understanding pricing...?

hello all! i'm a brand new user here (still having my first submissions reviewed) and i'm having a hard time understanding the pricing trends.

in looking at illustrations VS photos it seems pretty much all illustrations max out at $5 regardless of the quality or complexity. yet photos (many of which look like little more than accidental "snap-shots" top out around $10

this seems kind of upside down to me. as the time required to create a mediocre illustration is typically far greater than to take a mediocre photo.

i also hear talk in the forums about photos selling for $100s of dollars. but most stuff i see is like $20 and lower.

i just wonder if someone could either briefly explain the thought process or maybe point me to existing threads that have already done so.

cheers.

Ya need to look around better. The low prices you state are not accurate. A great deal of footage and photos are selling at very high prices. Artist ImageSource has over 140,000 photos selling at well over $700 each. A photo example that sold and priced at $785 is:
and

Look at artist resource, there are dozens of footage selling for over $300 every week.
Selling price is a touchy issue to some artists. After being here since the beginning I know lots of artists that are making very good money here ... none that I know of sell footage for $20. Most are at least $50 and most much higher. Don't fool yourself in believing low prices is normal or the best way to sell more. Pricing is a perception of quality.

Last year P5 affiliated with a micro site and uploaded over 7 million dollar stock photos. That indeed started to hold back photo and illustration prices. You do not have to follow their lead, in fact the sellers that are here for a business do not follow their pricing.

Price what you know is needed to cover all your production costs, equipment, time, internet, software then add your profit. Don't get suckered into low prices help sales ... not true.
.
IMAGE SOURSE PORTFOLIO LINK

here is what i've done:

went to pond5.com
searched "wedding cake"
sorted by price
page one - max price was $10
page FOURTY TWO - max price was still $10
(and ironically, that photo wasnt remarkably worse than the one you posted above)

i dont know. maybe im looking in the wrong place.
can you clarify what you mean by "Look at artist resource"?

At the low part of the page is a link called artist resources. If you click it, then it will take you to a page that shows recent high value sales.

Sort by price is not the best search method. It sorts by lowest price, and there are millions to search through so you will never get past the worst stuff.

In reality, you have to sell at the level you need to cover your expenses. Photos are a very hard market here on P5 though, wish so much competition from people that would rather buy a 3000 dollar camera with the hopes of selling a ten dollar image. It is tough, and you will have to upload thousands of clips to get your foot in the door.

Footage, after effects and even audio may be more profitable for some people.

Rekindle is right though. Make sure you really master your composition, so you can compell to buyers that know a good photo. Those buyers aren't looking for a bargain, they are studying the image, and they will pay what they have to for its use. Study, shoot, study and shoot.

Hope that helps, this market gets more competitive every year, and you just have to be better and better to stay above the water.

ive looked all over several pages and cant find the artist resources link...
is it possibly a mac / chrome issue?

and why the heck would they bury the good stuff under some nebulous link?

so far, i have to say that pond5 is one of the kludgiest, websites ive been on in quite some time

Scroll down under my writing here, see resources?

It is third down in that column. I couldn't find it for a long time either. It is right at the bottom of the page here.

Or here.

yeah, i've seen "artists" (not "artist resources") but all that gives me is an alphabetical list of contributors. what good is that when doing an image search?

i truly hope there is something im missing and this is NOT actually the most retarded and backward website in the world ; )

WGZN isn't an approved artist yet. Nothing approved in his/her portfolio so he does not have access to see what is really selling in artist resources. He just needs to spend some time reviewing the last several years of forum threads. He will get his answers then.

ahhhh!

- for the record, i DID mention that in the first line of my post : D

but still, i dont get it. i have to be an approved contributor to get search access to the high end images? that seems completely backward from a revenue generation standpoint...

and i dont mind doing searches on my own - IF The info is there. and maybe it will be once im approved. but shouldnt this kind of thing be in a FAQ?