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

[Bob Mark]

Can you say what types of clips sell the most? I have heard that “lifestyle” and “business” clips with people are the most sought after.

Thanks.

Bob

[Stephen Smith]

Occasionally sites like Pond5 and iStock photo e-mail out lists to contributors the terms that are the most searched. At the bottom of https://www.pond5.com/ they have a list of some of their most searched keywords.

As for me, I purchase a fair amount of stock footage and the footage I purchase the most is business footage with actors and lifestyle footage with actors. Great business footage is hard to come by since I’m looking for actors to be dressed a certain way.

Stephen Smith

Utah Video Productions

Check out my Vimeo page

[Bob Mark]

I know this is an old thread, but thanks for that info Stephen!

Bob

[Stephen Smith]

Thanks Bob. I have to say, I just got an e-mail from Pond5 yesterday saying I just made another $26 for another sale. I love those e-mails.

Stephen Smith

Utah Video Productions

Check out my Vimeo page

[Bob Mark]

Very cool, Stephen.

Bob

[Dennis Radeke]

Just chiming in as I come over once in a while to see what’s going on.

A ton that I’d like to chime in on but will be brief and circumspect as I’ve always tried.

Where’s the marketplace today?
– There’s a lot of outlets including Adobe Stock that offer the ability to sell your footage. There are at least a few differences between the marketplaces but all have something to offer.

Is there an opportunity for making ‘beer money’ or much more?
– Assuming your content is interesting and viable, then I generally say that people get from stock sites what they put into them. If you put in a hundred clips, you’re going to make beer money. If you’re a regular shooter and you’re taking time to get stock shots and upload them to the sites and ultimately build a collection of thousands of clips, then you’re going to make a part time living and add some coin to your bank account. Since I’ve moved over to Adobe Stock, I’ve met many people whose full time job is doing nothing but traveling and shooting stock footage. To that point, there will be Rick Ray at the Adobe booth at NAB this year who is one of those people.

Adobe is also sponsoring a 2 day workshop at NAB in association with Post Production World as well. If you are going to NAB this year and have an interest, here’s a link: Adobe Stock Shooting event

Why potentially submit to Adobe Stock?
– best answer is why not? I could wax poetic about the advantages of Adobe Stock, but I always try and walk the line and avoid pushing what might be perceived as an agenda. Reality is that most of the successful contributors put their content on all of the major sites and then they all work for you. The recent article from Daniel Hurst of Via Films is a great example.

If anyone has any questions, always happy to engage with you.

Best,
Dennis – Adobe guy

[Bruno Felix]

Hi Stephen Smith, if you may have a moment I’d like ask you some questions related to copyright. How do you do it? I mean, you shoot a video, prepared to upload it properly and then upload it right to the stock footage website? Or first you send your content to copyright registration? If yes, how do you register your content before send it for selling?

Thanks for the insights by the way, greetings from Brazil.

[Stephen Smith]

Good question Bruno. I think my answer is going to get me in trouble. I would love to hear what others think:

When you upload stock footage to a stock site a customer can only look at a low-resolution version of it. Or download a watermarked low res version. So no one is going to steal it. If they purchase it the stock site doesn’t tell you who bought it. So if it ends up on someone’s video you really don’t know if they bought it or not. (Unless you have never sold that clip yet) Also, the odds of seeing the video with your stock footage on it is somewhat impossible considering how many videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

As for me, I created a video of my travels like this one: Italy Video and then sold clips in that video as stock footage. Any jerk could easily rip my video and steal clips from this video. And if I was lucky enough to find the video where they had stolen clips the big question would be, what can I do about it? Is it worth hiring a lawyer? I would hope most people would remove it if you ask but I have never had this situation. Or I could send them a bill for the cost of the stock footage.

Once again, I would love to hear others opinions and thoughts on this.

I think you might find these article helpful:

https://library.creativecow.net/article.php?author_folder=lindeboom_ron&article_folder=basics_of_copyrights_pt1&page=1

https://library.creativecow.net/article.php?author_folder=lindeboom_ron&article_folder=copyrights_pt2_fair-use&page=1

Stephen Smith

Utah Video Productions

Check out my Vimeo page

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[Tom Laughlin]

A great resource on this is StockFootage.com, out of Utah. John Farr with Creative Media Group, who owns this stock footage website and business can help you with your questions on this topic.

Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Salt Lake City, Utah
digitalchophouse.com

[Kelly Wood]

I sold a few travel clips here and there for spare changes on pond5. Honestly won’t invest too much time on it due to the low return. Selling stock footage is just not for me.