They informed me they would close my account in a month, with a mention they would help me with suggestions to avoid that.
Since I had zero sales for months, I responded they should not wait and get over with it immediatelly!
That was the first time they acted fast and they deleted all my assets in a couple of days, although I am still waiting for the relative email to confirm that!
Now, as I was telling other stock friends, I feel as relieved as if I was going to break up with a girlfriend I knew I was never going to be forever with but was just postponing for a last night with her, to ... kiss her goodbye!

I deleted all of my content there manually then asked them to close my account. I got a long email explaining that they know it's been slow, blah blah blah but they really never mentioned my statement to them about how the subscription plan killed our sales. They wanted me to hang on but I had already deleted my port and they finally closed my account.  I had 1,500 videos there.  Had one sale in Jan then nothing since.  My email to them was pretty blunt, how they came in MSG seeking contributors and being all "we are your partner" and now cutting commissions and them effectively killing sales.  Anyhow, I am out as of a couple of weeks ago.

best in long time

Yes and it was TINY. MY 600 per month has plummeted to 200 in March. Each month gets incrementally lower.  It will get to the point where the income will not be worth keeping the account active.  I just closed my account at Storyblocks but manually deleted every file first, then also closed Motion Elements. That place makes you retain clips that have been sold for three years. I have about 40 but went in and deleted all of my keywords for those 40 clips. Both closures felt good and I can see Istock on the horizon. Like everyone else I have a lot of .002 video sales. I see no uptick of any kind there as floods of new content keeps filling their pipeline anyway. Istock really doesnt have anything to worry about, but contributors do.

Maybe the exclusives are getting preference?

Not sure when that will actually happen but it WILL happen.

Re: Vimeo pricing, our list (non-member) prices are $79 for HD and $199 for 4K for non-exclusive footage, and $299 HD, $499 4K for exclusive footage. Paid Vimeo members get a discount of 20%.

So Vimeo wants me to pay them to sell my video?

Quote from: Mantis on April 01, 2019, 11:44

Quote from: pkphotos on April 01, 2019, 01:27

What has happened to them? They have gone from quite reliable to very pathetic. I've sent them emails about how useless they've become and they always reply with the same stock standard BS.

They now have ample clips in their wholly owned collection to fill most of their needs. That was the plan all along, to ultimately phase out the paid collection so they get more subscribers that do not have to pay more doe for clips once they lay out the cash for the subscriber model. I think many here pointed that out early on and questioned VBs long term intent.  Those hypothesis came true and sure enough VB cut commissions and could now care less about the contributors who helped make them successful.

I just looked back at what I said about them in 2015 "I've stayed away from VB.  If they become successful they force other sites to lower prices and then what happens if they decide to take 50% royalty or if they stop licensing videos and only promote their free offerings.  I'm going to say away and most likely this year go exclusively with Pond5"
I didn't go exclusive with P5 since then but I did put more work on there than anywhere else.  It should have been obvious to everyone what VB's plan was all along.

Yep. I recall you saying that.

What has happened to them? They have gone from quite reliable to very pathetic. I've sent them emails about how useless they've become and they always reply with the same stock standard BS.

They now have ample clips in their wholly owned collection to fill most of their needs. That was the plan all along, to ultimately phase out the paid collection so they get more subscribers that do not have to pay more doe for clips once they lay out the cash for the subscriber model. I think many here pointed that out early on and questioned VBs long term intent.  Those hypothesis came true and sure enough VB cut commissions and could now care less about the contributors who helped make them successful.

Q How do we push agencies like SS, istock, getty to offer a fair share of royalties
A We cannot

Q How do we work with the agencies to prevent the race to the bottom
A We cannot

Q What agencies are inherently unfair - low pricing, very low royalty, that should be boycotted
A We cannot

Q How can we create enough of an impact to make the agencies correct this
A We cannot

The ONLY way to answer "WE CAN" is to choke the agencies of content, particularly from those contributors who drive high-sales for the agencies.  To accomplish this "broad-brush" style would pigeon hole so many artists who make their sole living at photography/videography/illustrations that it makes influencing agencies to the extent of this thread title impossible. The idea of unions is nice, but completely impractical this far into the maturity of the MS business.  Microstock is well beyond the peak of the S-Curve and the leverage is lost from an industry standpoint.  Sure, there are instances where we can stand up to a single agency and make some waves, but from the broader goal of yielding a much more robust model that better benefits the artist across all agencies, that opportunity is over.  It's probably a good idea to expand into specialty (Stocksy) or macro stock, in addition to self-hosting (if you have the discipline and technical savvy to do that). But micro stock is as we see it....a declining market being chewed up by mass inflow of content which provides serious leverage to the agencies, not the artists. 

The thing everyone going exclusive have to understand is that of all the times agencies do something along these lines and do not follow up with all the marketing needed to drive traffic to P5, when that exclusive journey fails you have to re-upload all your clips back to the agencies you just yanked them from.  The sales volume at p5 is so miniscule for me that i would never go exclusive there. They WILL HAVE TO HAVE A MASSIVE marketing campaign and be able to fund it. Perhaps their plan is to fund their marketing from the ones who refuse to go along with exclusivity. I wonder if anyone is getting a special deal to be positive about the whole thing. Because without any plan to grow and sustain foot traffic through costly marketing, bringing broad awareness to exclusivity then having the content to back it up, then exclusivity is really a moot point.

I have made $1 before my cut.

I think that�s an old address.
If you�re trying to login to Getty ESP, this is the correct address:

https://esp.gettyimages.com/

Interesting, thanks.  Been using that link up until last month when I logged in.  Bookmarked your link and it works fine. Thanks again.

Ive been trying to log in to Pond 5 last night and today and I'm having no success. It keeps saying: "Invalid login/password combination." Though I'm 100% definite that I'm using the correct login details. Don't suppose this has happened to anyone else? I'll use the 'forgotten your password' option (even though I didn't forget it) and hope that will allow me to change it.

It will.

Quote from: Mograph on March 15, 2019, 14:19

I received this email too, but when i try to change my password it shows me up this message �Unable to update password.�

Ring them. I did and they sorted it right away. Better than an email when you're concerned and want to resolve it quickly.

They called me back and said that it is only precautionary and that everyone is affected. Just do a normal "forgot password" and you should be good to go.