Whether you're an entrepreneur or an established production company, selling video footage online involves the same principles:
Pick the business model you are comfortable with
Acquire great stock
Use proven footage library software solutions.
Give the buyer more than they expect.
Later, you can expand your business model or launch new brands to cater for different market sectors. But the business is tough enough - so start with what you know and what you are comfortable with.
Standard library business models.
The standard business models, whether its image, motion, music etc are as follows.
Niche / Specialist
Generalist
Microsite
Within each of these business models you have a choice of how you acquire and market the product. Putting acquistion aside for the moment you can sell product
Royalty free
Rights Managed
Simple licence
Discounted
Rights managed and royalty free footage and video.
Rights management for footage libraries is still evolving and, so far, it is less complex than rights management for Image libraries.
However, rights management calculations can be different for each footage library - it's one way of keeping your competitive edge.
Market Positioning
Once you have decided on the business model and licensing type you then need to work out your market position. For example, in the race to establish market dominance several business models are being tried. Most follow the image library business models; so to sell video online in volume, companies are following the "microsite" model pioneered three years ago by istockphoto.com - who later morphed their model to istockvideo.com.
Istockphoto.com was purchased by industry leader Gettyimages.com after Istock came out of nowhere in 2006 taking all of Getty's and Corbis traffic and changing the world as they knew it.
The lesson to be learned, if you want to sell low cost video online via the microsite business model, are that you'll need:
Many thousands of
Good quality video clips
Ready for sale
At low cost
So how do you achieve this? Most businesses will use one or more of the following
Co-distribution deals with other video libraries or content owners
Buy content from video libraries or content owners
Split commission with User Generated Content (U.G.C.) providors.
Once you have decided that microsite is the route for you, you'll need microsite footage library software; you may need an API module plug-in for shared or co-distribution and you may want a UGC module too. Depending on your planned business size there are 2 flavours of UGC - UGC lite if you have a single editor or an enterprise version for several editors to review new content simultaneously.
So what features should a good footage library possess?
Additional e-marketing features
Admin generated discount codes for fixed amounts or percentages
Admin restriction of publishing privileges
Advanced integrated SEO tools
Advanced search for keywords
Add metadata to clips or to a category of clips
Preview pages
Automatic extract/upload IPTC data
Batch upload entire categories
Browser based admin - monitor your library with easy
Clip bin
CMS integration
Complete content management system
Corporate account financial management
Corporate accounts with credit limits, automatic invoicing and statements
Credit card payment
Display multi-media content - video, audio, images
Dynamic registration system - user profile updates
Dynamic DVD management
End-users can select the number of Images displayed per page
FTP upload
Full user guide and support available
Generate and print customizable sales reports on the fly
Global pricing - set standard pricing across an entire category
Hosted under your own domain name
Hyperlinked keywords - allows keyword search with one click
Import embedded metadata to create hyperlinked field search
Instant digital downloads - fully automatic if enabled
Integration with existing website
Intelligent search engine
Invoice feature which allows admin or end users to print out Invoices
Keyword search logs display searched keywords and frequency
Latest updates desk
Locality recognition to set pricing
Lost password facility
Measure clip popularity/ user behavior
Meta tag management, clip, page and category
Multi-lingual editions
My account - full user purchase history
New User account sign up
One click database output for advertising in online portals
Optional advanced campaign management plug in
Reporting and statistics
Royalty Free pricing
*RSS photo feeds
Send Invoice to customer and admin upon order completion
Send media to a Friend or send an entire clip bin
Shipping
Support for GBP, USD and EUR currencies
Supports PayPal, Protx and WorldPay payment gateways
Unique Design and Development
Unlimited product types can be created
Unlimited users/flexible access rights
Upload from DVD or hard drive
Use as standalone business website
Various file formats
Windows, Mac, Linux compatible
Add metadata to clips or to a category of clips
Additional e-marketing features
Admin generated discount codes for fixed amounts or percentages
Admin restriction of publishing privileges
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