We have Joel Holland the CEO and Founder of VideoBlocks, joining us on the forums to chat and answer any of your questions. VideoBlocks is a video stock company offering professional stock footage for an affordable price, a company that Joel has started from the ground up.
In this chat session Joel is happy to answer any of your questions. Whether it’s about entrepreneurship, his journey building VideoBlocks, or even his love of skiing and RV’s - you got it, anything.
We’re sure you have many questions for Joel, but if you’re not sure you can join us for the live chat, jump the queue and leave your questions on the forum early! You’ll have to log into your SitePoint forums account to participate in the written chat. If you’re not yet a member, that’s ok - it’s this easy! Just a quick note, this is not the same as your SitePoint Premium account.
If you’d like to participate without an account, just use #askjoelanythingchat on twitter. Our social team will publish it into the chat for you.
Now with your account ready to go, double check to see when it’s happening in your timezone. Start entering your questions below. Joel will get to them during the live chat.
Need some help with the forums? No problems, this FAQ about our Q&A’s or forum guide should help you out.
I think I’ll be around for the AMA, but in case I’m not
Joel - when you launched VideoBlocks.com off of the Footage Firm foundation that you’d built up, what was your biggest hurdle in making the online business take off? Marketing? Funding? Something else? I know that a lot of startups struggle today with just getting seen, and that’s in 2015, with significantly more resources available for finding and promoting apps, products, and services.
Gerry–VideoBlocks is a stock media company. VideoBlocks.com provides royalty free video clips, motion backgrounds, special effects, explosions, After Effects templates and more to help video editors tell better stories. We also run GraphicStock.com for graphics, and AudioBlocks.com for sound effects and music. Our goal is to provide premium creative content that we can ALL afford–not just the big budget studios.
Hey @joelkentholland, thanks for taking the time to do this Q&A!
Alright, so you know how in shooting some films there are people hanging from harnesses sprinkling hail and dropping individual oak leaves on to the actors? Well, I can’t confirm this, but I’m sure some funky stuff goes on.
What’s the strangest/most creative technique you’ve heard of/seen/done in getting that perfect shot?
Apologies for the non entrepreneurial/technical question to begin with but… I’m curious!
Hi Joel. I think most are familiar with stock photos and their application across the web but less so around video. What trends are you seeing in terms of web publishers utilizing video assets in blog posts, home pages or other?
Thanks for having me @angelamolina and the whole SitePoint team! Great to be here. A little about me: I love the creative community, and I started VideoBlocks because I was an indie video maker who felt like the “big boys” with budgets had an unfair advantage when creating video content. So I started VB to level the playing field. When I’m not working, I enjoy photography and videography.
Fun fact: I’m actually on location at The Greenbrier in West Virginia to shoot some awesome holiday content. As I type this I’m surrounded by holiday spirit–very cool!
@brianchinn: Great question! While the stock photo world is still much larger (and honestly, always will be), we are seeing an explosion in demand for stock video. This is because creation and distribution of user-gen video is exploding. You will start seeing a LOT more of it on websites, blog posts, etc. in 2016.
Haha, well here is a fun family video we made two years ago with my 95 year old grandmother! And you’ll see that I put good definition to the term amateur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYXAjsD8Nyg
I have spoken to a few folks who have incorporated stock audio and video into blog posts. I have also been a part of using audio and video for interactive presentations offline and have found it really useful.
Thanks for being a customer @ehargrove! Very cool to meet people using our content and finding it useful! On a personal level this makes me feel like we are doing good things for the creative community.
Hi Joel! I’ve worked on audio projects using stock audio before, and spent hours trying to narrow down that perfect snippet of sound. Do you have any tips to help find that perfect bit of creative, whether it’s audio, video or photo?
Opportunity !