When will we hit 200,000 clips?

Agree about the other site with 60% . . . they provide no statistics on views or sales. Pond5 has critical mass and loyal artists. . . at least it seems that way to me. . . .if the opposition got too hot it wouldn't take much for them to increase their commission rate and keep their artists happy:-)

I just think that in general the microstock business needs to be careful of quality. It shouldn't be about quantity, but the number of clips available on a wider range of subject matter.

The stock place that is most successful will be the one that makes things easy for the sellers and buyers, as well as having quality.

have to agree with FiveEP, good variation and quality will be determining factor of who survives in the footage game, especially in these tough times.

Exactly right. Remember to think as a customer. If you need a piece of footage for a project very quickly you do not want to be sifting through hundreds of sub par clips. The parallel is on royalty free music sites. Sometimes I have needed a piece for a project on a very tight deadline and if the quality isn't immediately apparent in the first couple of tracks I listen to I will move onto a different site.

I said it before, I believe its too late for other sites to start up selling video and surviving.
Giving you 60 or 80% of a sale to entice you to come on board means nothing when there aren't any sales.
The big three and yes Pond5 is one of those in video has the market share of customers.

Now, I will say this, with the amount of competition in video these days, the site that will be on top will be the one that has the best quality and production value, to coin a phrase by a friend of mine here. :-)

The thing that concerns me is the amount of talk on other forums about people wanting to get in to video and asking if a $200 point and shoot camera will be "good enough". This isn't a "good enough" business and the quality will suffer if that kind of stuff is accepted.

That was my rant for the day.

Bryan, I don't have any tats but if I did, it would be "P5" on my tongue. :-)
Jake

Jake,
Your time zone should midnight now. Or may be good morning.
Yes, I agreed with you. 60-80% of ZERO sale is 0%. In fact video market is not that big for so many players. IMHO
Is really someone asking $200 camera good enough for footage? : (
FiveEP is correct, diversify contents are the formular to survive.
Pat

That's kinda what I've been saying. The buyer side needs to mature and expand. The production side is big enough at this time. Of course there has to be a continuing submission of new higher quality clips. Until the sales side matures and grows better a limit on the production side really should be looked at. I can imagine a marketing push that states that a site has the best producers with the best production value footage and amateurs with the lower cost point and shoot cameras can go elsewhere. When the buyers see they only accept those who are truly working towards or are professionals with the appropriate equipment I think more buyers will flock to that site. We know another site that still advertises "turn your hobby into cash", why would a pro buyer producer buy from them? Limit new submitters and advertise the professional side of the the agency ... wonder who will do that first?

I don't do footage so this is coming from someone with a different outlook on it. My feeling is $200.00 point and shoot but this person captures some amazing stuff or guy who can operate a camera but has no love or care or any thing he is just capturing data, I'm sorry the point and shoot is going to win in my personal taste unless the quality is so poor it becomes unusable. I think allot of buyers would probably feel that way too. Blare witch was done with very little if I'm not mistaken and made a great deal of money. I think if your good enough you can blur the line a bit between you and the person with amazing equipment. It's good to see you guys looking at PV and talking about lighting and steady cams and pyro and what not I think it's very wise to always try and do better. The market will continue to saturate with clips, there is no doubt about that quality will always do well.

Bryan,I think you misunderstood what I said.
I didn't mean that in the hands of Speilburg the technical aspect of the video even using a point and shoot camera would be great.
But the noise, artifacting etc etc would kill the clip using a cheap camera.
Also, I'm talking about stock not for the theater.

What I've been reading is from people that either don't have a clue what is needed to produce a sellable clips or just don't want to research what it takes.

And its from people that would never think of using a point and shoot camera for still stock photography, I'm just amazed at why people think its OK to go the cheap route for video.

Jake

I see Fotolia just enter into the video market with the same structure as IS and revostock.