I’ve been in the video business professionally for ~ 30 years now and I’ve shot thousands of hours of video! About 10 years ago, I got turned on to crowd-sourced stock sites such as iStock and began offering some of my clips on these sites. I had a little bit of success with some of my clips but the one thing that griped me most was the egregious percentage of the sale that these sites took. If you did not offer your clips exclusively on their site your take was a paltry 10-15%. With the notable exception of Pond5, who offer 50% regardless of your commitment, but even then it was only half of the sale. And I did most of the work… shooting the footage, editing the clip, building the thumbnails, uploading, adding description and keywords, sheesh! So I thought if I was going to go to all that trouble, I might as well offer my clips directly to the customer and cut out that middleman! So here before you lies the idea, barely fleshed out and just partially maintained (so it is with most of my ideas.) If you find something of value here, you are welcome and please let me know.
UPDATE 2018: Now all clips are offered free of charge! Just pay me what you want if you think they have some value to your production.
Donate here.
FAQ:
Q. If your clips are free, why do you have a shopping cart.
A. The shopping cart process just allows me to monitor when and how much these clips are downloaded.
Q. If you’re giving this away, why do I have to give you my email and name?
A. If you don’t want to enter your email, just make something up. In order to get some stats (see above question), the plugin I’m using requires this info. If you put in a fake email you will not get an email receipt with the download link.
Q. I also have some video clips I’d like to give away. Can you put them on your site?
A. Sure, just get in touch via the contact form below.
Q. I really love what you are doing here, can I make a donation toward your efforts?
A. Absolutely, I’ve got three kids to support! Click this link and enter the amount you’d like to send me.
Q. You seem to have a lot of interests. What else are you doing?
A. You’re right, I’m always coming up with other creative projects, most only half pursued. You can start by checking out my business page Dave Taylor Motion Pictures, my Youtube channels, a sort of blog, cooterbuck and more.