Microstock Photography Forum - General > Selling Stock Direct
The game is rigged!! 🤬
FranckM:
I'm 40 years old, a film producer for 12 years and I've been a contributor since 2017 on the main platforms (Shutter, Adobe, Getty, Pond5 and a few others).
At the beginning, business was growing quite well, but the main platforms have become less and less fair and I can no longer keep quiet!
Year after year, all these platforms have changed the game and the rules of the game, without ever consulting us, without consulting the people who make them money, because yes without contributors these platforms would never exist!
I will spare you the details that you all know: change in their policy of paying contributors as they wish, implementation of level systems based on the number of sales that we make, subscription system which penalizes the contributor, etc . In short, a huge lack of consideration for the work of all filmmakers, photographers, designers etc... To summarize, a turnover which decreases by 25% despite a higher number of downloads! And the icing on the cake now: AI
I hardly dare mention the reviews of the files, which are immeasurably absurd, for example, I sent two videos from the same series at the same time, same camera, same format, same resolution, etc. .. one file was accepted, the other refused for poor resolution! it's the same!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What is the goal except to make you crazy and lose time? Or maybe they have a number of rejection they have to do to be able to say “yeah we have curated footage!”…
And now the AI: after reducing contributor payouts so their investors could make more millions, they all said, "NO AI ACCEPTED"...and now what do they do?? They each create their own image generator!!!
Adobe was the only transparent and honest one for me, from the start they accepted AI images developed alongside Firefly, but Shutterstock, Getty, who said NO AI IMAGERY and have now launched their own AI!! WHAT PURPOSE?? Remove all contributors? Earn more money? Destroy creativity? And what's more, all their communication is now mainly focused on AI!! Proud to show that they have over millions of AI generated images, millions of images that the photographer probably has in their portfolio and won't sell.
I got more than fed up with all this, so I created my own archive site to no longer depend on these people, a platform created by filmmakers for filmmakers.
https://footage.film/
I decide to go in the exact opposite direction of them:
- They created a subscription that customers pay for every month hoping that you won't use all your credits or worse, you forgot that you have a subscription on their platform and continue paying for something you don't use. So, on my site, NO SUBSCRIPTION, only a clip package with NO EXPIRATION date, you get what you pay for, it's simple! If you pay for 500 clips, you get 500 clips no matter how long it takes you to download them, 10 days or 5 years, that's for you to decide
And you know what ? I also created a lifetime offer, if you invest and believe in us, you deserve it so you will have unlimited download access to our platform for the rest of your life!
- They jack up the price of the license if you want to use it for TV or film etc. So many licenses for so many uses! Please can you make things more complicated to make sure we make a mistake and thus be able to ask for more money?? So for me I keep things simple, ONE LICENCE for all media, viewers, worldwide and timeless. Creators should be able to focus on their creativity and not on these kinds of details.
- LESS but GOOD: we upload only curated content, and we organize them !!!! Who wants to spend 10 hours searching for one image or video in the middle of millions of footage that are unusable??
So if you want to be part of the change, say stop to all these big companies selling our works for pennies, and start believing that your work deserves a platform that understands what a filmmaker's job is. Visit us, support us, and why not join us 😉and if you just want to take a look and leave a comment, big or small, you have my eternal gratitude🙏
Franck
https://footage.film/
blvdone:
Do you offer FREE clips and cheap subs?
That's a hard work you did to make your own site. One of the top stock video creator Hotelfoxtrot tried it too, but didn't work out well.
But I hope this will work out well for you. I can't think of myself doing it, but congrats for actually doing this for you. Wish you a success!!
Jo Ann Snover:
As you noted, we all know about the sad state of stock agencies, but if you want to generate contributor interest in your site - and I assume that's why you posted here - you need to add information about two important things:
1. What is your marketing plan? If you build it, they will come isn't one
2. What are the terms and royalty rates for contributors? Offering a large price for any number of lifetime downloads sounds great for the buyer, but what does a contributor make out of that?
I don't do video, so I'm just posting the questions to encourage you to be transparent with those you aim to recruit as contributors.
FranckM:
--- Quote from: blvdone on October 19, 2023, 15:43 ---Do you offer FREE clips and cheap subs?
That's a hard work you did to make your own site. One of the top stock video creator Hotelfoxtrot tried it too, but didn't work out well.
But I hope this will work out well for you. I can't think of myself doing it, but congrats for actually doing this for you. Wish you a success!!
--- End quote ---
@blvdone thank you for your message and your encouragement it warms my heart :)
To answer your question we do not offer free clips or cheap subscriptions, the concept of subscription is a concept which in my opinion has reached these limits. Today we have subscriptions for everything and anything and we find ourselves paying subscriptions for things that in the end we rarely use, if not at all.
This is why we chose the clip pack option, but if you want more informations you will find it on our pricing pages: https://footage.film/pricing and at the bottom of the page in the frequently asked questions
--- Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on October 19, 2023, 15:56 ---As you noted, we all know about the sad state of stock agencies, but if you want to generate contributor interest in your site - and I assume that's why you posted here - you need to add information about two important things:
1. What is your marketing plan? If you build it, they will come isn't one
2. What are the terms and royalty rates for contributors? Offering a large price for any number of lifetime downloads sounds great for the buyer, but what does a contributor make out of that?
I don't do video, so I'm just posting the questions to encourage you to be transparent with those you aim to recruit as contributors.
--- End quote ---
@Jo Ann, Thank you again very much for your response and your input.
1. Concerning the marketing plan: it exists and it is very specific, I hope you will understand but we are a little reluctant to make it public.
2. Concerning Terms and royalty rates for contributors: You are right and I should have mentioned more information : 50% on single clip sales, we also distribute a significant percentage of the sale of each of the packages to the pool of contributors, regardless of the downloads of the files of each of them. The more the turnover of the platform increases, the more the remuneration of the pool of contributors increases (in short the opposite of the big platforms)
We are not looking for a large number of contributors, but video contributors who are experts in their field. As an example, for today we have only one external contributor in the collection underwater.
It also seems important to me to point out that our contributors do not provide titles, keywords or descriptions, our SEO team provides this service to our contributors. Our contributors commit to providing 12 premium collections per year (from 20 to 180 clips per collection).
After 2 years of collaboration with the platform, a stock options program is automatically triggered for the contributor. There are many other benefits that we have put in place for our contributors (who are true partners for us and with whom we maintain a personalized relationship) but you will understand I must respect the rules imposed on me by my legal advisor ;D
I hope I have answered your questions as best as possible. If I haven't been complete enough and you think i should give more informations, don't hesitate to get back to me.
Annie2022:
I just want to say that contributors shouldn't feel that they need to sell videos at subscription prices in order to compete. Otherwise, you are buying into the same game that's frustrating you in the first place.
Even SS has always had two pricing models: Bargain Basement vs Premium. i.e. $529 per clip for Shutterstock Select videos.
https://www.shutterstock.com/pricing/video
If your videos are good enough, you should value your work higher than subs prices. Or at the very least one should go back to video pricing prior to when the agencies introduced their subs models.
This looks very cheap, or have I missed something?
--- Quote ---Creator
500 clips
No expiration date
290€
Less than 1$ per HD clip
--- End quote ---
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