Hi

Today 123Rf has reviewed all my files the old ones and the new ones that I uploaded 5 days ago. Amazing.

Until august I was selling in P5 about 2 or 3 clips a month. No sales in september. But in August I started to sell those 2 or 3 in SS. I look also the view stats at P5 and I had almost no new views or clip on bins. For test purposes i changed the price of some clips to just 10 dollars and still no sales and no new views at those clips. On january 2016 i will start to upload only in one or two marketplaces where prices are good for me and there are some sales.

Hi,

Last month I decided to upload a batch of footage (about 30 clips) to different platforms to see how long takes the review time.

In spite that this time can vary depending on many variables and on the planets and stars line up here is my experience:

1- Fotolia: 1 day
2- ShutterStock: 3 days
3- Depositphotos: 4-5 days 
4- IStockPhoto: 9 days
5- Videoblocks: 13 days
6- 123RF: 16 days
7- Pixtastock: 18 days
8- Pond5: 20 days
9- Dissolve : 20 days

In my opinion review time is very important in order to start monetizing content, where in ShutterStock or Fotolia you can do it very soon, others your content can get even obsolete before it's online.

What do you think?

Hi, this is just a personal opinion, and I would like to kindly invite you to write yours.

I started to upload microstock footage to many platforms almost a year ago (SS, P5, FT, DISSOLVE, istock, DP, ME, 123RF, etc). After that year I decided to stop uploading to the ones that doesn't give any sale.

But I have a case where there are purchases and I will stop uploading to, istock. I think they have to improve a lot to start becoming a good place for non exclusive footage contributors.

This are the main reasons:


1- Only 15% of commission for each sale. Impossible to reach more that 9$ for a single purchase.

2- Video format, they only allow PhotoJPEG codec in .mov format. This format isn't the most common in microstock and the file size it's slightly bigger. For instance: 10mb file in H264 mp4 format becomes a 45Mb file in PhotoJPEG .mov format. You have to do the encoding two times, one for istock, and another one for the other platforms.

3- Exclusive vs non exclusive, regards SS or Pond5 where there is no exclusivity, in istock if you are non exclusive, it's harder to appear up in the searches and make sales.

4- The are working to admit 4K content at istock. Right now they allow 4K upload, but the 4K version only goes somewhere at Getty Images and not at istock where you can only purchase 1080p clips.

5- Low sales. I've made only 4 in 6 months while in SS for instance i've made 20 in the same period.

What do you think?

Hi, this is maybe and off topic question regarding stock footage selling.

But I think maybe some of you have been in the same situation,

A production company from another country wants to use some clips i've shoot and are part of a video I have in vimeo, some of those clips I have them on sale in microstock, others not.

They want a direct licensing of the videos and ask for a price for each clip. They will use it in a indy film.

Due that depending of the marketplace, there are many prices that can go from 240$ to 45$ (or less), what would we your asking price for lets say 20 clips (4 to 5 seconds each?).

I know that is a hard question and has lots of points of view and possibilities, but could be interesting just in case any of us needs to sell directly footage clips in the future.

Thanks in advance

Hi Captain,

I've been shooting footage for agencies this year and in my opinion the bests agencies in terms of sales, price and approval times are those, from best to worst:

Shutterstock (Great sales, harder rate of approval, approval time excellent)
Pond5 (Bad approval time, good sales, you can put your own price for each clip)
123RF (Low sales but well priced, easy tagging)
Fotolia (Low sales and low price, the faster approval time, some times while I'm tagging the are approving real time)
istockphoto (Poor sales, poor price, clip format very restrictive and different for other agencies so yo need to export only for this platform, approval time too long)

Depositphotos, ultimatstock, dissolve, Kozzi, Pixtastock : Here I have no sales so far so I'm also thinking to stop uploading.

Videoblocks: I've started to upload (up to 200 clips) but after 1 week still waiting for approval, they communicate well and told me that they are over saturated of reviews so will take longer than usual.

Now I have about 400 clips in total, some agencies have only 100 others near 400. Non of them exclusive.

Last thing: Nimia, this is a special platform but very interesting. I've made only 1 sale in 8 months (84$ of commission not too bad) but it's a great platform for footage backup and well priced. You can, upload and download the footage, and also select which footage goes to their store and which you want only to backup. Have a look it's interesting.

PD: I don't have any relation with any of those agencies.

This is my personal experience, hope it helps,

Kind regards

Hi to everyone

My name is Ruben, in twitter @lostintv , and I just want to say hello and give you a short brief about me.

I started selling microstock footage on January this year 2015. I'm currently selling stock footage in pond5, SS, fotolia, 123rf, depositphotos, ultimatstock,istock and Pixtastock. My portfolio is about 350 clips so far, and i'm working hard to continue providing footage at the best quality and creativity as I can. I'm a rookie stock footage filmmaker.

I'm here to learn, share and help to other contributors.

Glad to be here.

Kind regards

Ruben