They have plenty of open and frank discussions on pond5. Artists are openly asking what alternatives there are etc...

But who is now in charge of pond5? Who makes the real decisions? And does he or she have a background in working online, transparently and internet community leadership?

As for conspiracy theories, I doubt they "punish" people for what they write anywhere, there are too many people reporting a drastic drop in sales on all the boards, including small, private facebook groups.

And some of those ports have thousands of files.

I think they just messed up the site completly with the redesign, when you go to an artist portfolio it is impossible to see what files they have etc...nobody is going to "click for more" several hundred times to get an overview of the content.

At least galleries are visible again on a page, they had hidden them completly before. Why would anyone do that? The pond5 gallery system is one of its major advantages. Something SS doesn�t have for footage.

I wonder where did all the customers go? Are they just waiting for pond5 to sort themselves out? Did they all buy into the membership program?

How can so many buyers disappear so suddenly?

Or are the sales not being recorded because of software problems?

Is there any visible leadership anywhere?

What are their goals? Or is encouraging us all to go elsewhere really the new plan?

Which agency is interested in becoming the next marketplace? Who will seize this opportunity and make it their moment?

A chance like that, you might not get it again for years. I don�t think anybody was expecting pond5 to give up their marketplace concept and go boutique and subscription at incredibly low prices at the same time.

Really excellent points, Cobalt.  Honestly, P5 has the appearance that they are falling apart at the seams.  So much going on with Johathan's death, then the ousting of execs, new investors, changes in collection acceptance criteria, poor, rude communication with contributors, rude responses from inspectors, etc.  The change is happening in such a short time that it is evolving before our eyes and does not have a positive tone to it at all.  I am honestly bummed because I was making okay $$ with them once I hit 700 videos. 

3 months no sales, next month 10 sales, next 3 months no sales, next month 10 sales.  VERY hard to believe that I would get a good mix of 10 video sales one month then crickets for three months, then a good mix of sales month 4, then crickets again for three months. I am suspicious, but I don't know why yet.  Definitely no short term consistency but I am seeing a pattern form.

CTO and founder no 2 is gone too....WOW!
Anyone left there?

I am fearful that they are following the path of Fotolia and Canva....taking revenge on contributors who question their new model/methods.  Ever since I had an email exchange (stern, factual but clean and legit) with them where I pointed out clear inspection shenanigans on their part, in fact showing them a search term from a set of my submissions, ZERO results come up on P5, so why were my videos in that batch fully rejected when there were no "oversupplied clips?" The response was too bad, all rejected.  I responded back to them in a nice way stating that they are destroying a good model and that the value for P5 was really in good curation, keywords and pricing floors, not destroying a model that is working. Then I linked them to one of the P5 threads here, never heard back from them. But haven't had a sale since, either. That was about 5-6 weeks ago. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. I have about 900 clips and 3,000 photos there.

The worst is the crazy amount of rejections after all this.

Yep. They are definitely going in a different direction.  Ever since I complained about their inspections my sales have dried up.  I went and looked at my popular stuff and I cannot even find in. The only stuff that does show up in the clips where nobody else has any.  Many of my clips used to come up on the first page, today I could not find any of my popular ones with the same keywords.  With the rude feedback I got from their "curator", who was likely sipping a martini, I will focus my time elsewhere.

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on April 03, 2016, 14:47

http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=27162.msg450588;topicseen#new

Thanks Sean!

So looks like about a 2half month review time and expect a 50% rejection from what I read.

50-100%.  They now spot check and batch reject.  So if they don't like the first numbers of videos they review from a batch, they will go ahead and unfairly reject the whole batch.  When I called them on this, they did what others have reported....IGNORE YOU. They are screaming for people to stop submitting.

It�s amazing how much negativity they are spreading in such a short time. Just a few weeks or three months ago people were only complaining about long review times, but otherwise were satisfied with pond5. You can always use more sales, but people felt at home.

Now there isn�t a single board where people are not complaining bitterly.

Who is now in charge of pond5? Do they now have a management that has never worked in the stock industry?

Instead of changing everything, why didn�t they add an additional site to experiment with and then very gradually implement what works on pond5, after discussing it carefully with contributors?

Why drive people to explore the competition? I don�t understand their goals at all.

Shutterstock, Videoblocks and Adobe are probably ordering champagne every week, this is an unexpected gift for them. And if istock had vision, they would use this opportunity to announce a new royalty system to attract all the content that has avoided them.

I would love this to happen but I can't recall a time where they did anything in favor of the contributor.  The only thing is that if they realize the delta between revenue loss that's linked to how much profit they are losing.  They are reaming us with horrible commissions, so a lot of people pulled content and no longer upload there. But what if they recognize this?  By increasing royalties to some higher level, they attract more content that ultimately yields higher gross margins.  The problem is that they would never offer royalties that even comes close to competing with P5. 

I had a great run with DT, and then, like other sites, there was a stair step decline to a more than 50% reduction in royalty payments.  I still upload photos there, but DT is the last site I upload to with minimal excitement.  I don't sell video there and I have built about 1100 video assets in 12 months.  To be fair, DT is still above the other sites I just cut ties with (Most Photos, Stockfresh, GL), but they are still declining for me month over month on declining volume.  I am also opted out of EL's but I rarely got those anyway.

I would love for them to change a few things. With the problems forming over at Pond5 someone has a real chance to take video share if they shape their program correctly. Funny, I just had all 120 of my last video batch rejected at P5, and have sold three of those videos already elsewhere in a few weeks. But the $20 or so I got could have been more if they sold on P5. 

2-3 weeks for me.

They must be tweaking things on search. I had 10 sales in Sept 2015, zip in Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, then 10 in Feb, Zip in March. That is just plain fabricated, not a natural low and high.

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on March 28, 2016, 16:57

"Don't limit yourself. We w..." it's a reference to SS but can't tell what without knowing what the cut off part of the ad says.

The cut off text appeared when I hovered over, the full text is Don't Limit Yourself. We Won't. Stock photography that won't make you "shutter".

Istock must realize that they are mocking themselves and/or their contributors. I'd say quite a few non exclusives have their work on Istock and SS.  So does my Istock work make Istock buyers "shutter" since the same port is on SS?

I had 1.46 given to me yesterday with the same message, "not purchased through the site"or something like that.  Nice. I can now go buy 146 gumballs (the small ones only, though)!

Quote from: Mantis on March 27, 2016, 08:23

As I mentioned earlier, I hope the rumors are true that Istock is feeling the pinch on video and changing their game later this year to be " a little bit "more equitable on royalties.  If anyone follows the Istock forums feel free to post any news you find on this, if any. I browsed the forums but could only find that they are maybe going to build a CSV capability of ESPAWS, but nothing specific about the video program being re-engineered like someone said in another MSG thread.

Hi Mantis I think you probably mean me. I read on the forum that istock were going to change some of the exclusive contributors files around so some would end up in the Essentials collection. Another contributor then wrote does that mean the signature collection will be a Vetta like collection again and this was the response by a istock idmin...

"As far as a more premium tier reminiscent of Vetta, we technically have a Signature+ collection for video, and we continually edit content into it just like we do for photos. The only difference being that we do not use it as a marker for mirroring to Getty Images and it is not flagged to customers. This may change and will play into the new royalties system that we going to be rolling out later in the year� yes, that's a dropped hint to something big coming, and we're confident that contributors are going to like it."

Thank you Cider Apple.  Probably good news for exclusives at the least.  Thanks for digging that up. Much appreciated.

My belief is that we are only seeing the beginning of the P5 transition from fair trade to something quite different. With new management & funding, my gut tells me we will see a 50% royalty go to 30%.  I think it's also probable that they will do more to control pricing. If they create a boutique-type collection (which it looks like they are doing) that will be a "premium collection"priced accordingly.  If buyers find something in the "general"collection they won't want to pay boutique pricing, they would likely expect to pay quite less.  The collections can't compete; there has to be a clear divide between them, which is content and price.  The only way to make that work is to devalue or control the general collection in some way so as to make the boutique collection of higher perceived value. The reason I say this is that other sites offer spectacular footage at regular micro stock rates. P5 won't be able to compete with that so the only way is to devalue existing work below the threshold of which the boutique collection is priced.  In any event Pond 5 has begin eroding the trust of its contributors who helped build them. Classic behavior once you are rolling in dough.  The direction of their inspections alone has alienated a lot of us contributors, especially knowing that they spot check and batch reject, even after waiting 10 weeks for inspection to happen. No thank you Pond 5.

As I mentioned earlier, I hope the rumors are true that Istock is feeling the pinch on video and changing their game later this year to be " a little bit "more equitable on royalties.  If anyone follows the Istock forums feel free to post any news you find on this, if any. I browsed the forums but could only find that they are maybe going to build a CSV capability of ESPAWS, but nothing specific about the video program being re-engineered like someone said in another MSG thread.