Frustrations and De-Motivators of a Contributing Artist

Pain points are a driving factor in the success of any company and the more the company understands about their customer pain points the better they can design and market their products. It's a little different in the stock industry where the product is the content and success depends upon getting the right balance between company, customer and contributor because without good contributors you will not have good content and therefore attract less customers. In this article I'd like to point out some pain points of the contributors in this equation from a contributors point of view and present some possible solutions.

1. Not getting our work seen - As has been said throughout the ages... it doesn't matter how great content is or how great a product is, if no one sees it, then who's going to buy it? Joining with an agency as big as POND5 and giving up half our income in return is not enough apparently because getting views seems to be in another ballpark entirely. Is there a way to get more views on new content?

2. Not being fairly compensated - There is a market for every price of product. The reason I joined POND5 is because I can set prices to my liking and I'm not interested in the low price models because I know there are customers out there willing to pay the prices I set. POND5 reeled me in with the highest commission rates but if they don't honor them then what's the point of even creating great content anymore when it's being sold for just $5?

3. Incentives that require additional work (are not really incentives) - As a contributor it's hard enough to get the training, learn all the programs, understand your camera, travel to locations, organize the shoots, make fresh, creative content and store the footage only then to have to shift into left brain mode and name, keyword, organize and upload footage.

POND5's incentives to earn up to 90% require a totally different set of skills that very few creative people have and this carrot, I believe, is burdening them and taking up valuable time that could be spent out shooting while those who know how to exploit loopholes, coerce their friends, understand marketing and have a following in this field benefit the most regardless of the quality or freshness of their content. This is unnatural and marketing ads to friends and family often leaves the contributor with an empty feeling inside.

4. Lack of loyalty & trust - In the case of exclusive contributors we have entrusted your platform with our content over every other provider in the hopes to make a decent income from it. You ask us for loyalty and to give up potential earnings from other platforms but then you change prices, alter contracts and don't have any schemes, features or separate collections (that I'm aware of) that benefit us so what is the point of going exclusive? It feels like you're cheating on us so how can we foster any trust?

5. Transparency and disclosure - As an active stake holder and partner we would appreciate the price offering we set and our commission percentage remains as it was when we initially agreed to being part of your enterprise. It is only common courtesy to keep your partners informed about major financial decisions that affect their bottom line. Imagine if you treated your shareholders like your contributors... Do you think they would give you any more money? Is the price drop a one-off or is it going to continue and for how long are some of the questions we would like to know.

You may come from the notion of... 'The clips would not have sold without our platform' but also consider... 'Your platform would not be as popular without our content'. If you can be more transparent as to why you make certain decisions, you will set yourself apart from every other agency and garner more trust from your contributors. If you continually undercut the set prices then, like what happened recently, a lot of your good producers will pull their videos and you may never hear from them again.


Possible Solutions
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Disclaimer: I haven't been over the website with a fine tooth comb and have not used it as a customer but I have done a fair bit of looking into it and have experienced poor results on the back end which prompted this article. I'm sure you may have already addressed some of these solutions so please excuse my ignorance if something has been repeated.

1. Curated collections - May I suggest taking a look at a photography site known as 500px.com/. I used to have a profile on there and it was great for getting views when I was starting out. They have an algorithm with 3 great features called "Pulse", "Impressions" and "Popular".

- Pulse is a score out of 100 that measures how popular a photo is, which is calculated by an algorithm based on engagement activities from the community.
- Impressions are counted anytime a photo is viewed anywhere on the platform, as a thumbnail or when scrolling through a collection and boosts the pulse rating.
- The photos featured in the "Popular" category are recently added photos with a pulse of 80 or more.

They have curated collections such as "Popular Photos", "Upcoming Photos", "Fresh Photos" and "Editors' Choice".

2. When your editors are approving videos get them to rate them with the highest scoring ones sent to the "Editors Choice" collection.

3. Have a love heart symbol near the title for any viewer to like the video (without having to log in) then use those likes as part of an overall score that boosts the video up the ranks of the algorithm.

(I can tell you from a contributors point of view that the above 3 points make up probably the best method I've seen over the past 20 years of gaining views, likes and motivation for engaging with the site and uploading more content. It gets addictive and could possibly dramatically increase engagement for both customers and contributors.)

4. Search by artist names - This will also help marketing ourselves and boost our profiles.

5. Allow comments of videos and then promote those videos higher in the algorithm - Not sure how this will go with videos but everyone likes comments for their hard work and this could inspire the artist to produce more like it.

6. Is it possible to follow contributors you like, which could also add to their algorithm score? Then each time that contributor uploads new content or makes a sale all the followers are notified. Have the button near the "refer & earn" or "share" button and also next to their name on each video.

7. Teach contributors how to take advantage of POND5's free clip of the week that is sent to customers. I don't like giving my videos away for free but if 1 or 2 could boost my views and convert into sales then it would be worth it. As mentioned contributing artists are usually not marketing experts so some best practices advice would be really helpful.

8. Real time views data in the dashboard - I read somewhere that a contributor mentioned he wasn't too fused about the views but would like more sales. Well that's like having a garage full of prestige cars on a busy street corner with no way to see in. If people can't see what they're buying then they won't buy sight unseen and probably walk straight past. In this game more views = more sales.

9. I don't know if anyone else has experienced this but I find it extremely hard to navigate to my profile page from the dashboard. I'm sure it's there somewhere but it's not very intuitive. How about when you click on your circular profile photo in the dashboard it takes you straight to your profile?

I didn't upload anything since commission was lowered to 35%. Makes no sense for me because we have to do most of the work > script, shoot, edit, grade, keyword and upload. And they just give us the server space, so WTF? It should be something like 80% for us and 20% for them from the beginning. Same happened to istock years ago when they begun to pay only 15% then I showed them the middle finger.

I am a new contributor (a few months here) and I think people can't find my music. I didn't know much about stock music and Pond5 seems a friendly place so I applied. I only wanted to sell my music for a fair price but after learning about the stock music and current subscription models, I think there is no place here for people like me. In the current system, a creator must create ridiculous numbers of photos, music, etc. This could only be possible by lowering the standards or using AI or Band in a Box software and compose new "art" three times a day and upload to the site. I have created YouTube videos and still don't have enough traffic.

I am wondering if Pond5 is also making money, why don't they push our work and earn much better?

PS: @Az_Jackson your collection is great btw!

10. How about an artist promo video at the beginning of the artist's page (30-90 seconds) so that the artist can showcase their best works in one clip? Like an advert for the artists work. Maybe you could even offer some simple drag and drop templates like some of the Instagram apps do.

P.S. Much appreciated Kutay_Yavuz

Some great suggestions Az. Would love to see Ryan chime in here as there's quite an opportunity to shift to more quality content if the motivation is there for artists. I'm a new exclusive artist (so new that all my footage is still pending review) and would never consider Shutterstock as its 15% artist commission is an absolute slap in the face to all serious artists out there.

The points I'd like to add are...

1. Production Value Score (PVS) that are added to videos by the curation team that get included in the search algorithm calculation. Reward quality assets! Then get known as a quality asset repository by agencies that have good money to spend on media.

2. An "Offer" button so that in a case where a price is set too high for a potential buyer, a sale opportunity still exists. Then it's up to the artist to decide whether or not to go through with the less than asking price sale.

3. Under no circumstances should an asset ever be sold for less then asking price if the artist so chooses. This goes to the core of establishing trust between Pond5 and its artists. The fact that this doesn't currently appear to be the case worries me as a new P5 Exclusive Artist (because I set my prices pretty high).

4. The ability to offer purchasers both graded and original/LOG/RAW versions of the footage. I know with my RED footage, I can zip it with the .rmd file but for other footage from my Nikon Z9 or DJI drones, I can't do that so allowing this somehow would give the purchaser that option (whether they want a graded video or RAW/LOG video) would really add flexibility and value to P5's buyers. Even if it was only included to high PVS ranking, long standing members or something, it would be a good start.

Well, Ryan, all good points but the reality is P5 is Shutterstock now with all of Shutterstock's business models. We're mostly talking to ourselves on this forum

Yeah, figured.