Selling Stock Footage

Andrew Clark

Andrew Clark

Active member
Hello -

I'm interested to see if anyone is selling (HD) stock footage shot with their HVX200 and are you having success in doing so?

If so, are you:

- Doing this thru your own website
- Using a stock house (i.e., RevoStock, Artbeats, Corbis)

And maybe you could enlighten us on:

- Compensation
- Clip info. (i.e., typical length of clip and is audio included; stereo or 5.1)
- Formats (such as 1080/60i, 24p, 720/24p,...etc.)
- Marketplace (i.e., is the demand high for scenics, people, sports, etc...)
- Any legal issues such as copyright, releases, contracts, etc..

Appreciate any input / advice from those who are doing this as I am looking into venturing into this area as well.

Thanks,

AC
 
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I am surprised no one has responded to this post. Seems like it is difficult to actually make money on selling stock footage through the stock houses. A months ago I set up an account with istock to sell some graphics (http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&userID=459109)
and so far I have sold 16 clips...my take on this...26 dollars. Obviously, the better your clips are, the more money you can make...but then again, I see amazing clips from guys like disjecta on sites like istockphoto and revostock and they are shown to have very few downloads by paying customers (most have zero). And the idea of getting only a few bucks per download is discouraging.

The internet stock footage marketplace is young, I guess. I see loads of istockphoto sellers of still photos with downloads in the thousands! Maybe the video clip marketplace will get better. But it is tough to compete with Digitl Juice selling 9000 clip collections for $249. (granted it is SD, but still)

I recommend you make a DVD collection and sell it yourself on ebay. I did this a few years ago with a collection of animations and I sold scores of them for between $20 and $59 dollars. Seems like an easy way to do it - and easy for people like me who are addicted to buying stock media off ebay...
 
We use stock footage rarely, stock stills a little more frequently, but when you need it, it's great.
I remember the days when you realy had to plan, make selections and wait a few days to get the tape!

Now with the internet and broadband, I'm seeing this as a decent market. It sounds like the prices are way too low though! ;)
We have tons of Digital Juice's stuff. They are a great bunch.
 
Hi Andrew. We would love to have you over at RevoStock! :)

Over at Revo, we offer our producers a 60% royalty rate if they go exclusive with us and a 45% for non-exclusive. So for a $35 HD file you would get paid $21. Now Revo is relatively young (we opened in May) so we obviously don't have the huge stock photo following of iStock, however we are growing quickly and our users appreciate our love for video. Also we offer stock music as well which is a major plus as we are the only pro community based stock footage site that does so.

As we tell our Producers, how many sales they will make depends on 2 factors. The first being the amount of footage they upload. If you only upload 1 or 2 clips you can't expect much. It also depends on the number of users on our site. As before since we are new, this number is still growing. However, many of our users are reporting increases of sales by 50% from month to month.

So, check us out. We would love to have you on board.
 
Well I can tell you that over the years i have sold thousands of dollars worth of SD stock but as with any footage that you are trying to sell you have to have some amazing stuff or something that sets your stuff apart from the rest of the world. For years i complied SD 4x3 fire footage (www.wildfirestockfootage.com) and have sold to just about every major network out there including a feature film entitled " Fire Fight " with Steve Baldwin. Now as far as HD goes and the broadband etc... It is getting easier to upload your own stuff and sell your own stuff. I am compiling a bunch on recently shot HD footage all aquired on the HVX200 to a website that I have called www.10HD.com were i sell all 10 second clips. Just an Idea but is there any money in it you ask? That is a good question that I have yet to answer but i believe there are nitch markets out there with specialty footage that may send more traffic in your direction... that starts with making a name for yourself so when so and so is looking for a particular type of footage they think of you.... i.e. fire footage.

So I hope this may have helped

JK
 
Well, I guess I'm a hardass about my stock footage.
I'm signed with two stock agencies as well as selling on my own. I have contracts with both agencies to sell my footage as rights managed only. I don't do anything royalty free.
I'm not sure if I can talk about my deal with one agency since it's a custom contract but the other one if a three year contract and 50% commission. Sure some houses give you more commission but the houses I'm with have sold clips for thousands of dollars and not tens of dollars.

Like Jim said, you have to have some great footage in order to make some decent money.

Like revostock said, the more clips you have in the system, the greater your return. I usually submit a couple hundred at a time just because I hate having to keyword more than that and I usually only send out a 300 gig hard drive to the houses.
 
DC,

Nice audio bite... LOL... Hey seriously though I kind of gave up on fires and have moved into mostly outdoor video production. The feature film "FireFight" was a fluke as I was contacted by Artsy Fartsy pictures DP Paul Ziller and he said he was working on a new process in up conversion for film and asked for my fire tornado sequence and thought that it was some of the best wildfire footage around at the time so i sent him my reel and the rest is history. I ended up with 2 credits one for my old company www.montanadv.com and the other my name... Sound crazy but its true.

The cool thing about selling any stock footage is to only give out a specified licensing agreement ( you own it so you can write up what you want to include in any contract ). I always ask for a copy of the finished program. You would be surprised how many shows you can accumulate over the years... Like Nova " Fire wars", History Channels " Fire on the Mountain " etc...These fires as crazy as they are to shoot have landed me other jobs like shooting the 1 hour special for National Geographic Ultimate Explorer " Women Smoke Jumpers" here in Missoula, Montana with Richard Neil from Adventure Pictures in San Francisco.

I would refer you to read Post magazines July 2006 issue by Iain Blair entitled "HD STOCK " it touches on quite a few of the original questions in this post. This would be a great resource for anyone interested in selling their stock footage. If you are interested in reading about my fire footage work... I was featured in Post magazines October 2001 Issue in an article entitled "Guerrilla Independents" under Montana DV.

This is my longest post but stock footage is my game... Its what I have been very successful at over the years... Hope this article helps...

JK
 
Jim Kinsey said:
stock footage is my game... Its what I have been very successful at over the years... Hope this article helps...

JK
Click to expand...
I have sold 36 clips on istock so far. My total take..about fifty dollars. Cha-ching! Something tells me I ain't putting my kids thru college that way. if you don't mind my asking..how much money is 'very successful?' - I mean.. do you make over $25k a year? Over $100k? A million a year? What kind of range between a good year and bad is there? I understand totally that it is none of my business..but there is not a lot of info out there on the industry..
 
Interestingly enough I sell non stock stock footage :P. I am lucky in some respects here in Tokyo insofar as there arent too many English speaking people to call on and have full understanding of your needs. And this is Tokyo. So I shoot stock shots on request. The files are never for resale by me and the client obtains all rights. Of course this is a little different in approach and is reflected in cost also. You wont get too many $35 files from me unless I happen to have it in the library and I actually still hold the rights to it. But of course what I am talking about here is verging on production shots. So I market this as one man one camera to full production shots and anywhere in between.
 
Stock footage sales

Stock footage sales

PMGmedia,

Sorry for the late response. I am busy cutting another DVD for distribution. As far as the money goes something like... high end shots $ 90.00 US a sec. and the low end stuff minimum $25.00 US a sec (minimum buy 30 seconds). So I have made as much as $3,000 dollars for a sequence of DV. But mind you this is a sequence of a fire tornado 300 feet in length that devastates a mountain in three minutes. As far as per year income.... Thats depends on what the market wants and what they need. I have made as much as 30K plus one year only to do several thousand the next. So I wouldn't bet the farm on it. It is strictly footage that no one else has or can get and you can name your price... and it helps to build a good reputation for whatever it is you good at... Stock footage wise. :thumbup:

JK
 
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