Sending footage to stock agencies can be a daunting task. Beside the amount of data to transfer, filling out file description on each website is time consuming.
Even with a high speed internet, uploading one movie to several agencies can take few hours. If you have a slow connection then it can became very challenging. One way to get around that is to use PicWorkFlow, a web distribution platform. I also use stocksubmitter, a stand alone application to speed up the uploading process.
Files preparation
Open Stocksubmitter to browse your video folder and it will generate automatically for each movie a 1920*1080 or 1280*720 image (with the corresponding file name). You can then enter manually title, description and keywords.
Distribution
Use your favorite ftp software to upload movies and their corresponding images to PicworkFlow.
Once the transfer is over, log into Picworflow platform to import your movies (it take only few seconds) and distribute them in few clicks to your agencies.
Finalizing uploads
For Shutterstock, Pond5 and ClipCanvas, Picworflow developed a firefox plugin with which you can fill out the movie informations in one click.
If the plugin is not available for your agency, you will have to use the copy/paste protocol from stocksubmitter and submit your footage.
In addition to save time, this workflow will allow you to have a good record of your footage on your computer as corresponding images have title, description and keywords embedded on them.
PicWorkflow (referral link included) service is not free but very affordable: it costs 1 US cent to upload 22MB of data hence for a clip of 200MB it will cost you around 10c. Taking into account the time you save and the selling price of a clip it is worth it. 100c are giving away every month allowing you to upload 2 clips to 5 channels for free so you can test the platform.
My best stock agencies in 2013 were Pond5 and Shutterstock. I put my referral links below if you want to sign up with them. Cheers!
Submit Footage Clips to Shutterstock and make $$$!
