Anybody here selling stock footage? Either as a sideline or a main business….

[Stephen Smith]

Tim,

I hope life is treating you well? I quite my job and started my own production company a few months ago. As per your question.

Anybody selling footage? I have been selling stock footage on the side for a few years now.

Is it a sideline? Are you making it part of your core business? It is on the sideline. I read an article years ago referring to it as “beer money”. I only have a little over 100 clips. If you want to make a living at this you will most likely need much more images to sell.

Who are you working with? I love Pond5. They give you a 50% split. If the buyer uses a discount code you still get 50% of the asking price and Pond5 absorbs the loss. I used iStockphoto and hated them. You get 20% of every sell and if you are exclusively with them then 25%. But hey, if you can sell 200 clips in one year they will give you 30%….yeah! Here is the pricing structure: https://contributors.gettyimages.com/article_public.aspx?article_id=5210 I wanted to look into Disolve but I haven’t had time.

What are you selling? Here is my Pond5 collection: https://www.pond5.com/artist/dtt#1/ Here is my best selling clip, it sells a few times each year. It is the Roman Colosseum.

And how’s it going? I think it has been great. It’s fun to get some money here and there. Especially on clips I uploaded a few years ago.

Thanks for any insight you can provide!

Stephen Smith

Utah Video Productions

Check out my Vimeo page

[Brad Coulter]

Thanks for sharing that. That clip is awesome, by the way!

http://www.betherecreative.com

[Todd Terry]

Hey Stephen…

Just curious, who sets the pricing for your footatge?…. do you do that, or is it set by Pond5?

I ask because I’ve always been curious about that, and now doubly so after looking at your page. Some of it is what I’m used to (i.e., I think the Colosseum shot is 55 bucks… makes perfect sense), but some of the other pricing on clips was rather oddly specific (i.e., $43.62, $44.95, etc.). Who comes up with that? And what is it based on?

I’m glad to hear you are having a good experience with Pond5. Honestly in the past we’ve always thought of them (perhaps unfairly) as sort of low-tier I guess mainly because their stuff is so cheap compared to the other guys (and some of their quality was pretty marginal in past years)… our go-to source was generally iStock, followed by Dissolve and Shutterstock… then we’d hit Pond5 if we just needed something cheap (and frankly, if it was some project where quality was trumped by price). Lately though I think Pond5 has become more of a reliable resource… also, more than once I’ve found the perfect clip on one of the other sources, and then checked Pond5 where the same clip was available… at at much lower price. It sounds like they are treating their suppliers much better, too.

Good stuff.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Stephen Smith]

Brad, thanks for the kind words. Italy was a blast.

Todd, Pond5 lets the person who uploads the clip set the price. I played around with some different price points to see if anything would work better than the other. Which would explain some of the more specific prices. Something cool to note. Some of the clips are 4k and HD. All you have to do is set the price for the 4k clip and then Pond5 will figure out the price for the HD clip for you. You just set the % difference once and then it set the percentage difference for you everytime you set a price or change a price down the road.

When I first looked at Pond5 years ago I agree with your observation that is was low-tier. Pond5 has come a long ways in the last few years. I used to only purchase my stock footage from iStockphoto because I felt they had the best quality footage. If they didn’t have what I needed I then went down the same road you do.

I just did a job for a big financial institution and bought a lot of business stock footage clips. I used Pond5, Dissolve, iStockPhoto and Shutterstock. I got most of my clips from Pond5 because I thought they had the best selection for the very specific type of shots I needed to find.

A cool side note about Pond5, they have thousands of public domain clips on their site that are free to download. That library saved my bacon a year ago on a project I needed to cover with old shots of New York.

As for your comment about finding the perfect clip on one of the other sources, and then checked Pond5 where the same clip was available. I do that all the time. Typically if you upload to multiple sites it is just too easy to copy and past the title of the clip and the tag data. So I always copy the title and see if I can find it on a different site for a cheaper price. One clip was $300 on Pond5 and I found it for $75 on Shutterstock. Other times I have found a clip on Shutterstock for $75 and found the same clip for $50 on Pond5.

Shutterstock and iStockphoto charge the same prices no matter the contributor so I keep those price points in the back of my head.

I think Pond5 is worth checking out the next time you need stock footage. They treat their contributors better than any of the other stock sites.

Stephen Smith

Utah Video Productions

Check out my Vimeo page

[Curt Lafurney]

I’d recommend video blocks, affordable and extensive. Use the heck out of it myself all the time.

https://www.videoblocks.com/

[Stephen Smith]

I signed up for Videoblocks a few years ago and hated it. I had unlimited downloads free for a month and could only find one clip I used. The other ones I downloaded ended up having too much noise and other low-end production problems that are hard to see in a little thumbnail.

I just looked for some clips to fit the specific footage I was just recently looking for and I would say the selection isn’t very big. Granted it is very specific but I was able to find many more options on Pond5, Dissolve and iStockphoto.

I think in the end it depends on what your needs are and what level of quality you want.

Their contributor agreement looks great: https://contribute.videoblocks.com/?utm_medium=XSell&utm_source=VBFooter&utm_campaign=VBFooter

Stephen Smith

Utah Video Productions

Check out my Vimeo page

[Curt Lafurney]

I have not had any issues with quality or previews with Videoblocks, maybe they have improved over time. My experience with them has been great. I fill a lot of holes with their content.

Good luck

[Robin Probyn]

Is the cost calculated time wise i.e. shot length.. is there a max/min length .. is everything timelapse or did you find that sold the best..?

Thanks

[Stephen Smith]

Robin,

The cost of the clip doesn’t have anything to do with the length. On Pond5 you pick your own price. (Clips have to be longer than 4 seconds I believe) On other sites like Adobe’s Stock they set the price. Which is nice for a buyer since you can budget for the actual cost of a project since each clip cost the same. As for selling the best. I just happen to have mostly time-lapse footage because that is what I love to film. I imagine time-lapse footage sells the least since most videos use footage that isn’t time-lapse.

Stephen Smith

Utah Video Productions

Check out my Vimeo page

[Robin Probyn]

Ok thanks for the info.. sorry to pick your brains .. how do you decide the price then.. just compared to other people..

Thanks