Restore Trust – Bring Back Fairness to Pond5

Sales have completely stopped following the recent decisions—especially:

Slashing contributor royalties.

Taking away our ability to set our own clip prices.

If you truly care about the future of this platform and regaining contributor trust, these mistakes must be corrected immediately.

Contributors are the platform.
The content is the real capital.
Without us, there’s no Pond5. No buyers.

Bring back the original royalty rates.
Let contributors set their own prices.

Let the platform breathe again.

Due to these insultingly low prices, motivation is completely gone. Give me one reason why I should continue investing my time in video?

i noticed too, that after the split went from 35% to 30% (at least on audio), sales numbers got down. it doesnt make sense - it's not like buyers are buying less because contributors are paid less, so something else must have gone off in the same period. if anything, sales should have been higher, because pond5 has more budget for promoting/bringing in buyers...

i do agree split should go back to pre-2019 50%. i actually think even that is too low, the minimum for contributors shouldnt be under 60-65%. and exclusive should be higher (75+).

what i think is, platforms give sort of a fair split (let's consider, for the argument, that 50% is somehow fair) until they reach very high portfolios - contributors are important in this step, because platforms rely on their motivation to increase the overall portfolio of the site. after a tipping point, when total portfolio is already huge, more work from the contributors is no longer effectively needed, so motivating contributors is non-important, and platforms now afford to underpay them, because they just don't matter that much anymore. and what are they gonna do, leave just because they get 30% instead of 35%? who does that...

the calculated risk is that contributors might stop uploading new items (but not actually leave, and especially not leave in bulk - organized) - which is not important, since the huge portfolio is not in need of growing. at that point they can go as low as even 10% or maybe even lower, if they do it gradually. for example, on motionarray, on music (tiers involved) i get 10% of the earning - and i still have to pay state taxes from those.

after a point, contributors just are not that valuable - but investors, shareholders, employees etc still are.

Arterial,impressive video portfolio you have!
Cherish the good moments you experienced when you captured them!
It was not a waste of time .

"it's not like buyers are buying less because contributors are paid less"
- I think that is exactly what is happening

I joined a few months after pond5 started in June 2006 one of the things I remember talking about or hearing others talk about was that many contributors knew buyers. There is an idea that you should be nice to PA's on a film set because they might be the next director. I was inexperienced but I knew some surprising people who bought footage I told this to OG pond5 and they agreed I think (it was long ago.) They had that philosophy that contributors would bring in buyers, that's why they used to do the API code for making your own store front, and all that.

Summer is always slow, but honestly I think contributors are telling the buyers they know to go to adobe stock, or someplace else. Although I don't really care too much now. I've been doing other things for a while. Its probably phrased something like "I really recommend adobe stock, its the most professional place" without explaining why or other things like that.

All stock website shenanigans aside, is there still a massive demand for your content and if so who is buying it?, I get the feeling that this stock video content is like vinyl records, there's still a demand but not nearly like it used to be.

Social media apps like TikTok have millions of viewers and the stock agencies sold all your content to them so outside of that space, is the sales volume still there?, I don't see this as being a viable industry for any of the players much longer including Adobe, it will exist but will be much smaller and I think that's also why you're seeing the mergers and acquisitions between Getty, P5 and SSTK.

I just personally noticed when sales dropped here they went up a lot more on adobe. Maybe it's a coincidence. I am not up to date on what is going on in stock video though, I don't pay attention to new stock sites etc or news. I do know these sites will look dated at some point too.

Interesting observation, you know it could also be now in this recession that people don't want to take any chances with their money so they're buying from big brands like Adobe for more security vs taking a chance on a smaller site like P5 or even SSTK.

Another thing to be aware of is we are in a bad recession, the mainstream media especially here in Canada just isn't reporting on it but it's bad, a lot of businesses and individuals are going under, less demand for various products and services as a result.....it's bad.

The economy is booming with businesses that are valid. P5 had ten times better video sales than Adobe several years ago and four times better than SS. The original owners sold out to investors, royalties were cut and an exit strategy went into place. SS bought their competitor P5 out and immediately cut sales prices and royalties. Karma set in. The new strategy was they had all the clips and photos they needed. Of course they need a limited amount of new. They focused on one competitor that was selling subscription. An agency with a relatively small portfolio. Economy is great but lost focus on who their competitor was. So now SS/P5 and combining wit Getty. All three lost their focus thinking lower prices would make up with volume. Problem is volume never came. Cheap prices looks cheap. Cheap prices appears as cheap support. Reality is new photogs are way too late in the game. Sorry but with individual profit down 80 to 90% it's really a game of price and royalty. SS can save themself by focus and raise minimum prices by 30%. Still way below value, few buyers will not buy but when the agency is taking 80% it will save them and encourage contributors. Don't blame the economy, business are at all time high. Stock market is an indication of growth. Three years ago SSTK (SS) had a stock price of over $123 and now $19 and dropping. It's all business, individual companies not the economy.

Imagine how much money we all would have made if the partners and large volume buyers like Bytedance (TikTok) and now the Ai companies had to buy our content through the website like the public.

You're right about the owners selling out to investors and yes they cut prices and royalties but with our content on their servers and almost no other platforms to sell on I don't think contributors had much choice, they could pull their content and go out of business or leave their content up and go out of business slowly as royalties declined.

Once they had all our content on their servers they did what they wanted.

Looking back I think maybe we made the mistake of trusting these websites with our content and we did make that mistake but there aren't many options in the digital world, in a physical store you can have a policy that the product doesn't get released until it's paid for but with these stock websites that isn't an option.

What would have been good for contributors would have been a system similar to the original Napster and Limewire music and video sharing sites but with a payment option, the content stays on YOUR computer with only a preview available and the the download only commences once payment is received.