Reston, Virginia-based stock video startup VideoBlocks wants to reward content creators with a new marketplace that crowd-sources video footage and offers the makers 100 percent of the sales. The new service adds on to the current subscription system but will offer a cheaper range of clips than anything else available. The idea is that the new market will serve to entice not only new users into signing up, but offer a better deal to the creators of the stock film than can be found on Shutterstock or similar services.
"We want to be as contributor friendly as possible," said Joel Holland, CEO and co-founder of VideoBlocks. "They deserve a chance to keep everything."
It certainly stands out from the usual percentage given by media sites who might offer as little as 15 percent of the sale price to the video makers. By not adding on a cut for itself, VideoBlocks can lower the price by as much as 40 percent from comparable footage where it would be taking a piece. As for what the company gets out of it, it's all about growing the user base and ideally convincing them to sign up for the pay-system that is the core of VideoBlocks' business.
"It will driver retention rates up and give them more of an incentive to stay on VideoBlocks," Holland said.
This is the latest in the company's plans to get more contributors and users. Last month VideoBlocks launched a service called Just Add Audio that would let users add a soundtrack from its library to a mobile slideshow for free. And even that was an extension of the AudioBlocks program it created earlier this summer as a music library to accompany the main video one.
The company is soliciting contributors to sign up for the new marketplace, which Holland said has no exclusivity contract. Basically, if the company likes your stuff it will go into the marketplace and if customers want to use it, they'll buy it from VideoBlocks, which will send all of the money along to you. Not a bad deal for an active filmmaker.
"We believe contributors should be getting a better shake," Holland said.
You can see a bit more about how the new system works in the screenshots below.
