The 50% commission is understandable. However, they should raise the HD price to $79.

50% of $49 is too low.

I will stop uploading and see if sales improve. But I'm not holding my breath.

Fifty lines to say that you cut our commissions?

C'mon, CEO... I don't even mind about the cut in this case (50% of zero is still zero) but try to avoid insulting your contributors next time

I echo your sentiments John,

I believe if they said 70% or even 65% instead of 50% this could have gone much better. As the commission now stands to be $24.50 for HD then it falls into the lesser pay brackets of other sites. The sales have been reduced drastically from a year ago and now the cut makes it even less inviting to upload.  I've never sold a 4k clip there and never have had a non-subscription member buy a clip either.  Used to have a couple of dozen sales a month and this July so far is just 1 sale which is probably the lowest in 3 years.  They need to get us above the bottom of the barrel commissions to work out the lower sales and do not necessarily believe sales will flood in after the changes have been made.  We all knew the business model was due to change, but this is quite drastic without a gradual approach. 

My letter to them.
Hello,

As a videoblocks artist with thousands of high quality clips here I am saddened by your news! You are now going to be one of the lowest earners per clip sale instead of the highest. This will force me to not give you certain content due to the low pricing return! A much better move would be to stay the leader for artist is to be at 75% instead of 50%. I have been in this industry for years and this is a mistake! You should have also lowered your 4k price to $150.00. You see the value is in the buyer getting a great price for subscribing to your service and the artist getting a great return a win win in this industry. Now you are lower and offer less features you will not be able to compete with Getty, Adobe and Pond5, shutterstock unless you stand out. What made you stand out is how you treated the artist! Sorry to see this go out the window.

John
CraftedShutter

Quote from: KevinM on July 16, 2018, 10:41

I think it's dangerous to all of us to let this go unchallenged. This is a massive commission cut. It's also the breaking of a commitment they made to contributors. To allow them to do that to us with no response except indifference and acceptance is not only bad in the short term, it's terrible for the long term. It means they will cut commissions again in the future. And of course other stock companies are watching - if they see that they can massively reduce commissions without any consequences, they may very well follow suit. It doesn't matter if you only have a few or no sales a month there, this is a big move and extremely damaging for us as the suppliers in this industry.

I'd like to hear if others feel the same. There are options we can explore, such as a collaborative response to Storyblocks and their CEO. They're particularly vulnerable to us shutting down our portfolios in protest because for most people they're such a low earner anyway. I think this is a needed time for us to make a stand for the sake of our long-term health and power in the industry.

Agreed completely, how do we go about it. Set up something on change.org, send the CEO some crazy mails, picket . out of them

Glad to see people agreeing that cutting commissions from 100% to 50% is intolerable and a betrayal of Storyblocks' commitment to the contributors it depends on for its existence. Several people saying they will stop uploading to Storyblocks, while some people suggesting that cutting commissions to 75% would be acceptable.

I second the idea of starting an online petition via change.org. Petition would state our grievances and say that signers are pledging to stop uploading content to Storyblocks unless Storyblocks maintains a commission of at least 75% AND makes up the lost 25% in commissions via higher sales.

What do people think of this approach and the terms?

I don't believe at all that cutting our commissions by 50% will be recouped by "driving sales growth" as TJ wrote his email, but if that's the plan then they should be held accountable by us not uploading new content until they've made up the lost 25% in commissions via higher sales. The commission reduction is a stab in the back to contributors who joined because of the good commission structure, and we as the content creators in this industry are long overdue to have some organized response to CEOs who think they can squeeze our paychecks without any consequence.

Quote from: izzikiorage on July 16, 2018, 11:47

Quote from: KevinM on July 16, 2018, 10:41

I think it's dangerous to all of us to let this go unchallenged. This is a massive commission cut. It's also the breaking of a commitment they made to contributors. To allow them to do that to us with no response except indifference and acceptance is not only bad in the short term, it's terrible for the long term. It means they will cut commissions again in the future. And of course other stock companies are watching - if they see that they can massively reduce commissions without any consequences, they may very well follow suit. It doesn't matter if you only have a few or no sales a month there, this is a big move and extremely damaging for us as the suppliers in this industry.

I'd like to hear if others feel the same. There are options we can explore, such as a collaborative response to Storyblocks and their CEO. They're particularly vulnerable to us shutting down our portfolios in protest because for most people they're such a low earner anyway. I think this is a needed time for us to make a stand for the sake of our long-term health and power in the industry.

Agreed completely, how do we go about it. Set up something on change.org, send the CEO some crazy mails, picket . out of them

Glad to see people agreeing that cutting commissions from 100% to 50% is intolerable and a betrayal of Storyblocks' commitment to the contributors it depends on for its existence. Several people saying they will stop uploading to Storyblocks, while some people suggesting that cutting commissions to 75% would be acceptable.

I second the idea of starting an online petition via change.org. Petition would state our grievances and say that signers are pledging to stop uploading content to Storyblocks unless Storyblocks maintains a commission of at least 75% AND makes up the lost 25% in commissions via higher sales.

What do people think of this approach and the terms?

I don't believe at all that cutting our commissions by 50% will be recouped by "driving sales growth" as TJ wrote his email, but if that's the plan then they should be held accountable by us not uploading new content until they've made up the lost 25% in commissions via higher sales. The commission reduction is a stab in the back to contributors who joined because of the good commission structure, and we as the content creators in this industry are long overdue to have some organized response to CEOs who think they can squeeze our paychecks without any consequence.

Just email them that you'll pull out all the clips.  That's more effective because it's direct.

Sadly, I don't think their sales will increase.  Honestly, their curation sucks.  It's a bad algorithm or whatever, when you search for keywords, great clips don't come up that often.  A lot of garbage clips show up on the first page for some reason.  By cutting our commission by half, it's likely that it'll result in us getting half the money we used to get, that's all.  Also, maybe they are not good with big buyers.  Without big productions and TV stations buying from them, their sales may not increase.  I am likely to pull out all my clips by August 1st at this point if they don't increase our share to 70% or higher.

Is the "THE" date? I am thinking of closing my account, too.

Dear Employees,

We are proud to announce that we will be reducing your salary by half to better serve you.

 

Sorry but petitions etc are a complete waste of time.

Not at all surprised with this development - deleting my entire portfolio there now. If they raise prices I might be persuaded to stay but I'm not having my work out in the marketplace for peanuts and receiving 50%.

To me, the only reasonable answer to these news is to stop every activity until things change. It's not a wise business choice to keep going in the dark. So:

- No uploads
- No videos in review
- No login to the site

My opinion is that they still can recover the situation, by allowing us to set our own price on the clips. That way, they'll be like Pond5, 50/50 split and contributor-set price, but with their Marketplace as the big difference.

Right now, 50% on a $49 clip ($43.39 because of tax cut) means $21,70 in the pocket (before my country's taxes). Pond5's equivalent is 50% of $59 = $29,50. I will not compete against myself, so I'm also considering deleting my entire port IF SALES GO UP.

I will start a Change.org petition and post the link in this thread - AND people should also email the CEO directly, as well as send comments through the contact page: http://support.videoblocks.com/customer/portal/emails/new

Is anyone able to track down the email for CEO TJ Leonard? I had no luck through Google, hoping someone here has some web sleuthing skills.

I think it's dangerous to all of us to let this go unchallenged. This is a massive commission cut. It's also the breaking of a commitment they made to contributors. To allow them to do that to us with no response except indifference and acceptance is not only bad in the short term, it's terrible for the long term. It means they will cut commissions again in the future. And of course other stock companies are watching - if they see that they can massively reduce commissions without any consequences, they may very well follow suit. It doesn't matter if you only have a few or no sales a month there, this is a big move and extremely damaging for us as the suppliers in this industry.

I'd like to hear if others feel the same. There are options we can explore, such as a collaborative response to Storyblocks and their CEO. They're particularly vulnerable to us shutting down our portfolios in protest because for most people they're such a low earner anyway. I think this is a needed time for us to make a stand for the sake of our long-term health and power in the industry.

Totally agree with you, it's more than a commission cut. I have 2.000 videos and 500 pics, selling 80$ a month (but last months nothing more than 40$/month) and I�m sick of this situation, I don�t want to just sit and see what happens. I don�t mind losing than money (the possibility of 20$ a month), so I will delete my clips and close my profile. I want to think that that sales with come from other of the websites.

Please, if any of you do the same, notify on the forum.

The disappointing part is that they could've come to this site for our support.  Than after a lot of feedback/suggestions from both the artists and the management- a good or agree upon decision would have been made and understood by all parties.  Don't just leave the artists in the dark on major decision like this! 

We warned them via email years ago about their sketchy business and we suggested that they should raise our prices and take a share of sales... but no, this was their dumb marketing strategy. So, here you have it. Eat what you cook.