Sales at Shutterstock in September are very low... not even close to last year when we had much less footage online. Something is wrong at their side, that's sure.
Looks like a closed system of contributors where they only have best clips online. Maybe it wont hurt sending them own portfolio if anything suits their taste.
It depends who their buyers are... i doubt that they sell clips for low prices. It would be interesting to have clips on their site to run some statistics.
Investing a lot of money in to heavy machinery while you don't even try doing unique footage with what you already have? Isn't that a bit naive?
Sorry, don't get me wrong, but with your video portfolio you have online, I doubt you'll get in to RM. You'll do even worse with exclusive on Getty/iStock.
Just a hint... it's not the equipment that does valuable footage, but the person behind it. And judging on what you already have, it would be more suitable to invest in high quality sets and make great footage with equipment you have, sell it on two or three RF agencies and enjoy the income.
Sorry if we destroyed your plans. It's still your decision on what you want to do.
Pond5 has completely died since May for me (for footage), and I actually panicked and LOWERED my prices... No change so far. I sold regular HD clips for $150, and they were NOT unique or very hard to film.
I think P5 has lost a lot of momentum on the footage side of things, but my music sales are as good as ever and I price much higher than the competition. Maybe my music is more unique but I definitely make more with higher prices.
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On the other hand though, speaking from a buyer's perspective, I need footage sometimes to make simple music videos. I would never ever pay $99 for a single clip as an independent, no chance. I think that's the market Envato is good for - the independent YouTube market who would never even dream of paying $1,000 for a collection of clips.
Interesting thought under the line... Making a music video would cost more thousands of dollars, at least (professionals would charge more than ten thousands). If clips are $99 on stock sites, it would actually be cheaper to make it from stock footage. If we are talking about hobby music videos, sure it's expensive... event $6 would be too much. Just my thought, because I work in both part of video production industry.
And what would you do, if other stock sites start to lower your clips from $79 to $49, because you are under-pricing clips elsewhere? It happened to me.
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