- In this video we're talking about
how you can make more money selling stock footage
by really focusing in on your keywords.
It's a very important aspect
when it comes to selling stock footage
and I teamed up with my friend Victoria
who does a ton of stock footage keywording
and metadata creation to give you some tips
on how you can do better stock footage keywords
so that you can get more sales.
(whooshing)
So when it comes to stock footage
there's a few things you need to think about.
One is you need to have awesome footage,
but that's not the only way
that you make money selling stock footage
because if you have awesome footage,
you need to get people to see it.
So no matter what kind of footage that you have,
if people don't see it, they're not gonna buy it.
So I would say that it's more important to have
good keywording, good titling, good descriptions
than it is to have the most amazing shots possible.
If someone has better keywording skills than you
then there's a chance that
they're gonna be able to put their clips ahead of yours
and get theirs purchased over your clips.
So this is the same kind of thing
that I talk about all the time when it comes to YouTube.
You need to focus on your metadata
so that people could actually find your videos
here on the platform because if you create awesome videos,
but you don't know how to get people to see your video
and click on it, then what's the point of making the video?
So stock footage is the same type of thing.
You got to focus on your metadata.
You really gotta
think about how someone is gonna find that clip
because that's how you get sales.
It's not just by creating awesome looking videos.
So guys if you're new here to this channel,
my name is Jeven Dovey.
I do filmmaking tutorials, product reviews.
I've also done a lot of videos around selling stock footage
so make sure you hit
that subscribe button (whooshing)
and turn on those
bell notifications (bell rings)
so you don't miss one of these tutorials.
All right, so I'm gonna let Victoria take it from here
and she's gonna go through five different tips
on how you can do better keywording and better metadata
so that you can get more sales on your stock footage.
- Thanks Jeven, you're exactly right.
Quality keywording is so important
to get your clips in front of the right buyers.
So I'm Victoria Smith and for the last 16 months
I've been working with collaborators from all over the world
on BlackBox to write their metadata,
which in this case, is the keywords, the descriptions,
the category, all that good stuff that we add to the clips
on the agencies.
And so in those last 16 months,
I have keyworded over 6,000 clips
and I have had 265 sales,
which I am thrilled with.
And I noticed that the guidelines,
the best practices for keywording have all been defined.
The agencies gave us really great examples
of exactly what they want.
So I started teaching that
and I started sharing that in the BlackBox community.
So I am thrilled to share my top five tips with you now.
The first of which is keyword for buyer expectations.
So you're keywording for real people.
Take your clip and imagine
that someone needs that exact clip.
What words might they use to find that exact clip?
And you really want to think about that person, that buyer,
and all the variety of words they might use to find it.
And if you're thinking of adding in some keywords
and somebody's not actually gonna search that word,
you can leave it out.
So you want to keyword for what they're gonna expect to see
when they type in those keywords
and you want their expectations
to match up with the reality of your clip.
And the second tip is to avoid inaccurate
or misleading keywords.
So that kind of ties into the first point a bit.
Let's say I'm at the beach and I film the sky
and then I also tag beach.
Technically, I was at the beach,
but when they're just looking at the sky
there's no way to tell that I'm at the beach.
So if there's a buyer who specifically searches beach
and then they just find clouds,
that's gonna be considered misleading for them.
Or if you're at the beach and I tag zoo,
that's just plain inaccurate.
So you want to use accurate precise keywords
that match up with what the buyer is expecting to see
when they search specifically for that keyword.
My third tip, and this is a really big one,
this is my best brainstorming tip,
is to answer the questions who, what, when, where and how
in your keywords for every clip
and then in your descriptions,
you can always answer at least two of these.
Answer as many as possible,
but all five won't apply to every single clip.
So, you can say it's a man,
an adult man, or a young girl in the clip.
That's for the who.
The what, what are we looking at?
Are we looking at a beach?
Are we looking at someone peeling an apple?
What's actually happening?
When, is it daytime, nighttime?
Is it golden hour, sunset?
Where, again is it at the beach?
Is it at the zoo, is it indoors, in a kitchen?
And then how talks about how the clip is shot.
So that might be a close-up.
It might be slow motion.
That's where we get into the technical aspects.
Tip number four is use conceptual keywords.
So in addition to the who, what, when, where, how,
you also want to capture the mood
and emotions that that clip conveys.
That that clip represents.
So if I look at a clip of
a young girl swinging on a swing set,
but maybe it's also joy, youth, innocence, innocent,
there's so many concepts that that can also emote
and we want to capture those as well
because some buyers know that they want
a little girl on a swing
and some buyers say I don't know what I want,
but I know it needs to be pure innocence.
And so by tagging those conceptual keywords as well,
you can catch buyers from across the spectrum
who know that they need your exact clip
because of its content,
as well as the people who know they need
your exact clip because of its emotions and its feelings.
And my fifth and final tip is to customize your keywords
and your descriptions for every clip.
So I hear some people saying that they have
a batch of similar clips, let's say they got 10 clips
that are all pretty similar.
Different angles of a girl swinging on a swing set
and they write their keywords once
and copy and paste across each video
and I'm here to say please don't do that.
So, you really want to pull out the differences
and that's gonna boost your, in each of those clips,
it's gonna boost them all in the SEO rankings
and it's gonna give you a wider possibility
of reaching more buyers.
For example, maybe one clip
conveys different emotions than another.
Maybe one conveys more positive, innocent, joyful emotions,
and maybe in the other one she looks lonely
and she looks sad.
You see that she's in an empty park all by herself
so maybe you can change up the mood keywords.
Maybe one is a slow motion close-up
and another one is a real-time wide shot.
So, I really challenge you
to vary your keywords for every single shot
and of course, have a unique description
for every single clip
and if you notice that you really can't find any differences
between two clips, consider only uploading one
because if you can't find enough differences
to identify them in the keywords,
there might not be enough differences
to justify uploading both.
And when you pick just one,
that one clip has better chances
of rising in the SEO ranking
and better chances of being purchased once and twice
and thrice and continuing to outrank all the other clips,
versus if you had two similar clips that each sell once,
any other clip that sells twice will place above them.
So, those are my five tips
and I have a million more that I'd love to share,
but for this video, I'll keep it brief
and those are my best of the best tips.
- So if you want to learn more about keywording metadata
and all of this, Victoria's put together
a step-by-step course.
It's called how to write killer keywords for stock footage.
I'll put a link down below in the description
to where you guys can check out that full course
and it goes step-by-step through everything
that you need to know
so that you can get more sales and earn more money
from selling stock footage.
Now one of the really cool things
and something that me and Victoria both use
is the software called BlackBox
and what that does is it allows you to share the work.
So Victoria actually does
all of my keywording for my stock footage
and through BlackBox, we're able to split the sales.
This is something that's really cool
and something unique in the stock world.
BlackBox is basically a site where
we upload the clips
and we can spit how much money goes to each person so
you can split 50/50, 30/70.
You could have three people.
So someone could be editing, someone could be shooting,
and someone could be doing all the metadata.
But it creates such an awesome opportunity so that
if you really only want to focus on metadata
and that's what you're good at,
then you can work with people who are shooters
and it automatically splits up the commission
so both of you can earn money
from every sales that comes in.
So guys if you want to learn more about BlackBox
and just more about how to sell stock footage in general,
I'll put a playlist down in the description
that goes through all of my videos on how to sell,
how to get setup on BlackBox
and how to just do stock footage in general.
So guys, I'd love to hear from you down in the comments.
Are you guys currently selling stock footage?
Or is this something new to you
and you're interested in selling stock?
Let me know where you're at
and also let me know what you're struggling with most
when it comes to stock footage.
And last, I just want to say thank you
to Victoria for helping me out with this video.
She's got a ton of knowledge
when it comes to keywording stock footage
and I highly suggest really focusing in on your keywords
and your metadata so you can get more sales.
All right, that's it guys.
I'll see you on the next one.