for video, just use the camera you have or even just your mobile phone.

keep it steady on a tripod until you learn to have VERY steady hands. If you do want to invest, try an electric slider, even one for mobile phone is useful.

you don't need fancy gear and lenses, also not really complex software.

Just take 30-60 seconds per scene, ater choose around 20-30 seconds, remember to leave 2-5 seconds for entry or exit, or in case the customers wants to blend several clips together and needs some starting seconds.

remove audio, export in your favorite codec, I use h264, works for me.

The main thing is not to become the total video pro, but to understand what customers buy, once you have that down, maybe invest in better gear.

watch youtube content that is made from stock footage to see how they blend stock clips with their own recordings.

Then gradually you will learn what works.

I also did too little editorial and overall too little video, but I am enjoying it a lot.

If you look at the p5 sales thread, lots of editorial there.

Of course it is biased, because if you have a well selling commercial clip, people will not show that.

https://www.pond5.com/community?thread=8135844&page=1421

The sales reports are depressing but I think this is mostly because of SS mismanaging p5 and perhaps not really marketing it anymore.

I still have to understand the adobe illustrative rules for photo and video but I do see a good longterm opportunity with editorial.

you don't need fancy gear and lenses, also not really complex software.

Just take 30-60 seconds per scene, ater choose around 20-30 seconds, remember to leave 2-5 seconds for entry or exit, or in case the customers wants to blend several clips together and needs some starting seconds.

remove audio, export in your favorite codec, I use h264, works for me.

Many thanks Cobalt, if I learn how to clean the sensor from dust without destroying it I will try. 

Or I will test with my iPhone 15 Plus or my old Sony A7RII ...

What software do you use to cut, remove audio, and export the file?

I use final cut pro, sometimes also the simple photo app from apple.

it is really not difficult, choose a start and end with enough seconds so the customer can make their own crop decisions, turn off audio or export without audio.

I add metatags and description while exporting and many agencies read out metadata.

I record with 30 fps, but export with 25fps.

I have no idea if that is the best way to do it, but customers buy it.

If the light is not so good, maybe indoors, maybe late afternoon, I export as hd instead of 4k.

Most of my sales are still hd.

Just get the files out and then see what happens. I still use my iphone 13 pro, especially outdoors for editorial it is a good camera.

I now have the 16 pro, it has better stabilization, quite amazing actually, but just for simple stuff the old iphone is good enough.


eta

had a little valentine push today, 64dl, 17 ai, 47 camera

last year I sold less files but a lot more ai.

 I guess there is too much competition, I also think more customers choosing to select camera only this year

I supply both, so that is fine with me. certaily motivates me to do more with my camera, even simple flower stuff.

You are very welcome.

Glad to meet someone here who is still interested in making money with stock!

Yesterday I sold a simple clip with flowers for 8 dollars that I uploaded to adobe in 2013

I think as I add more videos, my sales will grow.

And you keep reading how people with around 8k clips make 800-1200 dollars a month just on adobe with video.

Now with istock and ss merging clips will probably also sell better with them, if they merge their customer groups.

So all the best with your video journey.


eta

Yesterday was the best day of the year for me on adobe

71 dl, 19 ai, 52 camera

Valentine is over, so it will drop. But it was a fun day.

pos 1260. 7830files

Well done!

Yes, the copy cats are terrible.

I now do very simple generic titles that will not generate a copy of my file.

Of course this probably lowers the seo ranking of my file.

I just hope it puts of many copy cats and they move on to ports with finished propmting titles.

DaVinci Resolve 19 is free https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

Thanks a lot, I knew the name.

I didn't think there was a free version too.

I hope it's not too complicated. I'll study it 

I really had an unusually good valentines day with 103 dl. It pushed my weekly rank to pos 1000.

Now...the strange thing is....over 80% of sales were camera content, not ai. Last year the majority of my valentine sales were ai. And I was also selling fresh ai valentine cards up until a few days ago.

From reading around ai places I don't see other people reporting this.

But it has me worried for easter, because most of my easter cards are ai. I should do a few shootings with camera content just to be sure. Can anyway use that for other agencies.

You never know what happens in stock. I certainly enjoyed this.

It will be fun for 24h and then next week I will drop to 20-30 sales a day. well...I hope it is not less than that...

Strange. I did have a good amount of valentines content ("ai"), but I think only 1 think sold. Very odd. It's good quality, unique, etc.

Also odd a bit of a slower week, which is/was a little concerning to me.

That is why I am asking, how was it for others?

In my case, the week with Valentine's Day wasn't unusual, but I don't have too much holiday material either - it doesn't work for me somehow.

This week is a bit better with 143DL (25 camera images, 7 videos, 111 ai images), but I'm also producing a lot of AI content at the moment (for the last 3 weeks) (an average of 350 images per day) - it's like �the last AI attempt� to get a small piece of the cake.

Since I completely changed my workflow for AI images (exactly 3 weeks ago), I have created, edited, tagged and finally scaled 9,300 images - the only thing I still do manually is select which images to remove. Otherwise such a quantity would not be feasible.

This is the final attempt to get the account forward, if it doesn't work over mass, then AI is completely overcrowded - last year I lost about 30 weekly downloads, although I had about 13,000 accepted files in 2024.
Now it �has� to go up, otherwise it's no use anymore

PS: and in the meantime I already have the first downloads from the uploads of the last 3 weeks - so it could be that it works.

So you now have 60 000 files?

I am really impressed and very curious about your sales.

I am going the other way, trying to upload less files but hopefully more relevant.

Have you considered ai png? Seems to be very popular and successful.

From my experience (I was able to get a similar workflow, and did that a while back) - doesn't really seem to make much of a difference - in fact - the 'newer' files seem to affect the sales of the 'older' files. You are just 'working harder'. Not sure how the algorithm works, and it would just be speculative - but your much smaller portfolio seems to perform really well. It seems larger portfolios do not necessarily equate to more sales. I'm actually quite surprised - but your portfolio (in terms of downloads) does consistently outperform my downloads, even though I have a much larger portfolio than you.

Never considered the idea of 'lightboxing' - so - perhaps you just have clients that like your particular niche/whatever you are focusing on.

With respect to the PNG - also did that a while back - and - really don't know. Properly keyworded things, had desireable assets, etc, etc. "Some" did "relatively" well (double digits) - whereas the others no sales yet.

So... anyways - bigger portfolios (including significantly bigger ones) does not seem to necessarily equate to more sales/downloads/etc.

Whatever you are doing seems to be working, so I'd suggest just keeping it up.

@Cobalt:
There are currently 54,500 (and about 8,000 left to upload - currently a few hundred a day).
The review queue is limited to 3001, as far as I remember.

AI png I also have around 1,000 images in my portfolio, but only silhouettes - �real� png#s are very time-consuming and I'm not a graphic designer

@SuperpPhoto:
Yes, I was also under the impression that upload quantity doesn't have such a big impact, but the chance of a �good seller� is just bigger with more bandwidth.
It's my last attempt in the field of AI images with large quantities by my standards and a wide range of topics to catch a few �top sellers�.


I'll be using my AI picture account for the last week and then I'll be on holiday - a few days after Iceland to get the camera glowing again

I kind of thought the same thing - but - no, nothing seems to have 'caught on' as a 'best seller' (at least not yet). And I thought the increased diversity of assets would mean more sales in different markets - but - it just seems to 'replace' other stuff that was selling "relatively" well.

Plus - it is strange, it seems like there is almost a 'max # of weekly downloads' per account... like - even though I did a lot more work, the downloads kind of just fluctuate within a certain range, not really going up, and not really going down overall. It seems to have been like that for about the last 1.5 years within the same 'range'.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on February 13, 2025, 13:21

I think that's a very good way to find subjects that are best for both. Specific locations are the main attraction, but that doesn't stop anyone from seeing it as a good generic landscape as well. But either way, specific locations are a good way to attract specific uses. 

Selling generic landscapes is really hard for search rankings.

Being at the top for the keywords: landscape, nature, and outdoor is like winning the lottery ... (although I don't know if there are customers who do such a simple search  )

Good point. I was trying to say, if someone has specific locations, there's always that outside chance that a generic landscape could sell. Lots of maybe, could and wishful thinking. Yes, specific locations, for anything, seems to be a good way to hit the marketplace. Especially since everyone else, can't go to the same places or doesn't live near them.

All that aside, you made me look: 32,780,180 landscape, nature, outdoor stock photos  That's a wow number.  And the winner is...



Really? "Asphalt road square and green mountain with sky clouds natural landscape at sunrise" Not what I would have expected.

2nd is nice, #3 is the lone tree in a field photo, my God cliche, and #4 is a cityscape. #5 is the Sun in the clouds.

Now something like "45 pikes peak iowa stock photos " I'm on the first page, because everyone is. I'm around 10% of the images.

I don't know about the download limits, if that's some kind of set number and there's a way they manipulate sales, I wish my fixed number was higher.  What I get, from week to week, day to day, has wild swings, on Adobe. Speaking of: 11 results for pikes peak iowa in images at Adobe and none are mine. I need to see what's going on with that?