoman · « **Reply #49 on:** July 18, 2013, 11:08 »

Quote from: zager on July 18, 2013, 10:04

Vectors

Thank you cthoman for bringing this up. Vectors are working on Pixmac and I'm now in ping-pong game with developers to make it even better at Pond5. I've seen many systems - so I'll try to make Pond5 the best one. As for specification, it should take either EPS+JPG or ZIP with EPS+JPG+AI or whatever rich data you'll pack into the ZIP (SVG & PDF for example). We would stick to EPS v10 as the industry standard that gives artists enough creative options (transparency for example).

As for the timeline, right now the developers are actively working on it. Using the specification we finalized about 2 weeks ago. Hopefully we'll make you happy in reasonable timeframe.

Thanks for the info.

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Author Topic: Pond5: What should we improve? (Read 80240 times)

corepics

ACS

THP Creative

ProImage

somethingpretentious

WarrenPrice

EmberMike

PhotoGirl

charlotteLake

hafakot

Carl

THP Creative

08stock08

travelwitness

djpadavona

ShadySue

Ron

gillian vann

djpadavona

Julied83

Wichita

zager

cobalt

travelwitness

cthoman

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