It has been bad and I'm discouraged to upload/tag new material.

no crap 

Me too. LOVE P5. They treat me good...

Still uploading but I'm in the same boat with sales.  None last month.  That's a first with Videoblocks.  Might have to do with the rebranding to Storyblocks.  They could've lost some SEO or something.

There is a filter to view the ones in the marketplace, but it doesn't seem to be working.
In other words there is no way to visualise anything else but their stupid membership (unless I did it wrong).
That would explain the disaster in sales in the last couple of months.
And yes, I have the feeling that their re branding was an incredible exercise in self harm

As far as I'm aware, there is only a filter to show Member Library items. This means you can view ALL clips (marketplace + membership) or just the membership items.

For a common word like "sunset" you will just see membership items because there are so many matches, unless you sort by "Most Recent" or "Undiscovered".

Search for "switzerland beach" and you will mostly see marketplace clips, because there aren't many (or any) in the membership library.

Naturally, they will always push membership content first. There is no point in hiding that to show marketplace clips only.

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I don't know if the rebranding ACTUALLY hurt their sales, probably not that much, but the fact that their membership library is now much, much bigger makes marketplace sales less likely for every day that goes by.

If I can get 5 HD downloads for $1.65 each (their basic plan), it seems very expensive to buy one clip for $49.

If you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet and pay $40, you probably don't think it makes sense to pay $100 for an extra higher quality item... 

... have stopped with uploading.. they want new files and contributors, but mine will be on hold ...  after some time, they count to buy files from you for their MS program... in long term, it`s suicidal practice for all of us... but always there will be people who will give them files for few bucks...

Exactly.

If the all-you-can-eat buffet across the street suddenly offers the same quality and variety as the expensive � la carte, it makes the choice easy.

Especially if you can feed yourself every day for a year at the buffet place for the price of two meals at the � la carte place...

Quote from: Brightontl on May 03, 2018, 03:46

There is a filter to view the ones in the marketplace, but it doesn't seem to be working.
In other words there is no way to visualise anything else but their stupid membership (unless I did it wrong).
That would explain the disaster in sales in the last couple of months.
And yes, I have the feeling that their re branding was an incredible exercise in self harm

As far as I'm aware, there is only a filter to show Member Library items. This means you can view ALL clips (marketplace + membership) or just the membership items.

Yes, this is exactly why sales have stopped for us.

By default, the customer used to be presented with the filter showing ALL items.  At some point last year (look at your sales and you'll see when) they made "membership items" the default, so marketplace became invisible unless the customer switched it back. 

The moment this happened, my sales dropped around 95%. 

They have admitted they did this and explained that they're always looking for ways to "improve the customer experience."

Yes, it's clear WHY they did it.  It's always been their business model.

BUT people still show up here asking how and why their sales suddenly stopped.  The why has always been known. The how is that one day last year they flipped a switch to hide the marketplace collection, making our work invisible unless the customer flipped the switch back to the old default.

Quote from: stockmarketer on May 19, 2018, 06:50

Yes, it's clear WHY they did it.  It's always been their business model.

BUT people still show up here asking how and why their sales suddenly stopped.  The why has always been known. The how is that one day last year they flipped a switch to hide the marketplace collection, making our work invisible unless the customer flipped the switch back to the old default.

Yes, absolutely, fully agree with you. Just wanted to clarify some things.

The switch in combination with a now much bigger membership library results in very few people feeling the need to flip the switch back.

And furthermore, what does decreasing marketplace sales do to the sellers? Naturally, it makes it more likely that they will now say "yes" to a buyout... And so on, until the membership library is good enough to outcompete the rest.

I perfectly agree.
But even worse is the fact that something very similar is happening at Pond 5 with their membership program, which was much amplified only a couple of month ago.
Last year only the contributors left out of the membership were squeezed out, as the participating members were pushed up in the search rankings, but now everyone is complaining of very poor sales in their forum.
They did it in a very clever way: even the members who did not want to participate had no choice, as they knew that they would have been squeezed out of the search engine

What exactly are you referring to/which program to participate in?

Yes - I had been hearing (reading) great things about how pond5 was so great, so signed up - spent hours and hours uploading videos (several thousand) - and a month or so later, jsut 0 sales...

Quote from: Brightontl on May 19, 2018, 07:37

Quote from: increasingdifficulty on May 19, 2018, 06:54

Quote from: stockmarketer on May 19, 2018, 06:50

Yes, it's clear WHY they did it.  It's always been their business model.

BUT people still show up here asking how and why their sales suddenly stopped.  The why has always been known. The how is that one day last year they flipped a switch to hide the marketplace collection, making our work invisible unless the customer flipped the switch back to the old default.

Yes, absolutely, fully agree with you. Just wanted to clarify some things.

The switch in combination with a now much bigger membership library results in very few people feeling the need to flip the switch back.

And furthermore, what does decreasing marketplace sales do to the sellers? Naturally, it makes it more likely that they will now say "yes" to a buyout... And so on, until the membership library is good enough to outcompete the rest.

I perfectly agree.
But even worse is the fact that something very similar is happening at Pond 5 with their membership program, which was much amplified only a couple of month ago.
Last year only the contributors left out of the membership were squeezed out, as the participating members were pushed up in the search rankings, but now everyone is complaining of very poor sales in their forum.
They did it in a very clever way: even the members who did not want to participate had no choice, as they knew that they would have been squeezed out of the search engine

Pond 5 have a membership program, an all you can eat buffet similar to the one in Storyblock.
But it is much more dangerous as the quality of the footage is much higher.
This membership thingy, a sort of dollar store, has been progressively cannibalising sales more and more

I do.

Here you go. I uploaded about 100 clips in the first month or two I was there, then a gradual increase to 250 today.