There seems to be many accident shots in this portfolio. People actually die in accidents. No matter how much money these shots can make, personally I would not shoot accident scenes and crushed vehicles. Let there be some decency!

I actually think that's some of his best and most unique stuff and probably makes the most money. As long as you're not in the way of emergency services and identifying people via video then I have no issues with this. The world's a big bad place sometimes and horrible things happen.

I reviewed his portfolio in detail this weekend, he does actually have 39,000 clips but not very organized so if he is in fact a student I hope he isn't working in the campus library.

What I did noticed and I've already referred his profile to a couple of fellow producers is he does two things, his style seems to be to shoot long lens and take you there into the intensity and the reality of the event, everything I have seen so far is very real , he doesn't set up many shots,  it is FAR from polished work or fine art which makes him basically blazing his own trail and doing his own thing and something completely different than what most stock producers do.

He's basically turned the industry on it's head and with a little luck will break out ahead of the pack and leave everyone else behind and catching up, this of course if he gets things organized. So we must think before we knock his work, this guy might have just started a trend.  Thanks to the OP for positing this profile here, now I've got to get out and shoot in similar fashion.

We don't know if this was his plan or this is just how it came out, I compared his college student clips to others and you can't compare. If he was or is a student while building that collection then he sure was one of those that wasn't sitting around playing league of legends at every possible opportunity.  Not that there is anything wrong with playing league.

He used to be an ENG cameraman but lost a lot of work due to TV stations cutting budgets etc - I know this because he posts constantly on the P5 forums. He certainly hasn't turned the industry on it's head, he's just spent a lot of time shooting everything on his doorstep which in reality is very easily replicated by anyone with a camera. Given the size of his portfolio he should be making A LOT more than he currently is - loads and loads of duplicate clips probably don't help his cause.

And yeah he mentioned he can't afford to upgrade to 4K so that says something...

Thanks for clarification!

I was just browsing VideoBlocks and noticed they now have an option for non-members to purchase clips with the price being $79 for HD and $329 for 4K.

I've browsed the contributors FAQs on the site and there's no mention of this new pricing option. My question is do we get the full amount of this higher price or do Videoblocks now take a commission?

I think the reports are delayed slightly since they're being issued out of Seattle now.

June pretty decent all up, highest royalty 273x greater than smallest 

I read that they lost business from the likes of Nat Geo commissioned production companies because the license wasn't extensive enough (this was a rumor so who knows if 100% accurate.) If indeed this was the case then it might be a corresponding response to win back such business.

However I too get worried when I see such announcements - maybe an end to free flow pricing?! If that is the case I sincerely hope they have a high price point available in the $299 - $399 range.

Well after my disastrous start to the year at Pond5, March in particular, things have picked up there. I honestly don't think it's the membership program sales themselves that have screwed a lot of people this year but more the dramatic change of the website itself, confusion amongst buyers re: membership etc.

Some saying Pond5 are small player, I'd disagree, they were consistently my best performing agency until things went wrong. Getty seems to be getting stronger but they're royalties can have a huge swing. March I had two clips net me 4 figures each (my share,) April was a big run of $2 - $4 royalties - it all averages out pretty decently there though.

In the future it's going to be increasingly hard for people to make any decent money off standard, easy to replicate footage like cloud timelapses or city skylines. Anyone can shoot that low cost. However find your niche, difficult or tricky shots and there's still decent income to be made and always will be.

Talking of $400 clips, sold one on Pond5 this morning!

Cobalt - you're assuming all of Pond5's customers are now part of the membership program which is simply not the case. I and many others have had multiple regular sales of clips that are also part of membership. And it's not an unlimited download model - once members have used up their allowance they need to shop in the marketplace.

I'm still in two minds about whole thing and agree more data from Pond5 on how many files are being downloaded is very important!

I think people who are in the membership program will of course report excellent sales, their files are pushed in the search and when the customer selects membership only they get very targeted traffic to their portfolios, they basically live inside a walled garden inside pond5.  And if they offer super high quality files for 6 dollars, of course the customers will love it.

And if an artists decides to rent out their content, by all means let them do it. But they could have offered their files for 6 dollars or 10 dollars before. So they could easily place 30% of their portfolio at 10 dollars, get paid for every individual sale and enjoy the additional traffic that cheap files bring. They would also have statistics and download numbers.

So if the membership program offered the option to be paid by download, 50% of every 6 dollar sale, wouldn they make a lot more money?

There are people on envato offering files for very low prices and they report income up to 5 times higher than on pond5 with the same portfolio.

So there does seem to be a high volume, low price market also in video.

Every artist has to decide for themselves if this is the right time to offer their high quality files for 6 dollars.

When fotolia opened the Dollar Photo Club, they did it on a different website, so that the normal fotolia business would not be affected immediatly. They also marketed DPC mostly in the US and not in Europe, which was their main Fotolia market. So they tried to work in different worlds with teh same content, testing if an ultracheap site will make them good money.

Again, I am not against renting out content to an agency. It is the combination with all the other abrupt changes that makes it weird and looks like they are just throwing stuff at a wall to see what will stick.

For those who say, we should have diversified sooner and uploaded to more agencies - well, many of us supported pond5 because we considered it a truly artist friendly place, worthy of support. And the best way to support an agency is to supply them with content first.

This is one thing the community can do - reward a good site with our content, deny content to sites that treat us badly.

The old pond5 was unique and a really well run place for people who see themselves as entrepreneurs.

The membership program is not the end of the world. It just takes time until someone else replaces pond5.

And since we all share information which agency is worth uploading to, I am sure in a few months we will know which direction to take and the contributor upload streams...and the business...will flow to a new site that wants us.

Agencies that annoy the contributor community, who are also the buyer community, dont do well.

What evidence do you have that contributor's files are favoured in the search? I'm in the membership program and experiencing my worst sales at Pond5 in 4 years.

I have about 450 files in the membership programs. Sales have utterly tanked this year starting from January, currently running about 40% compared to this time last year.

If nothing improves in next 4-6 weeks I'll be giving notice to remove my content from the program. Pond5 used to be a super seller for my footage at good high price, it's tanked now. Thankfully I don't put all my eggs in one basket and have contingency plans for such events - sales continue to be solid and improving elsewhere.

As the previous poster said you'll need to invest at least $3 - $4,000 for decent rig and software on top. Right now the cheaper technology just isn't good enough and looks awful.

You'll also need specific software (which can cost) to stitch and sync the footage. It's not cheap to get into.

Consensus on the Pond5 forum is that today's sales report only covered 1 day of the 5 or so that are currently unreported, so there are likely more days' worth of sales still in limbo awaiting to be reported. Some sort of communication from Pond5 would be very much appreciated.

Quote from: thepokergod on April 14, 2016, 05:34

It's up the spout - no sales have been reported site-wide for 3 days which is very annoying. I and others have badgered support and also posted in the forums, hopefully this gets resolved ASAP since Payday is tomorrow.

And what did they say? "Oh so sorry we've been busy crop dusting around our new swanky office on Park Ave."   

They said IT's on the case but that was over 24hrs ago and another scheduled sales report has gone by without being released.