Pond5 was the first stock music library I signed up to. I have had relative good sales results and all of the tracks I have submitted, have been approved. It’s the only library that has been selling on a regular basis for me.
Uploading on Pond5 is like a walk in the park
The upload process on Pond5 is very easy and tracks are approved in 1-2 days. Their tagging system is in my opinion one of the best I have seen so far. Another nice thing about pond5 is that they allow you to set your own prices.
Pond5
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Ease of Use
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Help & Support
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Income potential / ability to sell
Summary
Basically the most consistent library out there when it comes to sales. Pond5 also have an excellent interface which makes it very easy to upload new tracks.
Reviews Submissions: Yes
Re-Titles Tracks:Â No
Exclusive or Non-exclusive: Both Options
Set Own Price:Yes
Commission Split: 60% / 45%
Tracks Approved In:Â 1-2 days
how much “Number of clip page views” do you have on pond5??
(overview -> dashboard)
i’m getting a lot of bars on about 16, some at 24, one at 32 and a few with 8 or 0 since dec2012…
Since Sept I have several also at 16 and the rest are all 8. Didn’t even know this data existed!
I just put up 21 tracks at Pond5, wrote pretty detailed descriptions and tags and so far haven’t had a single view, feels like I’m lost in an ocean, not a pond…
The new tracks I have uploaded at pond5 also has no views at all. When i started uploading at pond5 I was seeing decent sales, now i don’t even get Card Adds or Bin Adds. Maybe we just need more tracks to be found in the ocean at pond5.
I’ve just had a new sale on pond5 today, now I just hope more will come. It was one of my corporate tracks that was sold 🙂
glad to hear! i finally had a sale on revostock this week.
congratulations! 🙂
i’m getting some views and cart adds on pond5 (i’m at 16/24 views and a total of 31 cart adds) but the site is very slow.
but one sale generates “a lot” fo money… so i’m going to stay here…
the most sales are my short metal logo/loops but sometimes i have sold some “full” songs.
instead, revostock is pretty useless for me!
glad to help discover this!
one thing that i like in pond5 is the unique option to apply templates to file.
very useful for files which share the same contents, such as my audiologo, loop and sfx collections! 🙂
i wish there would be the same option on audiojungle and productiontrax!
how is your cart add/sale ratio in this marketplace??
since a few days ago I had about 35 cart add and i sold 14 items.
now, after some days i didn’t monitored the card adds, i discovered I have nearly 50 cart adds. Let’s see if they will convert in sales sooner or later… :-/
I have also increased the price here. before a “standard” track was 49$, now i increased to 69$ (I also have cheaper tracks).
my philosophy was this one: I have the same track on sale on audiojungle. but on AJ there are 2 licenses (normal / extended). I set the pond5 price about 10-15 dollars less than the extended license on AJ. in this way a potential buyer, if finds the same track on P5 and AJ (and on AJ he must buy the extended licence) , may go to pond5 to buy the track (where the share is higher). otherwise you may “competing” with yourself….
what do you think??
not sure how to read my data but i only had 2 sales in april and none in may. i also increased my price to $45 except for short ones at $25. still doing better on AJ than pond5
you should go to “uploads” -> sales data tab
order your songs by “cart add” and look at how many people have added your music to their chart. this should be an indicator of how many people are potentially interested to your music.
on the forum they say that usually a pontential buyer put the songs in the cart and evaluates later if buy or not, or buy all the tracks at once. but there are not so many figures on the cart add / sale ratio…
I’ve just joined pond 5.Found the whole process a bit confusing to be honest.I typed my name in and it returned with 0 results.A bit weird.On the other hand,I’ve also just gone with AudioMicro.Now this is more like it!Very clear,intuitive and up there with Productiontrax in my opinion.What does anyone else think?
I found one of my sons used in a video game trailer on youtube and they credited me and audiomicro but I’ve never had any sales with them. any ideas?
have you written direclty to them?
no… but I will. here’s a link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfegNkbSJ4c
it’s the first song being played called “where you lead”
sorry… should read “one of my songs” above 🙂
I have also purchased some graphics at 1$ from pond5… and i must say that, from a buyer point of view, the experience was very good, probably one of the best you can have. the only drawback is that, once you have placed several items in the card, you must buy all of them and so you must delete the item you don’t want to buy at the moment. but you can use bins to organize stuff…
i don’t know about search engine efficiency but the results are provided in a very convenient way and you can browse images (but also songs and video) very quickly and in a very efficient way, much much better than other websites.
also, i could pay immediately with paypal while on other webistes you need a deposit and maybe an additional charge if you use paypal.
I just discovered that my “big ta da orchestral sound” is on the main page of pond5 in the media of the moment, category “sound effect” – nice spot! 🙂
it has been there for at least 2 days!
however, I did not noticed neither an increase in views of my clips neither in sales… so it was pretty useless, beside the joy of finding one of my sounds there!
i started to make a copy/paste of the stats (the page in which you find views, bin add, clip add…) on excel to keep tracks on how i’m going on p5.
in the last month (since when i began these stats) i have an average of 11 views/days.
i also did some math: from my beginning on pond 5 I had a sale – on average – for every 2.5 cart add and for every 1.1 bin add.
now i have 86 sales total but most of them are sound effects very low priced
Nice with some more exposure for your sound effects in “media of the moment” 🙂
11 views a day at pond5 seems pretty good. I wish my music had the same number of views, but you probably have a lot of sound effect files online?
By the way have you experimented with raising the prices for your sound effects a little, maybe they will still sell…
yes I have a LOT of SFX (more than 250 files comprising music/SFX).
I have 2-3 bestsellers, one is a sort stinger (http://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/25300743) that actually surprised me…19 sales so far. I keep price quite low on this, but i feel it’s ok.
my best sellers are (5 – 6 sales each):
then I have this SFX: http://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/23196548
SFX Pack: http://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/25448722
orchestral stinger – http://www.pond5.com/stock-music/27862104
another SFX – http://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/23196561
I tried to change prices a lot, lowering, incrasing, i did not see much change.
I actually sold some songs at 60$ http://www.pond5.com/stock-music/17319744
and some other at lower price.
I don’t think high price is an issue if some editor is looking for a file that suits his need and it cost 10-20$ more than the average. I completely agree on some of your post.
In any case, I tend to keep prices on pond5 less than the “extended license” price on audiojungle..
sooner or later i’ll update my website to be more focus on library music and will organize the links to royaltyfree sites in two categories:
1) music for personal use -> audiojungle
2) extended lices -> pond5
so that buyers will not feel being “cheated” by the fact that I sell on different marketplaces.
Yes I have a lot of SFX, some of them sold 3-6 times but at 2$ 😀
I have also a large collections of stingers at 15$. one of them surprised me (19 sales)
http://www.pond5.com/sound-effect/25300743
but it is considered a SFX at sells at 5%
reg. prices i have tried to increase / lower them but with no significant difference. However, i did not on my “best seller SFX” and for the stingers, only for regular songs.
however, i tend to maintain prices on P5 lower than the extended license on audiojungle.
Anyone else having a slow December? So far, this is my lowest month.
on audiojungle is so far quite good, 79$ and 16 sales so far, my second best in term of money and third best for n° sales
however, here is a decrease in pond5
Strange month for me so far. Lowest number of sales on Audiojungle, but much better in other libraries. In fact, it’s a very slow month for sales but a good month for earnings (got a few sales for higher prices). Strange.
Some people on AJ said that december is always slow, and then january and february get much better.
I have been regularly tracking views, bin add, cart add on P5 since november 2013.
these are my stats:
from nov 2014 to jan 2014 i had an average of 11.7 views/day.
my rates in this period are:
28 sales
26 bin adds
56 cart adds.
on average, i had one sale after about 27 visits. I think it’s a pretty good average. it could mean that my tagging/title is quite effective and my music is appreciated by the one searching for a specific song/sfx.
(remember also that i have a lot of SFX / stinger).
in any case on about 250 files online really a lot of them have 0 views, often tagged in the same way as similar files with a lot more views.
unfortunately i cannot do the same stats with audiojungle, since their analytics is quite crappy
I think that
My experience with pond 5 seems quite close to yours. I have a sale after ~20 views and like you some of my new tracks gets views from the start and others gets 0 views. I have also wondered about this as I use the same tagging style for all tracks – just really strange that so many tracks get no views on pond5.
I have more bin adds than cart adds, but that makes since my tracks are priced higher than most of your many SFX and stingers.
I actually think that the views metering in Pond5 doesn’t work properly. I have the same experience as yours, and the view patterns do not make any sense. In all libraries with a view count, the view patterns look very different, much more “natural” (a normal gaussian bell shaped chart more or less). In Pond5, it seems that we are in a parallel universe where the normal laws of statistics don’t work. There is obviously something wrong, I think.
and, I add, that I have a few track with some bin adds and zero (!!) views. As I said, it’s a parallel universe 🙂
same here.
my feeling is that, since on pond5 you can preview/add to bin/cart the track without going to the actual song page, maybe some buyers just listen to the preview without even open the track page and then buy/add.
this maybe does not count as a “view”…
this has been a very slow month on pond5.
my tracks still are viewed (about 10 views/day) and i got bin some add/cart add but there was a slow down in sales: 16 sales in december, 9 sales in january, only 5 in february. maybe the magic is finishing!!?! 😀
perhaps i should make and upload some new track… but i have very little time for music in this period! :-/
I find it very hard to find out what’s going on at the libraries when it comes to making sales. Sometimes you you just don’t get any sales. I wish they had better tracking systems – letting us know what keywords they buyers use for searching, what keywords sell, returning customers and so on.
One thing is sure – if you stop uploading new music sales will slow down.
i have priced most of my normal length tracks at $55 on pond5. think that is too high? what prices do you choose? i really wish they had different levels of licenses like productiontrax and audiojungle. i’m actually thinking of only having my music available on pond5 and forget the rest. i would still continue to have them in libraries where they place music for you. i am now in about 8 libraries like that including one that places a lot on several usa cable networks.
I price my tracks at pond5 from $19-$49 and have had sales in all price ranges. 🙂
so do you price according to length of track?
No, not length of track. I price according to what I think the track is worth. How much time I spend on it, how complex it is and how well I overall think the track turned out.
Hi, first post for me here.
Have had music on Pond5 since october 2014, and have priced my tracks from 25-99$. I’ve based the pricing on length and complexity/use of live instruments/time used on track. So far I have seen no relation between low price and sales. My best selling track is priced at 69.95$. Have had good sales until Feb, but suddenly no sales for 3 weeks.
Seems to be no sure way. I price mine at $55 except ones that are under 2 mins I price at $35. I almost always get at least one sale a month on Pond5… nothing this month…. until today!
And sorry about the double post…:-)
Welcome to the blog ChrisL and now the double post is gone 😀
Thank you!
Pond5 has been really good for me so far!
I uploaded my first track in december, and i currently have 4 tracks up and running.
I have around 30 sales so far, and all my tracks are priced at 20-30 $.
My best-selling track (20 sales) seems to have had front-page coverage for atleast a week now, which is awesome. Meanwhile, Audiojungle seems dead. Had a around 15 sales my first month, but now i’ve had like 1-2 for the past 2 months. Thinking about leaving envato, as their prices are way too low, the process of uploading takes ages, and sales aren’t consistent enough. Leaving AJ would also make me eligible for AudioSparx, which looks interesting!
Hi Rob,
thats good sales in that short amount of time. I guess the front page exposure helped? Anyone know how that works on Pond5? I too had a track on the front page for a few weeks, noticed it by a coincidence. Some of the other tracks have been there as long as I can remember. Wonder how the tracks is picked out for that?
I have had 3 sales a month in average on Pond5, have about 70 tracks up.
Anyone else experience long review time at Pond5? Usually takes a few hours, now its been 8 days…
pond5.com is awesome.obviously it’s a good resource to find quality royalty free music.i hope this site will be in the first position regarding royalty free music in the long run.though i will not say that the other related sites are bad comparing to the other sites.
Just a word of advice to all the artists here, if you want more sales drop the price!
I’m an Indie games developer and have a very limited budget and Pond5 was a great place to shop.
I’ve been creating an Android game for the last 2 years and it’s nearly finished. I found Pond5 a year ago and purchased over 60 music tracks and sound effects for my game, I have about 40 saved in my collection that I want to add to my game but the prices have gone from $2.50 – $15 a track to $15 – $50+ a track in the past 12 months.
In my opinion asking $15+ for a 15-30 second loop or stinger is way too expensive, my game which has taken me over 6000 hours to create will sell for $3 and I’ve created over 1000 different graphics for it, if I had the time I would have also created the music myself and saved a lot of expense but that would add months to my project.
I’ve decided to make the remaining sounds I need myself and I won’t be buying any more music at Pond5 or anywhere else until the prices come down to reasonable and affordable levels.
hi!
glad you used pond5 for your music! 🙂
recently, pond5 increased the minimum price for music, that now is 15$.
http://help.pond5.com/hc/en-us/articles/200944103-How-Do-I-Price-My-Files-
so it’s not author’s fault! 😛
you have to consider that, buying on P5, you have a license that will permit to use the media forever and in all possible means, from games to hollywood blockbuster.
if you want cheaper music you should go to audiojungle but the standard license there is restricted to 1 use only…
How are you sells going now on 2018?
and whats the library that sells more?
It been a very long time since I have uploaded new music, so I only get a sale now and then on pond5. I currently have my apparent up for sale and want to buy a small house. Then I will be able to get a studio up and running and will go all in on composing, selling royalty free music and my working on YouTube channel 😀
August 2018 was the first month in my history (5 years long) that i didnt’ sell anyhting on pond5. not even a 1$ SFX.
usually i got an average of 30-50$ each month on pond5, with a record of about 150$ in a month and a minimum of that 1$ SFX
audiojungle, instead, continues to be quite standard, with a 50-100$ each month (more on the 50$ side…) 🙂
Pond5 sales are pretty much the same for me. Sales are down, but i have not uploaded anything for years.
what is bin add and cart add and difference between them ?
I have wondered that myself. I think you can make bins with tracks you might want to buy i the future. Where the cart add is an actual add to the cart.
I wonder if things have gotten really bad with this site or if I’m doing something wrong, I have 11 tracks and 63 sound effects online, these same tracks and sfx sell well on other sites, but I don’t even get many views on Pond5, keywords and everything should be fine. Three months and not a single sale.
Hi Joonas. It’s different for every composer. Some tracks sell well in some libraries while in others the result is no sales at all. It’s the same with my tracks, guess it has to do with different user bases.
Other than that I would say that 11 tracks is not that many on pond5. If you make good tracks an upload a lot more of them, I would expect you to begin seeing sales.
I Have a a total of 38 tracks at pond5 and 18 of them never had a single sale. Others are getting sales on a regular basis.