How to price a Pond5 clip

I want to talk about how to price the videos on the website Pond 5, when you first join the site you have the choice of putting HD videos up for anything above 10 dollars, now the temptation is always to go low, this is because you can compete with other members who have a similar shot at 50- 60 dollars, however what is interesting here is that normally these shots won't sell very well. Imagine you work for a TV company who has a budget of 500 dollars for some filler shots, perhaps you are doing a piece on London Underground, which instead of going out and getting a crew (which would cost a couple of thousand) you have 500 dollars to buy stock.




Stock Video Footage: London Underground Time Lapse- Piccadilly Circus


You see a shot for 10 or 15 dollars would you buy it? When you buy some speakers for your computer would you pay 5 or 15 dollars when you have budget of 20? The 5 dollar speakers are bound to be of low quality, so why buy the cheap one?
It's the same with video, Companies have money and they would rather pay for a quality video, so always price the video above 50 dollars.

Remember you only receive half of what the customer pays and Pond 5 will only send you the money if it is over 25 dollars.


Pricing High!!!
The average price of Pond5 footage is 50 - 60 dollars these also sell the most, but lets look at stockage that sells for more.


150 dollars
4 Sales
1321 views
since 2008



This works if you have an exclusive shot which is hard to come by and very well shot like this, now there is a risk, you could be selling more of these at 50 dollars but you would have to be selling 12 sales to get the same amount of money surely if you have shots like this its worthing charging more.


Now this is the same Pond5er his name is Vadervideo and he knew when he was filming this that there wouldn't be many similar shots,have a look at his blogsite
399 dollars
1098 views
5 sales
since 2008



He may have of course increased the price over the years as you can change the price of the video at any time. But he may have decided that this is the best price where it keeps selling at,its also a handy 200 bucks every time it sells, now thats better than 25 dollars! Now this stock provider has more than 7000 shots up there, at that point you can really start playing with price, but when you start out you need to start with 50 and go up from there, raise it 5 if it still keeps selling raise it again. I started with all of my videos at 40 but quickly increased them to 50 as I noticed the average price is 50- 60.

What is interesting is that with confidence and more videos you can keep on increasing the price with exclusivity you can increase it more and if you have something peculiar which will only sell once why not raise it more ?

Some people do sell their clips at very low prices, but it just doesn't add up, but these are people that are new to Pond5 or do not upload many clips, its important to remember the amount of work is put into filming a shot and then uploading it, it could take an hour or so to get the perfect shot and then to edit it, add keywords and then upload, you could end up earning a one dollars an hour, that just isn't paying yourself a fair wage and this shot could only sell once so go for 50- 60 to give yourself at least some kind of value.

Please leave comments on your thoughts..
Here is a link to Vader video's blog website