We like to track content and sales by ID #’s if at all possible. Some stock sites make this easier than others. Pond5 and Fotolia assign an ID # to each file as soon as we upload it. iStock gives them after your file is accepted. Shutterstock, sadly with the most convoluted process to track files among the sites we submit to, assigns ID #’s only after you submit your file.
However, we discovered a hack that makes our jobs a lot easier that we’d like to share with you.
When you submit your video files you can see the progress of your batch by clicking Portfolio/Approval Status: Videos, which should look something like this:
Here’s the hack, if you click over to the Approval Status: Videos immediately after submitting your videos, it will look like this:
What’s great about this is that you can actually see the original file name that you used, before Shutterstock has processed the file. Once processed, there isn’t a way to see the original file name (or at least one that we’ve found).
In fact, without going to each clips individual page, there isn’t a way to log and track your videos except for visually matching up the file with the ID #, which can be an extremely time-consuming process.
Hopefully, this hack will make your stock video process a little easier.
