In recent years, video cameras have become a must-have for any traveler, just like the photo camera. Besides, you can shoot videos even on your mobile phone. Hundreds of thousands of tourists annually bring millions of hours of travel videos. I wonder whether it is possible to sell them and get some extra income?

The very beginning

First and the most important thing is to learn how to make videos. By „making a video” I mean not just shooting everything you see around, but making something really quality, the raw material to convert it into a movie or some separate video stories.
This is not a „how to become a cameraman” site, so I won’t teach you how to film, but here is some basic advice that might be useful:

• It’s hard to keep the camera in hand all the time, so fix it on a tripod or place it on the appropriate stable object (rocks, walls, tables, chairs, etc.)
• Make panoramic filmings. First, fix the initial frame for 3-5 seconds. Then start slowly – as if the camera is a hundred times heavier than it actually is and you can hardly move it – move your camera aside. At the end of the panoramic filming fix the last frame for another 3-5 seconds.
• Film the general plan (for example, the entire group of people), the middle distance (for example, only a few people in the group) and a close-up (face, arms, or some object – such as a backpack, a stone or plaque).
• Film episodes that last at least 5 seconds otherwise it will be very difficult to do editing.
  What to do with your filming?

Actually, the easiest way is to do nothing! There are buyers who are ready to pay even for raw materials. For instance, TV companies sometimes need to shoot off a certain site or city, but it’s too expensive to send a special cameraman there. In this case, they buy this material from someone else and edit it themselves. The minimal price is 200$/ per minute of the episode that was included in a TV program or $60/per hour for the raw material.

Another option is to video stocks. Large photo stocks turned their attention to videos and started to allow video uploading. Usually, they need episodes from 6 to 60 seconds on different topics that are very similar to a standard photo topic vacation, famous sites, people, etc. Videos are now accepted by photo stocks Shutterstock, Istockphoto and Pond5. There’s also the first specialized video stock Fotolia. In this stock, you can set your own price for your video or entrust it to editors. You can upload videos in any format you want and in any quantity.