Considering selling stock footage... what do you guys have to say?

[GeorgeMaier]

So I've been very restless as to what to do with myself... I have loads of equipment now, semi-pro and pro... I was thinking of starting a small website to sell my stock footage, but with a twist. I notice most stock suppliers charge for TV stations, like £90 for something that will only appear for 10 seconds, or less. What I was going to do is charge for amateurs and lower end pro's, like most of us on this site... I was thinking more like £5 or less for a shot that the big providers would charge £100ish for...

Would any of you guys ever use a service like this if I created it? I have stock of mountain ranges, lakes, day to day things, sky time-lapse and loads more... I just want to know if it's worth my time money and effort actually going into this as a side project?

George

[blondandfun]

I think it's a great idea. I might do some stock video with www.istockphoto.com

I would image the need to be great. Commercial producers and music video producers especially.

[Noir]

It's saturated, not anywhere near as saturated as stock photos (yet), but saturated none the less. To my understanding, most of the people making good money at it are the National Geographic type guys with the budgets to fly all over the world to get exotic footage, and the formal guys with budgets to hire actors and locations for generic business/social scenes that can be intercut into advertising.

Time lapse stuff is probably the most saturated which makes sense given how cheap the tools are now ($200 DSLR, $15 interlavometer). The only thing separating you from the great unwashed masses is your access to scenic locations and perhaps budget for motorized tripod heads and dollies. (are there motorized portable cranes yet?)

Stock footage doesn't seem to be as rife with piracy as stock photography either, which is a good thing.

Good luck.

[movielighter]

Good topic.

I have about 136 clips (5-10 seconds long) right now that have been up for sale over the last year and a half. You NEVER know what people will want to buy, and the purchases range from the History Channel to a young child wanting a clip for a presentation. They can be sold over and over and the download is only good for a single use.

With technology making it to more households, schools, churches, and small producers, there is always a need for clips.

HD-1080 sells right now, about 7 to 1 vs. SD or 720p footage

I have made over $1300.00 during the time these clips have been up and most of this was done with a $450.00 used HG20.

This is all just extra "B-Roll" I take every time I am at a shoot. I look for something being done by someone, unique, or just normal stuff. Frame it not to get faces and I have footage to market.

One of my biggest sellers is a clip of horses in a meadow. I was hired to do a promo video for a band out in the country. Lead guitar and drummer were late and I had time to kill after setting up the gear. I turned one of the cameras to the property next door and let it run with a good "Old Country" frame of the area. I chopped it up in 10 second clips and they sell for $40.00 each (I get half). So far all together they have sold 11 times.

There are others I know making a nice living off of this ($30-$32k a year), or offset their income, or just do it to pay for new gear (that's me!).

One other thing to keep in mind, you do not have to travel out of your area to get footage. Where ever you are in the world, there is something around you (plants, cars, water, sunset, parks, etc.) that is not in other parts of the world.

There is no saturation as this is endless, only more choices. First there is the topis, then the customer will consider price, content, length and quality. There are very few subjects (clips) that have more than 20 or so that most would consider after breaking them down. The trick?

Only put up the best you have. If a clip is shakey at first because you are setting up the shot with the record button on, cut this when editing and only put the shot up. Customers on the web have the attention span of a nat and will move to the next prouduct at the slightest hint of a problem.

Go for it, no investment needed as it costs nothing to set up for sales and you only pay if the clips sale.

Good luck!

If you get stuck on something (rendering, format, whatever) feel free to email.


- Michael

[GeorgeMaier]

Do you distorbute yourself or through a 3rd party service like iStockPhoto?

[movielighter]

Yes, right now I am on pond5.com. Worked out well, good service, exposure and prompt payments.

you can also see the trends for each month, what types of clips sold etc. once you sign up. This is something to keep in the back of your mind when you are shooting.

iStockphoto looks pretty good as well.

The best part is you do not have to be exclusive, create an account and upload to each.

Michael

[GeorgeMaier]

Pond5 looks brilliant for me compared to iStock. iStock only give 20% royalty and are very annoying. I'm already uploading stuff to Pond5 thanks so much for pointing it out to me.

[Janke]

download is only good for a single use.

How can you control that?

[movielighter]

No way to really control it, but since it is not an actual production I am not too worried about it and have no trouble sleeping at night making about $12.50 cents a second on this type of work.


The downloads are tracked and there is an agreement between the downloader and pond5. Most of the people in the industry follow the rules and keep things legit. You can also embed your copyright in the rendering. Like anything else out, there is always a chance someone will break the rules.

[GeorgeMaier]

Just so I have a rough idea, how long does video clip approval take on Pond5? Less than 24 hours? A week? What sorta time-fame are we talking here?

[movielighter]

Depends on their work load. usually 3-4 business days.



Here is a link that shows the top clips sold over the period of 1 week. Once you create an account and log in, the use it.

https://www.pond5.com/index.php?page...ched&time=week


Shows a lot of different work and most have sold for the first time.

Keep a hard copy of these little clips as well. Somehere down the line they will still be worth something. A good friend of mind was contacted by a broker who was looking for a 30 second clip of corn stalks blowing in the wind. The pay was $750.00 and he just happened to have some on hand from the Summer as it was now Winter. Used in one of the High School Musical films.

[Noir]

Pond5 looks brilliant for me compared to iStock. iStock only give 20% royalty...

That is unconscionable, absolutely disgusting.

[blondandfun]

That is unconscionable, absolutely disgusting.

For exclusive rights to istock, you get 40%.

Who do you think has to pay for advertising to get people to the site? DO you have any idea how much online advertising costs???

[charlie_tango]

[QUOTE=blondandfun;373340 DO you have any idea how much online advertising costs???[/QUOTE]


If you considerated is free to create a account on this site, and the overall people who see your stuff,
i think it's not too cheap 20% of royalties, because it's not very easy on web to protect the rigth on
your personnal creation. And it's not easy to keep open this type of site, for help people to sell them production.
It's true that on web it's very expensive for put advertising.

the difference between two website it's that istock it's 100% whole free to use, and pond5 it's possible to have paid fee for some service on the site.
It's important to check it terms of service before to critics the politic of payment.

(I am writting it on my own without help, I hope it is understandable!)

[Noir]

For exclusive rights to istock, you get 40%.

Who do you think has to pay for advertising to get people to the site? DO you have any idea how much online advertising costs???

If you have any of their advertising numbers with which to defend their 60-80% take on products they didn't help make or fund, I would love to see it. I personally have never seen an Istock advertisement anywhere which makes sense since market leaders (which Istock undoubtedly is) don't usually have to advertise all that much given their top of the pyramid position.

[movielighter]

After reading this and posting, I started going through some of my older archives and found about 25 more clips I had set back to upload. Good stuff! Winter scenes, people playing music, outdoor crowd shots, some holiday decorations, etc.

[um3k]

I have about 10 minutes of pretty good deer footage that I've never got around to uploading to a stock site. It is probably related to my being devoid of motivation.

[Jergling]

It appears that Pond5 offers the best percentage. They also sell at a higher minimum price. Pond5 is growing rapidly, and they've started offering things like AE projects to attract a wider audience.

[movielighter]

Good Deer and Hunting footage is HUGE right now! The best reason I can come up with is that most hunters are not cameramen, and the ones that are do most everything themselves and do not really have the time to manage the gun and the camera. The ones that do, really stand out.

[movielighter]

Note: At 3:00am this morning (while I was sleeping), I sold a clip for $60.00 on Pond5 (720p, 60i Canon HG20) that I took on my lunch break one day. Life is good!

[DigitalBard]

The problem with stock footage is that HD cameras are cheap these days and everyone is trying it. Pond5 is great, but they have very little in the way of quality control, so thousands of the same crap is uploaded and approved regularly. iStock pays for crap, but they have a HUGE existing audience of buyers. The extra % you give up to them is for access to those buyers. Most of their buyers are corporate with accounts. The trick is to know who is buying where and getting the correct footage on the correct site. And since you are competing against hundreds upon hundreds of "make a buck quick" amateurs, your clips HAVE to be good enough to stand out. That means high production values and not uploading the same crap as everyone else.

All that said, I make 80% of my income from selling stock footage online. It gets harder and harder every year, but it still seems to be a growing industry.

[GeorgeMaier]

I posted some footage on Pond5, last monday, - it's now been 11 days... and it's still 'pending review' urgghhh

[KingDucky]

It is probably related to my being devoid of motivation.

You too!?

Pond5 looks verryy inteeressting....

[DigitalBard]

They got way behind during the Christmas holiday... Currently they are roughly 23 days behind (just got a batch of 82 new clips approved this morning).

[movielighter]

Yep, slow time for reviews. I have about 42 clips now in line. I do know that if you are going to throw up clips, do as many as you can to stack the load. usually about 48-72 hours, I will do a monster upload. They do not go by when clips are uploaded, the first clip places your account into a review "queue" and they review all the footage there pending for approval at that time, instead of having to go back later.