It`s not happening, please advice

1. Do you think is something wrong with my videos?
2. Could they have enough relevance for someone to buy them?
3. Ho to increase their visibility on the website?
4. How many videos should I have on Pond5 if I would expect to earn 2 to 300$ per month?

Thank you for reading and for your advice!
Warm Regards
A

1. Yes, I mean come on there is some thing wrong with everyone's videos. Your not a professional cinematographer... Do you have the best camera in the world? I mean come on now.. No offense intended at all, not even a little. Don't worry there is some thing wrong with all of my work too.

2. Any thing can have enough relevance for someone to buy it if it fits there need. I had a sale on Pond5 to one of the twilight movies, and (see 1.) You basically are in this weird conundrum with relevance right, some thing is relevant to someone all the time. Just about any thing is fitting someones needs in the world, but the likely hood of putting the two together is tough. Also while I believe that to the fullest, I also think that shots need to show them they need it. Think about it like this some companies back in the start didn't want us to touch up shots at all, or do any thing with them in post really. Now it's like throw every thing you have at it, make it new and different. Cover a new subject, shoot things that have not been shot, re-cover things that have been shot but in a new and different way. Or and with a new and different actor or actress.. With a different lens! Or camera or......

Some of the shots that I have enjoyed doing the most have no sales, some of the stuff I shot and almost didn't upload got great sales.. I mean, time lapse clouds don't do them unless your going to do some thing really new with it in post right. Try to get more, try and think about different ways you can shoot some thing.

3, Increasing visibility on the website, hmm, yeah there is no real way to do that, not one I know of unfortunately. I mean you can market yourself via twitter and social media and have your own site and use P5 as your sales platform. So there are tools to help you go and market yourself better available here. If there is any one thing that could get you better visibility it's keywording. You need to make sure you have a good amount of them, and that they are relevant to where it was shot, how it was shot, all of that stuff. At the same time don't spam up the words, or use Don Dispaine as a keyword, he hates that.. (inside joke sorry)

4. There is no saying how many clips you need to have to make a certain amount of money. I would say it is more like a what are you willing to put into this to make that much money, right? I mean at some point are you like ehhh, this isn't my thing, this isn't my passion! I am done. I quit! If you really love doing video and this is your passion then I think your in a good place and just keep working on it, and trying your best to get better all the time. Just create all the time, and enjoy it and make it fun for you too.. I guess what I am trying to get across is, stock footage really isn't a get rich quick thing at all. Also you really can't predict sales all the time, it's hard money to depend on. If your passionate about it though, and this is the type of career you want then push for it. Like being a comic or some other career where you kind of get your butt handed to you for a long time, but you learn from it and blah blah blah, maybe happy ending maybe you find out your not all that funny really and have to go back to doing some other job, but you keep at it in you spare time, and then it's the life time feel good movie later on...

Also there are good months and bad months in this business, we are coming out of an industry lull time. It's a fun time when allot of us question, will the sales come back? Oh man! Am I going to have to go do this instead of being a full time stock footage type person!!! NOOOOOO!!! Should I have done more during the summer?? Is this why it's slow!???!??!? Then normally like magic it just seems to pick back up again.

Regards to you as well, and I hope it is the right advice. I did my best, kind of said what I would have wanted to tell me early on.

B

Good question, and good response bryanbush. Very encouraging. I too, like AnaPond have had little to no success. I'm not giving up though.

Same here, and problem is that there isn't visitors at all in our pages, so it is not any big suprise that no sell ;)

Don't expect to get rich quick from anything related to stock income, treat it as a back burner - also you have less than 100 clips in your Portfolio, build it up, use variety and keep at it. There will be periods of good sales and then it will feel like a dessert for 6 months. It's at those points where you need to dig deep and keep going.

Good luck!