Cheers mate,... pass the vinegar - I only need a narrow seat as I'm just a shadow of my former self ;-)
[/quote]
Plus, as a bonus, we'll have plenty of chances for video clips of food...

Well. p5 has probably kill the video market for good and only in a few weeks.

Nah, not prepared to share the thread with that kind of language.

........Ah, that's better - you've reverted to a reasonable discussion and got rid of the expletives and F words - well done.......

I don't actually believe I'm getting sales because of the search engine giving me preference. That's because what I shoot generally only has 1 page of results - often only 1/2 page - so placement doesn't matter. The competition tends to be pretty weak as well.

If you're still shooting ducks or very common, not-in-demand subjects or 1,000s of similars; then the search engine is going to sink you - even if it didn't there's only slim pickings there anyway.

Love your figure estimates - you must think I do nothing but answer your questions. $1000 a month sure isn't going to keep anyone in business - my cigar bill is higher than that (that's a joke by the way - I don't smoke)
I do agree this whole membership is a risk - I didn't dream it up - I'm just a RM stills photographer who found his income hit by RF then microstocking part-timers, then microstocking full-timers.
But now the shoe is on the other foot. The scheme was happening - I had a choice to be part of it or not and see what happens next. You weren't offered it - have you wondered why that is? You of course, would have refused, but the point is: why weren't you given the choice? I know and you know.

I learned long ago that trying to get stock producers to form a cartel is like herding cats - it ain't gonna happen; so one might as well make the best of what is happening.

I still believe money in my bank right now gives me more options than faith, hope and charity.

I agree with you on many aspect and as I said I never posted in forums, but rather spend my time shooting and uploading.
The only reason why I am speaking out now is that this membership thing in p5 is making the video clip market crash too early, to soon to $6 for a clip.
200.000 hand picked, good quality clips at ten clips for the price of one is really a lot.
There are a bit more than 5 million clips on the pond. If you take away the bad ones, you are left with less than a million good quality clips. If you take away the repetitions, than you have about that number of good, non-duplicated clips. Basically the membership area is all a customer needs, plus it is much easier for them to find what they want, avoiding repetitions.
I am pretty much sure that in a couple of month, once all customers will be aware of the scheme, there will be no more sales outside the memberhip. At the same time a lot of customers will move from SS, FT and VB to this place and sales will dry up for all of us. All sales will be in the membership area where royalties to artists are not paid.
I guess SS, FT will have to react to this state of things very quickly and bring their prices for clips to single digit. They just have no choice, they cannot compete selling clips at $70 against $6.
Probably P5 will be the first to die in this war price, as they rely only on clip sales, while the other also have photo.
I know that artists cartels have never worked before, but such a dumping never occurred before, even in still images, the prices dropped at a much slower pace, not from $70 to $6 overnight.
And in this case all is needed is that artist get their clips back from the membership. Then we can probably enjoy a few more years doing what we like

Can't the people in the membership collection thing opt out?  I don't think people thought P5 would select high quality clips.  If they opt out, P5 will disappoint any buyers they have taken from other sites and will only hurt themselves.

I don't think the other sites will get in to a price war, as it isn't the only reason buyers use sites.  That's obvious with stills, many sites do well selling the same images at higher prices.

As far as I know the contributors can get out of the scheme, but somebody should make them understand the situation.
If many of them opt out, then things will go back to normal.
This time the dumpng from p5 is too strong: for the price of 1 clip customers can download 10 clips. SS, FT and VB will have to react or die

It is the second time that I read that once the customer runs out of the 5 or 10 cips from the membership, he has to buy them from the marketplace.
How wrong and naif is this idea? He can of course get a second membership.
A monthly download for 5 clips cost as much as purchasing a simple clip!
The only people who are still experiencing sales in the pond are artist who contributed, and apparently not all of them. This is because they get pushed up on the search, but also because not all customers have yet become aware of the crazy dumping of the membership area.
Give it a month and all sales outside the membership zone will disappear.
Give it 3 months and SS and FT will have to lower their prices to $9 per clip to survive.
Give it 5 months and p5 will be finally dead and buried

All contributors should withdraw clips from P5 membership program.  It just isn't good for us.

100% agree with this. It is the only way to save the market for footage.
The problem is that p5 is treating partecipationg contributors extremely well: they have been pushed up in the search engine (so they are the only ones who actually sell clips) and they are the only ones who get their clips accepted

Quote from: cobalt on May 15, 2016, 07:31

The 50 cents a month rent price for all downloads, is what pond5 said publicly.

So what else are people going to believe??

Contributors can only discuss what the agency and the participating contributors tell them.

If there is more to the deal and contributors get additional income depending on sales, it will change the discussion.

But you can�t blame contributors if pond5 spreads misinformation about their new project.

The fact remains, that the membership program is a "6 dollar per download" club and that is what will affect sales behaviour and has all non participating contributors rightly worried about an abrupt crash in stock video.

Again, the concept of renting content per se, I think that can be interesting if it is done well. But with all the other abrupt changes, [b]100% rejections, widespread reported drop in downloads,[/b] the new "impress our employees policy" etc...it is just one more abrupt bizzarre strangeness that makes it feel like the pond5 that we knew has disappeared.

And the old pond5 is hard to replace, it will take time until another agency takes the position of pond5 in the marketplace. But somebody will do it, and for many it is a wake up call to explore more agencies and diversify.

Good post, Cobalt.  Key points above really are the crux of today's gap.  I was doing okay on P5 prior to the changes, roughly $400 a month (my cut) and now it's $100 to $25. I did manage to get a 4k sale last week, and that made my $100. Otherwise, I am another contributor who is feeling the video pain and have been told to up my game by P5.  Well, like most, I don't produce broadcast quality, I am not a Motion expert to create my own animations, I don't have access to aerial other than investing in a drone and learning that angle, I don't have expensive sliders, pan/tilts, etc. and I doubt 95% of "regular contributors"do either.  Based on that recipe, P5 is going to be a main player in killing the video market as it will likely trigger a competitive response from others like SS.  They are essentially using a back door pricing scheme that cheapens the ENTIRE MARKET. Pay contributors a "fee"(which financially makes them happy) and sell to customers for $6.  The $6 thing is the root of all evil as it will echo across all video markets due to the high quality of the clips in that collection. So, in the main collection, why on earth would a client pay $6 for a nice broadcast clip and then need a shot of waves rolling up on a beach but the one they want is in the main "cheap quality"collection for $79? That's the gap that will contribute to further industry erosion.

Mantis, you have resumed the situation in a better way than me.
The big part of the video stock market would have eventually gone down in prices in a few years to single digit per clip, but it is way to soon for this to happen.
Most customers are still very happy to pay the $70-80 per HD file which was more or less the market price, until this bloody p5 membership murder.
Videoblock tried something like this, but it was never a serious threat, because their clips in the membership area are mostly a joke.
The p5 marketplace is another kettle of fish: the played a very shroud move. They selected 200.000 very good clips covering most subjects and can cater for the needs of most buyers.
The sales in the marketplace area are now totally dead for non-partecipating artist, while the ones who have clips in the marketplace are kept happy, since they have been pushed up in the search. Other artists are clearly being shown the door, as we can see by their new approuval policy
In other words p5 has made $6 per clip the new standard price in the industry and has become a closed clubs for a few artists who have clip in the membership

Quote from: Brightontl on May 14, 2016, 02:30

The only way forward now is to hope that other agencies will start selling footage at $5 for each clip and hope that this will kill pond 5

And that would be good because ... ?

Of course not good, but the only way to survive for video artists.
At the moment apparently all customers are buying clips in the bloody membership area of p5 and those sale don't generate any royalties for artists (just half a peanut a month for clip, regardless of the amount of downloads).
 In other words P5 have cornered th market and taken the artists out of. They can even stop accepting uploads, get rid of curators, of the forum and so on.
With those 200,000 files given away for extremely low prices the can make an enormous amount of cash for a few years. And I am sure that they wil have another go and try to increase the number of files.
Of course SS and FT will lose most or all of their video customers, unless they compete on prices (i.e. a price war with p5). That means selling clips for less than $10.
At that price there is no room for three agencies to survive. The first to die will be p5, because they rely entirely on video, the other two can go on with still sales.
Once p5 is dead and buried, price can try to go slowly back to normal (although is never easy to increase prices)

The membership is made up of 200,000 clips -  you can do a simple blank search for footage and filter by membership to find the figure, 199,797 to be exact.

My sales have tanked at Pond5, starting in January this year. I used to have super solid sales there selling multiple $299 clips a week and now that's completely dried up. I'm sure the membership program is having an affect but my hunch is other factors at play and customers have moved elsewhere. I have about 450 clips in the membership program all of which were my cheapo one, nothing that was priced high. If nothing improves in the next 4 to 6 weeks I'll hand in my notice and withdraw from the program.

Is it at all possible to withdraw from the program, I mean to stop the devil using your clips in the membership?
If that is the case it is very, very good news.
I am sure that most of the artists who have fallen into the trap will see how they have been taken for fools and get out of the scheme

It needs people who supply this madness.

Usually people only offer low quality files for cheap prices. The only reason to offer quality files for pennies is if you get extremly high volume sales, like some people do on envato.

Then you have a business model like the original micro market for photos, where those of us who got in early, made a crazy amount of money.

But now there is an oversupply situation and the quality photos are moving back to macrostock agencies or specialized collections like stocksy with a walled garden approach.

It looks like pond5 is trying to crash the video market really, really early in the game, if they place quality files in the 6 dollar price bin, while renting the content for 50 cents a month.

Maybe they are hoping to win back all the customers they lost to other places, I don�t know.

A rental concept for low quality clips, I can see that working as a win win for all involved. Reliable money is reliable money.

But with only 4,5 million videos in the whole market, I don�t understand why artists would give up on individual download income at 50% for good quality files.

Basically p5 got a new management.made up by people that don;t really know this industry.
When a new mgmt arrives they try to do something big to impress the shareholders, even if it is something very stupid.

What is happening is that they are driving all previous p5 sales to this bloody membership area.
In the MA basically no royalties are paid, only the ridiculous half dollar per clip per mont one off.
The thing is that before p5 was getting an average of $ 35 per clip sold ($70 minus $35 for the artist), in the bloody membership they only get an average of $6 per clip sold. So their income per previously existing customer is 6 times smaller than before.
In order to maintain the same income they need to multiply their volume of sales of clip six times, therefore by attracting customers from other agencies, and remember that this entire huge volume of sales does not generate any income for artists.
In reality they are stealing a lot of customers from other agencies, that is why everyone is complaining of lower sales for video clips not only at p5

I am not participating to the program, but since this bloody thing started sales of clips have totally tanked for practically everybody, from what I read in the different forums.
I knew it was coming: if customers can have 300,000 very good clips covering most subjects for about $6, why on earth should they be buying anywhere else?
The only way forward now is to hope that other agencies will start selling footage at $5 for each clip and hope that this will kill pond 5

Sorry Cobalt, but I don't understand your point.
Unless I misunderstand, the artists gave full use of their clips to p5 for the ridiculous amount of 50c per month, thus surrendering their entire portfolio, as no customer are going to buy anything outside the membership, since they can have 300.000 good clips for peanuts.
Why should the artists care about real time sales, since they have already been paid that stupid amount?
And why on earth p5 should disclose their sales on the membership area, since they basically have the full use of those clips?