Okay, great thanks for the feedback. I might just go for it and see what happens to sales.

I've been producing stock video for a few years now and I've been generating a bit of extra income to invest in camera gear. Non of my stock footage features people or talent - but I'm starting to consider hiring models to produce more content.

How many of you out there produce stock footage featuring hired models? and do you find those clips sell better (and make more money) than those with no models or people?

There's a lot to consider.

Permit
Do you need a permit? Int he UK if you want to earn money from your footage you have to have a Permit For Aerial Work (PFAW) which means you have to go on a course and take a test and so on. It can be quite expensive. I imagine it varies a lot form country to country, but it's worth checking first.

Drone
New 4k recording drones are cheap to buy now, but they don't always meet the technical requirements of agencies. The cheaper drones compress the image a lot and can introduce compression artefacts, especially where you have subtle gradation tones. So you need to really research your choice of drone.

Subject and locations
As many have said already it is a very saturated market now. My first sales were actually drone shots back in 2015, but now, despite uploading more, I have had very few drone sales.

Cost
As well as the possible costs for training and permits etc. you will have the additional costs of extra batteries, cards, cases, accessories, spares. It soon adds up. I would say I have just about broken even on my set-up over three years. So not a great return form me. Others may have done better.

If you think you have something unique to bring to the market then I'd say consider it, but otherwise it might just turn into a fun hobby. Which is no bad thing.

When I started out selling video I uploaded all my footage onto seven agencies to see which ones would generate sales. Two years on and I've started dropping a few low performers and now I'm considering dropping even more, maybe bringing it down to just three.

My hope is that it might increase sales on some of my other higher earning (per download) sites.

Has anyone out there been brave enough to drop agencies, that are still performing to some degree, with a hope of pushing sales up elsewhere? And did it work?

I have just over two years worth of sales data now and I was hoping to start seeing a pattern in sales month on month - but actually, it couldn't be more random.

My lowest was Sept 2017 with only $30, whereas my highest was Apr 2018 (same port) at $600. Quite a jump.

I was curious to know just how big a gap most people experience in sales from month to month or if your sales are quite balanced on average?

I clicked the link after seeing the news in the iStock newsletter. Seems legit.

The email address is [email protected] which relates to the link in the email.

Seems a bit fishy to me, but equally if there's money to be had 

Anyone had an email from iStock marked as an ADAGP Payback. It reads as follows:

Dear Contributor,

We are a member of a collecting society in France called ADAGP (Société Des Auteurs dans les Arts Graphiques et Plastiques) and are registered to be part of their payback.

For us to be able to redistribute the royalties they have paid to us for your content, we need you to sign the attached authorisation form.

Please e-sign and complete the document in DocuSign before October 31, 2018.

I removed myself from iStock nearly a year ago. Just wondering if it's possibly a scam.

Really poo. Last July was one of the best. This year... the worst.

Quote from: SuperPhoto on July 19, 2018, 07:37
How could you market your "own" site to make sales? (Whether video or images)

I read (and agree to an extent) about people being upset about other microstock sites cutting commissions, lowering prices, etc, etc... So... how could you market your own site & make sales? (Most recent being videoblocks - which I totally agree is wrong for them to go back on their word. They "promised" 100% commissions "forever" - so they should have figured out a way to stand by that... because by going back on their word - it now means nothing. Nothing to stop them from "deciding" to say go to 25%, 10%, 5% etc in the future. Plus, they were very non-specific in their "marketing" efforts... so in essence, their e-mail is

Videoblocks (in essence/paraphrasing) e-mail: "Thanks for uploading your videos, giving us data on which clips sell - so we could buy those dirt cheap from you and build our membership library and grow that hard. However, we've now decided that we also want to get any marginal revenue left over, and don't feel like paying for clips even more at the dirt cheap prices we did... so - if your clips on our site that we benefit from SEO where you did all the work keyword, titling, etc make a sale, we've decided we are going to take 50% of those earnings too... If we get around to doing some extra marketing for you, great. If not, well, we've decided we just want to take 50%".

So... If you paid for hosting, I think you could get away with about $30/month. (Would you pay it? And would you pay for the extra cost as you scaled up, i.e., storage space/bandwidth, etc, so maybe $100/month for say 5,000 videos? Do you even 5,000 videos?)

That seems to be a logical alternative.

The big sites seem to have economies of scale (which simply means they are so big, they get a lot of traffic/buyers - so it is "easy" for them to make sales). So, you as a little guy with maybe 1,000 videos may find it hard pressed to go head to head with say a site like videoblocks that has 1,000,000 videos in their library.

So... if you did make your own site, upload your own videos, showcase your own work, take care of your own payments, etc... how could you effectively market/find those buyers, to not only cover your costs, but make sales too?

I think this would be a good discussion.

You have to look at it from two perspectives; your product and your buyer. Your product has to stand out in some way to drive people away from the bigger players, you have to be 'super niche' and provide something that cannot be sourced anywhere else. For example if you were staging/producing images like Gregory Crewsdon.

Secondly you have to 'find' your buyers. This is easier if your stuff is unique because they will gradually come to you, but initially it will require a lot of grass-routes marketing to let people know that you're even out there, and believe me (i've been there for independent films) it is a real slog - you have to give your life to it and a fair lump of money as well.

The other hurdle is customer trust. You have to build that through a good secure site with clearly defined licensing options and a website that functions really well on the back end for sales and transactions. And if you're operating globally, keep in mind the cost for sales processing etc..

So, it is possible, but it is also a lot of hard work. In short, it has to become your life.

Anyone else seeing a dramatic fall in video sales this month? The longest I've gone before is five days. Fifteen is unusual.

I did an image search for my own feature film recently only to discover a still from my movie (one I took for publicity) with an Alamy watermark all over it. I've never given permission for this.

I clicked through only to discover it sat alongside 95,000 + other stills from popular and recent big release movies available for sale and download. The uploader is called Moviestore Collection Ltd.

Is this legal? and if so what's the workaround here? I'm confused?

Just an update on the cancellation of my contributor account at iStock.

It has taken 10 days from raising a ticket to the deletion of all my content. So not too painful. I can still access the ESP account, but all of my media has been pulled.

I feel cleansed... 

I started selling footage on Adobe Stock recently and have had a few nice sales. Their review time is super quick and the share of profits seems decent so far (can vary depending on whether the sale is through Adobe CC or Fotolia).

I don't think you can create a new Fotolia account anymore - uploads all go via an Adobe CC account now.

I've also been using Microstockr for the last seven months. It's great and gives you lots of info about your footage sales. The developers are quick to respond to issues and are open to any feedback you give.

Quote from: WorriedIstocker on March 17, 2017, 15:08

Quote from: Wrighty on March 17, 2017, 11:36

Does anyone know how to disable your media for sale using the new ESP portal?

If you mean deactivate, we're no longer allowed to deactivate our own content. You need to pull a support ticket and request that the file be deactivated and give the reason why. They may or may not deactivate the file. Generally, legal concerns are considered a valid reason. Other reasons are at the discretion of istock.

The only way to ensure that your content is deactivated is by closing your account.

Thanks, that's what I suspected. I've raised a ticket to close my account. Let's see how long it takes... 

Sadly that email doesn't work anymore. I got this reply back:

Body of email:
ATTENTION: Thank you for contacting us, but this email address is no longer in use. Please instead:

1.       Sign-in to the Getty Images | iStock contributor system, ESP: https://esp.gettyimages.com 
This is our new system which gives you single sign-in access to ESP, the Contributor Community website and Account Management. 
Once signed in please use the 'Need Help?' link in the top right corner.  From that page you have access to FAQs, links to Account Management if you need to update or access your account information and the ability to contact us if needed.

2.       If you have problems signing in to ESP there is an option to contact us for sign-in help.

We hope this helps you find what you need.

Many thanks,
Contributor Services and Relations

Does anyone know how to disable your media for sale using the new ESP portal?

I'm in the UK, my PayPal balance fluctuates ever day depending on what the GBP is doing against the dollar. One day it went down by 40 dollars, then slowly crept back up. Confusing at first, but makes sense now.

Quote from: sinnlos on March 01, 2017, 09:49
to recap my first two month of microstock, the speculations by some of you were quite right. The first three weeks I had a lot of sales, 81 sales in 3 weeks, then february it dropped to 28 for the whole month (only SS figures). So new pictures are def. pushed.
Overall, I earned 140$ in the first month, and in february only 90$ - (114 and 74$ of those with Video - and I have 2,5 times more photos online than videos)
- concluded from that, putting effort in the photo section isn't worth it at all and I will focus on Video.
Hope to see more sales coming with the last added Videos and doubling my Portfolio...

apart from that - I submit to Adobe stock - SS - VB and ME at the Moment... considering PIXTA and 123rf for Video as well .... any experiences for with footage sales recently there? those agencys have at least a decent pricing... not like VH.

I had a very similar experience. Been uploading 4k video since Sept last year and had great sales for the first three months and then it slowed right down despite adding more content.

I upload to all the main video agencies (Pond5, Shutterstock, 123RF, VideoBlocks, VideoHive, Adobe Stock, iStock and Motion Elements) just to test the water at first. The results have been interesting and I guess it all depends on what type of content you upload. Moving forward I'll be dropping 123RF and Motion Elements (0 sales) and iStock. Shutterstock, VideoBlocks and VideoHive have all seen excellent sales for me with some nice extra ones from Adobe and Pond5.

If you enjoy it, I think it's worth sticking with it, upload to all the sites you can, and then drill down into the figures to see which agencies to focus your efforts on.

Quote from: Noedelhap on February 25, 2017, 09:35
Actually, the time to stop uploading was when you noticed videos are severely underpriced at iStock, and HD and 4K are priced the same.

Yep. We're all learning.

I think when an agency returns your work for resubmission because of  keyword meanings (that'll be disambiguation) so unbearably stupid, it's time to stop uploading.

I'll clarify (disambiguate).

I uploaded several video clips of salt pouring and they were returned for revision. The keywords that required clarification (disambiguation) are... Salt, Pour, Studio Shot, Pouring, Baking, Granulated... etc. etc.

This is totally potty! I'm Getty out of here...

Thanks for the pointers, I'll search harder next time.

I've had footage there for over four months... not a single sale. I've decided to concentrate on other sites and stopped uploading there.

I've had stuff on iStock for a few months and just logged in to check my financials (my desktop App Microstockr reports sales there), but for some reason they are nowhere to be seen under my account page. There's normally a tab I can click for sale data. Anyone else having this problem?

Also, as a separate question, are iStock and Getty the same platform, I seem to upload through Getty, but my footage only appears at iStock. Do you have to upload to both separately...?

Quote from: Mantis on January 23, 2017, 14:15

Quote from: Wrighty on January 23, 2017, 13:19
I've been at this for about five months and had decent stock footage sales on top tier sites. But I'm yet to have a single sale on 123RF.

What are your experiences out there with footage sales on 123RF? and how long do most of you go without sales before deciding to no longer upload content to a site?

For stock footage, no.  I have over 1,000 videos there and rarely get a sale. Maybe I don't have the right content for the customers they target, but it is VERY rare I get a sale.

Thanks for the info - I'll probably just leave my current stuff up there and not bother in the future, unless I start getting bites.