Anyone Sell video's here?

jjneff

I am a professional stock video producer and want to sell my work on Smugmug. I know you can not add a watermark but how small can you make the preview? I know you can block the right click so if the preview is small enough I am not to worried about people ripping it off via screen recording. I would love to see some examples where people are selling video here! Thanks

Evolvephoto

Hey Jeff, I used to allow fairly large viewing of videos through smugmug for an event photo/video company I own. I found that I got a lot of views, but not a lot of orders. Many people use the site like YouTube. Instead of purchasing, they just give their friends and family the web link and watch it online. For stock video it may be a whole other story. This season, we have decided not to offer videos through smugmug. We do allow people to order through email or over the phone. It's a lot less work and more profit. The exception for me was that we will continue to post HD Video for Prepaid Clients (weddings, recitals etc) where I've already sold it and now just allow the client to use the site for sharing/downloading videos for no charge. This seems to be a much better use for what I'm doing. If there was a way to watermark videos in the same way we do photos through smugmug, I would consider going back to selling them directly from the site. Unfortunately I don't believe keeping the player size small is a huge deterrent to abusing the service in the same way a watermark would be. For stock video, I would assume most people would not be willing to purchase something that they can't see a decent high quality sample of. Other stock video sites like shutterstock have a great method of being able to see full length high quality sample footage with a watermark overlay. Until smugmug can do the same, it won't be an ideal forum for that kind of thing imo.

jjneff

That makes a lot of sense. Currently I am sticking with sites like ShutterStock, Alamy.... And the like. When I am ready to launch my own site as well. I will probably not use Smugmug for the reasons you listed. Thank-you for your thoughtful response

Jay_Z

Hey Jeff, I was looking at old messages regarding video and wondered if you started offering stock video ... through SmugMug or elsewhere? I've looked more at offering stock video since I get a lot of interest in my stock photos and the video work that I do. I'd rather not sell through Shutterstock, Pond5, etc and at least be able to create a catalog on SmugMug. Wondering if you set this up, how it works for you, etc. Yes, I wish they could watermark, that's one thing I'm trying to figure out - I don't want to pull 100s of clips into Premiere Pro to add this and export, then upload - if I can go direct from Lightroom to SmugMug that would be ideal. Thinking of posting a small (fairly useless size) video without a watermark.

Gary752

There is a way to watermark a video. By using an overlay you can add a text or graphic watermark. The nice thing about this is once it has been rendered and exported, there is no way for the end user to remove it.

sdeweddings

aynone uses filmstock? is pretty new, started last year.

whats everyone's experience with stock website? I want to get into it as well, not sure which site is the best.

Gary752

Check out www.videoblock.com Also if you need audio, they have a site at www.audioblock.com