"If they were concerned with administration costs, why did they practically abolish entrance exams?" Because they cost money?

Exactly, and because they aren't a good predictor of future success.

If a contributor is unsuccessful, they'll get discouraged after submitting a few hundred files and not seeing any sales. Someone who starts microstock with mediocre images, may end up learning a lot more from rejections along the way and become quite successful.

Hi there!

I am hoping that the MSG community can help me out!

We are looking to launch a stock image service which pays 80%-90% commission to contributors. Before we launch, we�d like to test some assumptions that we�ve made about the image supply side of the business; that's where you come in.

We think that we can do something really cool in the stock photography world, and at the same time, make sure that the cash paid for images gets into the hands of the people who created them.

We would really appreciate your feedback; it will help us to get going. As a gesture of thanks, if you complete all questions (including the �optional� ones), we will give you an extra 5% commission for the first year post-launch - make sure your email is correct so we can keep our promises!

Some of the information in this survey is sensitive (i.e. not usually something you share with just anyone), however I can assure you that no responses will be shared outside of our small team. In a way, once you complete this survey, you become a partner to our business. If our commission structure says anything, it�s that we value our partners.

Thank you so much for your time - we look forward to getting to know you.

https://goo.gl/forms/Wxk6xBT6UMSgIGux2

Questions: 23 (mostly quick, multiple choice)

Time to complete: 5 - 10 minutes

Why not tell us a little bit about who you are before soliciting information?

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on April 03, 2017, 13:17

It'd be nice if they'd give us another rise for hitting, say, $50,000. 

And penalize you in the search results even more, because you're 'so much more expensive' than the newbies?
I suspect that a good position in the search results is more valuable than your base royalty per download.

The penalizing theory doesn't make sense because anyone that has a half decent portfolio will have hit the highest rate very quickly. More than 95% of downloads and sales go to the top 5% of contributors. Those that are persistently on the lower rates, especially with large portfolios tend to cost an agency more in support and from reviewing images than they actually earn.

People are complaining on all groups in all languages and you think that one artist is creating these complaints?

They just have to go through their rejection list, every time their curators are not "impressed" and reject a large batch, the artist will complain somewhere. All that negative energy comes from their own actions.

Their rejection list is their karma list.

The artists vent in one of the many public and closed groups in the community. What is being written here and on p5 itself is just the tip of the iceberg. Most community communication went underground after the Getty Google deal and DPC, but the overall activity is the same. If anything, I�d say it has increased, because information of who is worth uploading to, is what people live from.

I don�t remember p5 ever creating such negative vibe so drastically. They always had a good reputation.

For many sellers 300 dollars a month is a full time income. Might be nothing if you are from New York, but there is a huge world of sellers out there that really feed their family with their stock income.

Again it is their company, they can do whatever they want. I don�t think there is anything we can really do. It will be several months until the new management has implemented whatever they want to change and until they acknowledge the impact of what they did.

ETA:

Have you ever heard Amazon or ebay say to their sellers: "We already have too many people selling chairs and your selection does not impress our employees. Please sell these chairs with one of our competitors and we hope you can impress us next time"

No? Because they are marketplaces, they provide a framework but every seller is responsible for their own success.

They never micromanage a sellers port, which is why they have this explosive growth.

If you micromanage, you are not a marketplace.

My point was that about half the complaints on this forum come from one poster who finds some negative comment to make about anything Pond5 does regardless of what it is. On other forums yes there's some complaints about poor sales and rejections, but there's also plenty of opposite sentiment. Also when i look at the complaints, I see the same people posting in multiple forums and making the same points wherever they go.

If you buy into sales threads for any agencies you'll find the same views at any given time. Best match algorithms change or there's variation in sales - its part of the industry and if your portfolio is at the size or quality where its making $300 a month, its far too small to get any idea as to whether this is normal fluctuation of if something else is going on - change in best match maybe?

I don't check every forum in every language - I don't have time to. The nature of forums and this industry is that people like to talk about their failures and rarely successes. What I read on the Pond5 forum is a mix of people that are happy that there are new standards and those that aren't. The discussion then descends into whether rejections of videos shot at f22 are warranted. The other forum on Pond 5 is a repeat of the same people posting and really only a handful of the same points being made over and over.

The comparison with Ebay and Amazon aren't really relevant, no matter how many times you repeat it. You're never going to have thousands of sellers going out and making their own chairs when they've never made a chair before. Also there's a rating process and way of buyers getting their money back if they get products that aren't up to scratch, which usually involves a cost to the seller in terms of shipping. If you think just anyone can set up shop and list products on Amazon like this, you're mistaken. The other big difference is that these sites are selling to a consumer market, whereas stock agencies are mostly to businesses.

From my perspective I think Pond5 made a mistake in letting through a lot of the content on for so long - in video its much more difficult and time consuming for buyers to sort through thousands of clips and try to find material they want. If they constantly find substandard clips, they'll go somewhere with better curation.

I used to have regulars sales at vb but from 2 months it slowed down to almost no sales...
Anyone is experiecing the same?

Seems to be a very consistent pattern - I hear many people that have unexpectedly high sales early on, only for those to slow down to a trickle. I think its a deliberate ploy on the part of the agency to artificially boost initial sales as a small investment to ensure contributors upload their whole portfolios and encourage others through word of mouth. After a few months it doesn't really matter if sales drop - nobody really pulls their portfolios once they're online.

I see no reason to upload to sites that sell 4k at such low prices and depositphotos has a long history of having very low prices and paying us very little.  They have failed with undercutting the market but it looks like they are still trying it.  I did upload some of my stills portfolio years ago but soon stopped when I saw what they were trying.  They wont be getting any video from me.

My sentiments exactly - as an agency they bring nothing new to the market except lower prices, their model is based purely on undercutting the rates offered by established agencies. While they had slightly higher percentages than some agencies in stills (until they reduced them last year), they're still a long way behind Pond5 for video. Fortunately video has survived the race to the bottom better than stills so far - partly this is due to many contributors being more disciplined in where they sell content.

Quote from: op on December 04, 2015, 03:37

Quote from: click_click on December 03, 2015, 17:30

Quote from: op on December 03, 2015, 13:16

On GI, HD and 4K are on the same price and to be honest I like it that way, so I'm sure clients get the optimal quality.

I'm not sure if I should take your comment seriously.

Just because a camera these days may be 4K capable, doesn't mean that it provides "optimal quality" for a buyer who indeed needs 4K footage.

HD cameras have greatly improved in the last couple of years so, yes, they are quite cheap and produce decent quality.

Have you been shooting RAW HD or 4K? Once I saw the difference between RAW recorded footage and compressed footage which 99.9% of the prosumer (DSLR etc.) cameras produce - there are still worlds of difference in terms of color and clarity.

The substantial costs for high end 4K gear cannot be reflected by the insulting footage prices of iStock, not to mention the fact that they price 4K and HD the same.

So I cannot agree that HD and 4K should be offered at the same price as production costs vary heavily.

95% of my work is time lapse shot in RAW 6K 14bits. HD was already $xxxx on GI, how much more do you want them to sell 4K then?.. I agree with that and when a client is willing to pay that price I'd rather see him/her get 4K instead of HD.

Pardon me for not being clear enough: This is not aimed at you but 4K timelapse clips can be shot in RAW at a decent quality starting at $400 or less.

Obviously I didn't include such an example as "high end gear".

I was trying to refer to genuine 4K real time footage shot for example on a RED system. Needless to say that you can easily add two more 0s to that price.

I'm not familiar with the GI footage pricing structure - only with iStock's where I enjoyed selling footage until they changed it to commissions below the double digits.

Adding insult to injury and selling 4K (NOT time lapse) at the same price is delusional. Sure, the buyers will be happy in terms of the money they can save but the question is how many contributors can sustain a business model while delivering top notch content for $8 royalties per sale?

I'm not even selling my HD stuff that low.

I think the problem is more iStock's non-exclusive commission structure. For footage producers you really need to be either exclusive with IS or not upload. Most are now going with the latter option.

While 4K production costs may have varied a lot even 12mths ago, there's plenty of equipment now available at a sub $1K price point that will do the job. As with any footage, the costs for production are about far more than the gear you shoot it with.

The thing that differentiates 4K for me is that its a more useful file for the end user. For example you can take a static clip and apply motion effects or crop in to give the impression of a second camera used and still deliver a HD product. Its the usefulness that should justify a higher price point.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on September 17, 2015, 15:00

There's an exclusive who reported elsewhere that he had over 1,000 images deactivated for this reason.

Hmmm. The main 'scuddy wimmen' contributor that I know of still has thousands up, with a lot more 'on show' than I've read other people having rejected or deactivated.
Maybe it's more to do with 'who you are' than any sense of respect for women.

Looks like the cull isn't finished yet: https://contributors.gettyimages.com/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=3551#post32058

As you may know, we periodically go through the collection to remove files that no longer meet our evolving standards. Even though Getty Images and iStock by Getty Images does accept artistic partial and full nudity in photography for royalty free photography we reserve the right to reject/deactivate any image, including images that we feel are clich�d, overtly stereotypical, too explicit, verge on the pornographic, obscene or represents gender roles in a sexist manner. We may also reject/deactivate images in these categories that we feel are not commercially viable.

The above is the deactivation notification we've sent to contributors who are impacted by this Content Guidelines change. These deactivations should be completed over the next 48 hours.

Its long been known that these types of images are pretty low in sales volume - probably they've worked out that they sales generated don't make up for the damage though lost sales with high end clients that are put off.

Did they just recycle Fotolia's commission cut announcement from 2009? http://www.mystockphoto.org/fotolia-2010-pricing/

Flashback to 2009:
To accomplish our marketing and promotional goals, we�ve adjusted our artist commission structures. While some levels have increased and others have decreased in terms of percentages, a majority of contributing artists will continue to see increases in the total dollar amounts earned as we are raising prices. In comparison, Fotolia continues to pay artists one of the highest royalty rates in the industry

We all know how well that turned out.

Quote from: ShadySue on August 02, 2015, 14:33

^^ is the contract secret? Surely not.
I see that there is quite a lot of easily-available info about unfair contracts in British Columbia; not so much for Alberta, but those directly affected might like to check this out more closely.

Well I never signed it, so uploading is of no consequence to me. Here you go. It's too big to attach here, so here is a link to Google Drive.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5XjPpZC_ujSfm5NSXZUWGJNakE4TzlUbWFKUXd0UVZNbEVacmszdU4zSVlaMzNPMWFZU1k&usp=sharing

Thanks for that.

The agreement term is for 5 years - it doesn't seem to specify anything about how much content needs to be provided by a contributor, or whether there's an obligation to keep licensing all of the content for 5 years or how to remove any content that has been previously supplied.

There is a reference to a first recital of the agreement - article 1.1(k) - do contributors need to list the footage that they're supplying when they enter into the agreement? Is there any link between the upload process and this clause?

Glad I trusted my instincts and didn't upload there then. Does anyone have a copy of their contract terms that they can post? Without signing up you don't really get access to it.

So lets imagine this for example.

Let's suppose that Aaron or any dissolve representative came out 2 days ago speaking like a person and not like a robot from the 90's and announced the following (which belongs in the sphere of imagination,but just for the sake of argument)

Dear dissolve contributors,lovers,brothers,lurkers,and casual bystanders.We have realized that we have to compete in price because..yada yada,corporate greed 101...yada yada...marketing 101 etc,that we need to price hd at 59usd for all non-exclusive portfolios because of all the aforementioned yada's.But at the same time we will raise hd commission at 40% so that our beloved contributors will earn the same royalties as before.
We will also run bulk discounts shutterstock style whenever necessary (big clients,corporations etc) but we will maintain the 40% commission for you like pond5 does in discounts (and ss doesnt).
We will also implement a true contributor console where you can not only do whatever everyone else is also capable of doing in most of the other agencies but send us feedback on uploads and help us communicate so that we can fix curation and other mistakes fast and efficiently etc etc.

Would it be so difficult for them to go that route?
Would it be cost prohibitive?
Would they lose contributors?
Would they grow as an agency?
Would they set a paradigm that would make people forget about all the others and focus on them?
Would it.......(fill in the blanks)

Then why?
Because the "markets" i guess.
Well, there you go.

Even in this scenario I wouldn't license my footage through them. In the market at the moment we have 3 main agencies - SS, P5 and iStock/Getty. VideoBlocks seems to be the up-and-coming agency with a unique model.

Many non-exclusives tolerate selling at 30% through SS because the return to them for most sales is somewhere in the order of $20-25 with some sales for significantly more. They don't particularly like the 30%, but the sheer volume of buyers makes it a hard place not to sell for non-exclusives. On top of that SS have a track record of consistency.

While there's some negative posters lately here making noise about Pond5, they're generally accepted as a very good agency for video sales. The ability to set your own prices and a 50% royalty is pretty unique in the industry, as is the practice of offering periodically discounts to customers without cutting into the contributors share of the price. They're also probably the only agency that has bought another microstock and increased that agency's royalties to 50%.

Videoblocks seems to be getting a lot of attention lately, and is almost certainly the reason for this change - the $49 price point is no co-incidence. From a contributor perspective though its a model that has potential to be very lucrative. Its early days though and they may end up also being one of the many agencies that don't succeed in this business. What will obviously concern Dissolve is that VideoBlocks is attracting new contributors at a much faster rate than they are. From my searches, it looks like they already have more 4K footage than Dissolve in a much shorter space of time.

Its worth re-reading what Dissolve posted just over 12 months ago about commissions (and the response): http://www.microstockgroup.com/dissolve/introducing-dissolve/msg386463/#msg386463

"When a contributor signs with Dissolve, their royalties are set for the duration of the contract. So, no need to fear of rates reducing after you�ve signed on."

Where there's a will, there's a way.

Didn't take long did it?