Pond5, 4K, and ShutterStock: My Humble Opinion

I think for the ~ 10$ contributors we should only offer much laughing. I don't believe that they will have much sales and in thinking about how much work it s to shoot, render, upload and describe every clip, they will make more money when selling french fries at Mac Donalds. Last not least higher prices offer more exclusivity for the buyer, but it's also in my mind that there should be a minimum pricing of 30$ for HD clips.
In belonging to SS and others, .... i always wonder how you guys have the time to serve at several stock agencies. Especially now in the summertime i shoot every sunday more clips as i can prepare in the following week only for P5. Maybe you have no other main job? Ok, that will or may change the situation! ;)

I'm at a resort and indeed have more ready to ftp than my bandwidth can do. Lucky this week so I have a bunch ftp'ing from home and more from my room here. Should be able to get about 100 4K clips uploaded this way. Remember that the average HD clips here at P5 are already over $64 so $30 is real real low still. SS is $79-500 and IS is over $150 last I looked. The other agencies just arn't players with enough sales to make a difference.

Beckhusen, I work full-time as a nurse and do stock video on the side. Like you, I shoot as I can get some free time. With family commitments, sometimes this free time is fewer than I'd like. The $10 sales are pathetic. I usually don't care about things until they impact me, but recently I uploaded some baseball game clips only to find someone has his array of $10 clips out there. I think its an ego thing where he wants to sell more clips than the other guys..even if it means he ends up paying for them himself after his expenses are accounted for.

Michael, there's always one who sells cheaper, but that doesn't mean that he sells more nore that his clips are in the same quality.
Since a whole while i focus on the quality of my stock, not like at the first time when posting all like a beginner. That means every single clip in between took me much more time as before, but that's the way. My average sales are all higher priced. Also when you look at the "Just sold" section at the P5 starting page you will see that sales for around 10$ are very rare.
Rekindle, yes, 30$ is really real low still, but more than 10$ ;) In my portfolio there are only a very few clips which are cheaper than 50$ because i thought that nobody would be interested in it or the quality wasn't well. But that was only the idea from my first days here at P5. For me personally in between 60$ is the absolute minimum.

"Rekindle, yes, 30$ is really real low still, but more than 10$ ;) In my portfolio there are only a very few clips which are cheaper than 50$ because i thought that nobody would be interested in it or the quality wasn't well. But that was only the idea from my first days here at P5. For me personally in between 60$ is the absolute minimum."

@ Stefan

You are probably wrong at pricing for those you-think-no-body-interested-clips, our Forum Guru Vadar said every clip will sell and it is matter of how your keywording to let buyer find it. So I suggest you to raise those price much higher and keyword better. You will be surprise...

patuwe (Patrick?), yes you may be right and it's indeed my secondary intention to enhance step by step older uploads. With in between more than 3000 clips it's no loss to delete some of my oldest handheld clips or re-upload them, and also check every collection step by step for the quality and description.
Unfortunately P5 doesn't give us the possibility to re-upload clips without loosing the existing clip id. I'm only lucky that my main job and lifestyle offers me some more time to care for it.

P5 Guys ... if we are shooting in 4K should we stop uploading HD also?

Are you getting real close?

Will you go back through all the 4K footage that has already been uploaded and auto convert to HD?

How will duplicates be handled? Hopefully not an automatic deletion unless absolutely positive its a duplicate.

Feedback please ...

Unless I'm cropping a shot, I've stopped duplicating and uploading HD files for association. This may be a kamikaze approach but I feel I provide a fair price and clients will downscale if they require the content.

We are all waiting on P5 to downsample... so quit uploading 4k and HD, you are wasting your time. P5 is going to have to offer this service or SS is really going to continue overlapping them.

I am starting to prefer SS lately because of this reason. A lot of my 4k over there is selling as HD. Maybe people aren't ready for 4k yet, or maybe 4k is priced to high (here or at ss), but HD seems to be the way to go. There is no way I can afford the time to process both sizes, upload and keyword.

Totally agree at this point. P5 has always got my clips first but now SS is getting my 4K first and P5 getting HD due to bandwidth. If I have extra bandwidth then 4K goes to both sites.

Still waiting for an answer P5..... will you go back and auto downsize all existing 4K or just new 4K? Is there anything we will have to do as Artists to get existing 4K downsized? This is kinda important since 4K files are so huge and takes so long to upload.