City shots are mostly editorial or far away to avoid details. Nature is no problem.

There are several 360 clips in the P5 bestsellers each and every month. Since there are only 0.2% (0.3% in the $130+ range) as many 360 clips as there are 4k clips, I would say that's pretty good.

You don't need special gear to enjoy 360, which is a big difference compared to 3D.

I personally never enjoyed 3D that much, but I find it very fascinating to view 360 content. Even locations that aren't special at all.

I don't know about "taking off" but 360 is selling already, and you can demand high prices since it's still very, very expensive to buy a high quality 360 rig.

On the other hand, very, very easy to film once you have the gear.

360 is much, much, much, much more useful than 3D. They can't even be compared.

I don't know I'm happy at thye current price point to keep both for occasional PS tweaking....I intend to learn a bit more about doing the fancy stuff in PS when I get round to it. But more as my "hobby" side of photography.....I doub't many pics generate the sales that hours of sophisticated Photoshopping would warrant.

I would say that most stock photo best-sellers involve heavy and (more or less) sophisticated Photoshop work. It's just (usually) well done so you don't think about it.

Many of the all-time famous conceptual photos are actually composites of photos taken at completely different locations.

This one for example: https://petapixel.com/2015/09/24/the-iceberg-stock-photo-that-has-earned-over-900k/

And I can guarantee it's not the only one.

These are both top 20 Rome photos at Shutterstock:

https://www.shutterstock.com/sv/image-photo/colosseum-sunset-rome-italy-261029783?src=60hPqdqFuxxFY8GxCiJPhw-1-17
https://www.shutterstock.com/sv/image-photo/roman-ruins-rome-italy-316881665?src=60hPqdqFuxxFY8GxCiJPhw-1-21

Not sure I would call it "sophisticated" Photoshop work but those leaves are of course added in post.

Every "perfect" model photo requires lots of post work. Every perfect studio product shot. Etc. etc.

Many of the nice backlit photos have a fake sun/fake sunlight in them, or if there's a real one, it's always enhanced.

Keep in mind that editorial images have a much lower sale potential.
Personally I don't do editorial at all and consider it a waste of time: they never sell multiple times per file, while what I am looking for are best sellers that sell over and over. Others will probably disagree with this

That is not quite true. And how would you know if you don't do editorial? They might have lower sales potential but they are not a waste of time.

Several of the Pond5 all-time bestsellers are editorial clips. That means MANY sales. Many of my 4k sales have been editorial. I just wish more sites would accept editorial clips.

There are so many uses for editorial clips - not everything produced is a commercial.

From the website

While we have made great progress, mostly thanks to your invaluable feedback, we realized that we are getting too far away from our original mission. Therefore, we have decided to take what we have learned from FocalPool and start fresh under new branding and a laser focus mission. Once we are ready to publicly launch our new company, we'll notify all of you via email.

Far away from the mission of making money... 

No problem for me, but sometimes you have to use your username instead of your e-mail address. Tried that?

its for Golden Gate bridge. i think the same, this policy is so cumblesome,  its ok for large production but for stock and youtube its overkill.

Oops, missed that. 

But you are thinking WAY too much about this. Will you go with a team of 10 people with actors, cranes, dolly tracks, parked vehicles? No. Didn't think so.

You take photos/film as a tourist. You don't have to worry about permits. It does not cost $10,000 to set up a single tripod and make a time-lapse of the Golden Gate Bridge.

60p if you want 40% slow motion and deliver in 24p.

Whether you sell it as 60p or 24p it's still the same identical clips. Customers know what to do with it. If it looks better in slow motion, put it as 24p.

not with so many tax witholds we had at VB. Then the incomes was as bad as elsewhere.

Don't mix in unrelated issues here. Withheld taxes are dictated by the IRS and the US government, and depends on the politics of your country and the US.

It has nothing to do with VB, iS, P5 etc. (except their location).

---

100% is great. 62% is great. 70% is great.

Sneaking in a $30 "temporary fee" and calling the price $49 is not great.

All I want is honesty in a company.

And the argument "but the other companies are worse" is pretty weak...

Sorry Guys, I'm not a videographer and I don't know this agency but reading through this post I keep wondering how the heck do these people make money if they give you 100% commission???

Thanks

They either charge a $30 "temporary membership fee" which is what we're discussing here, or they get people to sign up for their full membership program.

easy way to test that theory is to have a "friend" (in another region) purchase your clip as a non-member, and record the process while on skype (let's say) if the royalties show up and all is there we're good, if only $49 shows up on contributor side then we prove the theory, if nothing shows up then we PANIC!

youtube and social media is a powerful tool, no agency would want that kind of stain on them.

PS. if contributor keeps "100%" -minus a dollar or so, then this experiment will cost very little
PSS. if anyone tries this please follow up in this thread.

Cheers,
Bart

EDIT: I believe the $30 non-member fee goes to agency not contributor, so we always get $49 for HD.

I already said that I KNOW that for a fact.  It's in the first post.

Let them make some money.  I don't want them to go out of business.  Without non-member $79 sales they keep $30 out of it, it's like they are volunteering for us for no reason.  I don't care how much they sell for those non-member sales.  They give us $49 (minus $1+ fee) for HD video and that's much more than any other sites.

If you read the posts you will see that that's not what we're talking about...

We are talking about hiding information.

You just didn't know isn't transparency.  I already knew and have no problem about it whatsoever.
Congrats!

I don't have a problem with them taking $30. But they try to hide it. That's the non-transparent part. You knowing about it doesn't make a difference...

This is what it says in their contributor agreement:

"For each Member that purchases the Content, we will pay you the amount that such Member paid us for such Content, less only third-party fees incurred by us for such transaction"

So far so good, because someone that has to pay $79 is not a member.

"You acknowledge and agree that we may charge a membership fee to gain access to the Platform and such a fee is not considered Revenue"

Wait now... If the buyer is charged a TEMPORARY membership fee, they must be considered a member, yes? Membership. Member.

The thing here is that the "membership fee" doesn't give the buyer ANYTHING else but the right to buy that one clip. And for a non-member the price next to the clips clearly says "$79". Only later do they claim the price is still only $49 but they charge a "temporary membership fee" which is complete nonsense of course since you don't get anything for that fee.

Doing it this way you can just set the price to $1, pay out $1, but charge a "temporary membership fee" of $48 that you see if you add to cart.

They can call it a "mouse click fee" or whatever they want, but as long as you only get the right to buy that one clip it effectively acts as that clip's total price. The price is $79.

They do their best to hide the $30 fee from contributors so they can claim 100% royalties, which is not true.

It's just a shady way of adding $30 while still claiming 100% on everything. That's that.