Positive Marketplace for Microstock Contributors

October already… Wow, does time fly. Lot’s of changes in my life over the past few months.

First, I’ve purchased a lot of new equipment, including a new camera. I’ll be posting reviews. I sold my T2i and was going to buy a T3i, but I ran across an amazing deal on the T4i that I couldn’t pass up. I also “downgraded” my tripod and picked up a new track dolly and other various gadgets.

My “day job” running my business has grown incredibly fast and has me working 60 to 70 hours a week, so there’s not much time for shooting stock. But I do manage a few shots here and there.

Things with Pond5 aren’t any better. Sales are still pretty dismal there and still not much in the way of communication. However, things have been AMAZING at Shutterstock. After ingesting over 1,000 new footage files my sales have more than tripled and consistently for the past few months. They are really going after the stock footage market hard.

If you’ve visited in the past week, you probably noticed that I added some new charts to the right sidebar where I have tracking data. The first chart labled “Agency Sales 2012” represents the number of footage files sold for the agencies listed. One thing you’ll notice is that Pond5 is trending down, while Shutterstock is trending up. At the present rate, those should meet early next year.

The second chart is revenue by year, although not in dollars. I don’t want to give out how much I actually make. I mostly want to show the trends.

I’ll add ClipCanvas into the charts soon since they have become a major player for me in the past couple of years.

One thing that is extremely important to understand, especially for anyone just starting out. The stock photography market is over-saturated and it’s EXTREMELY difficult to make much money without a massive portfolio. The stock footage market is starting to move in that direction. Without a massive portfolio of unique and high quality items, don’t expect to make enough money to live off of. Look at it more as a little extra money each month to pay for some gas in your car and a few nights out with your significant other.

Artists who are making a significant amount of money have been in the game for some time, have large portfolios and spend a LOT of hours adding new content on a weekly basis. it’s actually a big job to be successful in the industry now. That’s not to say that if you put in the effort and have the quality, you won’t also be successful. But you can’t upload 100 clips and expect to make much of anything these days. There are too many people in the game now.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I have been really hard on Pond5 over the past year. And it’s real easy to complain about how things are going there and the poor relations they have with contributors.

So, I while contemplating yet another rant, I decided to think about the positive things at Pond5, because in reality, the positives do outweigh the negatives.

Pond5 is still in the top tier of Microstock agencies in revenue sharing. From the get-go, they’ve offered a 50/50 split compared to the 30% or less provided by the other big names. They still allow artists to set their own pricing. And the process of submitting is still pretty simple, making it easy to grow your online portfolio.

So, despite the many issues on the negative side, I have to say “Thank You” to Pond5 for remaining an “overall” positive marketplace for Microstock contributors.

Why I signed up for BlackBox Global

A year or so ago someone brought BlackBox to my attention. I went to their web site and checked them out, discarding the idea of signing up. But recently, I decided to go again and sign up and I’m glad I did…

First, BlackBox is a service where you upload your stock footage clips (does not support Images or Audio). You add your title, description and keywords just as you do with the agencies, and then they upload them to their account on 4 agencies (Pond5, Shutterstock, Videoblocks and Adobe Stock). When clips sell at an agency, they pay you 85% of what the agency pays them. So, if an HD clip sells on Pond5 for $79, Pond5 pays BlackBox $39.50 and BlackBox pays you $33.58 (they keep 15%).

My initial dismissal of BlackBox had to do primarily with the fact that they are taking 15% for just uploading clips to their 4 accounts and nothing else. They don’t help with editing, they don’t help with titles, descriptions or keywords. Definitely not worth 15%, in my opinion for just an uploading service. However, what I missed was that there is a collaboration component with BlackBox that allows you to share revenue with someone else on a per clip basis… so revenue sharing with models and editors is now possible.

So, instead of paying models a flat fee, you can both sign up for BlackBox and assign a revenue share for each clip you upload on a clip by clip basis. So, if you’re doing a 50/50 split on a clip that sells for $79 on Pond5, then it’s $39.5 paid to BlackBox and $33.58 split between you and the model ($16.79 each). Without you having to do all of the accounting work. Or, in my case, I do a 60/40 split with someone else doing the editing & title/description/keywording of my raw video. I upload the raw video to my FTP server, the editor downloads the video, edits it, submits it through my BlackBox account and we split sales 60/40 (I get the 60%). Totally worth it for years of backlogged video that would otherwise sit on my hard drives for more years earning nothing.

BlackBox is not for everyone, but I am only using it for my backlogged video. I’m not using it for newer stuff I’m producing and editing myself. it’s definitely worth taking a look at.

Cons for Using BlackBox:

• 15% cut for just uploading your clips into their account, they don’t do anything else
• Once you submit a clip, it’s gone into the system and there is no way to edit the metadata or do anything else
• The clips go into the BlackBox Guild account so you get no credit (can’t get IMDB credits, for example)
• You have no access to your clips once they’re submitted, so if you lose the original file, you can’t recover it
• There are major issues with “ease of use” on the web site. They have had “fixes coming” for some time with no target date.
• If a clip is rejected by an agency, there’s nothing you can do, you can’t resubmit it
• There’s no easy way to find your clips in the BlackBox accounts
• If BlackBox folds/shuts down, you won’t have your clips to upload to agencies yourself
• On Pond5, you can’t price your clips yourself since BlackBox handles pricing

Pros for Using BlackBox:

• Collaboration tools allow you to share revenue with someone else and not do all of the accounting
• You don’t have to create accounts on the 4 biggest agencies and upload to all of them yourself
• Great online community

Despite all of the cons, I still think as a collaborative service BlackBox will make me money by allowing me to quickly get my unedited backlog of footage online more quickly. And the online BlackBox community is pretty great as well.

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