Quote from: cobalt on April 29, 2016, 18:10

Well, I just had 7 of 7 rejected, including one file where they asked me to include a missing model release in a group of 4 people. Mostly 4k.

But the review time has improved.

So, we are all getting the go away message. I�ll keep uploading small batches, but otherwise the focus will be on SS, Videoblocks and Adobe. Maybe even a little bit to istock.

Somebody will step in and say: I want to be the next pond5...

SS sometimes inspects in under 4 hours, fotolia in one day.

I suspect Pond 5 is watching their costs and that includes storage costs, they have five million clips already in the pond and probably can't afford much most space at their current burn rate plus lack of sales revenue plus their normal operating overhead so I think they without saying they are closed to new clips they are mostly closed to admitting new clips, they are using the terms like we have new and improved standards but I don't believe it.

They probably figure that if they reject 90% then most people will simply go away and stop submitting.

and yes we hope someone will step in and become the next Pond5, the challenge will be finding investors with many millions willing to invest when the returns are so small in this business and there are already some big players in the space, would be a tough pitch to make. 

Guess the lesson learned here is no matter what we are doing these days our job security is zero, in this case it was a management change at pond5 and just like that....done.

If they wanted to reduce storage costs, they would of removed all the low quality clips already in their collection.  So I think that can't be the reason for rejecting new clips.

The other sites might be frightened of losing an expensive legal battle with Google and finding they have sunk without trace in the search results.  I think governments should be dealing with Google.  Copyright laws are quite straightforward and should apply to everyone.  Other internet businesses that have allowed people to flaunt copyright laws have been dealt with by governments.  Taking on Google in the courts must be a daunting task because they have such deep pockets.  Getty might be thinking that Google will want to settle this quickly to avoid bad publicity.

Will be interesting to see what happens and how fairly Getty compensate the people who supply them if they win.

Quote from: cobalt on April 02, 2016, 17:09

It�s amazing how much negativity they are spreading in such a short time. Just a few weeks or three months ago people were only complaining about long review times, but otherwise were satisfied with pond5. You can always use more sales, but people felt at home.

Now there isn�t a single board where people are not complaining bitterly.

Who is now in charge of pond5? Do they now have a management that has never worked in the stock industry?

Instead of changing everything, why didn�t they add an additional site to experiment with and then very gradually implement what works on pond5, after discussing it carefully with contributors?

Why drive people to explore the competition? I don�t understand their goals at all.

Shutterstock, Videoblocks and Adobe are probably ordering champagne every week, this is an unexpected gift for them. And if istock had vision, they would use this opportunity to announce a new royalty system to attract all the content that has avoided them.

To be fair there's one person that has been complaining at every opportunity about everything Pond5 does and starting threads for the purpose. The problem with this forum is that many of those contributing do nothing other than use it for a sounding board for negativity.

I can't see that things have changed that much in terms of sales or reviews at Pond5. Obviously they're now starting to reject a bit more, but lifting the standards of contributions isn't necessarily a bad thing. I haven't seen complaints from anyone that has a high quality portfolio - if that happens there's more to be alarmed about.

There were some big site changes last month that will have an impact, but its far too early to really know how those will impact sales if at all.

Just block KnowYourOnions and you wont have to read the one person who just complains all the time. 

There's nothing wrong with tightening up a bit on reviews but when there are good contributors reporting near 100% rejections, something has gone wrong.  They haven't gone through their collection and removed the lower quality clips that they have been accepting for years, so rejecting lots of new 4k clips seems like a strange policy to me.  There's also the fact that sites that accept almost everything with stills are doing better than sites that started the Pond5 policy.  Just look at the difference between Shutterstock and Dreamstime, they were much closer 5 years ago.  I think Google likes a lot of content and buyers will buy a lot of content that inexperienced reviewers would reject if they have to make subjective decisions on "commercial quality".

Pond5 was doing great accepting almost everything.  The search should be good enough to bring the best to the top.  I think making such a radical change that has led to disaster for other sites is highly likely to be bad for them.  Not giving us any guidance before making the change has made a lot of people waste time uploading big batches of video clips and has wasted reviewers time when they already had a huge backlog.  I hope they think things through more in the future.

Prices for web use with Alamy can be as cheap as microstock.

How big is your portfolio ?

2,276

Quote from: AlessandraRC on April 08, 2016, 19:07

I don't think that they are rude, but their English sometimes is a little rudimentary.  I've learned to like it there. No sales yet but only time will tell.

No sales, lets celebrate how good they are like the rest of the loser sites paying nothing for your work. Or is it the higher percentage of nothing that's impressing you? Why do people borther with these places?

They were quite good for selling to sites that I hadn't uploaded my portfolio to.  I was getting a lot of sales and payouts before a site closed down.  Now I hope they can generate sales from their own site.  Not happening at the moment but I have been pleasantly surprised by other sites that had long periods of no sales like Mostphotos.

The reason to use these sites is that you can get paid a reasonable amount for the very little time and work involved.  Some sites aren't worth it but I would of lost a lot of money if I had followed the advice of people telling me to only use the top 10 sites.  Definitely not worth it for anyone that doesn't get regular payouts from the big sites, as they are unlikely to reach the payout threshold on the smaller sites.

I have no idea why, they should tell you.  Are they still only taking 500 new contributors a year?  If 10,000 apply, the odds aren't great.

They haven't spent as much as other sites that had no option but to close and I remember they said they weren't going to get in to big debts to be competitive, so I think they wont close unless they want to.  I don't get many sales but I think they have enough to keep going, like FeaturePics who have been around since 2004.

Cutcaster could do better by paying 50%, I think they pay 40% now?  That small change could give them a big boost, it would get me uploading again.

I suppose there will be less competition if they reject so much but I still don't get why they haven't gone through the collection and removed all the lower quality clips they accepted in the past.  Having the highest standards now wont make the site more appealing because it was already full of clips that all the other sites would of rejected.

They should communicate with all contributors to let us know exactly what they want now because I don't see the point in uploading if there's a good chance of 100% rejection.  They should also let us know that they are committed to keeping the 50% rate because with so many things changing, that's the last thing left that will make me want to carry on uploading.

Unlimited downloads wont mean much while they have limited content.  Hope it stays that way.  Did they just send the email to registered buyers?  I didn't get it.  Makes me wonder if 123rf is worth carrying on with?  They have never made much for me and I stopped uploading after the commission cut.

Quote from: ShadySue on April 06, 2016, 17:39

Quote from: dbvirago on April 06, 2016, 17:06

I've cut costs too. Which means I don't spend any time trying to convince an agency to sell my work. I submit and move on. If one site doesn't sell them, another will.

There are other, more serious, reasons someone might want to contact support.

Yes. Thank you ShadySue. My motivation for contacting support was to bring to their attention that a batch of my submissions were rejected in less than a minute for the same erroneous reason.....that they were not submitted in English....suggesting either their "automated" system or reviewers have problems.

If SS responded and told me that, yes I was correct, but sorry, they're all blurry, poorly cropped/framed.....fine. But to get no response says something about the SS's new "contact" policy.

Can't you just upload them again and leave a note for the reviewer that they were rejected for the wrong reason?  Can't imagine the number of emails their support must get.  They probably ignore most about reviews because I doubt they employ enough people to respond to all of them.  If the same problem keeps happening, try the forum or twitter.

Looks interesting but I don't know how many of these vintage images are already on the other sites?  Can't old images that are out of copyright be uploaded by anyone?  Doesn't that take away the advantage of a niche subject?