Perhaps you are just thinking about where to spend your time and effort with Stock footage photography. Or perhaps you have your collection of stock footage and now you’re ready to upload your collection. The big question is which stock footage sites earn money and are easy to work with? There are so many options for agencies these days and it takes time to get your collection on-line. How can you make the most of your time and effort?
The Stock Footage Masterclass Online Course
The question is what other stock footage agencies pay out?
Pond5
Once you’re ready to start making some passive income with your videos Pond5 is a great start. Their site was easy to use, upload, and their review turn around is pretty fast. I’ve got my largest collection of videos here and I get paid from this site. I’ve created the “Stock Footage Masterclass Online Course” if you want to learn complete process on getting started.
Shutterstock
Shutterstock is the big player in the industry for many years. They are publicly traded and based in New York. In 2020 they made a huge change to contributor payouts that do not benefit the contributors. See my video on this topic. Because I choose a non-exclusive model on other sites I can still sell direct.
Istockphoto ESP Getty
Their web platform is confusing and picky, but they have become a number 4 or 5 earner where I’ve uploaded some of my aerial footage. Their site only takes .mov files and it is tricky to understand their royalty reports, but my small portfolio on here does perform.
Dissolve
This Canadian company occasionally brings me a few sales every month for my portfolio of 5000. They are still around, but I’m not spending too much of my efforts with them these days.
Motion elements — Easy to work with
This Singapore company got me into the Stock footage game. I’m thankful for that. They approached me to provide a hard drive with Asian collection and the rest is history. Their website is very easy to work with in terms of uploading and using the CSV files. I can use the same CSV files for Pond5 on their site. That is super convenient, and a time-saver. They surprise me once in a while with a few good sales.
Storyblocks formerly VideoBlocks (inactive)
These guys are no long earning me income and no longer taking uploads. I think they went inactive. I actually subscribe to them as a customer. They offer a good selection of music, stock footage, and sound effects for my youtube videos.
AdobeStock
Adobestock became a force a few years ago and with the tight integration with branding and resources as well as the Adobe Cloud Creative Ecosystem which includes Adobe Premiere, photoshop, and more. They produce occasional sales.
BlackBox
Blackbox is a Canadian syndication platform for creatives. Currently it allows stock footage video contributors to distribute their clips on the top agencies (shutterstock, pond 5, adobe stock, and video stock)and also allow you to outsource different stock footage workflow and automatically allocate revenue across agencies. Very interesting. Not my top earner, but last year I invested some time and effort to get 1000 clips online through blackbox as a test. Blackbox allows you to workaround the new shutterstock payout structure.
License your own Footage Directly
I’m seeing diminishing returns with stock agencies especially in 2020 meaning that a larger higher quality collection is not translating into higher earnings. I think now more than ever you have to take ownership for marketing your own footage if you have a collection of 2000 or more high quality clips. I know this is a tall task for some contributors. You need some marketing and technical knowledge to pull this off. In 2019 I believe you need to hedge your bets by getting your footage on the top agencies and licensing your own footage. For all the information that shares you the workflows, CSV’s, ins and outs of the agencies, as well as arming you with the business and marketing knowledge to license your footage directly you can check out my online course on how to sell direct.
Pixta
The exciting news is that I got my first sale with Pixta with 700 clips currently online. Getting that first sale with a new agency is exciting to me as that is some real-life validation that what you are doing works.
This stock footage site based in Shibuya Tokyo Japan approached me recently to start contributing to their site. It took me a while to figure out their system, but it’s been efficient to get my files over to their their Japan FTP site. They also have a US FTP site. They accept CSV files; however it takes some data massaging and manual work to get it in their format. I have since visited their office and met the team. They were very friendly and accepting of the feedback of gave for improvements. They also gave me tips on what to shoot in Tokyo.
Visiting the Pixta team in Shibuya Tokyo
Stock footage is still an early industry and video will remain a viable medium and form of content for decades to come. It will be interesting to see how this industry shapes out in the next decade.