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My experience after 1 year selling stock footage

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videostocker:
Hi people,

Let me share my experience after 1 year selling stock footage in microstock platforms.

I started on January 2015 selling content at Shutterstock, Pond5 and 123RF, adding Fotolia, iStock, Nimia, Dissolve, DepositPhotos, Videoblocks and Motionelements in the following months. In May I had all platforms selling my footage. At the end of 2015 I had 300 clips average in each platform with the same clips (more or less).

I've made sales in all platforms except Motionelements where I have no sales so far.

I created an excel file, where I wrote each sale in monthly basis (Number of sales and $ amount)

And here are my results: (All are not exclusive)

Agency       Clips sold   Earnings percentage
Pond5           29 sales     35% of sales
Shutterstock  22 sales     31%
Videoblocks   3 sales       10%
Nimia            1 sale        7%
123rf             6 sales      6%
Fotolia           8 sales      4%
iStock            9 sales       3%
Depositphotos 1 sale        2%
Dissolve         2 sales       2%

So, my conclusion, based in this experience is that, for maximize profit and time only Pond5, Shutterstock and Videoblocks* deserve the upload. The others, during 2015, were not profitable.

*Videoblocks are too new so I'm not sure it they will be profitable in 2016 due to the amount of people uploading.

As you can see, istock and Fotolia are the worst in terms of number of clips sold vs profit. They are a waste of time. Maybe if you play the exclusive role with those, results will be really different.

This 2016 Nimia has lower prices so maybe this 2016 they will be also at the bottom of the list (or not, maybe they will sell more due to the new prices, who knows)

This year I started to upload only to Pond5, Shutterstock and Videoblocks, as they are by far and based in my experience the most convenient places to sell clips nowadays.

Lana:
Happy Anniversary! :)

Thank you for your stats and congrats on a good start!

Just wanted to ask a few things for a better understanding:
Are you selling only HD or 4k too?
How long did it take you before getting the first sale at SS and Pond?

I'm also weighing on whether to start doing footage..

videostocker:

--- Quote from: lanabyko on February 24, 2016, 07:08 ---Happy Anniversary! :)

Thank you for your stats and congrats on a good start!

Just wanted to ask a few things for a better understanding:
Are you selling only HD or 4k too?
How long did it take you before getting the first sale at SS and Pond?

I'm also weighing on whether to start doing footage..

--- End quote ---

Well, I started with HD only, but today I've most 4K in my portfolio. But, I still sell most HD than 4K.

My first sale came on SS in just 15 days after approval. Not much sales in the first 2-3 months. But of course in the beginning I had less clips for sale than at the end of the year.

ACS:
I started to make video clips for stock in 2013 and my experience is very similar to yours. As you mentioned, P5, SS, VB and (according to my stats) Fotolia are the agencies worth to submit nowadays and most likely they cover %75 of all the revenue made from videostock market.

cobalt:
Thank you for sharing. It will be interesting to see how videoblocks does this year and if Fotolia sees an upswing by being integrated into adobe.

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