In 2022, I made $5,114.90 by selling stock footage online.
And in this video, I want to show you how I did it,
as well as tell you exactly how you can do it, too.
So this video is not clickbait, and I don't want it to be some weird flex
either where I talk about how great I'm doing and how much money I'm making.
No, I want this to be an encouragement to you.
I actually got the idea for this video from my friend Eric Flo Berg,
who makes pretty much yearly videos at this point
where he talks about his income as a creative filmmaker and photographer.
And I love how he really pulls back the curtain and talks
hard numbers in an industry where we as
creatives are oftentimes very quiet about our income.
So thanks for the inspiration, Eric, and I really hope
that for you watching this, this video inspires you too.
Now let's talk about stock footage and I'm going to break down where these 5000
plus dollars came from, as well as where I would recommend starting.
If you are thinking about getting into creating stock footage.
Starting off, you have Pond five.
This is one of the longer running stock footage websites
and they have literally millions upon millions of video clips on their platform.
And with the 279 videos that I've uploaded in 2022,
I made a whopping $72.54 from them.
Hey, that's 72 tacos.
Fun fact, by the way, because money is oftentimes really ethereal.
I like to think of it in terms
of how many dollar tacos I could get, because $72 doesn't sound like much.
But if you suddenly think about being able to eat 72 tacos,
suddenly, that's a pretty good deal.
Also, keep in mind that I have filmed a lot more than those 279 clips.
I just need to upload more of them to Pond five, which is something
that I'm definitely gonna be working on in 2023.
Moving on now, we have more numbers to talk about here.
The next site that I made some money from was Adobe Stock.
Adobe Stock is also one of the most popular stock footage
sites out there, and they integrate well with Premiere Pro, which is great.
They're a cool site with Adobe Stock.
I pulled in $97.30 this year with the majority of that income
coming from one clip, which was a time lapse that I filmed of the Dallas skyline.
Pretty cool.
That's 97 more tacos.
Next up, let's talk about where I made a lot more money and that is from
livestock.
Livestock is a stock footage site that is aimed mostly at licensing
Christian themed stock footage to churches, etc..
But what's cool is that they accept pretty much any kind of stock footage.
So I upload everything that I film there to.
With livestock, I pulled in a very respectable $403.11 this year.
Yes, hundreds of tacos.
So right now we're sitting at a grand total of $572.95.
And we only have one more site to talk about.
And I'm sure you're probably doing the math in your head thinking, wait a second.
Matt said he made over
$5,000 selling stock footage and he's only talking about 500 so far.
So what site paid him 4500 bucks?
I'm so glad you asked.
The final site where I made the bulk majority
of my stock footage income was art grid.
If that name sounds familiar, I'm sure you've heard me talk about Art List
many times, which is one of my favorite music licensing websites.
Well, art list is to music.
What art grid is to stock footage.
So just like how you can sign up for art list and download unlimited songs
for a monthly fee.
You can also sign up for art grid and download
an unlimited amount of stock footage for a monthly fee too.
And where do you think art Grid gets their stock footage?
Filmmakers like me that have uploaded many hundreds of clips for them to license.
I then get paid when those clips get downloaded and I can
then use the money that I'm paid to buy dollars tacos.
4541 tacos to be precise.
Side note I actually made $5,046 from art grade, but they withhold 10%
for taxes, which is why I'm saying here that I only made 4541 in $0.95.
Anyways, that is where my stock footage income came from in 2022.
And while I think that numbers like this are useful to consider, especially
because nobody really talks about them and everybody keeps things really private.
As I said at the start of this video, you can do something
exactly like this and make this kind of income selling stock footage.
And so in the rest of this video, I need to tell you how to do that.
To start, if you want to sell stock footage, you need footage to sell.
The good news is that if you're already a filmmaker, let's say a wedding
filmmaker, for example, you already have all of the equipment that you need.
You have a camera and you have lenses.
You don't even need
audio gear because the vast majority of stock footage is uploaded without sound.
Now, with this gear, you may be thinking that you need to go out
and purposefully film videos that you can sell as stock footage.
People oftentimes think of really cringeworthy clips of business executives
and board meetings shaking hands or an office worker typing in a cubicle.
But instead of that,
I want you to think about everything that you're already filming.
If you are filming a wedding, think about all of the B-roll and ambient
footage that you film of wedding venues, churches, nature, drone shots, etc.
You've already filmed all that.
Heck, remember that one clip
I had of the Dallas skyline that made me money on Adobe Stock?
I filmed that clip at a wedding reception that I was filming.
There was a lull in the dancing, so I took a few minutes to set up a tripod,
pointed out the window of the skyscraper that the reception was occurring in,
and I was able to film that time lapse in
about 5 minutes, as well as several others that I now have for sale online.
So quit thinking that you need to go out and film
brand new things exclusively to sell a stock video.
You can do that by all means, but instead
I want you to think about everything that you've already filmed.
You could also be monetizing.
And as you're filming new things like weddings or corporate
or commercial videos,
think about any footage that you're getting that you could sell in the future.
Next, once you have some footage filmed, cut it up into smaller clips
that are one minute or less in length
and you're now ready to upload it and sell it as stock footage.
But where should you upload it?
I recommend that you do what I've done, and that is take the shotgun approach
where you upload to as many stock footage sites as you can,
knowing that most of the sites are not going to pay you much.
But also being aware that over time these smaller amounts will add up.
Sites like Adobe Stock and Porn five do not require you to apply
and will accept pretty much anybody
as long as you have footage to sell through them.
So you could literally start uploading there today.
Alternatively, though, with sites like livestock and art grid,
this is where things start to get tricky because these sites require you to apply
and be accepted.
And in order for you to apply, these sites, want to know that you already
have a large library of stock footage that you are ready to upload to them.
Because of that,
I would definitely recommend starting with Pond five and Adobe Stock.
Take the time to create an account or if you edit your videos in Premiere Pro.
Congratulations.
You already have an account for Adobe Stock
and you're now basically ready to go once you upload your clips point five
and Adobe will check them for their quality.
And as long as they don't have any major mistakes or issues,
they should be accepted and published on the site for anyone to purchase.
Now, to be clear, I would not be expecting to make much money starting out.
I'm sorry.
Selling stock footage is not a get rich quick scheme.
And just like most businesses,
you are going to need to commit to working on this for years
before you really start to see substantial income from it.
For context, I've been creating my library of stock footage for about a decade now,
but it wasn't really until about a year and a half ago that I really began
going all in on trying to see what kind of income
I could make by uploading stock footage to multiple sites, as well
as applying to other stock video sites that are more difficult to get into.
When I only had a few hundred
clips uploaded, I was making a few hundred bucks per year at most.
But I think that I'm really starting to see a snowball effect begin
where the income is starting to grow exponentially because at the time
of making this video, I have a little over a thousand clips that I saw online.
And like I said, I made over $5,000 this past year.
Now I realize that you may be thinking that $5,000
is not that much in the grand scheme of having a business.
But if you consider that stock footage is an asset that you're
creating for yourself where you literally filmed this footage once,
edit it once, upload, uploaded once, and from then on it's
sitting on the virtual store shelves of these stock footage sites
ready to be purchased and downloaded for the foreseeable future.
If we're talking passive income, selling stock footage is pretty passive.
With that, thank you so much for watching.
Can you do me a favor now and leave me a comment down below
and let me know
if you would like to see other videos about creating and selling stock video.
I have some ideas, but I don't necessarily want to make them
if you don't want to watch them.
So let me know if this is interesting to you.
Also down below, near that comment box, I'm
going to leave a link to my edit videos.
Like a pro guide,
This guide is going to walk you through some of the biggest techniques
that took me years to learn as a video editor,
and I think they're going to be super helpful to you
regardless of whether you're editing stock footage or anything else
for that matter.
This guy is completely free.
You can download at the link down below.
Thanks so much for watching.
I'm Mat Johnson,
your bearded friend in stock filmmaking and all other video for that matter.
Have a great day.