Well, I already had mine go into the water and sink 3' into a pond the first week I had it. The only open space at the location was a dock and I landed on the edge of it . . . the drone teetered for a second and then dropped into the water before I could get to it. That was my lesson not to wear reading glasses while flying (to see the controller) because it distorts your view when you look at the drone itself. Now I have a cheap pair bifocals so I can see near and far.

The soaked drone would not power up at first but over the course of two days I recovered by running a clothes dryer until it got hot, then turn it off and put the drone inside for about 30 minutes, then heat the dryer up and repeat about a dozen times. It created the best hot, arid, desert environment I could make. Gradually the drone would give me fewer and fewer error messages until finally all was good again. Lesson learned.

I was not as lucky as Doug. One year ago I bought a DJI Mavic Zoom. Last spring during run off time here in the desert I went out to shoot a river with high water flowing. I have very little time flying it. On my first flight down stream about 100 yards I turned it around to bring it back and made the rookie mistake of pushing the control the wrong direction for the new orientation. It hit some tall reeds and went down into the river like someone throwing an anchor out of a boat. i had the DJI insurance but finding it is mandatory for a claim. It did not seem possible but I had to try. I was in an Isolated part of the river I hiked a couple miles into. The afternoon air temp was about 75 degrees but the water was freezing. Off came my backpack with an FS5 in it and the rest of my gear. Off came the long sleeve shirt. I went for the swim in jeans and boots. I was able to wade with my knees to shoulders above water most of the way except when my boots would slip in the current on the mossy rocks. I must have looked like a total fool because even though I left everything I could behind I did take the controller and attached phone. So every time I went down my priority was to keep that above water with one hand. Being in the river was my only way to it, the shoreline was impassable. When I got close to where I thought it was the Find My Drone feature confirmed I was at least close to the drones last signal. But how far had the current taken it? After i had all the cold water I could take I was about to give up the search when I spotted it. It had not been swept away, it was in a deep spot close to where it went down. I had to rest the phone/controller in the reeds because I had to dive for the drone. The two mile hike out soaking wet and cold to the bone was brutal. I was not a happy camper!

DJI care refresh did replace the drone for $179.00. They make you jump through hoops and it is PITA but they did it. So....Lesson learned, hell yes. I still don't have enough time on it to be a good pilot. The water crash took some of the good MoJo away. I'm working on it when I have time.

Fly safe and have fun Doug!

Kind Regards,

Steve

Steven, I bet you are not the only one that has done similar. Would have made a good UWOL "Save the drone"

That's a great story Steve! I've done the exact same thing plenty of time where I panic and push the wrong control. On an airplane you pull back on the stick to climb, but on the drone it is oppositve. And when the drone is facing towards me, the side to side controls are flipped which I have trouble getting used to.

I'm glad you had the protection package. Don't think I wasn't kicking myself for not having signed up for it three days before mine fell off the dock. Fortunately I ddin't need it anyway, but if I'd had the chance to sign when the water was still coming out of the drone I'd one it immediately. I think it is a really good idea for people who are new to flying -- as I was. Now I feel a little more experienced and I hope I won't need it. Not an expert by any means, but I feel more confident.

And that gentlemen is why I will continue to happily film from the ground. Bob

Doug, just out of curiosity which drone/camera did you get? The aerials are very clean and the color is great. Bob

Well, Shutterstock just came out with its new payment schedule. A bit of a shocker. Will probably disable my account until the last payment is made then have it deleted. https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/contributor-earnings-update

For the uninitiated, just how bad is it with the coming changes?

Also, don't forget to tell them why you are closing off your account. Every drop of water can have its voice.

Andrew

I am currently at 30% commission. The change will be to 15% and increasing based on the number of sales. I will have to sell 251 clips to get back to the 30%. Performance based systems are nothing new. But I like what Pond5 did several years ago which was to delete clips that had poor performance and did not change their commission rate. I am deleting my account because they solicited me directly to be a contributor and reneged on the agreed upon commission rate.

Makes sense.

Shame you don't have a profile page on Shutterstock where you can mention you are leaving soon (get in quick, closing down sale, etc). Definitely tell them why you are leaving per them reneging on an agreement when *they* were the ones who recruited you to their platform.

Andrew

I am currently at 30% commission. The change will be to 15% and increasing based on the number of sales. I will have to sell 251 clips to get back to the 30%. Performance based systems are nothing new. .

Yeah, that's pretty much the way I understand it. Everyone starts at the bottom on January 1 and has to claw their way back up, all the while making 1/2 the normal commission until you get to that 251 mark. That would take me about 2-3 months, so my commissions for the first quarter will be half of what it has have been in the past, or about a $4K hit. Total bullshit. The change would be easier to swallow if they started you at January 1st at the ranking you had in the prior year. This starting at the bottom every time is utter nonsense.

Fortunately, I'm already at 251 for 2020 so these changes won't really affect me for 7 months. Hopefully in that time they will come to their senses and undo this catastrophic change. I won't delete my account, but I'm not going to be submitting anything new for the time being.

I think you have a compelling public interest reason to go to relevant media with the issue.

Talk to stock photo news sites (angle = "the best photographers are about to leave Shutterstock, so start looking elsewhere for the best pics and video) and also pro-video/photographer news sites (angle = "you may not have noticed but pros are about to be shafted by unfair changes, Shutterstock now rigged against you).

Do this well and not only does the word get out as it urgently needs to, but the suits at Shutterstock will proverbially wet themselves when they realise what the purchaser and supplier aspects of their marketplace are learning. Both ends of their business model starting to evaporate is a nightmare scenario.

Mark, you have a good personal story to go with the factual side: not only planning to leave Shutterstock and your actions to date to make your migration to another service happen, but also that you were targeted for recruitment by Shutterstock in the first place.

Doug, you have incredibly good standing as a broadcast professional who both shoots video and trains the industry on how to do so, but who also sells top quality stock clips. Your voice carries weight.

Reckon you two are in a superb position to do something about this.

Andrew

Andrew, a disappointment for sure. But I mirror all my Shutterstock clips for the past 5 years on Pond5 so I think I am going to go "exclusive" with them for the higher commission rate. I have no desire to fight with Shutterstock as I don't feel they are worth my time.

Don't fight with them, but do alert others. It's a public service announcement of sorts.

It's understandable that we all just want to get on with our lives, but we need to get the occasional message out so that others can't also be taken for a ride. A small amount of your time will make a world of difference. It's a bit like posting here about the issue, but a much bigger audience.

Andrew

Well, I haven't been in this game as long as some of you, but when I got that notification I started to think that 15% commission on a 4k clip would be about $26.85 and commission on an HD clip comes to about $11.80 per clip if I got full price. By my calculations that is about a 50% drop in commission. I don't think it would take that long to upload all my clips to Pond5, after all, I do have a lot of time on my hands. My question to you all is, is it better to switch to pond5 as a Exclusive contributor and drop Shutterstock, or continue to contribute to both Pond5 and Shutterstock?

I am not making any long-term decisions or changing anything about how I work until the dust settles.

The only part of this change that surprises me is the January reset for everyone. I know compensation for stock contributors will continue to decrease but why are they screwing the long time contributors with a history of good sales? If I had a huge portfolio like Doug's I would be more than a little pissed off. What a bunch of crap. Obviously the reason is revenue. Imagine what this will do to first quarter profits. And they have the guts to try and pitch it as "leveling the playing field for everyone!"

I would like to know what percentage of contributors have 251 sales in a full year. This means the small portfolio guys will never reach a decent percentage on payout. And the big guys get hammered as well. They know their numbers well and are making a statistical run at something here.

"18,861,819 royalty-free stock videos" I pulled that off of Shutterstock's website today. That is one hell of a product inventory when you don't have to pay for any product unless you sell it. They do, however have to manage that inventory. Have they reached a saturation point? The release said they want a focus on "fresh, new content". Are they intentionally trying to discourage submissions? Is curator cost overwhelming as they screen to much bad video? I don't know the answer because either way throwing EVERYONE overboard every January does not make sense.

I have noticed recently my rejections seem to have gone up. Those rejections are almost always for the same reason "similar content". As a shooter and editor I do take similar shots of a subject. But I make sure there is something different in every take to give the buyer a choice. Lately they seem to accept a couple of shots and reject the rest as similar. Pond5 accepts all of the takes and I have sold clips on Pond5 that were rejected by Shutterstock. I have been wondering if the curators really view all of the clips. Curators must be under great pressure to deal with all of the volume. Likewise no agency wants to manage a database of "18,861,819 royalty-free stock videos" unless everyone of them has potential for sales.

Note that I only dabble in stock so don't take advice from me. Ironically I just invested in new equipment specifically to get more serious about the stock game as part of my COVID19 recovery plan. Yesterday when this thread started I was out testing new systems. I am going out this evening specifically to shoot stock. My time is valuable, shooting on spec is not something I do a lot. This news is discouraging but at least I wont loose a few thousand dollars in commission payouts on a portfolio of 8000 clips. This makes no sense to me. How can they hold back money from someone like Doug on clips that have already sold, they know will sell again, and they are not selling them for less. But they are going to pay him less!

I'm going out to shoot right now. But I am far from as excited as I was yesterday!

Kind Regards,

Steve

Good post, Steve. You have summed it all up pretty well.
BTW, I jsut got back from 4 hours of shooting wildlife. I shoot for fun and the money is icing. It is disappointing that I won't make as much money but I don't see it slowing me down on the shooting side of things. Maybe I will be less likely to spend time submitting, though. Time to get going on Pond5.
I'm glad I've got 7 months before this thing really affects me. Hopefully they will rethink their new plan.

I opened a contributor account with pond5 today and I am in the process of uploading my video clips on to pond5. I do have two question for those of you that have been using pond5 for awhile. Is it better to set your price or to have pond5 do the pricing for you? And, since I an relatively new to selling stock video, would it be advisable to just drop Shutterstock and go with pond5 as an exclusive contributor?

Bob, I have been with Pond5 for over 10 years. When I started it was 50/50 on the commission. This week I thought about going exclusive with them but have decided to hold off a little bit as I am trying Adobe Stock. I disabled my Shutterstock account (won't sell my work for pennies) until I see where things settle. I understand the "disabling" takes a couple of days to kick in.

Mark, thank you. Do you let them set the sales price?

Oh, and I let them set the price unless it is a very special clip.

Great, thank you. Stay safe. Bob

I am going to share my latest stock project and what shooting stock means to me. During my COVID19 downtime I decided getting serious about stock should be part of my recovery process. So I built a new rig. Hence my disappointment in the Shutterstock announcement. But sometimes you have to move forward anyway.

This is what stock means to me. First of all it makes me a better shooter. I give myself assignments I would not normally be out shooting. Even after a couple of decades shooting fulltime the more I shoot the better I am. It’s challenging. I have been in the image making business for over 30 years. The DVINFO community is important to me because I have benefited in countless ways by being active here for a very long time. I try to share my work and my work experiences in a way that younger guys might benefit from. I am candid and share the good, the bad, and the ugly. More often than not I get feedback beneficial to me. I love this forum. I think this is a great time to help Criss Hurd and each other by sharing our current experiences. If you're lurking, come on in and test the waters, the sharks don’t bite here. Staying successful in this business over a long period of time takes more than good business sense, sometimes it means hitting the reset button and changing everything. I am going to adapt to the new COVID19 world.

Shooting stock reminds me of the days when I earned my living laying transparencies (slide film) down on a light table in front of art directors and photo editors. Those guys could be ruthless on a young photographer. They had commissioned me to do the shoot and paid for everything else the shoot may have entailed. Then everything would come down to that face to face meeting when I laid the product down on the light table. I loved it, but that does not mean I did not get my ass kicked a few times. What does old time commercial still shooting have to do with stock video? The two main lessons I learned then apply big time to stock. First: A professional standard of technical proficiency was a given expectation. If you failed at meeting that basic standard you were going to get thrown out of the office and never work for them again. Rejection is much harder to take face to face than reading it on a screen. Second: Those guys taught me a lot about what an editor wants. If you asked anyone of them what they wanted to see the same two words would be spoken every time, "SOMETHING DIFFERENT". For the professional rates they paid they weren't paying you for the expected technical standard, they were paying you for talent. Anyone can learn to be technically proficient and shoot a picture or video. They were paying me for "A LOOK". And it better look different and better than everyone else's look.

Soooo....I have never forgotten those lessons and am going to approach shooting stock video that way. Here is how I am going to try to be different. It’s a work in progress so I am asking for community input.

In the last year I messed around with mounting cameras on my truck. Mostly action cam stuff. It all basically sucked. I decided to build a vehicle camera rig that would enable me to shoot from a moving vehicle. Here is the new setup I am working on, it is still being refined:

DJI Ronin S mounted on the hood of my Chevy truck. Hard mounting does not work so I built my own vibration dampening system to mount the Ronin on.

Camera is Sony A7III
Best lens so far is Canon 16-35MM L, old Metabones adapter

This part is where it gets bad:
From inside the truck I control the camera with Sony Imaging Edge Mobile on android phone. I dont use auto anything so exposure and control on a phone is difficult at best. Wifi connection is unreliable and drops out occasionally.

Ronin control is on I-Pad via Bluetooth app. This is almost worthless. Connection is terrible and the virtual joystick is only for crude rough adjustments. I am going to spend another $300.00 for DJI hard wire controller. This project has not been cheap.

Initial testing shows Ronin S performs very well bouncing around on my hood up to 40 MPH. It works! The vibration dampening mount is critical. It works but I am still refining it. Even though the Ronin is self leveling I still need to level the mount so cables will share load evenly.

Initial test results:
After short test sessions during the build process I went out on my first trial shoot. I am sharing that raw video straight from the camera. It is not processed in any way. You will see the 4K video. It's not good enough for stock yet but I will get there. My eldest son was driving. He is also in our business. We tried a very challenging “stock assignment” and had a lot of fun trying to work through all of the issues. Phoenix has a light rail system downtown. To stick with what I said earlier about making my images look different and better than most other videos we chased trains. That’s what this is about, better and different. I am not there yet, I am sharing my first test shoot. This is what I have learned so far.

Conditions: Temperature over 100 degrees. Blazing evening sun creating extreme exposure dynamic range. One minute you're in killer sunlight and you make a turn between skyscrapers and you are in a dark canyon. Try controlling that with a phone. You will see my adjustments, and those are the good ones, it is hard to do. Exposure from an android sucks.

Phoenix is no longer under lockdown. Downtown traffic was not as heavy as normal but it was busy. Trying to chase trains was a lot of fun and a big part of the challenge. I did not get the killer shots I wanted yet. I said the DJI app is terrible and the connection is weak and unreliable. Get this, every time we got close to a train I completely lost the DJI connection. They are electric trains and blow up the Bluetooth. Now I know!

Shooting:
The good news is the HD is beautiful. The A7III will do XAVC at 120 FPS, at 125th second it is sharp edge to edge. It handles all of the crazy motion perfectly. I cant believe how good it looks.
My goal is 4K and it is not there yet but close. I can only do 30FPS. At 1/60th it is unusable. I have only gone up to 125th so far as I would not normally go over that, but I am going to have to try. The attached video is the 4K 30P at 125th. The image softness is not focus, it is the motion. The HD is tack sharp. Any suggestions on making the 4K better? This is a big issue because if it is going to be stock I want 4K. I am not going to buy another camera just for this yet. And I am not putting my FS5 out there.

Still to do: Wire smallHD monitor into truck. Wire DJI controller into truck. Test more lenses and settings. Go shoot and have fun.

Here is a phone pic of the rig. Note the battery grip is replaced by a proper DJI mount to bring the center of gravity down. It is powered by a V-mount battery. This project gets more expensive everyday. I spend a lot of time in desert back country. If you see an orange Chevy Avalanche four wheeling with a rig on the hood it is me. Can't wait to try that.

Kind Regards, Everyone be well and safe!

Steve

Train Spotting Test on Vimeo

Hi Steven,

This was shot in the early morning hours? My first thoughts from not quite seeing the tack sharp HD that I was expecting was that the footage is likely suffering from sensor noise (from low light filming) fuzzing out the detail of the image. The fringing of the traffic light lights was what really spoke to me here. That said, Doug knows more than I do.

My second thought is that I dearly wanted the subject of the video, the tram, to be lit/exposed properly so the art could be seen in all of its glorious beauty, even if it was at the expense of the rest. Any chance of mounting some big-ass cinematic flood lights on the front of your truck? ;-) Currently it looks like watching the comparative shadows.

Do you have something shot elsewhere in the middle of the day? I realise the city can be challenging with those annoying buildings that radically change available light when the direction of travel changes.

The stabilisation is certainly very impressive. This stuff must be so hard to get right.

Andrew

Hey Andrew,
We started shooting at 6:30 PM in a harsh setting sun and continued until dark. You are correct on grain. By the time we finished I had the ISO up to 4000 but I don't think any of those clips are quite that high.

Yes the exposures are poor and no attempt has been made to correct them in post. Its first time test footage and not worth it. I can continue to post more as project moves along. I will shoot something in HD so you guys can see it. The difference is shocking, It makes the 4K look like mashed potatoes. I have a lot of things to work out. 30FPS may not ever work, more testing to do.

Lights on the truck? I have some LED panels that run on batteries. That would get me harassed by the cops for sure! LOL.

Doug, Yes, I still enjoy shooting too. Especially when I am out doing things in the wild. There is more wildlife in the desert than most people think there is but it is hard to find. We are not quite the sanctuary Florida is but I try sometimes. I was surprised to hear you were out shooting wildlife on the day SpaceX was trying to launch humans into space? I was hoping to see your incredible footage.

It turns out the new payout plan at Shutterstock isn't going to be as bad for me as I had originally feared. If the new system had been in place on January 1 of this year, I was orignally thinking it would have cost me about $4K. But I finally got around to crunching the actual numbers last night for January - May, and because my commission will rise to 20% after 10 downloads, rise to 25% after 50 downloads, and rise back up to my normal 30% level after 250 downloads -- the damage is not so bad.

I would have earned $1641 less in the first three months of this year and now I'd be back to my normal levels for the rest of the year. That's $12,358 vs. $10,717. A 14% drop in income for the first five months, and then I am back on track for the next seven months. No, that is not ideal, but not catastrophic by any stretch of the imagination. In the end, this payout change might reduce my annual earnings by about 7% - 10% over the course of the entire year. And, none of this effects me at all until January 1, 2021 so there is plenty of time for Shutterstock to reverse course and make further changes. I will continue to upload and conduct business as if nothing had changed. No big deal.

Of course, this only addresses the payout changes. The effect of lower subscription pricing is a totally separate issue and I cannot forecast the effects it will have. I will have to crunch the numbers after a few months to see what effect it has had on my average earnings per download.

Doug, Yes, I still enjoy shooting too. Especially when I am out doing things in the wild. There is more wildlife in the desert than most people think there is but it is hard to find. We are not quite the sanctuary Florida is but I try sometimes. I was surprised to hear you were out shooting wildlife on the day SpaceX was trying to launch humans into space? I was hoping to see your incredible footage.

I was pretty sure that the SpaceX rocket would not launch last Wednesday due to weather, and I was correct. I didn't want to disrupt a planned 3-day trip to shoot wildlife just for that rocket. Yes, it was a historical mission, but from a strictly visual standpoint it was unremarkable. The Falcon 9 with a dragon capsule is the smallest, least interesting, rocket that ever gets launched from KSC these days. Nevertheless, I shot it anyway from my driveway on Saturday and didn't have to battle the huge crowds and traffic jams. It all worked out for the best and was still cool to see.

SpaceX and NASA successfully launch Astronauts to Orbit - YouTube

Yeah, even Doug's driveway is super-cool

Andrew

Andrew, you always crack me up. I wish I could see rockets from my driveway too. It did happen here once. At 5:30 PM during rush hour traffic a couple years ago a UFO blazed across the horizon. It freaked everyone out. Even the media did not know what is was. People were stopping on the freeway to look at it. It was a wild sight. I was sure it was a spaceship. The media finally figured it out. They told everyone to calm down, it was in fact a spaceship. SpaceX had launched a rocket in California and we saw it blast across Arizona! I don't know how thats possible but I saw it and knew it was a spaceship. Quite an amazing sight!

I have not been back out shooting with my mobile rig yet. I'm waiting for new parts. I hope that post did not sound snarky. As in, I do not have stock that is better or different yet. Sometimes I write story's into my posts. That post is about one way I am trying to achieve better and different. I will post more video when I get there.

Tuesday I did go downtown and cover a protest with a few thousand people. What a great experience. This time there was no violence or looting. It was people making their voice heard and advocating for change that needs to take place. The cops were awesome and held their line without incident. I am submitting to Pond5 today. I dont know if it will do any good, they are not big on current events.

I was shooting video but I shot a few stills.

Key Word Help:

I have searched like crazy and can't find these answers.

1. Do you only put one word in a space or do you use multiple words for some singular counts?

2. If you use two words as one term do you also put those two words in separately? Ie; "scenic drive" as one and then "scenic" and "drive" separately. Is this even something that will help? I find the biggest difficulty with keywords is you can only use any word about 3 times before they delete it anyway.

3. If you do use multiple words as one do you put spaces in or write it all as one word? Pond5 does not answer these questions. I have that question because they do it that way themselves. For example they suggest you use something similar to "citizenjournalistcurrentnews" as a keyword so they find your current events.

My Updates:
I never talk money, ever. But so far this is still small potatoes I'm dabbling in so I will through some round info out there to let you guys know how I am doing just having fun with this. I find everything Doug has said is true. I am doing it my own way but based on his video information.

I dumped Shutterstock and went exclusive with Pond5. I had no sales at Shutterstock, even on clips that sold on Pond5. When I shoot I cover a lot. I try to create shots that give an editor choices. I started getting regular rejections from Shutterstock for "similar content". If I submitted 10 different shots of something they would accept 3 and reject 7. On one hand this makes sense but Pond5 accepts all 10 and sometimes they sell. I think Shutterstock is taking internal steps to manage submissions based on the massive amounts of data theses agencies deal with (just my thought). Rejections are time consuming. On one batch of 10 clips Shutterstock rejected them all. I got it, they weren't my best shots. But I have since made over $200.00 off those clips on Pond5 because all ten were accepted.

Pond5 makes it easy and I am lazy. That is probably a mistake but submitting to just one agency is clean and easy. I also get paid better on Pond5 being exclusive and a small fish contributor. They are not holding my enrings over my head for better pay rates. I like getting 60%.

I only have 250 clips on Pond5. They have gone up very intermittently over a period of years. The quality varies widely. Garbage does not sell, I am much more careful now.

My total sales for 250 clips is around $2,500.00
BUT...before you say wow, one clip has sold 12 times (even extra licensing) for $828.00
My next best sold 6 times for $414.00
The rest is made up from other clips here and there. Just like Doug says, once it sells once a clip is likely to sell again or other ones like it.

Anyway this is fun. I do it when I can. It is like fishing and I am a fisherman. I put bait out there when I want to and once in a while I get an e-mail that says I made a few bucks. I can see how you could get out what you put in to it.

Also, Pond5 does not claim this is part of being exclusive....But...for me, my sales went up right after I did it. That has been reported by others guys on their forum too.

Kind Regards,

Steve

Steven, I am feeling the same way. The last clip I sold on Shutterstock got me $2.00 US, and my last clip on Pond5 got me $32.50 US. Also, two weeks ago I submitted 9 clips to both Shutterstock and Pond5. Same clips. Pond5 accepted all of my clips, Shutterstock accepted 3 and rejected all the others because of "artifacts". Question, did you close your Shutterstock account so that you could go exclusive with Pond5? What about clips that already sold on Shutterstock, can you still consider them exclusive? I am seriously thinking of dropping Shutterstock. Like you I don't really need the income, just doing it for fun and yet I don't need the hassle of Shutterstock. Thanks, Bob

Hi Bob,

I can not answer your questions with authority so check my response to best suit you.

I never sold a clip on shutterstock so it was easy for me to go exclusive with Pond5. In fairness I had been dabeling with Pond5 for several years. I was only on Shutterstock for about a year. If I was to get serious about stock, Shutterstock may be viable, I am just not willing to do it. For me, I think the exclusive set up at Pond5 is best.

My shutterstock clips are technically still there but not on the market or viewable. They have an option to put them in limbo before you totally delete your account. I will be deleting my Shutterstock account.

Kind Regards,

Steve

Steve, thanks. I think I'll just keep the account open but not submit anymore clips. Bob

Bob, I closed my Shutterstock account due to low pricing over a year ago. There was a huge contributor revolt there over pricing. I am still with Pond5 where I have a long relationship and recently added Adobe Stock.

It only makes sense to submit to as many agencies as you can. That's why having a good spreadsheet with all your metadata is so vital. I didn't have time to upload very many new clips last year, but nevertheless, 2020 was by best year ever at Shutterstock with an average of about $95/day. 2021 is off to a poor start and I'm averaging about 30% less. But heck, the work is already done, and $50 - $60 per day for doing absolutely nothing still comes in handy. I've got a back log of about 2500 4K clips that need metadata before I can submit them, but I will get to it when my schedule allows. I have certainly not given up on Shutterstock despite their recent changes for the worse. And submitting more clips to Adobe and Pond5 is also on my to do list. I know I am leaving money on the table every day that those two agencies don't have more of my portfolio. If only there was more time in the day.

I don't upload much footage and I hate the idea of going to many different websites to upload footage, so I have been using BlackBox. I know they take a percentage of the total, but I feel like it's worth it to me to only submit footage once.

I've sold several clips and am always surprised by how much I end up getting (even after they take their cut).

What are your thoughts on them?

Correct me if I am wrong, but that company takes 15% off the top of every sale, and you still have to do to all the painstaking metadata creation yourself, right?

If a consolidator makes sense for you, then that's what you should use. For me personally, here are my arguments against it.

1) I still have to all the work of editing, grading, and creating metadata, so there is no time savings there. BTW, I wouldn't want to farm out those critical steps to somebody else even if I could. Those steps is too important to leave in the hands of others. Metadata is just as important at the clip itself.

2) There are only three agencies worth submitting to, so if a consolidator is claiming to submit my footage to dozens of agencies I would say --- so what? I'm not about to give up a 15% commission at the big three just so I can pick up a few extra pennies at the small boutique agencies.

3) Why would I give up 15% across the board for every sale forever just to save a little time uploading. It's not like I stand there watching my clips upload. I start a batch uploading via FTP and come back later and they are ready to go. Then I do the same for the next agency. What's the big deal? If someone paid extra for data usage maybe that would be an argument for only having to upload once, but how many people pay for data at home?

4) My metadata for each clip is created/stored in a custom spreadsheet, so it just takes me a few minutes to create a modified CSV for each of the three agencies -- and then all the metadata is populated in a matter of seconds after uploading. Fast and painless.

5) I earn about $30K-$35K per year from stock. 15% of that amount would be $4500 - $5200 per year. PER YEAR for the life of my clips!!! For what benefit to me? Just to save a little time at the very begining FTPing clips -- which I am not sitting around watching anyway. FTP happens overnight or while I'm doing other things. Even if I earned far less, say maybe $2000 per year, I still wouldn't want to give up 15%.

6) I don't know what the situation is currently, but a few months ago there was a huge uproar on the Shutterstock forum when all the clips (from all individual contributors who use them) were removed from the site without notice. I don't want my eggs to be carried in the same basket with eggs from shady contributors who may not be submitting legal clips.

7) I prefer to be in 100% control of my assets and how they are managed.

In my opinion, consolidators prey on people who don't have much confidence that their footage is worth anything, or who simply don't want to be bothered with doing the necessary work. If the choice is between turning things over to a consolidator or not doing anything at all, then the consolidator suddenly looks appealing. But I think is a bad choice for anyone who has commercially viable footage and is willing to spend just a tiny bit more time on their workflow.

That's my 2 cents.

Good to know! Thanks for your input.

Well its been awhile. How is everyone doing? So again I have been submitting clips to both Shutterstock and Pond5. As usual Shutterstock rejects 80% and Pond5 accepts 95%. Same excuse, noise/artifacts, similar content, out of focus. Let me say I shoot with a Canon XF705 on a Sachtler flowtech 75 tripod and a Sachtler head. I shoot in 4k using peaking and zebra stripping. I edit with DaVinci Resolve. I am over Shutterstock. I am not in this for the money, but Shutterstock has taken the fun out of it.

Bob, I'm sorry to hear that. I've been so busy with other things that I have barely submitted anything new to any of the stock agencies this year, so I can't tell you how my own acceptance rates compare. I'm now sitting on over 5000 graded and edited 4K clips that need to be submitted -- after I do the metadata -- so one of these days (probably next winter) I will be able to report how well they are accepted.

In the meantime, sales of my existing portfolio is holding pretty steady and I'm doing okay. Income is down about 30% from last year due to changes at Shutterstock, but I'm still averaging about $2K per month without submitting anything new for a long time.

I will say that if you are not in it for the money then it is probably best not to waste your time submitting anyway. Keep shooting for the fun of it, but why do through the drudgery of the metadata if you don't care about the money? If I didn't care about the money I would cease submitting this very minute -- but continue shooting for the fun of it.

I've been in Yellowstone shooting wildlife since last Monday and I have to say there are far fewer animals than in the past. Too many people and too many cars. I guess the animals have moved to the back country. The first two days we had snow and clouds, great weather. But mostly it has been bright blue skies, which don't make for nice images. But I've still got some "keepers" of bull elks bugling, bison crossing rivers, bald eagles, osprey, geese, ducks,coyotes, wolf, etc. No bears worth shooting, but I never expect to get any decent bear footage anyway. If it happens it happens, but not worth spending hours and hours waiting.

We move down to Jackson and the Grand Tetons tomorrow so hopefully I will have better success there with moose.

Doug, be careful in the Tetons, I heard there are still a lot of investigators there. I do enjoy making money selling clips but my real pleasure was in knowing that someone in Tele Aviv liked my dragonfly clip over thousands of others enough to buy it, or that someone in New Zealand wanted my clip of two adult African Lions. That is a big kick for me. I love shooting video. I would be happy filming a brick as long as it was outdoors. So I will continue to travel and shoot video and submit to Pond5 and probably Shutterstock. After all, I am retired. Safe travels and hope to see you at Merrill's Inlet in early January. Bob

Bob, you're right. I agree that it is cool to know that someone chose one of our images over hundreds of other choices they were presented with. That validation is worth something beyond the income it brings.

I have had the idea more than once just to dump all of my footage into the public domain and let people have at it. Wouldn't that be a disruption for all the people who have similar content!

See you in Florida.

Doug. I like your style!!! Safe travels, Bob