Quote from: thirdbornentertainment on May 04, 2019, 20:41

Quote from: pkphotos on May 04, 2019, 20:26

Quote from: thirdbornentertainment on May 04, 2019, 14:16

Quote from: pkphotos on May 04, 2019, 14:01

Quote from: thirdbornentertainment on May 04, 2019, 11:29

If you think this is bad, wait until instagram has a simple opt in function thar allows anyone to sell their photos and video. That will be the final death blow for stock imho.

Not exactly, the range of clips and photos on instagram is relatively narrow and covers only about 20% of stock subjects. Most of it is ego me me me driven and will never cover the everyday subjects that stock requires.

You arent looking ahead. Just because they cant cover whats out there NOW doesnt mean anything. Instagram can easily accept higher res stuff and make it simple to opt in and make money off content. Once they do that everyone will license their snaps for peanuts and be happy making 20$ a month off their selfies and whatever else they have. It's coming, dont kid yourself.

I think you're dreaming. Stock sites have millions of clips specifically made by professionals for stock. You also seemed to ignore my point that most stock is of subjects that the average Instagram user would have no interest or access in shooting, such as medical, business, education, environmental, industry. Instagram is all about travel, food, fashion.

Go have a look on instagram and see whats on there. Theres plenty to choose from, it might not tick all the boxes but it can definitely take a massive chunk out of the industry. I understand you want to protect your job as long as you can but the reality is slowly setting in with subscription services, lower commissions etc. This is not a dream but a nightmare situation that can and will eventually play out. Now any soccer mom can upload a photo and make some side money with the click of a button.  Discussuon over. Check and mate.

Check and mate? I find your argument and logic reasonably clueless. Stock producers have nothing to fear from Instagram and other sites that will never compete with specialist stock agencies. The main competition for stock media creators come from the hundreds of thousands of other stock media creators saturating the market for a piece of a pie that's not growing much. Instagram, Twenty20 and any other site that throws their hand into the stock market will just be competing for crumbs unless they can come up with a master plan to take over the stock game like SS did many years ago.

Your argument is nonsense. Stick to shooting and leave the business side of things to those with a brain. People also mocked the automobile when it came out and we know how that worked out. Just because you lack the foresight and dont have the ability to look way ahead isnt going to stop it from happening. Keep on being a dinosaur, see how far that gets you in this game, kid.

By sell there stuff i mean photos and video. The bar for stock footage is extremely low and anyone can do it.  I produce high end work but also have a lot of clips that id never use in my life, and guess what? They sell. Instagram would be silly not to, and if they dont somebody else will. They have hundreds of millions of producers at their fingertips and with the way phone cameras are progressing media will be worthless. Anyone can shoot a sunset, mountains, a tropical beach etc etc. Point, shoot, click opt in and now your image is readily available on the largest stock site in the world and they didnt even have to lure producers in, because we already are doing it for them.

Quote from: thirdbornentertainment on May 04, 2019, 11:29

If you think this is bad, wait until instagram has a simple opt in function thar allows anyone to sell their photos and video. That will be the final death blow for stock imho.

Not exactly, the range of clips and photos on instagram is relatively narrow and covers only about 20% of stock subjects. Most of it is ego me me me driven and will never cover the everyday subjects that stock requires.

You arent looking ahead. Just because they cant cover whats out there NOW doesnt mean anything. Instagram can easily accept higher res stuff and make it simple to opt in and make money off content. Once they do that everyone will license their snaps for peanuts and be happy making 20$ a month off their selfies and whatever else they have. It's coming, dont kid yourself.

Quote from: stockman11 on May 04, 2019, 03:03

Those technical stuff like building a website and seo are not too hard, especially if you have money to invest in good hosting, maybe hire some web developers, etc.

The real tricky part is marketing (getting buyers) - facebook ads and stuff like that ain't gonna cut it. Being active on social media as many "experts" advice is laughable. If marketing isn't so tricky, there would be much more people successfully living from their own shops and probably not dealing with agencies. Instead of that, people are lucky if they earn from their shops enough to pay hosting and domain.

Yeah that's the hard part, need to master SEO and get on the front page of a google search when someone uses certain keywords when searching for stock footage but the problem is those keywords change with each search obviously. I don't know enough about this myself or I'd be doing it and perhaps it's not possible without a ton of money for marketing and web development.

Maybe the solution is a new agency that simply provides the platform but doesn't do out of their way to discount our prices and offer all these programs etc to further discount and sell our work for next to nothing but instead lets us set prices and takes a commission that allows them to remain healthy.

How many clips do you have and how long have you been at this?

They are not contributor friendly.  Not a good agency to deal with

In what way? I make the same % from them as I do SS and P5 and they accept more footage than Adobe. I'm curious as to why they aren't contributor friendly? They've been good to me.

Thanks!

not sure if it is because I voiced an opinion along with many others (I was quite polite, I know others were a bit 'agitated')...

but - has anyone else seen their pond5 sales plummet to $0 since last month? they were consistently producing at least a few hundred $$$... but $0, strange...

I've seen a massive drop off starting in January. This was my biggest selling agency for the past 3 years and they are getting crushed by SS now. What the heck is going on with Pond5?

This is a fast cash grab. I have no doubt he will make a bunch of money in the short term but he's sinking his (and our) long term prospects in this industry.

Basically, they are running out of money and this is their last chance to recoup costs from their high-end production. Short term this hurts us all, but in the long term, it will eliminate bottom feeders like these.

Quote from: greenroom on April 10, 2019, 04:03

Hey all,
So as there is a lot of discussion regarding the P5 Exclusive program, which I really feel is kind of a scam.
Are there are really contributes who believe that P5E sales can be greater than all other stocks combined?

60% P5 sales > 30% of All other stocks sales (including the P5 40%)? Who would go for it?

It's not only P5. ISE, the new Vimeo stock, and some other stocks, does any of them has the economic power for convincing contributes to be exclusive?
I've been selling stocks for 3 years now and I just don't see it. They all share the market, and for me, different shots are being sold in the different stocks.
The way the market looks like (referring also the the polls in here), it has no sense for contributes at all.
Maybe for new contributors? That doesn't know sh*t?
It does make sense for P5, that in a very impressive rhetoric phrasing (soooo American) have reduced our cut from 50% to 40%, using the exclusive program as a huge fig leaf.
Personally I don't care, it's business and 40% is still fine, just leave us from the exclusive BS.
A stock that REALLY wants to help contributes ? Refer your energy in bringing us more sales, this is why you take 60-70% commission, right?

For someone who don't care you come across as aggressive towards the deal, as though it was a threat?
As far as the math is concerned, if you have what may be considered premium content, but are not favoured by other agencies you have the opportunity to set premium prices and at 60% one sale could be worth 10 at other agencies, as well as getting a decent cut for your not so premium offerings.  Partner sales at adobe and vimeo also mean that different content that isn't to Pond5 buyers liking may get a chance as well.  Give it a go with 10% of your new work, call it an hedge against future subscription offerings by the other agencies.

I was going to upload all of my new stuff there but my SS sales are too strong. Maybe I'll place 10% on exclusive like you suggest to test the waters. Can't put all our eggs in one basket no matter how big the basket is.

The really big problem in MicroStock is that the business model has changed over recent years, it used to be about a partnership with the Agencies to sell our work.

What has happened is that the wealthy shareholders (the people who don't pay tax) have moved into the market financializing the companies by issuing shares to these people.

This has caused a ever need, to constantly increase dividends to these people, which basically means that most of them (except Adobe) have cut our commission rates.

Essentially by not putting up the commission rates they are exploiting artists.

What's needed is a new big player in the Market, funded by the artists and able to wipe the floor with these companies, just how to achieve this, I really don't know at the moment.

Pond5 exclusive is the answer.

I've heard that before, the good ol days of stock footage. Now my 6 hours of work to produce one hyperlapse is worth $70 according to them. I have colleagues that would sell clips for $4000 + a decade ago if it was exclusive.

They want quickly produced garbage, that's what I'm about to give them. I just picked up a DJI pocket Osmo and will be shooting everything stupid little thing I can find just to saturate the market with the garbage they apparently want.

Check your portfolio. Over half of my 1000 clips have been repriced. If they want to sell our footage for a cheap price then I am going to start mass producing low quality clips. And they said 10,000 clips in a year is impossible.

Simple math.  Pond5 wants to make more money.  If Pond5 makes more money, total payout to contributors increase accordingly, not decrease.  That's why they tested to see web size sales would have negative/positive effect to total sales.  And we can set our own price on Pond5, it doesn't undercut competition.

Disagree. I have clips that have sold for $500 USD and I've put a lot of work into making them. To say that they are only worth $24 is crazy. I don't care what resolution you watch my clip at, the clip is worth that much because of the quality of work I produce. People have been watching videos on their phones for years now, the resolution shouldn't dictate the price. I'd be happy to see a one price fits all approach and sell clips for the 4k price. If your work is truly amazing then you control the price, not the other way around.

Thanks David. I hope everyone else raises up their web prices as well.