Pricing and potential Pond5 discounts

Hi all, I'm a new contributor here. I've been with Shutterstock but I'm leaving them because of their non-transparent pricing practices with their contributors. They often offer deep discounts to clients without giving the contributors an opt-out. Contributors at SS are making as little as $1.50 through "clip pack" sales and a partnership with Wix.

I thought Pond5 was different but just read these clauses in our contract:

"we will have discretion to offer discounts as part of special promotions or to customers who we believe will make volume purchases or commitments or to help secure additional revenue on your behalf,

we may temporarily or in select markets charge higher or lower prices to test pricing levels in an effort to maximize sales or revenue on your behalf..."

Has anyone here had any sales for lower than the price they set?

Absolutely... Pond5 has taken it upon themselves to downrez to SD and sell cheap. And you can't opt out. They also offer steep discounts to certain clients and that discount doesn't just come out of their side, they share the discount with us.

It's industry wide, you won't be able to find ANY seller that's not doing this.

I don't believe we don't share the discounts.
I've gotten as much as 20% discount and what I received was minus the entire 20% of my clip price minus the 50% royalty of course.

The SD is well below market and I'm sure at some point other sites that still sell SD will follow. So we know where that goes and as the suppliers we are the losers.

But on Pond5's side, I do love the extended sales. Just had one for $300 which I received 50%
So the discounts and occasional SD sales are tolerable.

Good to know, thanks for responding. What's the most they've discounted your footage? And how often does it happen?

It does happen...but most of them are few dollars less than normal price...my worst case was a 50% cut (my price was 199$ and i got 50$ instead 99,50$)...at the moment you won't see 1,50$ sales like at ss...

As per the contributor's agreement under paragraph B iii, the discounts have ranged between 15 - 20% of the sales price and split 50 percent.

Jason you forget about global partner sale which the discount amount is unknown for us...

But that's a program you can opt-out of.

Yes...you right jason,i forgot about that...

ok, thanks everyone!