My name is Renato Murolo and I am a photography enthusiast and video producer from Venice, Italy.

Thanks to this site (and the Italian version of it, stockfootage.it) and to Daniele Carrer and his course, which I bought almost two years ago (it has been a precious goldmine of information), I discovered a world that I never even imagined in: microstock, and I started focusing especially on stock footage.

Daniele Carrer explained to me how to use my thirty years of passion for photography to create something concrete that has also allowed me to have extra monthly income.

I tried to apply the principles that the course explains and now, after a little over a year, I can confirm that they work.

How I've become a microstock producer

I started by uploading a thousand photographs of my archive created over the years to major agencies:

This strategy allowed me to practice with the upload procedures, and learn how to keyword my stock content. It also gave me confidence, since every now and then I made some sales. They didn't earn me a lot of money, but they gave me the satisfaction of knowing that someone around the world paid to use my images.

For example, this photo of mine:

has already been downloaded 26 times from Shutterstock.

However, as Daniele has always said, the sale of stock images does not bring great earnings, at least for those producers who started uploading in the last few years, even if some satisfaction has arrived anyway.

The discovery of stock footage

So one day I started dedicating myself to creating videos, which in the microstock business are called stock footage.

And thanks to this, things have begun to also give me greater satisfaction in economical terms:

The microstock business during the COVID-19 lockdown

During the lockdown period (March 2020 and the following months) enormous opportunities also opened up in the microstock business, like in almost all online businesses.

I had the chance to create a few videos of Venice in early March, the last few days when I could leave home to shoot and in unusual times when tourists could not walk the streets. That unique footage soon had great success.

These three videos that I made in my beloved city were downloaded all over the world:

And my satisfactions did not end there.

My stock footage in a commercial with the voice of Sophia Loren

One night, while watching television during the lockdown, I happened to see a Barilla commercial.

And what do I notice at the sixth second?

They had used a segment of one of my clips, purchased through Istockphoto (the one shot under the porch in a deserted St Mark Square).

Beyond the great satisfaction of being part of that project, the point is that thanks to:

  • the internet
  • the opportunity of purchasing an affordable semi-professional digital camera that records video in 4K

but above all, thanks to Daniele's advice, a NON-professional video maker like me was able to create a video clip bought by a major production and broadcasteded on television in a wonderful commercial.

My frames starts right when the voice of the divine Sophia Loren begins to talk.

How much was I paid for my video to appear in a Barilla commercial?

Istockphoto did not pay me very much for the footage used by the Barilla commercia, but I am satisfied with the $150 I got. That month (March 2020), I made several other sales of the same clip and other similar videos.

So, just on March, GettyImages paid me over $300 in royalties.

The following months of April and May 2020 also went well, while from June I had a decline. But I must say that, after the summer, sales resumed in September.

What else can I say?

Nothing else... just a great thanks to this site and to Daniele's course.

Renato Murolo

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