Every now and then a video breaks all the rules and still sells incredibly well. 99% of the time however the videos that sell have the same common attributes. We have laid these out in a handy guide for filming, uploading and things you can do after upload to increase your chances of a sale.

Filming

The unique perspective

Were you at an event attended by lots of people? It’s likely that you’ll be competing against other filmers at the event, but if you captured an interesting story that others might have missed you have a much better chance of generating interest in your video. Getting the story or perspective that no one else got makes your video exclusive, which buyers love.

Consider your audience

Sensible filmers think about the audience they’re creating a story for before they start filming. This is how buyers think – they want to buy videos that will appeal to their specific audiences – so get one step ahead and imagine which demographic you’re appealing to before you start recording.

Wow or aww

The videos that sell the most generate an involuntary ‘wow’ or ‘aww’ from the viewer. This is because buyers want videos that will engage their audiences and the most common way to engage a user is with cute or exciting content. You have a chance to enter sales nirvana if you can evoke both cuteness and excitement into your video!

Tell a story

If part of your video doesn’t add to the story then either stop filming or don’t include it in your edit. Including parts of your video with no action will make it less compelling, which will lose the attention of prospective buyers. Videos that tell a story from beginning to end have purpose and are much more likely to sell.

Uploading

Tell a story

Story-telling is so important that we’ve mentioned it twice. The video story (or description) is a key reason why buyers buy and they will generally pay more for a compelling story. The story highlights why your video is worth sharing to audiences, and often what you think is obvious or superfluous should be explicitly called out.

Did you film a fire in London? Details like the street name, the size of the response from the fire brigade, and the number of people injured could be the difference between a top-seller and a non-starter. It’s worth bearing in mind that journalists sometimes use the video descriptions as the basis for their articles, so you need to show them that your video is a story worth telling. A good rule of thumb here is detailing who, what, where, when and why.

Title

Describe the emotions evoked in the video and add to the title, putting the key emotion in capital letters. Is the video HILARIOUS? Call it out in capitals to grab a prospective buyer’s attention.

After upload

Volume

Keep filming and keep uploading. Your chances of making a sale increase by 2.5 when you upload twice and 3.5 when you upload three times. Buyers may check your profile when they see your video, if you have a good quality catalogue of videos you will likely see your sales increase.

It’s important to be patient, sometimes a video sells instantly but sometimes videos sell years after their original upload. If you don’t see immediate sales come in it doesn’t mean they won’t sell, just keep uploading and the right buyer will hopefully come along soon.

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