Pond5 was one of the best for the longest time when it came to both earnings and transparency but I suspect the investors/shareholders have since 2019 forced them to change their business strategy. The agencies push the narrative that “it’s a competitive market and prices need to be lower and the customers want cheaper prices, etc” and expect us to align our expectations and continue to put in greater investments for lower returns.

There might be several other reasons for decline in sales but these agencies, all of them, can’t tell the truth if their lives depend on it. How else would you attribute such a drastic reduction in royalties at both Pond5 and Shutterstock? So, in addition to giving themselves the permission to wholesale out content out through the Partner sites and large distributors in places like China, they gave themselves the right to copy the content and license them out and we would see fewer reported sales at Pond5. If you look at the new revision to the Pond5 Agreement, Section 2a has caught my attention as it states: “You hereby grant us the world-wide, right and license, to directly and/or indirectly copy…” Do you think there were any factors which contributed to such a drop at Pond5? Ouch, that’s a large drop in a short period. Not all buyers would switch to Pond5, some have accounts with SS and can’t buy from others so they will not come over to Pond5 anyway. I was against exclusivity since keeping in mind that if you removed your content from all other sites, you would be taking a pay cut and an even bigger pay cut should sales not be attractive on Pond5. It may have worked for some contributors to become exclusive but not for most. That’s right, it was just when Pond5 launched the exclusive program and tried to convince us contributors that the reason buyers stopped buying stock is they want “exclusive” content. I recall that around April 2019, Pond5 launched the exclusive program, do you think this is a factor in the reduction of your earnings?

I went from $3000/month with editorial to less than $800/month on P5 and rapidly falling each month…now it’s down to as low as under $200/month on Pond5 and I am building up my new account on SS and earning just $135/month. Then, almost like a bad April Fool’s joke from April 1 st 2019 it was like a switch was pulled at Pond5 as sales stopped for everyone…silence. Sticking to stock, how large are your ports and where do you currently upload? Same with doing editorial stock…I’m not cut out to sit at a desk all day that’s for sure.īreaking news filmmaker sounds exciting and reminds me of the movie “ Nightcrawler ”. In TV news there were often 15–19-hour days but I loved the work, such as the driving to scenes and everything else that went with it, loved every minute of my time there. The 2008 crisis was a tough break for me and these types of work contracts ended, so I kept going but instead of selling the content to the TV stations I begun licensing via stock sites like Pond5, Shuttterstock and Videoblocks (before they closed to contributors). Prior to the 2008 recession, I was an editorial news freelancer where I basically covered hard news and severe weather, while listening to police/fire scanners and chasing breaking news for years and then was on contract to a local TV station.

Where do you live, how long have you been submitting clips and to which agencies? Thanks Mark, for taking part in this exclusive interview.

Storyblocks contributor