Exclusive or not?

It seems to me that the content of exclusive accounts is average better and newer. Despite this, my non-exclusive account sells more. What does exclusive mean? Does it mean that you were excluded from sales?

"average better and newer"?
What are you basing that on?
It's the same content, just exclusive to this site.
Well, actually not exclusive to this site as its on all Pond5's partner sites as well.

I've been shooting stock since 2007 and was exclusive with Istock for a very short time. It didn't take long to figure that no one buying royalty free wants or cares if its exclusive or not.
Same as if its shot on Prores or h264 or 24 or 29 fps
If it fits their project, they buy it.

Did you price your exclusive content much higher than your non exclusive? Is it similar?
That would be my guess as to why exclusive doesn't sell better.

Hi JHDT, I started from the concept that exclusive means "only available here". In fact my deductions cannot come from reliable data and numbers, but only from the posts I read in this community and from my personal experience.

So I assumed that whoever opened a new exclusive account while also keeping the old non-exclusive account, uploaded their most recent videos to it, and maybe even moved some of their best-selling videos from the non-exclusive to the exclusive account, in hopes of increasing their earnings.

From what I've read in the posts and from my experience, it didn't work out the way hoped. The concept of exclusivity alone does not favorably affect sales.

Other factors are likely at play such as price, search rankings, and more.

A few days ago I lowered the prices of the exclusive account to the same level as the other account. In a few months I will check the results and decide what to do.

The strangest thing to me is that at first I sold well with the exclusive account, even with high prices, but later the sales slowed down a lot compared to the non-exclusive account.

Wildshots - "The strangest thing to me is that at first I sold well with the exclusive account, even with high prices, but later the sales slowed down a lot compared to the non-exclusive account." But ... what is the income from those sales. For me I do not care about the number of my sales, only the resulting income - which is why I went exclusive with high prices.

Hi WinterQuarters, I started the exclusive account in April 2018. In the early months sold a dozen for $299 4K and $149 HD (list price).

"The strangest thing to me is that at first I sold well with the exclusive account, even with high prices, but later the sales slowed down a lot compared to the non-exclusive account."

There are also better and worse times of the year as far as selling stock goes, so if you base things on a year by year it will sway one way, month by month might sway another way.

Another thing I feel about this is you can not predict what will and wont sell with any amount of certainty. I have done shots just to do them, and had them sell great, things I thought that wont sell and uploaded just to not waste it completely by deleting it have sold well. I have done things I thought would sell great, and they have never sold. My best sellers here, are not my best sellers on other sites. I think allot of sales has to do with what is viewed by buyers and has allot to do with algorithms and what they favor. When Pond5 has changed the algorithm I have gone from selling allot, to selling very little. Or maybe that had to do with what google was favoring then too.

The idea we have any control over any of it besides doing our best, I think is something that prevents moving forward productively. For me at least, that is true. If I agonize over things I can not control, it zaps my energy for doing the actual work, and it all starts to seem pointless.

So I think my best advice on exclusive or not, high priced or not, any of that is do what you feel will be the best for you and then move on for a good amount of time, then re-evaluate year by year. Is this company doing for me what I need to be exclusive with them? If yes, then you stay, if no make a change. A bad quarter could be inflation and less money for advertising budgets, or less total buyers due to that. A good quarter could be had by the right buyer needing the right things and not caring about a budget because it isn't his or her money at the end of the day that is being spent.

These debates go on and on, and you will never have a clear answer because there is not enough data that we get, and likely even that Pond5 gets. If you had an exclusive account with the same views, and a non exclusive account with the same views, both sets had the same prices, the buyer viewing them would still be different and have different needs.