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!

But there's a feelgood pseudo-reality that looks a little grittier and slightly rougher around the edges than the shiny happy people style. Telling themselves that's "authentic" adds to the perceived value and makes the buyers feel better about peddling fantasy when they view it as closer to reality.

I don't find those images as jarring as the cheesy stock ones but just as cliched...inevitable I guess.

Exactly

Function so_called_authentic (cliche, smile, hipsterness, colour_grading, optional actually_authentic_things = '')
  return (cliche - smile + hipsterness + colour_grading)
End Function



my wish:

Function so_called_authentic (cliche, smile, hipsterness, colour_grading, year)
  if year>2016 then exit function
  '[...]
End Function

That's far too advanced for me. I'm more of a...

10 GOTO 20
20 BEEP
30 GOTO 10

...kind of guy!

The reason why bottom feeders feed at the bottom is because there's food there. There's enough food in the ocean to go around and if some people are happy eating a great white once a week, there's plenty of people happy to continuously chow down on the smaller varieties.

This is more of a devil''s advocate question, but is it to the detriment of everyone, or just to the detriment of you.... when people realise they're probably paying a bit too much?

But like Angela says... not everything is worth $10 or $50 or even $25. There's a lot of rubbish out there! Should people steadfastly keep all their clips at $50 or more, even if they are gathering dust and selling one a year?

Hold on... I've just thought of something. If somebody is selling stuff on Pond for $10, then I'm sure the general consensus would be that they should increase their prices. And based on what people are saying here, and in a bunch of other threads, they'd make more money if they did so.

And they will increase their prices, to $25, because they have to. Maybe more, but if they were selling at $10 before then the $25 minimum is more likely.

But... what you're saying is that if there's less of a difference between this guy's stuff and my stuff, people are more likely to buy my stuff. So, as a result, this guy isn't actually going to earn more, he's going to earn less. And if this less of a difference thing works across the board, then if I put my prices up, then there will be less of a difference between my stuff and more expensive stuff... so I'll also make less, as people will be more likely to go for the more expensive stuff.

It seems slightly contradictory. Sure, I get that my stuff needs to be better than his to warrant the higher price, but the general 'put your prices up and value your work' advice seems to be dished out to everybody without taking quality into account. I'm sure nobody on the microburgergroup.com forums are telling Ronald and Hamburgler that they should be charging $10 for a beefburger.

The thing is, making stock isn't exactly rocket science, and I just feel that a lot of people put maybe a bit too much value on their work. Yes, we hear anecdotes of how people sell clips at $250 and buyers are more than happy to pay it so everything's wonderful... but who's to say that 10 sales at $250 couldn't be 100 sales at $50 or even 1000 sales at $5?

I think pricing is a bit if a dark art and there's no perfect one size fits all formula. You've got content, duration, the site you're selling it on, quality, usability, amount of similar clips you're competing with etc etc. Some clips just aren't worth $25. Some are worth more than $250.

I feel that some people are influenced a bit too much by what they feel the price should be, no matter the clip, rather than the potential value of the lifetime sales of the clip. I have a clip at Videohive that has made me $1370 over 15 months. I've probably doubled that with sales from other sites. It took me about six hours and $250 to create (I had to hire a dude to help with something I was stuck on). Am I not valuing my work if I'm earning over $450 per hour for those six hours I put in? And that's for just over a year... I'm sure I'll at least double that for the lifetime of the clip sales. It's actually three different clips where I've just changed the colours on the other two... work smart, not hard! You could say that a lot of clips just don't have that sales potential. To that, I'd say... well they're obviously not good enough. Make better stuff!

So yeah, I'm just rambling a bit now, thinking out loud.

it would probably be pretty popular... blogs, books or articles on work related stress, being in a job you don't like, as part of a before and after image on training and wellness programmes, customer service, hiring the right staff etc etc.

I think they're trying to say that the kind of shots where you have some telephone support operative with a beaming smile, for example, is non-authentic. Whereas if they looked hungover and miserable, that would be more authentic.

OK, that kind of makes sense. If Ronald started charging $50 for his burgers, then the Michelin restaurant next door wouldn't seem like that much extra for the higher quality. I'll go with that.

I'm just having a bit of trouble grasping how people increasing their sub $25 clips, to $25 (or more), will result in me getting more sales.

I'm looking forward to sites forcing top-feeders to lower their prices to (or closer to) an unrespectable level, and reduce contributing to the over-pricing of our collected product. 

I'm probably joking. A bit.

I made the same mistake when somebody commented on ClipDealer and I responded regarding Clipcanvas... but either way, they're both a bit rubbish!

When life gives you tomatoes... make stock.

Upload more stuff and upload better stuff. That's pretty much the key to it. The former is straightforward, the latter... that's a bit more complicated.

I've never figured out why 4K has to be four times more than HD. Sure, there's four times more pixels, but does it cost four times more to produce? Yes, you'll get people saying about render times, storage space, the cost of cameras for example. But take storage... if you get $75 more for a 4K clip then you only need to sell one and you've got a 1TB hard drive right there.

The shooting takes the same time, the editing as well, maye not rhe rendering... yes, you need better equipment, but I still think that 4K is overpriced. What's going to happen when 8K is on the up in five to ten years? Will that be $800 a clip? Will 16K be $3200?

If stock is anything like the technology used to create it, then 4K should reduce over time, and the 8K should be sold at the price that 4K did originally. I appreciate there's more to stock than technology, but if you ask somebody why their 4K stuff is so expensive, that's usually all they'll talk about.