Flixel announced a new partnership yesterday to help drive more revenue from its growing community of content creators. The Toronto-based startup, which builds toolsets to enable photographers, videographers, and brand marketers to create ‘cinemagraphs’, has partnered with Shutterstock to make those moving photos available for license by brands, journalists, and publishers.
Through Flixel Stock, Flixel brings over 1,000 cinemagraphs to Shutterstock’s community of 1 million users. In addition, current Shutterstock content contributors will receive a discount on Flixel’s Cinemagraph Pro software. Flixel CMO Robert Lendvai explained to BetaKit how Shutterstock’s content-hungry customers will play a role in Flixel’s monetization strategy.
“While some companies will choose to create their own with Cinemagraph Pro, others looking to quickly produce ads for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or other marketing campaigns may opt to go with stock cinemagraph options,” Lendvai said. “As an example, Facebook has over 2,000,000 small business customers that could now easily produce cinemagraph video ads with Flixel Stock.”
The partnership also provides Flixel’s own crop of content creators an opportunity to wet their beaks from their work. Cinemagraphers aren’t forced to share their work on Flixel Stock, but if they do, they’ll receive 30% of all licensing costs – the same amount Shutterstock content creators currently receive. However, as co-founder Philippe LeBlanc explained, cinemagraphers will have an added incentive to use Flixel Stock.
“We will help to promote them leading to more financial gains if they go through Flixel,” said LeBlanc. “We’ve negotiated a separate deal for Flixel with Shutterstock as we will be driving significant cinemagraph content their way.” LeBlanc gave an immediate example in Alexandre Miguel, a Portugal-based photographer who was named the Flixel Creator of the Year in 2014, and is currently enjoying having his content promoted on Shutterstock.
The partnership seems a win for both content creators and Flixel, which after a recent $2.2 million seed round, is hoping to drive more revenue from customers who have already purchased its software.