Through the information provided on this blog, you’ve learned a lot about drone photography and videography. You have the drone for the job, your license, and even a website and a social media presence. What you’re missing are clients. Where can you sell to?
If you’re looking to sell your drone videos and photos, try these 9 great resources:
- Dissolve
- Dronestock
- Story & Heart
- VideoHive
- Pond5
- VideoBlocks
- Shutterstock
- Adobe Stock
- Getty Images
In this article, we will dive deep into each of these 9 websites that could buy your drone videos and photos. We’ll tell you how to get in touch with each one and even how much money you might net for your footage. Let’s begin!
Just a reminder that if you sell your drone footage, the FAA mandates that you get your Part 107 Certificate. We wrote an in-depth article on how to get that certificate here.
9 Websites to Sell Your Drone Videos and Photos On
Dissolve
First on the list, we’ve got Dissolve. A stock photography and videography site, they have more than 2.8 million pieces of stock media as of this writing. While they don’t specialize exclusively in drones, they do welcome drone photographers and videographers who have superb content to sell.
You can apply to become a Dissolve contributor to begin sharing and getting paid for your pictures and clips. To do so, you have to complete the Dissolve contributor application. You must also include your top picks from your portfolio for Dissolve’s perusal.
It takes up to four weeks to hear back. If Dissolve wants to work with you, they’ll ask for more photos and videos that can be used for stock purposes. Then you have to wait another week to learn whether you’re accepted as part of the program.
There is a limit to how many videos and photos you can submit once you become a contributor, and it’s one that Dissolve establishes. On the lower end, it’s 25 photos and videos. Some contributors don’t have a limit, but it seems you’d work your way up to that point.
How to Contact Them: Take a look at Dissolve’s website here and their contributor application page here.
How Much Money You’ll Make: To earn royalties through Dissolve, you get a cut of the license price. For example, if a customer paid $79 for a standard license for your content, you’d bring in $23.70 at a rate of 30 percent.
Dronestock
Dronestock is like any other stock photo site, except it’s one that specializes in videos and photos taken specifically by drones. They provide photos in countless categories, some of which include:
- Transportation
- Sunrises and sunsets
- Sports
- People
- Landscapes
- Fitness
- Nature (mountains, lakes, rivers, deserts)
- Cityscapes
- Beaches
- Architecture
You can even whittle down your search to the exact drone type that captured the footage, with many DJI models featured.
Per their FAQs page, Dronestock has certain requirements for the footage they’re willing to accept. If you want to submit photos, they must either be 72 DPI (1000 px at the longest side) or 300 DPI (at whatever size they were submitted at). Dronestock currently accepts the following video sizes: 4K, 2.7K, 1080p, and 720p.
Upon purchasing your photos or videos, Dronestock would have a royalty-free usage license for customers. This lets the purchaser use the photo/video for a single project. If they wanted to do another project with the same footage, they’d need to buy an additional license.
How to Contact Them: You can visit Dronestock’s website here and their seller site here. The latter does require a login, but you can register your account on that page.
How Much Money You’ll Make: Dronestock offers non-exclusive royalties at a rate of 30 percent for photos and videos. If you become an Exclusive Contributor, then the rate gets bumped up to 50 percent.
By entering an Exclusive Contributor role, you get other perks as well. These include:
- A pro concierge, where Dronestock editors will take your hard drive (with your permission, of course) and edit your content for you. They then add keywords to the content and put it online.
- Promotion of your clips and photos on behalf of Dronestock.
- Assistance with landing more gigs, again with Dronestock backing you.
Story & Heart
Next is Story & Heart. They only accept videos, not photos. When you visit their website, you can begin searching for footage by mood instead of keywords. Some of the included moods are sad, peaceful, angry, joyful, brave, curious, and loving.
Although it’s aimed at filmmakers, Story & Heart should accept aerial drone footage, provided it’s story-driven. That really is the crux of their service, so random footage won’t work here.
According to their website, Story & Heart has a rather “unconventional” application process that will take at least 15 minutes to complete.
How to Contact Them: You can visit Story & Heart’s website here and apply to be a contributor here.
How Much Money You’ll Make: Story & Heart has a great royalty rate, paying contributors 50 percent of the cost of every license a customer buys.
VideoHive
Another resource you can try selling your drone photography and videos to is VideoHive, a branch of the Envato Market. VideoHive offers both stock footage and video effects, with more than one million clips on their site and counting. Customers can get templates like motion graphics, titles, product promos, backgrounds, and opens on VideoHive. Through the Envato Market, you can upload photography as well.
When you sign up to become a contributor, it’ll be through the Envato Market as an Envato Elements author. Once you get accepted, you must post at least every 90 days to stay a part of the team.
As you’d expect, you should meet certain requirements with your content. Envato Market asks for high-quality images but doesn’t give any specs. They only mention refraining from sharing excessively compressed, distorted, or upscaled photos. You should also watch what you include in the Item Description, refraining from adding email addresses, HTML, and links.
How to Contact Them: The VideoHive website is right here for you to review. For more information on becoming an Envato author, click here.
How Much Money You’ll Make: Whether with video or photos, VideoHive/Envato takes the subscription revenue they earn and splits it in half. You get 50 percent of the payment, which is very good!
Pond5
With music, photos, and videos, Pond5 offers a lot of media. We’ll just focus on their photo and video services for the purpose of this article. Like Dronestock, you can search a variety of categories for the perfect footage. This includes general categories like 3D, 4K, or even aerial video. You can also look for specific clips with keywords like:
- Timelapse
- Alpha-channel
- Drone
- Vintage
- News
- Travel
- Space
- Celebration
- Animals
According to Pond5, more than 60,000 people contribute to their stock footage. You can join by registering an account on Pond5’s website or even using your Facebook account. If you want to be a part of the team, Pond5 ask that all drone video footage has a resolution of at least 1080p. Your footage can be as little as three seconds and as long as a minute.
What if you take drone photos? You must edit your own photos. The resolution should be 2MP or higher. Acceptable photo formats include PNG, TIFF, or JPG. All PNG photos need a transparent background; otherwise, Pond5 says it’s better to submit the photo as a JPG.
How to Contact Them: You can take a look at the Pond5 website here and their contributor portal here.
How Much Money You’ll Make: The revenue share varies depending on if you submit photos or videos. For photos, it’s 50 percent, and for videos, 60 percent. That’s incredible. The only exception is if you’re a non-exclusive video contributor. Then you get a revenue share of only 40 percent, which still isn’t bad.
VideoBlocks
If you’re still looking for more sites to sell your drone photos or videos to, you may consider VideoBlocks. They offer AfterEffects templates, backgrounds, footage, and more. You can explore and find almost any footage you want, including videos centered around landmarks, history, holidays, food, animals, and more. VideoBlocks even stocks aerial, VR, and 360-degree footage.
You can join the VideoBlocks team through Storyblocks. There, you can upload things like vectors, photos, templates, animations, and videos. You’re required to have a “high quality camera” for all video and photography work. For videos, that means 4K or HD quality only. Edit your videos so they’re no more than three minutes.
For photos, keep the file size under 50 megabytes and the resolution 4MP or higher. The shortest side of the image should be at least 1600px. Also, like with Pond5, if you’re uploading a PNG file, it should have transparency.
How to Contact Them: The VideoBlocks website is here and the Storyblocks contributor website here.
How Much Money You’ll Make: When you join the Member Library Partner Program as part of your Storyblocks contributor membership, you can start earning.
Your income varies depending on the subscription revenue Storyblocks has at any one time. By adding new members, that revenue goes up. The other factor that dictates how much money you’ll make is how often people download your videos or photos. If you get more downloads than everyone else, you make more money.
It does cost money to become a Member Library Partner. You earn five points for signing up. Each time someone downloads your videos, you get between one and five points. Then, depending on how many points you’ve earned, you get a certain amount of the monthly revenue pool. If you earn six points, that’s 60 percent. If it’s four points, you get 40 percent.
Shutterstock
Of all the stock photo websites out there, surely you’re familiar with Shutterstock. They share royalty-free illustrations, vectors, images, and videos with their users. Shutterstock has had over a billion songs (yes, they do music, too), videos, and photos downloaded from their site. Their image library alone includes more than 250 million pictures. About 650,000 people contribute. In 15+ years, Shutterstock has paid out $500 million to all its contributors.
It’s quick and easy to register, and you can do it right from Shutterstock’s website. They even have an app for their contributors. To maintain its high degree of quality, Shutterstock certainly has guidelines you’ll have to follow. Let’s discuss these more now.
When submitting photos, they should be TIFFs or JPEGs in sRGB color at a resolution of 4 MP or higher. As for videos, Shutterstock only accepts mp4s and mov files up to 60 seconds long. While they would like 4K and HD footage, you can also upload in SD, 2K, and 2.5K.
How to Contact Them: Visit Shutterstock’s website here and their contributor portal here.
How Much Money You’ll Make: Shutterstock has a whole earnings system. While you do get 30 percent for video footage, it’s different for pictures, so let’s dive into it:
- If you get 20 percent up to $80 for an enhanced or custom license photo, that’s $1.88 for an on-demand image of any size, $0.81 for an on-demand image that’s small or medium, $0.15 per monthly subscriber image, and $500 over the course of your contributions.
- If you get 25 percent up to $100 for an enhanced or custom license photo, that’s $2.48 for an on-demand image of any size, $1.07 for an on-demand image that’s small or medium, $0.33 per monthly subscriber image, and up to $3,000 over the course of your contributions.
- If you get 28 percent up to $112 for an enhanced or custom license photo, that’s $2.70 for an on-demand image of any size, $1.17 for an on-demand image that’s small or medium, $0.36 per monthly subscriber image, and up to $10,000 over the course of your contributions.
- If you get 30 percent up to $120 for an enhanced or custom license photo, that’s $2.85 for an on-demand image of any size, $1.24 for an on-demand image that’s small or medium, $0.38 per monthly subscriber image, and more than $10,000 over the course of your contributions.
Adobe Stock
If you already use Adobe products like Photoshop or Illustrator, then you might want to consider selling your photos to Adobe Stock as well. With photos, videos, templates, editorial images, illustrations, and vectors, the site has a whole slew of royalty-free media for its customers.
Millions of people use this service, says Adobe. They also promise the “best-in-class royalties,” which you can see via the Adobe Stock dashboard.
Before you get started, make sure you follow Adobe’s guidelines. Images cannot contain timestamps or waterstamps. The file size cannot exceed 45 MB, the image resolution should be between 4 and 100 MP, and you should upload it as a JPEG with sRGB color.
If you’re more into drone videos, you’ll have to be careful to avoid square and vertical framing, as neither are allowed. Keep your videos to 60 seconds and at least 4K quality.
How to Contact Them: You can take a look at Adobe Stock’s website here and the contributor page here.
How Much Money You’ll Make: Adobe offers commissions at a certain percentage depending on the type of content you submit. For photos, you can receive a commission at a rate of 33 percent. The video commission rate is 35 percent.
Getty Images
Yet another bigger source for royalty-free stock videos and images is Getty Images. They too host music and editorial images, all royalty-free. While it’s not the easiest thing to find on their website, they do have a contributor community. There, you can register an account as well as upload your drone photography and videography to start getting paid.
Getty Images also has an app for their contributors. If you get accepted, you’ll join a network that caters to more than 1.5 million people that use Getty Images and iStock. More than 200,000 contributors already share their videos and images, so why not be one of them?
To register, you must prepare a small portfolio of your best work. Whether you take videos, images, or both, keep your content between three and six pieces. Also, upload all video footage to YouTube.
Then, you wait to hear back. If you’re welcomed into the fold, your images or videos appear online for customers to see and pay for. This gives them a license to use the photo, either commercially or personally.
How to Contact Them: To see more on Getty Images’ website, click here. You can also review their contributor community here.
How Much Money You’ll Make: While you do earn royalty income for your images and clips, it depends on how often someone buys your content. You get a video royalty rate of 20 percent and a photo royalty rate of 15 percent.
You can increase that by becoming an exclusive contributor. Then you can see more royalties trickle in, between 25 and 40 percent.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it. Those are 9 of the top websites you can use to sell your drone photography and videography. Whether you start small and work your way up to bigger sites or just go for the Adobe Stocks and Shutterstocks of the world, you have the potential to earn some serious cash with your drone. Good luck!
