My experience with these smaller stock video agencies is that you tend to get a few sales within the first few weeks of uploading with for example a 100 video portfolio but the sales quickly dry up if you stop uploading. I have found this to be the case with clipcanvas.com (apart from the initial 2 sales within the first couple of months) and after a year of no sales i asked to be removed from their site. After that i tried clipdealer.com and i got more initial sales from them because i believe they are older and therefore have a bigger presence in the market but again the sales are not coming anymore - sound familiar?

My theory is that their search engines prioritises your newest uploads for a set period and then after that you go down in the rankings. Personally i dont like this type technique that they impoly within search engines. Other sites such as pond5, fotolia and istockphoto sales seem to keep coming and i didnt experience any tailing off with my sales with those sites based upon my frequency of uploading. It would appear that the smaller sites use a 'dangling the carrot' method to keep enticing you to upload.

Based upon my theory maybe it might be a good idea to upload in stages, maybe like 50 in one go just to get your presence in there and then 10 every week after that. In the grand scheme of things im not sure if they would want to you upload in that manner as a bigger portfolio for them in a shorter space of time would be more beneficial to them, but if their search engine treats you liek that then they leave me with no choice.

Of course these are just my theories based upon my own personal experience so others may well have a different opinion depending on their type/quality and size of their port.

I have also just finished uploading my entire port to canstockphoto and will report back with findings in the coming months. My inital findings are that their keywording and submitting process looks quick but insta-fail with the inability to choose thumbnail pic of your video, which for CG videographers such as myself can be the make or break of sales.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to add your experiences with the smaller agencies.