selling stock footage – worth it or not?

[Mike Cohen]

Many moons ago we offered stock footage from surgical procedures for sale, however the time needed to find just what a client was looking for made it unprofitable. We sold a few clips to Strong Medicine on Lifetime and to some museums, but our time is better spent making money for production jobs.
It seems there are many many stock footage websites. Have production jobs dried up in your area?

Mike

[Charley Fernandez]

Hello Russ:

We are currently working on having a direct page with all the information regarding submitting material in our site. We are still a work in progress, we just opened 2 months ago. We offer 50/50 commission on a non exclusive basis. You can send us the material, we will upload them for you, however you will need to submit the meta data.

In regards of not getting the response you need, I guess are very hesitant to post $$$ number amounts in websites. Also, many pros hardly spending time on forums. Some are also hesitant on sharing there “good experience” with stock houses, at the end, you will probably be competing in some form or the other.

I’m sure many have wanted to sell their stuff, but after the find out the amount of work involved they simply don’t go for it, specially if the don’t know the outcome….it happened to me with two websites…..

In response to indications: a) As with everything it will depend on many factors, your stuff may not sell, or sales good. Before opening my site I did a research on 52 stock houses…I found out that there are a lot of people making money even with average material…I know producers making $700 or more a month from just one site!…just think about it…which bank will pay you such amount in interest?

b) In todays market, you will find them all, amateurs and pros…the better you material the more people will like to find your stuff…

c) True Getty Images is one of the big ones with High End material, but even all of them are jumping in to the micro stock….If I’m not mistaken Getty acquired istock video for the “small” sum of 50 million dollars…???

I will say jump for it, again, your video is just sitting in a hard drive. Also, I understand you have SD material, if this is the case, this is your time because in the years to come HD will lead the market.

All best….

P.S. Do a research, here is a good way to start. Go to, let say, istockvideo, do a search on the kind of material you have….then take a look on how many times the clips was downloaded…..then calculate that by the percentage they pay (20%)…it will give you an idea.. 🙂

[Charley Fernandez]

BTW sorry for the misspelling and errors, I was in a hurry 😉

[Russ Stiggants]

Thanks for your advice Mike…..

Production work in my town has always been pretty slim, but I’ve made a living out of it for many years.

That’s not really the point however….

Like many pro’s, I’ve kept just about every camera tape I’ve shot (over more than 25 years) and have some very interesting vision some of which has never seen the light of day (you know how it is – shoot x-number of tapes for a 10-min ‘corporate’). For example, I’ve done a lot of stuff for the mining, oil and gas industry in some of the most remote parts of Australia, as well as a lot of agricultural/horticultural stuff (and a whole lot more). It just seems to me that this is an untapped resource that could spin off some dollars.

I do agree with you that production is still where the real money is (and I’m doing that increasingly with video-on-the-web) but I’m still keen to explore the stock ‘option’.

Like you however, I agree there’s got to be a profit to it. If in the end I’m spending $100 dollars of my time for only $10 return, that really doesn’t make much business sense.

That’s why I’m keen to hear from ‘suppliers’. No offence to the middlemen; I understand it’s in their interests to talk-up stock sites.

At the end of the day, I guess I’ll only find out the truth by spending a day or two pumping up a number of shots and passing them on to a number of stock ‘houses’. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll chalk it up to experience.

Russ

[Russ Rayburn]

I have a few stock footage contracts up for renewal. Most are offering as low as 15% now, but I was getting 40 and 50 % before Has anybody had any luck with these footage houses, seems like they are making buckets of money. Anybody know which ones are worth dealing with ? Any self posting sites good to deaL with?

Russ

[Russ Stiggants]

Hi Russ…

Interesting to hear that the prices paid for stock footage seem to be going down, which only goes to confirm why I started this thread in the first place…..selling stock footage does not really make economic sense unless you’re sitting around with nothing else to do. After a year since I created the thread, you’ll notice a paucity of people reporting wild success. If I were you, I’d being going with those who return as much money as possible to you. But given the state of the world economy, I don’t think I would be holding my breath…..

[Randy Wheeler]

How do you audit these stock footage websites that sell your footage to know if they are accurately reporting sales of your footage? Or, are we just supposed to trust them?

Randy

[Russ Rayburn]

Some contracts allow for audits, but at your own expense, unless you find a certain percentage of error, then they will pay for the audit. Some contracts do not address the issue of audit at all.
I have had the experience of seeing one of my shots on a national commercial,(Channel surfing is good for something) and was only paid once I brought it to the attention of the stock house, they were sorry for the mistake. I do have my suspicions, but it is expensive and difficult to prove anything. Now that shots are sold on the World Wide Web, I think the Wild West mentality is everywhere, most people think they can’t be caught. I have registered some of my copyrights, since I found out you can’t bring an infringement suit without it. Let me know what your experience has been. I do have a meeting with a forensic accountant later this week, so should know more soon. I would like to hear of other peoples experience with stock houses.

Russ

Russ

[Russ Stiggants]

Randy does make a good point – and good on you Russ for going into it further.

here’s a what if….

What if you make a stock-footage sale to client x who uses the footage in his TVC or corporate docco. So far, so good – you get a payment (peanuts usually by the looks of things) and the deal is done. But client x later gives his video (including your stock footage) to some other party who wants to use portions of it in another, unrelated video. Client x thinks he owns all the footage (and he does to the edited tape) but he effectively hands on your stock footage (edited as it may be). Thus your footage may be used in another production without your knowledge – and without payment to you.

And here’s another what if….

Production House n buys your footage and uses it in production b. Now another client pops up and could benefit from the same footage, albiet edited in a different way. Does the production house acknowledge that? The good ones will – but what about the not-so-honest?

Some points to ponder….

Russ

[Russ Rayburn]

You have some very good points. Once the footage is sold by the stock house to the client, they are supposed to only use it in their productions and not resell it or give it away to others, of course as you pointed out, it is possibly making the rounds and being passed from person to person and company to company. Many people in the business seem to ignore copyright, even if they agreed and signed the licensing agreement of the stock house. While this is very difficult to detect and enforce, I have been told that those who ignore copyright are taking a big chance, although they rarely get caught. Statutory penalties can be up to $150,000.00 per occurrence plus statutory award of legal fees.

The reality of this, as you pointed out, is that the shots scatter to the wind, and the world is a big place, but at least we should be able to hold the stock footage houses accountable to our contracts and to copyright law, it won’t be cheap and will take a few years.

Let me know if you have any experience with this.
Thanks
Russ

Russ