https://www.change.org/p/tj-leonard-videoblocks-don-t-cut-people-s-pay-in-half

Incase you want to share with friends/family

Remember to drop a mail, instagram note, tweet to them as well.

Points
- no new uploads till we get a price increase/custom pricing/commission increase
- don't download from SB, Head to P5 or others
- tell us what you'll be doing to push up sales

I'm pretty surprised by all the outrage, you must be pretty naive to think 100% royalties was a sustainable, long term prognosis. If it's too good to be true, it almost always is.

I originally uploaded my crappiest 1500 B-roll clips to VB knowing that it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do given the low prices but at least try and get a bit of short term extra income from my lower quality clips. That plan worked pretty well before sales dried up completely.

Now with this royalty cut I'm asking myself, do I want an agency which sells footage for $49 a clip and offers 50% to become the market leader (and subsequently drag  other agencies down to that level?) The answer is of course no, so I've pulled my entire portfolio and emailed them notifying them. If they raise prices or even enable artist pricing control (oh lord I wish there were more agencies who would do this) then I'll happily start uploading again.

For the record I make a solid living doing this and the bulk of my portfolio never sees the light of day on SS, VB etc

That essentially means that you are heavily dependent on Pond 5. Imagine what would happen if did some thing like this. That's what smaller contributors like me are feeling

We were working with them for a long while in regards to improve the keywords quality in the submissions coming through StockSubmitter to ESP.
We were open for a dialog and were implementing their every single requirement (you may have noticed those changes in the program).
Suddenly a month ago or so they had stopped communication with us on the matter. I guessed it's because they were satisfied with the keywords they're getting but... bah! out of the blue comes this decision to stop accepting submissions through StockSubmitter.
What can I say... that's a weird decision and it's completely illogical to cut the most convenient way to submit to them instead of keeping to work with us together to find a way to make it better for everyone...

You guys have been doing really well in this. Guess getty does not like people who don't give it a convinient excuse to pull out

Quote from: everest on July 22, 2018, 07:50

I agree 100% with your post. People keep complaining but the picture is always quite clear in front of us. It is us and only us who decide where we invest our time and resources to maximize profit.
Obviously shooting cloud timelapses or landmarks with awful light and pricing them 400$ at Pond5 is not getting you anywhere. Shooting great footage and receiving cents at Getty neither. Lets create unique content and people will pay for it, as simple as that.

Perhaps there are more options that may yield better returns per video in the long term.

An example could be to use the cheap sites as a way of market testing premium content. Use the 80/20 principle across all sites to determine what your best video content is - then every 12 months systematically purge top earners from cheap sites and crank the price up elsewhere. If cheap sites want to sell videos for $1.50 - well then make sure it's videos that don't sell well anyway.

Or if that is too risky, do the opposite!

Accept that only 20% of your videos will actually gather good sales at cheap sites. That does not mean that someone does not need more specific video content every so often. So remove 80% of your videos from cheap sites instead and then crank the price up elsewhere.

This would mean reviewing how you see your creative work. There is no "good" and no "bad". Just videos that sell frequently and videos that don't. My guess is that quite a few videos that don't sell well is because they are too specifically targeted to a particular market and the demand for video is still far from its apex.

So as demand for video increases, so will the demand for more specific video that caters to a more exacting market specification. If that video is only available for $400-$600 or more (bloody yay) - well that's pretty specific content right there that is unlikely to be replicated by someone else - hence the increased value.

Want that footage Mr Buyer? Well fine, this is the price. Too expensive for you? Well, go and buy your own GH5, Metabones speedbooster, Canon 50mm fast lens, Glidecam and model located specifically at the Niagara Falls eating a cheeseburger, then drinking a coke, then washing their hands.

You get my point - someone trying to enhance hygiene levels in public places is a very specific target market and that a video or sequence of videos may not sell well at cheap sites. But to that person who actually does needs it, it sure saves them a bundle of money to buy them all at P5 for $1200.

If we all did this, we would limit the depth of the cheap agencies and likely increase the overall value of our collective portfolios. You could still make money from the big sellers - so as contributors, we lose nothing and the content that does not sell may well make far more $ when it eventually does.

The buyers would soon learn - need a blurry crowd of feet at the railway station or a cellphone millennial dude playing on his phone at night . . . cheap site for you. Cheeseburger at the Niagara Falls? Pay premium at P5.

Soundest advice yet

I think the issue that most face is the fear that there is too much content out there so if you are not on a site you are losing money. We need to be a little stronger and a little more organized in where we post

I suggest we stick to the no new uploads till we get a clarification or policy change rule. To all the eager beavers, you can always do a mass upload later if things work out well.

Lets reach out to more of the company management. Lets try tweeting to them, or instagram, facebook whatever it takes. Drop a polite message, add a link to the petition. Lets ask for a decent response atleast.

Its definitely worth a shot to get the commission increased or custom pricing started.

I've reached out to friends who've shot or modelled for videos and gotten them to sign and drop TJ an email. It affects them as well if we get paid less.

For the people saying that this is their livelihood and they can't burn bridges. Well, if the return per video goes down then your livelihood goes down as well. You should be the most enthusiastic about leading this charge and ensuring that this continues to be a good way to earn a living.

Sign the petition and more importantly drop TJ and the contributor id a mail. No uploads till this is resolved

https://www.change.org/p/tj-le...don-t-cut-people-s-pay-in-half

Kevin, can you edit the petition and add the two email ids there. That way each one who signs can drop in a mail as well.

Here is the petition, please sign and share with friends!

https://www.change.org/p/tj-leonard-videoblocks-don-t-cut-people-s-pay-in-half

43 people signed, guys push others to do it as well. I'm sure the remaining are not happy with the mail as well.

Plus need to keep up the mailing. I got a random stock reply as well about how this will help me earn more in the long run

Sorry but petitions etc are a complete waste of time.

Not at all surprised with this development - deleting my entire portfolio there now. If they raise prices I might be persuaded to stay but I'm not having my work out in the marketplace for peanuts and receiving 50%.

Do we each drop in a mail to the CEO with the points mentioned? Plus no activity till we get ability to set prices and a larger cut of the pie?

Please start a change.org petition. Some key points

- raise commissions to 75% (even this is a breach of what they were promising)
- raise prices for HD content to make it better than market rate
- suggest that sales need a better algorithm better site, more than they need marketing
- suggest a sales review by oct to see if this worked

Well guess they figured out that they can make money in this game now. The funny part is that they still have a good structure, provided that sales go up

Thanks, guess the 24FPS at 24Mbps is my default setting now

Hi everyone

I've been trying to learn what moods my sony NEX6 shoots video. Trying to figure out which to use from the top two modes in quality

1. 25FPS progressive at 24Mbps : get more quality per frame and keep size a little low

2. 50FPS progressive at 28Mbps : get more smoothness and a change to make a slowmo later. But since the bit rate is not all that high might lose detail per frame.

The camera saves in AVCHD, I'm using after effects for my editing and exporting it to mp4 compressed