How many Items do I have to upload in order to get recognized?

Hi there party people,

I keep reading that building up a big portfolio is the way to go on Pond5. So my question is: How long did it take for you to make a regular income? And how big was your portfolio?

it depends on many things, if you change the prices all the time, or keep them constant, if you upload regularly or in bulk, if you do sfx or just music, and maybe other factors.
but i would say don't even think about regular income until you have at least 100-200 clips online.

I agree with LivingroomClassics mostly but it doesn't have to be 100-200 tracks. I have about 30 tracks and I make regular income, it's not much, about 200-300$, but it's regular most of the time.

Thanks for your insights guys. Do you think it helps specializing on one genre or is it indeed more helpful to spread the items across the marketplace?

It's definitely best to stick with what you do best, but I have gone off into other territory and have gotten sales on that stuff (the cheesy ukulele stuff). I currently have 1100 music files and 600 sfx and make about $300-$400 a month. However, a lot of my stuff is experimental and pretty out there. I know I need to tame my experimental side (not abandon it completely) or else I'll have 5k files on here with not much more in the way of sales than I have now.

I had about 30 videos up when I got my first sale. I added some more and got around 60 videos up and started to get about 2 sales a month. I uploaded some more and after about 5 months of consistent sales around 2 a month, my sales completely disappeared. I haven't sold anything since July last year. I just got 48 new videos approved featuring completely different topics than I normally shoot as well as adding in 4k aerial footage. So I'm hoping to start making some sales again soon. I know my portfolio is still pretty small and can't expect huge amounts of sales, but it was disappointing to go from a couple sales each month to nothing for 8 months.

i haven't sold anything since June last year - since the cart/bin add counters stopped working (i think)

Guys and Gals, lets be realistic ... volume sells. Quality is very important. If you just started or have 9 products or even a hundred products the reasonable answer is you will not pay your cell phone costs for a month in a whole year of sales. When you get a thousand then the expectation goes up. There are a lot of great Artists here with several hundred or even a thousand clips that rarely sell.

SO the best answer you can get is don't even think about how much money you will be making until you have a large portfolio. When you have 500 online then this is a reasonable question. Until then ya'll are spending too much time worrying about things you cannot control. Only you can control your quantity and quality. Don't get discouraged and think lowering prices will help. It does not. When I see an agency lower prices it's a desperate attempt to save the entire company, never works. If you don't believe it look at GoPro and what happened with their low "volume" of different products, drastically lowering prices and now they are almost a penny stock. Go cheap and you will look cheap.

Good luck

The views completely died for me as well though - thats the bit that is confusing. I would expect at least a few views in 8 months. Some people with small portfolios do very well on here. Admittedly, they have been on here for years and so already return in the top search results.

Rekindle's words ring very true. And it's especially difficult for newcomers to get their material to the top of the search pile versus those who have been here many years. Sales bring more sales (giving files a better search ranking) so if you're starting out it can be quite a challenge.