Yeah, I think it takes a few hours to update.

I do not feel this is fair to the buyer who thinks my files are exclusive when they are not!!

Why would they care?

The good thing about my space stuff... I'll be long dead before I have to alter the positions of the stars. Impact craters could be an issue though.

Just to chip in with video.... there's always the resolution to consider. When I uploaded my first video back in the mists of time, there was still a few SD clips available, a bunch of 720p, mainly 1080p and hardly any 4K. Now a lot of sites won't accept SD or even 720p. All my After Effects projects I create in 4K now. It's not a massive amount of additional work and hopefully that will future-proof them for a while.

But yeah, anything other than landscape there's going to be a bit of a lifespan for them. I'd say you'll get at least five years out of them. Cityscapes are going to go the quickest probably (or techoose as you mentioned). Imagine the Vegas strip five years ago for example... City Centre would still be under construction. No big wheel thing or Linq etc. Fashion might last a bit longer, a traffic jam is going to look a bit old if all the cars are from ten years ago.

Although, after a certain point, you can add the word retro to your keywords and go for the niche!

"I have spoken to quite a few brits who cannot honestly explain what the EU actually is - but voted for Brexit anyway."

Of course they did. If they understood what it was then they probably wouldn't have voted to leave. Instead they probably grumbled a bit about foreigners, and immigrants, and pesky newcomers stealing our jobs... and then voted to leave.

Maybe a bit of a stereotype, but hey, it's probably not that far from the truth.

Quote from: YadaYadaYada on October 11, 2016, 21:57

Quote from: marthamarks on October 10, 2016, 09:42

Quote from: gyllens on October 10, 2016, 06:58

I dont think people leave SS as such they leave their portfolios but dont upload.=

That's exactly what I'm doing.

My older images still sell on SS, but newer ones die there. So now, all my newest images are going to Adobe and Dreamstime, where they do sell.

If you don't upload them they will never sell. Perfect plan. Then you can say, sales are down on SS, because you don't give them new files?

That's right. If you don't upload new images, perhaps you can at least update the old images with better keywords so that they match the user's current search trend. Think of it as SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you still have old unsubmitted ones from the past, it is worth giving a try again. AxonGuru can simply the process with auto-tagging that saves your time.

So instead of having keywords like 'snazzy, groovy and far out'... you could have 'lol, yolo, fam and peng' instead? Ya get me?

On a side note... do you contribute to any threads where AxonGuru doesn't simplify the process?

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!   

Well here's my best selling clip...

https://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/51754730/global-network-orange.html

And if you search for global network or networked earth you come up with stuff like this (there's mine on the second row)...

https://www.pond5.com/stock-video-footage/1/global-network.html#1

And although some of them are not that impressive, most of them are of a pretty similar standard. Some are $25, but they're mainly the pretty rubbish ones. Some of them are $60, but most of them are $49 or $50.

Yes, there are differences between mine and the others. I've gone for a more realistic kind of look whereas a lot of the others are more grid/glossy/no clouds kind of stuff. So if somebody is specifically looking for something in that style, then they might pay $79 if I was to increase the other price. Otherwise, they're going to see a bunch of clips with a similar concept, but half a dozen or so of them are $50, and one of them is $79. For some that might not be a big deal, but I think it might influence the decision of a good portion of people. I mean, they're on Pond5 at the end of the day, not Artbeats or something.

It could be said that you should price what you think your work is worth and screw everyone else... but you've got to take your competition into account. Would Pepsi and Coke be as close if Coke was twice the price?   

More people entering the market uploading more and more stuff. The amount of sales doesn't match the growth of new contributors and images, so the pie is spread a lot more thinly than before.

The SS homepage says 100 million images with 800,000 new ones uploaded every week. Not sure what they had back in the day, but there's considerably more competition than back in the mists of time that was 2012.

There's someone who posts the quarterly results here for SS. I only skim read them, but they always seem to be on the up. One person having bad sales doesn't mean SS is having bad sales. In fact, everybody having bad sales on SS doesn't mean that SS is having bad sales. It might just mean that there are considerably more authors uploading considerably more content... so even an overall increase in sales, could mean less sales for authors when everything is divided up.

A simple example just in case that wasnt that clear. Maybe a bit too simple,  son sorry if it's obvious...

2015. 100 authors with 100 items and 100,000 sales per month. Every author gets 10 sales per item per month. 1000 in total. Happy days!

2016. 150 authors with 150 items and 125,000 sales per month. Every author gets 5.5 sales per item per month. 833 in total. It's the beginning of the end and Shutterstock is going the way of the dinosaur.

But... sales are 25% up for Shutterstock.

Quote

Another handy guide Brasilnut

By the way "Rejection reason No. 1: Poor Lighting: Image has exposure issues, unfavorable lighting conditions,
and/or incorrect white balance."

can also include blown pixels and clipped shadows (at least with Shutterstock)
even a single blown pixel will get you this rejection.

It doesn't seem to be a problem with other agencies.

Since Shutterstock reviewers are only paid 5 cents per image they inspect, to make UK minimum wage which is equivalent to $8.70, they would need to review 174 images an hour (almost 3 images a minute) There's a huge margin of error, especially after taking into account fatigue after hours of doing this repetitive work. 

Perhaps they also have a quota of rejections they must meet (i'm speculating now).

174 images an hour... blimey! So that's one image every 20 seconds. Crazy! I wonder how much they get paid for video... must be based on duration I guess.

AudioJungle?

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?