understanding pricing...?

I can back up that low prices do not increase profit and did little to nothing on number of sales. For the newbies here, last year I dropped pricing on over 2,500 HD footage clips. Down to a ridiculous $15 each. I left the prices for six months. I believe anything less than 6-12 months is too short to get any accurate analysis. Even a year may be too short. Fact was the number of sales increased only marginally if any but profit dropped to an unacceptable level. Now last year was a transitional year for P5. They played with the search algorithm a lot. Still I fully believe that there is a perception of quality based on prices. I continue now to sell the same $15 clips for $50-60 almost every week. I as most of the artists that are making a USA level income really believe low prices hurts individually. There are dozens of artists making great money. I have yet to hear of anyone making $2,000 plus a month here at P5 that sells a substantial part of their portfolio for less than $50 or even $60.

If there are any artists that sell for $20-30 each and make in excess of $2,000 a month here at P5 lets hear from you.

BUT, the market for HD footage is not at $5 or even $20. IStockPhoto it's above $90, Alamy is way above $90. SS is $79. All the other agencies are not selling enough to even be considered. RS even raised the low end limit and increased the high end limit. I also had five restaurants as a business that the franchise focused on low prices to bring in the hordes of cheap customers. My sales were in excess of $4 million a year and that was also no profit. I'm out of that mess after struggling for eight years doing it. When the company raised prices it stabilized the closing of stores and a profit is being made by more of it's owners. In retail there are definitely slow months. January after Christmas spending and September after school starts and mom and dad are broke from tuition and clothes.

I do see you advocate starting at $100, that is admirable. Changing prices each month based on the calendar does not work in stock. It takes at least a year to determine if a clip will sell well. Heck, every sale I've made I raise prices. Dropping pricing in Dec does not work the same as retail. In the USA 325 million people are Christmas shopping for electronics, clothes, toys and books. Stock buyers are business and education buyers, there are far fewer and all have a specific need or subject requirement. Most anyone will buy a cheap book for curiosity, people will not buy a cheap clip for curiosity.

Stock footage is not like the local dollar store, everyone has books, bread and mouse traps. Stock is a very niche business where subject is far more important than price. Quality and subject sells, there has been many threads from dedicated footage buyers here, most say that rock bottom prices scares them ... perception of quality is real.

Oh by the way the average HD footage here at P5 is over $64 and the average of all clips is over $50, far below SS and IS which are both very big players. So for the newbies, listen to those artists that are making a profit, it makes sense. Do you want to earn $200 a month or $3000 a month? We have not heard from any P5 artist that sells for $20 or even $30 across their portfolio and is making $2000 plus a month. I think that tells the story. Selling books or pizza is not the same.

Why would you say they will go to iStock and get something better? It is much of the same inventory.

Your declining price policy wont work on a database of millions of clips. Only very few files sell at the rate you are describing.

Lowering prices does not increase demand. If people need a video of a pig, lowering the price of a lightning storm video isn't going to make them decide they need a lightning storm video instead. Your pig video just has to wait until someone needs one of those, and they will pay your reasonable price. Much of this is a waiting game.

I do agree that holding out for extreme high prices is not profitable, but trying to make money at $5 a clip is a joke. Unless your $5 clip sells 30 times a month, it isn't worth it, and it isn't going to sell much more frequently.

SS is a good baseline value, and they are a leader in the market, so I base my profit on that. If at SS you get 33%, and here you get 50%, I aim to make the same profit on sales by lowering my prices here a bit.

Not sure what volume of pricing people think they are going to get by lowering to five or ten $, but producers are not going to need that clip any more often, and if it is bad quality, they aren't going to go for the discount rate material to make a professional product. They know that you get what you pay for.

Someone has been chewing to many Erythroxylum novogranatense leafs and he's delusional thinking he'll make a fortune selling at low prices. Don't quit your day job.

Unless low prices are bringing in more customers, then its really just lowering the overall revenue for stock footage sales. I mean, just to throw a number out there...let's say there are 10,000 buyers a week for all the stock footage companies combined...if clips sold for $50 clip on average that's $500,000 in sales...if the same number of buyers get clips for $5 a clip, then that is only $50,000. If you mix up the $5 sellers and the $50 sellers, I'm sure the $5 sellers will get a good share of the reduced profit, but the overall profit is still considerably reduced....so instead of 10,000 buyers a week, you'd now need 100,000 buyers a week to match your previous profits with $50 clips...I'm not so sure $5 clips are going to bring in ten times the amount of customers, and if not then you've actually given away a considerable profit overall. I don't think this is the type of business where people are just going to buy stock footage on a whim just because it is cheap. They either need it or they don't.

Sorry that is hard to believe. Quality takes money, and if not for stock you would have paid thousands more. If your logic was true, the sales on artist resources would not exist. Quality clips continue to sell upwards of $300.

If you were making commercials from five dollar clips, I am sure the value was apparent to the customer.

If you think tv broadcast video should sell for $5, shot on thousands of dollars worth of equipment, sellers would need a stock of at least 50,000 clips just to buy lunch and gas. Whatever you may believe, that is just ridiculous to expect.

You can thank god that some contributors are desperate enough to take massive losses from cost of gear and time vs. profits, but most are not, and P5 will probably follow suit and raise minimums at some point.

Makes no sense with your argument. If you are making advertisements with $5 clips I wish you the best. Sounds like a bad business model when you have a contract for 100 advertisements and can't afford $250 for 5 quality clips. Like Physics stated. look at artists resources. At $50 or $60 and up P5 continues to be the cheapest prices anywhere and with the fairest commission to sellers. The reality is, and many will find this harsh ... we don't need $5 buyers. There are stock footage companies that sell cheaper, when you need your $5 clip go there and stop trying to make anyone here believe that is standard or needed to sell. Guess what ya can't find what ya want there ;) if ya can then stay there.

The concept of $50 starting price for HD clips is cheap. It's like an echo, there are dozens of artists selling nothing less than $50 who make $2,000 or more a month here. The industry has been damaged by sellers who are happy with $200 or buyers who want $5-20 clips. In reality ... don't need either one.

Bottom line, if IS, SS or quality P5 footage is too expensive for your advertisements then shoot them yourself. Bet ya can't do it ... that's why you came to stock. I also bet there are lots of great artists here at P5 that would love to take over the 95 advertisements you failed to fulfill.

Ya just don't get it. $50 is not high priced, the lowest in the industry that is successful. $150 clips sell very very well here. It's the subject not the low price that sells. If the subject is right and quality good the bottomline profit will go to a higher priced clip and not volume at lower prices.

The bottomline; profit is all that counts, anyone who is here for bragging rights on number sold is marginally insane if they are not making a profit.

Not likely. The costs to produce are high. Most people that sell $5 junk are not around for long. P5 could not even sustain their curator staff counting on $2.50 profit.

I don't think your logic is sound. It is not going to be an 'across the board' five dollar industry. P5 and its contributors would fail. The volume of consumers is finite, which means lowering prices doen not increase demand.

Good luck though.

@dtiberio, we used to have a guy like you on P5. He had 16000 clips which he sold for $10. After one year he was so disappointed and bitter, he requested P5 to delete his account.

My advice to you:
Raise your prices to $40.
If your bottom line is lower - you can always go back to $10.
If your bottom line is higher - raise the prices to $50 and so on until your bottom line stabilized.

What do you have to lose?

WRONG.
The older clip is promoted by P5 because of their MERITOCRATIC strategy.
It will see many more sales.
The new clip will not see the daylight for several months and it will always lag behind.