What should your clip be about? What do you say? What should your background look like? Who will buy this clip? When should it be released and what equipment does it take to create a profitable clip production venture? These questions are frequently asked on message boards, social media and in the heads of those who want to become clip creators. When I started on Clips4Sale, I had these same questions and began to suffer from paralysis of analysis. Each source I sought said something totally different. So, how did I move forward and begin a successful clip store?
Getting different opinions on how to do things can be supremely beneficial, but any ideas I found myself resisting, I’d leave behind. If I didn’t feel compelled to move forward with a recommendation, then maybe it just wasn’t for me or at least not for me right now. Once I let go of things that just didn’t gel with my workflow, it made room for more experimentation that allowed me to focus on what worked best for me. For instance, I personally do not like having a huge lighting system in my film space. Being a klutz, I broke these expensive items more often than not and eventually stopped using them for this reason. That is not to knock anyone using lighting kits, but they just were not working for me. Instead, choosing different periods of the day to film helped me have the light I needed, without having huge rigs for me to trip over.
Trust that there is a market for your content, not every ‘blueprint’ will be right for you and you will grow while on this path.
When taking advice from other clip creators, it is also very important to only make small changes and to note when exactly you made them. When making a change to your business, try to give it a fair shot to see if it is worth it. Changing too many things at once means you will not know which one resulted in newfound success, failure or stagnation. If the change is not given enough time, it will be infinitely more difficult to determine if it is worth it to continue or nix the new idea. For this, it is best to keep a spreadsheet-like system that shows your sales day to day with the new techniques that you are implementing. If you see a massive dip or spike, do not always attribute it to the tested variable. Try the test again to see if you get the same result. Does this sound like science experiment? It really is! You need data to determine if these results are true or not.
Another important lesson that I wish I had learned early on, would be that just because it is not right for me now… doesn’t mean it will never be right for me. In the beginning, I hated editing anything. I just wanted to rush to get stuff out and felt that learning how to edit video, audio and even images was a waste of time. I did make attempts to learn earlier on and developed quite a few skills in each area, but because I truly resisted this task, much of my content took longer to come out. At one point, I decided to say screw it and just put out what I wanted. It wasn’t until years later that I decided to try my hand again. I found I had more patience and actually enjoyed learning these skills then. I do feel that I could have been a better student of these skills earlier though. Why wasn’t I? I felt that because I resisted it once, I should avoid it in the future. If something frustrates you today, it is fine, but make time to revisit it later, especially if it is a needed skill for the future.
Your clip creation journey will be different than others’, and that’s okay! We all have different skill sets, perspectives and objectives coming into our careers. Trust that there is a market for your content, not every “blueprint” will be right for you and you will grow while on this path. I am truly happy for every opportunity that being a clip creator has opened up for me. The best advice anyone can give you is to stay true to yourself, listen to your body and remain teachable. We are all ever-evolving and learning from each other in this industry!
Amberly Rothfield creates content on Clips4Sale.com as well as AmberlyRothfield.com, and can be followed @AmberlyPSO on Twitter.
