Quote from: tickstock on April 12, 2019, 11:25

Are they also pushing the subscription sharing model because of contributors desire for that?  I remember people saying only bloggers use SS not serious buyers with money.  Getting 100% is better than getting 50% so I'm not sure they want to push marketplace content, if they did they would make it easy to see that content and put it in the similars space but they don't, they also wouldn't be trying to get contributors to sign up for the subscription sharing program either.

Also when you do a search there the marketplace clips are hidden by default, only membership files are shown.  When you click show all you get a pop up warning about them and then in the generic search I did only 1 out of the first 60 clips was a marketplace clip.

You don't seem to be following the reasoning here... We're not discussing promotion of the subscriptions, they have ALWAYS had that as their main product.

Only subscribers got the marketplace clips for $49, so naturally, only if they didn't find what they needed in the unlimited section, they would go to the marketplace clips. Now, when they cost $79 anyway, the subscription isn't worth as much, and they can go to Pond5 and find cheaper $25 clips, or a better library (including the clips they may find at VB, since they're all spread out) of $79 clips at Shutterstock/Pond5/Adobe.

Non-subscribers who shopped around for price before the change, needing more than 6-7 clips got a great deal by subscribing and getting thousands of free clips + the same clips they wanted for $49. That is not the case anymore. Now they just get a mediocre unlimited library with no other benefits.

Therefore, very few marketplace sales.

Quote from: Mantis on April 01, 2019, 11:44

Quote from: pkphotos on April 01, 2019, 01:27

What has happened to them? They have gone from quite reliable to very pathetic. I've sent them emails about how useless they've become and they always reply with the same stock standard BS.

They now have ample clips in their wholly owned collection to fill most of their needs. That was the plan all along, to ultimately phase out the paid collection so they get more subscribers that do not have to pay more doe for clips once they lay out the cash for the subscriber model. I think many here pointed that out early on and questioned VBs long term intent.  Those hypothesis came true and sure enough VB cut commissions and could now care less about the contributors who helped make them successful.

I just looked back at what I said about them in 2015 "I've stayed away from VB.  If they become successful they force other sites to lower prices and then what happens if they decide to take 50% royalty or if they stop licensing videos and only promote their free offerings.  I'm going to say away and most likely this year go exclusively with Pond5"
I didn't go exclusive with P5 since then but I did put more work on there than anywhere else.  It should have been obvious to everyone what VB's plan was all along.