Can we hear the opinions of people who works for Pond5, in regarding of this issue. Why leaving us the choice of what price to set for footage if the best selling clips are 69$? Someone puts 5$, someone 300$, what this looks like... Why not set a fixed price and accept only the file that meet the criteria.

Hiya, I do happen to work at Pond5, so I'll try to share what information I can.

So to start, here are our current pricing guidelines at Pond5:

http://help.pond5.com/hc/en-us/articles/200944103-How-Do-I-Price-My-Files-

Pond5's mission has always been to be an open marketplace, by artists, for artists. That's why we let you price your own goods. I think there's a strong argument to be made for having firm pricing guidelines in that scenario, and I've cirtanly seen lots of feedback suggesting we need to raise the minimums. Rest assured that that feedback gets reviewed by the people upstairs.

There's been lots of talk about falling sales across the whole website, not just outside of Pond5, but we're aware of it and working on it internally too. It's true that summer time comes with a drop in sales normally, but we think there are other factors contributing that many of you have mentioned here. Our marketplace could use a good "quality" clean up, for example. That's totally on the to-do list.

Something else I can share about pricing that may be helpful is this: we've seen data that suggests when you raise prices (on quality content) it tends to correlate with a rise in sales. Now, we all know that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but it's still probably unwise to ignore that. We think higher prices may give buyers the impression of higher quality, and when the shopper is looking for a scene to put into their next multi-million dollar movie or TV show, quality is often their primary concern. So I would definitely and highly recommend playing with pricing, and see what works best for your items. The recommendations on the edit item page are much more up-to-date than what's on artist resources, so I'd use those as a barometer first. WeatherENG's suggestion of using the search system is also really good advice.

I don't have any news or information on if or when we'll adjust the minimum prices, but if you have anything to say on the subject please feel free. As I said, I do bring this feedback to the guys upstairs.

On that note, if you really want to help, please try to offer as much "actionable" feedback as you can. Saying something like "the interface sucks" isn't actionable, and won't really help us improve anything. But saying, "I can't easily price or manage my items because the interface makes it hard for me to work with large numbers of files at once," is much more helpful and actionable.

And of course, you're always welcome to PM me on here, or email me directly if you'd like: [email protected]

How do you turn off the feature in P5?

You don't have to actually turn anything off, just don't use any of the suggested keywords if you don't want to.

http://help.pond5.com/hc/en-us/articles/204090849-Auto-Tagging

Hi everyone,

I wanted to let you know that we at Pond5 released a pretty cool feature last month: Auto-tagging.

Now you don't have to mindlessly type in keywords for any of the video clips, photos, or illustrations that you upload on to our site. We'll do it for you!

The feature is built with super-fancy artificial intelligence technology that automatically scans your media and generates relevant keywords�saving you a ton of time and helping you make more money.

I see there's been some talk about it here already, but I wanted to create a central thread for discussion and feedback. Please let us know what you think of the system! Is it great? Is it awful? Is it working? Is it the coolest thing since sliced bread? We're listening, so please share your thoughts!

30,000 square feet office

Also, the space we are in now is most certainly not 30,000 square feet. That really would be ridiculous, you're right. The space we are in now is actually about 5,000 square feet.

Try this one - www.facebook.com/govooza/posts/581698011961783

or go to vooza.com and find "Bull*hit metrics" video

Ah! That did the trick, thank you

Hah! That was great! I'll have to check out more of their videos.

It's not about keywords. Pond5 converts the descriptions and titles to all lower case, which is a pain to fix.

Ah, I see. Okay, yeah, I'm on board, I can see how that would be incredibly frustrating. I want to talk about this more with you as I have a few more questions about the details, but I don't think this thread is the best place to do that troubleshooting. Could you please shoot me a direct email?  I'll work on this for you guys.

[email protected]

First bold. Make it $30 minimum please.

Second bold. You are missing the point. You are conditioning content users to expect free.bthe larger that collection gets the more that expectation grows. Yea there might be some cannibalization, but i am far kore concerned about your strategy to breed demand for more free content. This is the direction most agencies are going and now the one left i liked the most has put in its second nail in the growth coffin. The first nail is $10 hd clips.

$30 is the price point I hear suggested for that a lot, I'll be sure to pass that along.

Pond5 has actually been offering free content for many years now, that's not new. We've always had the promo page (http://www.pond5.com/promo) with rotating free items. There's the free item of the week too. And there are other promotions with free content for film festivals or for things like our Adobe plugin as well. But having free content doesn't invalidate the piles of fantastic paid content our artists offer.

I'm not a business annalist, and I won't pretend to be. I'm saying that we're confident that the public domain project will bring in buyers and sales for everyone because experts with more years of experience than I am old have looked at the numbers and stats, and their experience and analysis tells them that this is a great move for everyone. I absolutely believe that.

Pond5 only makes money when our artists make money. Why would we do something to damage our own pocketbook?

And yet, after years and years, you're unable to stop the system from changing all my titles and keywords to lower case.

Hi Sean, if you like you can shoot me a direct email and I'll be happy to help troubleshoot any problems you're having. You can always reach me at: [email protected]

 - 4K video auto down conversion is coming.
 - The current minimum price for HD video is $10. Recently, we raised the minimum price for music from $5 to $15. We'll be paying attention to how this affects our market, and if it makes sense to apply the same type of change to other formats, like video, we'll certainly consider it. It's in Pond5's interests to help everyone sell more.
 - We're always working on new designs for the site. We launched V2 just two or so years ago, and there will eventually be a V3 (and hopefully a V4, and a V5...) We're always happy to hear your feedback on the site's design so we can take that into account.

I understand how some sellers could be worried that the Public Domain project might cannibalize their sales. That's a valid concern, and a natural reaction. But please, rest assured, Pond5 has poured a lot of time and resources into this project, and we did that because we are very confident that the end result will be more sales for everyone.

This project holds the essence of many of Pond5's ideals. We've always believed that public domain content is great by virtue of not having any copyright restrictions. We believe in the idea that public domain content should be free and accessible for the world, but that hasn't been the way it's worked up until now. Previously, if you wanted to get some PD content, you would have to go to the Library of Congress or another archive and search through hall after hall of old reels that were organized with an archaic system that only people who were trained in could possibly use to find anything at all. Or alternatively, you would have to pay someone else to do that research for you, sometimes for hundreds of dollars an hour. We want to change that with this project!

We did previously accept some of this kind of content from some artists at Pond5, though we no longer do. In order to submit public domain content to Pond5 today, you need to make sufficient edits/changes to the content such that you've added value and created a new piece. We've had this policy in place for many months now.

We've always believed that all public domain content should be free and easily accessible for everyone, but we've never had the resources to make our vision a reality until now. This is why we used to accept this kind of content, because accepting it was the best way to make it available to media makers. But Pond5 has grown up a lot in the last few years, and we're big enough now to make this dream a reality.

We are very confident that this is going to be a massive boon for everyone at Pond5, including all of our artists. This is the first time in history that such a large collection of public domain content has been made easily available for free to the whole world, in seven different languages! It's going to draw lots and lots of traffic to the site. More traffic means more buyers, and more buyers means more sales.

Hi mojaric,

I'm not aware of any problems with the system at this time, but if you're having trouble give us a call or shoot a message to customer service and we'll be happy to help.

[email protected]

For those of you who's sales are up, at Pond5 or elsewhere, congratulations! Rising sales are always something worth celebrating.

I'm afraid I can't help you with your sales elsewhere, but if they aren't where you'd like them to be at Pond5, I do have some helpful advice to share that I hope will help.

If you have more high-quality media, definitely continue uploading more of your work. Our customers know what's good, and the larger your high-quality collection, the more recognition you can have with our community. Buyers are always hungry for amazing content! Many of the most successful sellers at Pond5 are all users who are consistently uploading new material on a regular basis.

For your clips to be easily found, accurate rich info in titles, descriptions and keywords are helpful. How you title and keyword your work is very important. If you spam your keywords or titles, it will only hurt your visibility. So doing this in more detail, but ACCURATELY, has a significant 60% SEO (search engine optimization) weight on the search results.

We also always recommend that you promote your work to up your exposure. Pond5 can't promote your individual account for you, we have far too many artists for that to be feasible, so we focus on promoting the whole website. But it's always good to market your individual account too. You can create a Collection bin showcasing your footage, and then simply copy the link, to add that to your website or social outlet. Here is a link to our Knowledge Base article explaining this: What are collections? - http://help.pond5.com/hc/articles/200944893-What-Are-Collections-

Another option is just to simply post links of your clips all over the internet. You can even add some of your clips to our "free clip promotion" and this will also help get your name out there.

You are also welcome to explore our Artist Resources page. - https://www.pond5.com/index.php?page=artist_resources

Here you will find tons of very valuable metric information, such as what kinds of files comprise what percentage of site sales, the most commonly searched keywords, and so much more information that we think are useful for our artists.

And lastly, if you use your Referral Links, you can even make 5% on all purchases or sales made for the first year of people who sign up using the links you give them. That's another way of thanking you, for sharing Pond5 with your friends! - https://www.pond5.com/referral

I work in customer service myself, so if you've ever written in to us then you may have worked with me before. You can always write in to us at [email protected] or call us at +1(646)233-2155. Our phone support hours are 10am to 8pm eastern, and if your call goes to voicemail please do leave a detailed message. There are only one or two people answering phones at any one time, so we make it a priority to return calls with messages left as quickly as possible, typically within three hours. You can also always write to me directly if you like, at [email protected].

Hello everyone,

I have some official information I'd like to share with you all.


    1. Pixmac.COM is not closing. The verbiage that was used in the newsletter subject was not entirely accurate.  Pixmac.COM (along with pixmac.in, pixmac.fr and pixmac.ma) will be redirected to Pond5.com.

    2. Pixmac.NET is where Pixmac users can still sign in, as normal, and access their accounts. You can still upload, get sales, make purchases, and request your payouts, etc.

    3. All Pixmac artist portfolios that were directly uploaded into Pixmac will be and have been automatically mirrored on Pond5 through api, so there is nothing that artists need to do. This is the "dummy" account you see on Pond5 with the  2@... username.

    4. Again, 2@... is not an actual account. If you want to go ahead and set up a Pond5 account that is linked to you Pixmac account, you can do so at: www.pixmac.net/migrate

    5. Pixmac accounts with money don't need to worry. Again, through Pixmac.NET you can access everything... you will always still be able to see your sales and can still request a payout, just like before.

    6. In the future, we will be transferring Pixmac files to be hosted at Pond5 -- there is no estimated timeframe on this.