Oh cool thanks!

Venice is all editorial, and editorial is rarely bought.

Roughly about half of my videdo sales are editorial. Actually, my best selling video on P5 happens to be editorial.

Buy a tripod and a gimbal, everything is not stable in your frame.

Agreed. I see way too many shaky hand held videos in this port. And those pans need lots of improvement.

I'm reaching out because I recently joined Pond 5 as a contributor, and I could use some advice. Despite having 900 videos in my portfolio, I haven't made any sales yet.

I have a significantly smaller video port compared to yours and when I first started in P5, it took me ages to get my first sale. May have been a few months but I can't recall. When I got my first sale, other sales started occurring not too long after. Another P5 contributor said their experiences were pretty much the same when they started. A very long wait for that first sale and then the flood gates are open. There were even instances when I would get a sale and then about a week later, I would get another sale.

Unfortunately later on, something happened. Something changed. Sales seem to have dried up. It's extremely rare when I get any sales from P5 these days. And it looks like other contributors are having similar experiences.

Hmmm....now I'm not so sure if submitting videos to DT is a good idea or not. Apparently, if P5 find out that your videos are on other agencies, they will lower the price of a sale to match the other agency. Though then again, there are so many variables which influence the price on an agency like DT or SS. It's not exactly a fixed price. Though I get the impression that generally, videos would be priced lower on DT compared to P5.

Ah I see the option now. It wasn't specifically pointed out in the otherwise comprehensive video tutorial.

A nice surprise this morning: 4 sales for a $694.22 total (gross), 40% mine. First time it happens all in one day (Champagne !!!) 

Woah, that is awesome!

Especially those contributors from your series:
https://www.shutterstock.com/de/g/ZainKhalid09
https://www.shutterstock.com/de/g/MaikAachen
https://www.shutterstock.com/de/g/SanMirza

Those three ports are gone. I was curious to know what they looked like. I guess SS are cracking down on spam ports. Though it's odd why reviewers let them in in the first place.

I think it is possible to use your earnings on Dreamstime to buy photos, not sure though if it works below the $100 threshold.

I thought I recall someone asking about that on DT's own forum a few years ago. So far, this individual had no sales and was wondering if he could buy his own images from his port. I guess he was so desperate to get sales that he thought it was worth trying this. Regardless, one of the mods said that this wasn't allowed. Though I guess there might be a difference here. This guy had no earnings from Dreamstime. So I'm not sure if it makes a difference if you make earnings from DT or not.

Shutterstock announced their "good news" about finalizing the Pond5 takeover I think around Jan 2023.

And yes - so far - jan/feb were about 60% lower than both previous months & previous years, march about 40%... perhaps the "good news" from shutterstock is they somehow found another way to steal revenue... not sure... but, the timing is interesting.

My sales on P5 have been few and far between for a long time now. And if SS is taking over, I could only imagine things will get worse (especially with regards to royalties.) However, around mid January, I received a $46.40 HD video sale via P5. So good things can still happen at least for the time being. Though later down the track, one can only guess at what plans SS have in store for P5.

So, if some lame ass with millions of followers tweets your photo then you get an enormous exposure.

Without credit.

Quote from: dragonblade on March 20, 2023, 07:53

I miss the global sales map. I guess that's a part of history now.

It's gone?

Oh no, it's still there and they added a +/- so you can zoom in? Still looks terrible and why do I want to zoom in on a useless Blue Dot? Scroll down.

https://submit.shutterstock.com/dashboard

Ah I see the map now. Though mine doesn't show the whole globe. I also get broken thumbnails when I let the cursor hover over the blue spots - probably because I closed my photo port on SS.

It's a pity that this map doesn't show video sales because that's all I sell on SS these days. Also, I'd like to see my sales info on the main page as well instead of having to go to another page to learn about the details of each sale. This main page is now just mostly wasted space.

I miss the global sales map. I guess that's a part of history now.