How to sell stock footage, step by step

How to sell stock footage: the eight steps

Selling footage through an agency means licensing it: the agency sells the right to use your clip, and pays you a share of each license. The work splits into eight steps; each one below gives the agency rules that apply and links to the page that covers them.

If a term is new to you (royalty-free, editorial, LOG, Rec. 709), the stock footage glossary defines it in a line.

1. Choose your agencies

Shutterstock, Adobe Stock and Pond5 all take video directly from contributors, and all three publish their rules. They differ on pay, exclusivity and AI. iStock and other outlets are compared in the best sites to sell stock footage.

Exclusivity is the first real decision. Pond5 pays 40% instead of 30% if you are exclusive, but Shutterstock notes that content you place exclusively elsewhere cannot be sold on any other platform. Staying non-exclusive lets you offer the same clips on several sites while you learn what sells. What the agencies say buyers ask for is in what stock footage sells, and the pay side is weighed in is selling stock footage worth it.

2. Open contributor accounts

Sign up as a contributor at each agency you picked, then set up three details early, one per agency:

• Shutterstock asks for a tax form. Without it, 90 days after the first reminder, the Upload and Submit buttons are disabled until it is filed. The forms and who files which are in the Shutterstock tax form guide.
• Adobe Stock uses your Adobe ID to sign in to the Contributor Portal. SFTP is offered to qualified accounts only; Upload, then Learn More, shows if yours qualifies.
• Pond5 uploads by FTP with a separate FTP password of at least eight characters, set under Account, then FTP. U.S. contributors who earn $600 or more in a calendar year must file a Form W-9.

Tax rules depend on your country. For your own situation, ask a tax adviser or your tax administration.

3. Shoot and export to spec

A clip that misses a technical rule is refused however good the picture. The safest export is the one that fits all three agencies at once:

On set, the quality standards come down to focus, exposure, stable camera moves and a shutter that matches the frame rate: see how to shoot stock footage. Before you upload, the free video spec checker reads a clip's settings and compares them with each agency's list.

4. Name files and gather releases

File names trip up first uploads more than they should. Shutterstock accepts only a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and the underscore. Pond5 refuses spaces, dashes, accents and special characters. Adobe's CSV stops the Filename column at 30 characters, extension included. A short name such as harbor_sunrise_01.mov passes all three. More in how to name stock footage files.

Then sort each clip into commercial or editorial. A commercial clip with a recognizable person needs a model release, one per person, signed by a parent or guardian for a minor. Footage shot on private property needs a property release signed by the owner. Editorial clips need no release but cannot be used commercially, and only Shutterstock and Pond5 take them: Adobe "doesn't accept traditional editorial content at this time". See editorial stock footage for the caption formats.

5. Write titles and keywords

Buyers find clips through search, and each agency reads your words differently. The same clip needs three versions of its text:

Describe only what the clip shows. Shutterstock counts keywords that do not describe the content as spam, and Adobe lists irrelevant keywords among its refusal reasons. Leave out brand names in commercial clips. The method is in how to keyword stock footage, the numbers side by side in keyword limits by agency, and the free title and keyword checker tests a draft against all three.

6. Upload and submit

Upload first, then add metadata by hand or with a CSV whose file names match the uploaded clips. At Shutterstock, clips sent by FTPS can take up to 72 hours to appear, and uploaded clips not submitted within 21 days are deleted. Each agency has its own walk-through: Shutterstock, Adobe Stock and Pond5. The CSV columns are in the Shutterstock CSV and Adobe Stock CSV guides.

7. Pass review

Every submitted clip goes through review before it is offered to buyers.

• Shutterstock mixes automated and human checks, and review times vary by asset. A clip that meets the legal and metadata rules but falls short on quality may be accepted for data licensing only. Newly approved clips can take up to 72 hours to show in your portfolio.
• Adobe Stock moderators look at technical quality, intellectual property, commercial value, metadata and how distinct the clip is from the collection. Adobe publishes no review time.
• Pond5 curators review files in order of submission and email the result: accepted, returned for edits, or rejected with a reason. An accepted clip can take up to 24 hours to appear.

A refusal names a reason. Read it, then check the other clips from the same shoot for that problem before you upload them. The reasons, agency by agency, are in why stock footage gets rejected, and what each agency says about timing in how long review takes.

8. Get paid

No agency publishes a price per video license for contributors, so a share is not an amount. To turn these rules into a yearly estimate from your own numbers, use the stock footage earnings calculator; the detail of each payout system is in stock footage earnings.