Virtuosity & the Art of MicroStock
Maybe as we age we really do slow down… or perhaps we actually do grow more patient with age… or perhaps it has nothing to do with age and I’m just a naturally patient person. I bet you have no idea what I’m talking about by now.
I read a post in a forum on a MicroStock site where the contributor was announcing that he was quitting because he had sold nothing. Not a single video clip. The rest of us who post about our sales are all liars because obviously nobody buys anything since they didn’t buy any of his clips.
So, I clicked on his name to view his portfolio… he had only been on the site for 4 months. He had 23 video clips. And I won’t comment on how badly his stuff sucked… oh wait, I guess I did comment on it.
So here begins the lesson: The number one key to success in the MicroStock industry is PATIENCE. This industry will frustrate the heck out of you. Rejections for reasons that make no sense, review times that linger into “months”, and long periods of time between sales are all a major reality. If you are easily prone to frustration, this is not the industry for you. If you don’t have patience then you’ll find your blood pressure fluctuating from day to day.
How could he possibly expect to have sold anything when he only had 23 videos out of “hundreds of thousands”? Did you ever actually try to find a needle in a haystack? It’s quite difficult, no matter what Bugs Bunny tells you. When the industry was much younger and there were far fewer items online at the various MicroStock sites it was very easy to stand out with just a small amount of clips. But those days are long gone.
Those of you just starting out in the MicroStock biz have a HUGE mountain to climb and when you get to the top, you’ll find an even bigger ocean to swim on the other side before you get to where you want to be. To start selling your work has to not only be outstanding in quality, but you need a minimum of 500 to 1000 items for download on a site before you can expect to even sell 1 or 2 items a month reguarly.
Of course, there is a shortcut… A very difficult shortcut… UNIQUE. Photograph or video something that is truly unique. A tough job because it seems like everything has been photographed or filmed. But there are things still off the beaten path that haven’t made their way into MicroStock. You just have to make the effort to find them. But if you can’t find them, then upload, upload, upload and when you’re done upload some more. It’s about volume folks. Without it, your work simply won’t get noticed.
If you are out there shooting clouds, flowers, traffic, wind mills, farm animals, pets, etc… don’t have any expectation of selling any of it. Just be happy on the rare occasion that it does. And if you just got into the business within the last 6 months or so, LEARN PATIENCE.
The World of Stock Footage
Many photographers are starting to look towards expanding their portfolio into the world of Stock Footage. Indeed, cameras like the Canon 7D, Canon 5D Mark II, Nikon D5000 and Pentax K-X have blurred the lines between still and motion picture taking.
Microstock Footage is not a new industry, however. It’s actually been around almost as long as Microstock Photography has and has matured over the past several years. Most of the leading stock footage artists are not still photographers (although some of the leading still photographers have been in the footage game for some time).
As with stock photography, the days of just getting any old camera, pointing it at stuff and recording are over. Today’s stock footage buyers are sophisticated with many blockbuster hollywood movies even buying from microstock agencies. They expect quality. Fortunately, if you’re successful in stock photography then you already have a leg up on the average person trying to hawk their home video, because you already plan your shoots, use high end equipment and have a solid grasp of high production value.
Before you just dive right in, do a little research first. While many of the stock agencies you submit stills to also accept footage (iStock, Fotolia, Catooh etc..) not all agencies are created equal. The revenue sharing ranges from very low to rediculously high. Most of the highest paying sites are new with very few paying customers, so they are using 60%, 70% and higher rates to attract artists. 70% is great, but 70% of nothing is still nothing. So many new sites aren’t worth the effort unless you want to get in on the ground floor of a startup agency.
Also, watch out for exclusivity. None of the sites the sites that offer exclusivity (and thus a higher payout rate) sell enough footage to make up for lost revenue at other sites. If you haven’t been in the footage game for at least several years, it’s not worth going exclusive at any one agency. The bigger agencies tend to cater to different classes of buyers, so a down month at one agency could be an up month at another.
If you are just starting out, patience is the key. Most of the big agencies already have hundreds of thousands of clips online. So your initial upload of 10, 50 or 100 video clips is like adding a drop of water to a full bath tub. Just like stock photography, constantly building your portfolio is the key to success.
So, start shooting great footage and get it online!
Time to start submitting your Stock Footage
Okay, you’ve been shooting video for some time and you’ve picked your best shots to submit. What do you do next?
If you are submitting to more than one site, you want to create a single clip that meets the needs of all sites. So, keep your clip length to a maximum of 20 seconds. If your clip was shot on a tripod, make sure that you don’t have any shudder due to wind or bumping the camera. So, stabilize your footage. Even if you have a really great camera (if you do, I don’t like you already) you want to check your footage for noise and run it through a noise reduction filter. Finally, encode your Quicktime .MOV file using the PhotoJPEG codec at around 85% to 90% quality. PhotoJPEG isn’t great, but it’s accepted by everyone right now.
If you did not read my previous blogs and you have clips of cloudscapes, ocean waves, traffic, etc. that you want to submit, then do something with them to make them unique. Stylize them… Black and white, vignette, colorize it… Anything to make it distinct so that it stands out. A lot of sites suggest that you upload the footage with no changes and let the buyer add post effects, but that was when there wasn’t so much footage available. The artists who are top sellers today are using products like Magic Bullet Looks or Boris Effects to stylize their footage. They’re adding lens blur in post, not through the camera lens itself.
After you have uploaded your clips to iSyndica, just fill out the title, description and keywods for each clip. Try to keep your keywords to around 25 or 35 as many sites are reducing the number of keywords you can add. After you’ve filled out the info for all your clips, export the data from iSyndica so that you can just “cut and paste” the info when you submit to each site. Just head to the Syndicate tab now and start the uploading.
The average time for review on most sites is about 3 days. But there are a couple that are much longer (one site is close to 60 days behind in reviews).
BE PATIENT. On some sites even after your clips are approved, it takes them a while to show up in searches. And if you are just starting out, there may be a lot of buyers who “view” your clip, but don’t buy because you are new with a small portfolio. So BE PATIENT. As your continue to submit and your portfolio grows your sales will start. You just have to BE PATIENT. (Yes, Davie wants a cracker.)
Get Your Phone to Making Footage
Sometimes in your life you just happen to be at the right place at the right time. That happened to me yesterday… twice.
It was another hot day in Topeka and I needed to get out of the house. So I loaded up my camera equipment in the car and went for a drive. By pure luck, I ran across the police just starting to surround a house. I quickly pulled over and got as closed as I could with my camera. It was a hostage situation which lasted almost two hours with a stand-off between police and a guy who was holding “himself” hostage. About 50 to 60 officers including S.W.A.T. and some heavy duty armored vehicles eventually had the whole area surrounded. While I was there only one other news agency sent a camera and the person using it was, um, well, an idiot. So I ended up with the only decent footage and photos of the whole thing. During the whole crisis I was able to position myself in the best place for taking pictures because I was able to listen to what the police were doing on using a 99 cent police scanner app I got for my iPhone.
When it was over, I decided to head to a local park to get some photos and footage. While there, I was listening to the police scanner app and heard about a train wreck. I quickly raced to the scene and again was first on the scene with a camera. A reporter from the paper showed up with a little “point & shoot” camera and eventually a news crew showed up over an hour later when it was getting dark. So again, I got the only decent photos and video of the accident scene. I was able to get there quickly thanks to the GPS in my iPhone.
I never leave my home without my camera. I don’t always load up my good tripod and other accessories, but I always have my camera and two primary lenses. And the silent hero yesterday was my iPhone. Without my police scanner app and GPS things would have turned out way differently.
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