Why it’s high time to start building your own stock footage platform? And how to do that?

And why you should do that NOW?

Stock footage is an exciting opportunity for doing what you love while generating a steady income. More and more video producers, filmmakers, camera operators from all around the world are looking into starting their stock footage journey.

The stock business really looks like a very interesting business for many of us. Why? Because, as creators, we feel a constant urge to bring our creativity to life. We’d do everything to go outside, take our favorite equipment and shoot. With stock footage, you can experiment, no one is telling what to do (client or producer) and give full power to your creative freedom.

Your talent and great ideas make you stand out from the crowd. The more interesting content you create, the higher the chances that after uploading your work on the stock footage marketplace, your content will be found and licensed by a potential customer.

Stock footage is an enormous market. Shutterstock itself has 13M video clips (for 2018, with 9M clips in 2017) in their catalog, and the volume is rapidly growing year over year. Video production needs are constantly growing. We have more and more high-definition screens everywhere. Demand for the content will never stop.

The questions that I often get from video creators:

• how to start?
• is it too late to the game?
• which platform (Shutterstock, Adobe, Getty, Pond5, etc) is the best?
• what kind of content I should create?

Here’s my answer:

Stock footage market looks much different, especially for artists, than it used to be 5–10 years ago. Video gear is much more affordable, more and more talented people produce great content, the Internet speed is no longer a problem, and more and more people are looking to build a stable on-line “passive” income. On one hand, it looks like it is a little bit late to this game, as you can find almost any kind of content in the stock libraries. On the other hand, the whole business is a little bit more mature and there is a lot of interesting data and insight available regarding the type of content that’s needed.

Which stock footage platform I would choose to start building my portfolio? Actually, I wouldn’t join any of them. I would build my own. Why? There’s plenty of reasons. Creating and growing a portfolio is a long term investment. At least it is how I understand it.

The last few years brought quite dramatic changes in the way how agencies operate and how they perceive the value of the video content. For example, some agencies, license footage for less than $5 per clip (where you get ~$1.50 per sales) or modify the clip price behind your back. In some others, you’re not able to withdraw your footage yourself. Very often you can’t distinguish your portfolio and your precious work is put in the same bag together with very mediocre stuff. All agencies can change their terms and conditions anytime (pricing, % cut) or remove your portfolio whenever they want. Some people will say, that all those things don’t matter as long as those agencies are bringing clients and revenue. That’s true, but for me, it’s not enough.

So, what’s my current take on this?

In my opinion, the only way to “survive” and thrive is to build your own platform and specialize in your own niche. Start to build your own portfolio with content that’s unique for you. What it could be? Maybe you live in an amazing place in the world and you have access to beautiful and specific landscapes or you’re passionate about wildlife or you can’t sleep at night and love to shoot the night sky time lapses? Or maybe you’re into technology and have amazing future-proof 8K footage? All those things good starting points for building your own interesting portfolio.

I see more and more creators, filmmakers, influencers who start their own platforms for licensing their content. They market their work through social media (Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest) and invite customers directly to their own business!

Something that doesn’t stop to amaze me is the creators who market their content which they uploaded to big stock footage platforms! Why would you advertise a platform that takes 50% of your sale, while you could send it to your own business and start creating relations with your customers?

Here are great examples of artists creating their own platforms:

Emeric’s Timelapse — https://www.emerictimelapse.com — very talented timelapse photographer is licensing his work created all over California. He also sells his online timelapse courses.

Vadim Tereshchenko Hyperlapse Production — https://www.vlvart.net/ — amazing hyperlapses from Los Angeles.

Video Miami — http://www.video.miami/stock-video-collections — a vast library of stock footage from South Florida.

Nowadays, it’s easier and easier to build your online presence and there are more and more very useful platforms for building your own online businesses. However, there are still not many choices if you’re looking to start selling digital products and especially videos.

Here are a few ways to do it.

1. InstaClip — a brand new platform created for stock footage producers and filmmakers who wants to quickly license their footage directly to their customers. It literally takes 30 seconds to upload your video clip and share a short link with your potential buyer. The platform automatically generates a watermarked preview file, so the transaction is quick, easy and secure. You can also connect your own domain, so your store would get this professional touch. And what’s most important, you need 0 technological skills to use this platform.
2. Wordpress + Easy Digital Downloads/WooCommerce — Wordpress gives you unlimited options to build your online presence and together with amazing plugins, like Easy Digital Downloads (or WooCommerce), it’s possible to create your own stock footage store. However, any time you decide to go with Wordpress, you have to take care of many things like buying and managing hosting service, installing and maintaining Wordpress, configuring EDD, setting up your payment gateway and more… which might be intimidating in the beginning. It can be a good option for more advanced technological creators who want to have full control of everything, which might be a crucial thing for some people. Just have in mind that EDD doesn’t fully support video features (like encoding or watermarks) and you’d still have to take care of this yourself.
3. Shopify — Shopify is taking over the Internet by storm! And I’m not surprised, it’s an amazing, easy to use, and very robust tool to create e-commerce stores. It also allows selling digital goods, like photos and videos. With Shopify, you don’t have to worry about servers and other technical issues, it’s quite easy to set up payments and all the other important things. There’s only one downside if you’re thinking about creating your stock footage portfolio on Shopify. It doesn’t support basic video features like watermarks. You’d have to do it manually.
4. Wix / Squarespace — Both platforms are amazing tools for building websites with pretty promising e-commerce features. You should do your own research and see for yourself if that’s enough for you to start. Both platforms are growing very fast and adding new functions each day.

Thanks for reading! And… don’t forget to join the Badass Stock Footage Shooters Group on FaceBook.