The decision to begin uploading my footage to stock footage websites came at a time when no one was really sure about where the world was headed. I wanted a way to pass the time while staying home and “Socially Distancing” that still felt like I was being productive and had the promise of providing an additional revenue stream for myself and my family. To be honest, when I first started uploading footage to MotionArray.com, I really had no expectations whatsoever, but it felt good to be doing something that I had set aside for so long and secretly hoped that it would result in some revenue coming in.
I spent a lot of time combing through all of my footage to find shots that would be usable as stock footage and after much trial and error found a great system of exporting R3D Trims from REDCINE-X and importing into Final Cut Pro-X for organization. This system allows me to organize my footage and since I’m working with the RAW files inside of FCP I can easily re-export different formats and resolutions as needed.
After all the time organizing, exporting, uploading, naming, tagging, adding descriptions, and submitting, I somewhat moved on to other projects and forgot about all of the footage that had been uploaded. Since I had no preconceptions about how this would go, I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t receive ANY emails about my clips being downloaded or licensed and so I essentially forgot about them for a few weeks.
Imagine my surprise then, when I happened to think about the stock footage endeavor I had embarked on and decided to check my MotionArray account and found that I had about $75 worth of unpaid royalties due to the downloads of my clips! Yes, I know $75 isn’t going to allow me to retire any time soon, but I was amazed that I had ACTUALLY had people want to download my footage AND I had gotten paid for it. The world is my oyster!
Although I’m not yet at the point of being independently wealthy from my stock footage sales, it is nice to see that it is a viable avenue for making some extra income, especially in a time when there is a lot of uncertainty in the world. This new project not only allows me to pass the time when I’m a little slow, but it should hopefully give me a revenue stream for years to come AND prove helpful to someone out there needing my clips.
