I've been submitting there for just over a year. The main reason I started was that I wanted to start submitting live-action content as well as animations, and it would look a bit weird to have cookery videos on a SpaceStockFootage account full of planets and spaceships and the like. Could have changed my username, but wanted to stick with the branding... and as most agencies don't let you have more than one account... using something like BlackBox was the only option.

Aside from the odd exception, my income has increased every single month since I've been submitting, but that's to be expected as I've been submitting a lot more content every month. Aside from March and April 2020... things have been pretty quiet since the middle of last month, but I guess that's to be expected. Seeing the same from my individual agency accounts.

Upsides:


Submit and tag once and they distribute to five agencies.
Payments are always on time
User interface is good when it comes to keywording and the like
Popular Facebook page with a lot of help and advice
FTP is fast, reliable and very few issues.
The ability to share revenue with partners, actors, curators etc
The ability to assign curators to handle your keywording etc.

Downsides:

15% cut. I guess that's not too bad though, especially as they seem to have slightly better royalty rates from one or more of the agencies. I think with SS you get pretty much the same as you would going direct.
Recently added a 10 clip per day upload limit
You can't alter the display image/thumbnail for a clip... it's always the first frame.
No ability to enter a 'description'. They call it a description like on SS for example, but if they're submitting to P5, the description becomes the title... and the description is just a duplicate.
Once you've submitted, there's no editing of anything. Stupid typo� it�s there forever.
They tell you if it's online at one or more agency, or if it's been rejected by all agencies. So when it says 'online', it may be online on one agency and rejected by the rest, or it might be online at all agencies.
You don't get any feedback on why a clip has been rejected.
Impossible to delete anything from your portfolio without contacting support... I'll double check but I think there might be a minimum duration you have to keep them on as well. They did say they'll take them down asap for any legal type issues though.
Can't set your own prices at P5.

Other downsides which I've not included in the list as they're more subjective opinions rather than facts... everyone's far too positive in their Facebook group! You've got people ordering all the BB merch and wearing it with pride, thanking the owner for everything he does and how amazing BB is, people brimming with excitement and being all hopeful about making their first sale. Negativity doesn't go down well in the group. Negativity as in facts though... not just unfounded negativity for no reason. It feels a tiny bit like a cult for some reason. Maybe I'm wrong! And don�t ever ask a question in the group unless you�ve double checked the user guide twice. The moderators will tell you to read the user guide. Your peers will post some kind of meme or inside joke about not reading the user guide. Call me crazy, but I just answer their question. Not exactly a recommended approach when it comes to customer service.

Does seem to be quite a mixture of abilities and experience when it comes to the people who submit there� from people who are just shooting on their phones to people all kitted-out with their Red cameras and the like. Then you�ve got another mixture� people with their Red cameras who already produce stock and know what stock is, and people with their Red cameras who have no idea about stock. So I guess their early marketing worked, it got plenty of people through the door. I do feel that a lot of their marketing is marketing the concept of selling stock itself, rather than marketing Blackbox (with a bit of collaboration features sprinkled in).

So they�re on about moving away from the gig economy, financial freedom, passive revenues etc etc. All stuff that the other agencies offer�. without the 15%. So in that sense, they�ve done a really good job of promoting the concept of stock itself.

And while the owner is obviously a talented guy who has set up a decent platform, I do get the feeling that he bends the truth slightly if it�s in the interests of the platform. Like when he said that there wasn�t any benefit to knowing why you�ve had your clips rejected. I mean, surely everyone here would agree that there�s more benefit to knowing why your clips have been rejected than there is to not knowing why your clips have been rejected? I�m sure you�d get the same answer if you asked why you can�t edit clips, why you can�t delete clips, why they don�t tell you which clips have been accepted where� I�m guessing the real answer is that it would take a lot of time, money and effort to install those features, but that�s probably not the answer you�ll get. It�ll be along the lines of� trust us to take care of all the business side of things for you, you concentrate on creating great content.

On a side note, one reason why you�ll notice a lot less videos promoting BB at the moment, is that they�ve suspended the referral program. I think it was two, maybe three months ago� give or take. They�re working on another one and will let everyone know when it�s ready. 

Bottom line... if there was the possibility to open second accounts at all the agencies, then I'd probably just do that instead. Overall, I'm pretty happy with them though, but I would rather have a bit more control over editing, know what's been accepted and where, what's been rejected and why, pricing etc etc.

Videohive is a joke. $11 (or less) for a 3D render? Yeah right, one week of rendering and you can earn pennies? No way, I'll stay with Adobe.

Then don't sell them at $11 then, sell them at the same as Adobe... or more. And even if you were to sell them at $11, you'd probably make it up in volume. I make more on VideoHive than any other agency, even with lower prices. While it's nice to get a high royalty per download... I'm much less concerned with how much I earn per download, than I am how much I have in my bank at the end of the month.

Quote from: SpaceStockFootage on April 22, 2020, 02:47

Any evidence to support any of this... other than you having all your videos rejected?

yes.

But you're deciding not to share it?

Remember, a large percentage of those 300 million plus images are things that don't have much sales potential.

But unless something has changed drastically for some explicable reason, a large percentage of those 160 million images, or those 80 million images (so on and so forth) didn't have much sales potential either... i.e. 160 to 320 is still double, whichever way you look at it.

...but which is the more important factor in revenue decline...the number of images uploaded, or the revenue per sale...something tells me it's the latter. In the "good old days" we weren't getting $0.38 per download

 

How much are you getting now? What's the highest you got before? I only sell video. I'm guessing the download prices haven't changed as drastically as the number of images in the last 14 years? I would have thought the number of images was much more of a factor than the revenue per sale.

But yeah, 2008 for me. Only started taking it seriously in 2014, and just done stock since 2016.

....resolved to offer my footage exclusively on Pond 5, because to date they've sold better there than anywhere else.

But have they sold better there than everywhere else combined?

Shutterstock at the moment has 18 million clips online. My portfolio contains about 25k clips. If 100 people like me decide to pull out our portfolio, that's 2.5 million clips. That's 13.8% of their whole library. Just in the hands of 100 people like myself.

It's not that hard to imagine what would happen if instead of a 100 people, 1000 people do it.

Then Shutterstock would lose 138% of their content? That could happen, but it's also extremely unlikely. How many negative things have been implemented by the different agencies over the years? How many people have left them as a result of it? Have any of the big four ever taken a massive hit to their offering due to people pulling their ports? No. And it'll be no different this time around. Maybe 100 people will leave... that's not the unlikely part... it's that those 100 all have a port of 25K. 100 people leaving is more likely to result in a loss of 25K rather than 2.5m. A drop in the ocean. 

But even if they did... is having 9 million clips going to make that much difference from having 18 million clips? "My God, I only have 750K clips of clouds to choose from rather than 1.5m?! This is an emergency!"

That depends how much they want your particular clip vs any generic clip of the same topic.

Similar, but I think it would be more accurate to say "how much they want your generic clip vs any generic clip of the same topic". I'd be surprised if people shop around as much as everyone seems to think, but if they do, that just makes it more likely they'll now use SS rather than another site. Those that don't shop around, and use Pond5 or Adobe for example, are a lot less likely to use SS in the first place... unless they stumble across an ad for their reduced prices. I think people put a bit too much faith in how amazingly unique and brilliant their content is... I can't see an individual removing their content resulting in buyers not being able to find anything close to what they need, so they have to go elsewhere.

If enough people do it, it's very likely.

If enough people decide to buy something similar for a much higher price... then it's very likely that people will people decide to buy something similar for a much higher price? Erm... yeah, I guess so!

I'm creating content relative to 'coronavirus' and selling it. Recently, somebody said me on this forum, "complex motion graphics is not rocket science"... well, maybe he was wrong

Hmm... not quite sure your reasoning works! While I agree that complex motion graphics are far from easy, by your logic.... if somebody makes something and then sells it... then it is rocket science? Flipping burgers, printing t-shirts, selling hotdogs, baking cookies to sell.... because these people have created content and sold them, all claims that 'it's not rocket science' are false?

Well there we have it guys and gals... who would have guessed it? All these months and years of division, hostility, confusion, arguments and debate... and finally it's all been solved by a video from a guy named Tim. Well, I guess I was wrong and Trump is actually a great guy. I feel so stupid now, what was I thinking?!

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

Yes... preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus. Later investigations conducted by the Chinese (and other) authorities did find clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus. What's your point?

Yeah, it's not worded very well!

Hello Footage Contributor,

We hope this email finds you well.

We would like to notify you that as on April 6, 2020, 123RF will no longer be accepting any footage content or repurpose footage into another site within INMAGINE ECOSYSTEM. We will send out an invitation to selected contributors to participate.

We will not place them for sale without your approval.

Please note that all footage submitted to 123RF in Pending status will progressively be removed from our servers.

We will also be disabling the Upload Page for footage.

We will continue to license your footage for as long as we can and please rest assured that we will send any earnings that you may are entitled to during your time with us. Further announcements will be made to this effect in the future.

We would like to thank you for submitting your footage all these while to us at 123RF.

Out of curiosity - does anyone mind sharing what their average yearly number of downloads are? Based on most of the comments, Is 5000 an easy goal for most?

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

Last year I had 45 video downloads... so that puts me at 360 downloads with the x8 for videos. Should make the 150 without too much trouble, but definitely not the 5000.

Just like Trump disappeared during the 2009 swine flu outbreak?