The Microstock Blog

Looking at the Microstock Industry

Mid June Update

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Well, a little after mid-June, but better late than never…

The “summer slump” has officially arrived and sales are down all over the place.  I’ve had zero sales at ClipCanvas and MediaStock this month.  ShutterStock sales are down 80% from last month.  And Pond5 sales are down nearly 30% from last month.  The only bright spot is RevoStock.  They updated their pricing to be much more flexible and I was finally able to match pricing from Pond5, so I’ve sold a little more than double the number of clips over last month.  Of course, RevoStock sales had almost no place to go but up… Still it’s good news during another dismal summer.

Speaking of dismal summer, my air conditioning woes continue.  The room where my computer is located was added on to the house, so it has inadequate ventilation.  And it ends up being the hottest room in the house during the summer.  Unfortunately, we’ve got a full house, so I can’t move my computer any place else.  Which means, for now, I can’t work on my computer during the day.  So, I either have to find other things to do, or work at night and sleep during the day.

Although I can’t run my computer much during the day, I have managed to create about 30 new animations so far this month.  And I’ve been all over Kansas shooting video with my T2i (which I absolutely love).  I’m still not getting as much new stuff online as I should, however.

I am hoping to take a short trip to Houston, TX in the next few days to visit family.  If I am able to make the trip I also plan on meeting a good friend and taking a day or two to drive over to Louisiana and get some footage of the oil spill mess.  If that doesn’t work out, then I’ll be working on some new people clips I’ve been planning for a couple of months.

Oh! I took a DSLR camera class for newbies at a local portrait studio in town.  I didn’t learn much that was new, but what I did learn was very valuable.  And some of the things I “already knew” were confirmed by the expert.  So I’m feeling much better about myself.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t a hands on class, but the studio is putting together a small hands on class for July which I’m thinking about taking.

I’m working on a new blog entry for iSyndica which is a follow-up to my initial T2i/550D review.  Now that I have practical experience with it, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned.  I also promised them a review of an iPhone app or two which I haven’t completed yet, so I’m going to try and get those done as soon as I get back from my trip.

RevoStock making a run for the title

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It looks like RevoStock really wants to sell more footage, which is great news!

Within a few days of Pond5 adding support for embedded meta-data, RevoStock also added support.  Both sites were working on it at the same time, Pond5 just beat them to the punch…  But it was far from a knock out and it looks like RevoStock is up for a title fight with some recent changes.

RevoStock now accepts clips encoded in H.264, QuickTime Animation and QuickTime PNG codecs.  Which means that you can upload H.264 .MOV clips directly from cameras that support it, or re-encode in H.264 which provides a LOT more data for buyers.  And the Animation/PNG codecs allow you to include embedded alpha information without having to create a separate luma matte for your animation or chroma key clips.

Also announced today were new options in Flex pricing that allow for more competitive pricing.  The upper limit on pricing was raised to $65 in order to attract more higher end artists and the lower limit on pricing was set at $5 (SD clips, HD clips are $10) to allow for more competitive pricing in the huge animation market where prices on other sites are typically much lower than the previous $30 floor.  It’s still not “create your own price”, but it’s still much better and should allow RevoStock to compete better with Pond5 and ClipCanvas (who also recently updated their pricing).  The new pricing takes effect on May 17th.

The only major feature now missing from RevoStock is optional automatic resizing of clips.  If you want to sell different sizes, you still  have to do all the encoding work yourself.