VideoBlocks Launches New Stock Video Marketplace Where All The Money Goes To Contributors

Stock video company VideoBlocks is expanding beyond its subscription business model with the launch of a new marketplace for contributed content.

The company has already built a library of 115,000 video clips, backgrounds, and effects, which it either created itself or licensed from others. Customers can use any of the content in that library for a subscription fee of $79 a month or $99 a year. According to founder and CEO Joel Holland, that averages out to less than $1 per clip for most customers.

Holland described the VideoBlocks library “a very high quality archive of content” that’s “not super deep.” As a result, customers would often start their search for stock footage at VideoBlocks (after all, they’d already paid the subscription fee, so there was no extra cost), but they’d have to often have to go elsewhere to fill in the gaps.

For example, Holland said VideoBlocks has footage of the Statue of Liberty during the day, but maybe someone wanted footage of the statue with the sun setting.

That’s where the new marketplace comes in. It’s not yet open to VideoBlocks customers, but the company is beginning its outreach to potential contributors. The goal, Holland said, is to offer the same footage that you’d find on a site like Shutterstock, but at a 40 percent discount, and with 100 percent of the money going to the contributor. (Shutterstock pays a 30 percent royalty for every clip purchased.)

“You’ve heard this saying, ‘Content is king,'” Holland said. “If that’s true, content creators should be treated like royalty.”

So how does VideoBlocks make money from this? Well, you need an account to access the marketplace. And after a brief trial period, that means paying for a subscription.

The company also launched a stock music service called AudioBlocks earlier this year.