I will now fashion a tin-foil hat to keep the aliens from reading my thoughts, I suggest you do the same.

Done!

How long is it taking to get photos reviewed here?  I've been waiting for weeks now.

Before you submit think twice.... photo sales are sinking deep at P5.
They've got into Low Earners now! 

I haven't noticed any discussion here yet in 2015 about problems with 1099 US tax forms so maybe I'll mention this here.  I'm not being specific about the stock agency as under US this could involve serious legal questions of a possible criminal nature depending on the intent of the agency.  For two years running I have received  1099 US tax forms from this agency indicating that during the previous tax year I earned a small amount of royalty payments (less than $100USD) although I actually received nothing from these people.  Initially I ignored the discrepancy and paid the few dollars extra tax.  However, This year the same thing happened.  If the agency is doing this with a substantial number of their contributors, this may appear that the agency has higher operating costs than is really the case. I am not a tax expert and I am certainly not accusing anybody of "cooking the books" but still, the contents of the corporate pot seem to be smelling more & more like fish.

wow!

keep us updated on this

"We would like to apologize for the inconvenience because our CEO is still sunning in Brazil. We will get back to you shortly when he approves our reply."
 

p.s. saying this because last time P5 replied to this thread over 1 year ago. 
http://www.microstockgroup.com/pond5/pond5-what-should-we-improve/msg360106/#msg360106

Quote from: stockmarketer on February 21, 2015, 06:36

Everyone who didn't opt into this should be kicking themselves right now.

I was working in a major ad agency this week. If you saw what an ad agency pays for one-time use of an image (from Shutterstock and Getty in most ad agencies), you'd be shaking your head sadly at these $2 resell-all-you-like Google payments, as I am today.

I'm not kicking myself at all about opting out...instead I'm realizing how much people are actually willing to pay for one use of my images. (It's a lot more than all the $2 payments you got for all those images put together.)

I can confirm this and I am very upset about bargaining that is happening all over.
Ad agencies with massive budgets gets stuff for nothing.
How to stop this, I have no idea! 

Quote from: PixelBytes on February 19, 2015, 14:31

Couldn't agree more!   Who said we want you to advertise us individually?  Johnathan,  don't insult our intelligence with such a silly comment. 

We want you to advertise your paid content that you built your site with, instead of spending all the advertising budget you got from OUR content promoting FREE content that undercuts our business. 

Are you still confused?  If you are, you might need medical help.

But they do. I often see Pond5 ads banners on Facebook with my own clips in them. Although it's not because they decided to promote my portfolio. It's happening because I've clicked on those particular clips on the Pond5 website earlier, so the system assumed I am a potential buyer.

If so, that's a money waste!

Today you are more likely to die in a plane crash than click on a banner for a particular campaign.

The average banner ad has a 0.1% clickthrough rate (CTR), and the standard 468x60 banner has a 0.04% CTR.

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/horrifying-display-advertising-stats

AND banner blindness explained

http://andrewchen.co/the-law-of-crappy-clickthroughs/

 

And if you are looking closely at FB likes on P5 page you will clearly see that likes are paid and not natural. So many Indians, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Brazilians...all paid to click like on P5 posts.   

Yes, these are flowing in.  VERY nice.

I am desperate for some good news this Friday... please share, if any? :-)

Topic: For those who've left pond5 make sure your images aren't still there

After getting sick of pond 5's petty rejection reasons i'd decided enough was enough and asked them to clear my balance into my paypal account, remove my images and close my account.
After their pathetic 'we just want the best for you and our customers' excuse I reiterated my desire to leave them.
So they paid my balance into my account. I then got news of a sale for $10 followed by news my account had been closed.
I then contacted them about the unpaid $10 sale (no reply)
I then out of curiosity went to the site and looked for my images as a customer would and lo and behold they were all still there available for sale, so I contacted them again asking how this was possible? (no reply)
Went to bed and awoke to see another sale email coming through this time for $7, so checked again and indeed my images were/are still there available for sale even though my account is closed.
Contacted them again about this (still no reply)
This to me is nothing other than fraud and I would recommend for others that might have left Pond5 to check that their images/sounds/videos have indeed actually been removed.

I myself will be making inquiries as to were I legally stand on this.

 
Before you make any inquiry, make sure you've got the screen grabs of images you found as a proof!
I hope you will get to the bottom of this and get a compensation too.
Keep us informed.

Really love this series 

Scenes you've seen

http://dissolve.com/showreels/scenes2

http://www.dissolve.com/showreels/scenes-youve-seen

The contact information received from the �apply now� page is used by Dissolve sales representatives to follow up with the prospect and determine if they meet the program criteria. Most prospects are not accepted into the program.

I think this is the common practice. All big agencies have the same procedure in non-watermarked unlimited downloads allowed to trustworthy clients ONLY.

If what you mean is more that we don't advertise Pond5 enough in general though, then I'll see what I can find out about our campaigns if you like. We have a whole marketing department, and a budget for advertising, so I know we are doing those things. But I'm in a different department, so I don't know the details. If you're interested, I'll see what I can find out and what I might be able to share with you all here.

Jonathan, sorry to hear we confused you ... We haven't seen a single campaign promoting our media files in long time! Nobody expects you to advertise us individually - although you obviously have your favorites (!!!) https://www.facebook.com/pond5/posts/10153117910329777

So yes, please ask your marketing team why is that...if anything else, out of respect to all of us who helped you get that 30,000 square feet office space in fancy Soho. 

As I said above... I found it absolutely tasteless to brag so much about public domain free stuff, as our files don't exist at all.
And not just to brag only, to give awards for its usage too - http://www.mandy.com/1/board2.cfm?v=62891147