Video stock sales in November 2019

A change this month – as I am very unlikely to get any new video sales today I decided to write about my experiences in selling video clips as stock in November and how I have seen the trend over the years. First off – November was actually pretty good – not the best month ever, but at $487, it is not bad at all!

As you can see, I have had 3 superb months in the past, but this November result is continuing a trend that is showing a steady rise over the years. I now have 472 video files on Shutterstock (they take both commercial and editorial video) although I added 18 this month. I’ve finally got round to uploading the videos I took on a river cruise on the Douro river in Portugal and have maybe another 10 to add. I have 307 on Adobe stock – just commercial ones there, then 514 on Pond5 and finally 99 on iStock. I no the prices there are often poor (although not always), but it is unlikely that a buyer with an iStock or Getty account would search elsewhere for the perfect video and so if my clip isn’t there they will buy someone else’s clip. There is a good argument that this eventually leads to a devaluation of prices everywhere, but the impact of me not submitting to iStock is zero – sorry, but that is just the way I see it!

So what drove the sales this month? First off, a great $105 sales on Shutterstock of a macro shot of rotating gold coins. I used my trusty Edelkrone Surface One (now called the Dolly One). I’ve written about this before – most recently when talking about my home studio – and it is great for adding interest to macro or close up shots. In this example, I placed a board on top of the DollyOne and placed the coins there and set the device to rotate on the spot with my camera on a tripod.

This – like all my recent uploads – is a 4K video. While on the subject of the DollyOne, I also sold a range of videos on Shutterstock about the Opioid crisis in the USA and the various lawsuits that are developing. There were 6 different clips that sold during the month for a total of $108 (about $18 each on average), and most of these had the DollyOne slowly tracking around the subject so that you get both rotation around the focus point plus the background shifts as well to reveal the US flag:

Shutterstock made up $317 of my $487 earnings on video this month – a great performance and next in line is a simple tripod based shot of the bow of a boat sailing across the ocean, which sold for $41:

Not to be left out, Pond5 sold one from a similar position on a much stormier day for $44 (and a second for $10):

This one also sold on Pond5 for $10:

The message with these is that successful video clips don’t need to be complicated. Yes, I needed to be on the ship to take these, but how about taking simple shots of driving along interesting roads near your home? This one taken with a GoPro mounted on a rubber suction holder on the hood (bonnet) of a rental car in Maui:

This was only HD (as that version of the GoPro only had stabilized video at the HD resolution) but it sold on Adobe Stock for $56.

I’ll be back in a day or two with my full earnings report. In the meantime, if you missed the opportunity to get the Jixipix painting plugins in their last sale, they are on sale again at 40% off. The code to use is BLK40 to get the discount. I’ve written about these Jixipix plugins in the past – I enjoy using them as relaxation, and they also sell as stock photos from time to time!