Help selling footage

Lochalsh_Production 3 Aug 2017 21:21
I'm new to selling footage on Pond5 and wanted to know any tips in how to sell clips or finding people interested in aerial shots. I feel I have decent clips (nothing worth hundreds) but even with some clips I sell for free, nothing is added to the cart or even looked at. Any help would be appreciated and would like some feedback on the clips to improve my filming techniques.
musicaustralia 5 Aug 2017 09:25
Best advice I can give is go for as much variety as possible to increase the chances of being found. Tag your footage with a good number of keywords and describe it well. If you are on Twitter tweet and join the stock footage groups on Facebook. If you have a website then also promote this.
Also check the best sellers and see what people are buying.
Be ruthless and only upload your best material and continue to develop your craft.
If i was to be brutally honest with you I would say load up your car and take some trips around your area and beyond where the scenery is different and try to get more variety and stretch your skills.
I'm personally making a few music sales by doing all of the above but have a long way to go.
Hope that helps.
sebolla74 5 Aug 2017 10:20
Buyers don't look for footage on facebook or twitter...Promoting on social media doesn't help at all...it brings in only new contributors not buyers...spend this time to shoot more clips instead wasting time posting and promoting...
steveandlizdonaldson 5 Aug 2017 13:10
My only "two cents" here is that the horizon on your aerial shots is often not level. If the horizon shows, it should be absolutely horizontal. You should check out why this is. That can turn off buyers. On my quadcopter, I know that I have to have it absolutely level when I turn it on -- I'm not sure what is going on with yours but you should try to figure it out. The countryside where you live is beautiful, so my advice is to keep at it!
RekindlePhoto 5 Aug 2017 19:04
Totally agree with Sebolla. Unless you have a very large number of TV, movie, advertising production buyers as friends on Facebook, or Twitter then it does no good. Even big buyers are doing a keyword / description search within a large agency portfolio to compare and make decision on what to buy. Now if you are one of the few world renowned stock shooters who have a very large following then to let everyone know of a new shoot then it can or might be helpful. They really don't have time to look at individual clips that you may show on social media. If you are using something like YouTube and have it open to the entire world public and can somehow make it go viral then possibility.

Best thing is to brag on social media to your friends and family. More important is get great equipment and look for unique shots. Don't spend time on ducks on a pond, timelapse clouds, or other areas where there are already millions of similar competition. Ten years ago you had a few thousand quality clips in competition, now it's tens of millions. You are already in competition with tens of millions of already shot subjects. So what makes your work stand out and have subject matter that is desirable to mass media and marketing. Sales will be very slow for a long time at this point. Don't expect to quit your day job anytime soon. Get a few thousand and then sales will become more regular. Remember that most top agency are recieving thousands or tens of thousands of new clips each week. Good luck.