When you think about getting video footage for your website, do you take into consideration that you should be looking for free video stock footage, unless you’re prepared to find the video’s owner and either ask for permission, or pay for usage? Contrary to common practice on the internet, you can’t just pick up any old video or photo from a Google search and use it for your own purposes.

• Free Video Stock Footage

There are a variety of different sites out there that provide free video stock footage and photos for you to use. It just might take a little research for you to find the site. Certainly more than just lifting a video from the internet for your own site. But once you do the research to find that site that offers these free entertainment videos, then you’ll never need to find that site again. Just bookmark it and return the next time you need another free video for whatever you’re using it for.

• Royalties

There are two types of payments that you may have to deal with if you end up paying for a video. One is simply a lump sum for use of the video. It is usually for a single purpose, and cannot be used multiple times. Meaning, if you pay for the use of a video, you can post it on your website, but you can’t use it in your work training video too. You would need to purchase the rights twice for that.

Or you may be forced to pay royalties. A royalty is a per-usage based payment method. Meaning that every single time that video is used, shown, seen, you pay a small fee to the person whose intellectual property the video is. That can actually add up to be more expensive than the one-time license, so you most certainly want to find some royalty free stock video.

• Why Does It Matter?

Sure, plenty of people lift videos and pictures from image searches and put them onto their own sites, and no one’s the wiser. No big deal, right? In one sense, yes, it’s a victim-less crime. But, just imagine that you do that, and then make it big on the internet. You blow up and become a celebrity, and make a ton of money because of your blog.

Now imagine the person whose video you lifted and put onto your website without permission coming upon your site. He is going to see that his video helped you to make your millions, and he’s going to be pretty unhappy about not being a part of it.

The moral of the story is to cover your tracks. Either make sure that the video that you’re using is completely free to use, or pay for what you are using. The chances of internet fame are pretty slim, so it’s probably in your best interest to just to find the free ones. On the off-chance you do rocket to stardom, you’ll have no one to answer to.