KhoPhi innovates ways to make Africa’s drone stock market more lucrative

As the consumerization of camera drones for videography and photography continues to rise, more and more high quality aerial footages from Africa are shared. Many, like Rexford (aka KhoPhi), a content creator from Ghana who’s been capturing the beauty of Ghana’s infrastructure, landscapes and tourist sites for the past 2 years, have enhanced the opportunity to make such footages available for purchase through an online portal he calls Experience Africa Today.

One easy way content creators today market their stock footages is through well-established stock footage marketplaces, such as Shutterstock, Adobe Stock and many others. Such marketplace platforms make selling high quality content seamless and quick, with a big audience.

But that seems not to be enough, and this is where Experience Africa Today, a stock footage platform run by KhoPhi steps in to make a difference. According to KhoPhi in an interview with TheAfricanDream.net “Our approach is quite different in the sense that we are using our portal to allow content creators to earn 95% on each of their stock footage sales. That’s about 25% more than what the average 30% market cut today out there today on conventional platforms.”

TheAfricanDream.net chatted with the founder of Experience Africa Today to learn more and we share KhoPhi’s responses on this revolutionary approach with you below.

TheAfricanDream: Hey Rexford, or should we say KhoPhi. Its been a while since we last had a chat with you. How’s it going with your our new project, Experience Africa Today, which is looked exciting to us. Could you tell us more about it?

KhoPhi: Hi Oral. Haha, Rexford, KhoPhi, any of it goes. I’m primarily online as KhoPhi. I’ve kinda hijacked that word online, so all points to me.

Anyway, thanks for having me, and yes, I’m doing well, just overwhelmed with fixes and updates as I am trying to put this Experience Africa project in very good shape.

So Experience Africa in a sentence, is a stock footage website, designed with a different approach, that makes it possible for content creators on the site to earn 95% revenue on each of their stock footage sale.

TheAfricanDream: We are not into creating stock footages and whatnot, so not really sure why the need for what one would say is ‘yet another stock site‘. For instance we pay for stock, we get the stock. Platform takes about, what? Say mayne 30%. Then content owner gets about 70%. Everybody wins. That’s what it looks like to us. So what’s the problem with this and why do you want to change it?

KhoPhi: Of course, everybody wins. And it ain’t necessarily a “problem” perse. It’s just a different approach we’re taking, where we want the content creators and buyers to win more in the exchanges, whiles the platform kinda just fades into the background for creators to make some more money, so in effect it’s a competitive offer.

TheAfricanDream: If a party is winning “more“, then another has to win “less“, right, based on market competition?

KhoPhi: Not necessarily. Here’s what’s currently happening. Any stock footage you purchase on stock footage sites today, there’s an average of a 30% revenue cut. When you price $100, you’re taking home about $70. The $30 goes to the platform.

The Unfortunately, the 30% sales cut on footages sold on such platforms give rise to at least two issues, namely, the stock footage prices are high, and the content creators do earn not as much as possible for their work.

But what does “as much as possible” mean? Well, for a platform that takes a 30% cut, this means content creators need to price their stock footages at $130 for instance if they expect to pocket $100 on each and every sale they make.

Some content creators are okay with such percent cuts. But not every content creator is okay with it, especially myself and other content creators sharing my opinion. In my case, as a content creator, who is first a software developer for about a decade, I thought long and hard about what possible approaches there are, and which one would work best.

The result is what we have on Experience Africa, combining a few common technologies together, leveraging the power of the web and simplifying the entire process, allowing content creators to make the most and creating healthy competitions in the interest of quality for both the service providers and clients.

TheAfricanDream: That makes sence. Don’t bog us down the technicalities involved here, but at an overview level, how are you achieving this Rexford?

KhoPhi: Haha, will try not to be intricate. That said, we’re essentially using 3 technologies to get the ball rolling. Firstly, the content creators store their own stock footage files, the ones buyers will download after payment (we currently recommend using Google Cloud Storage (GCS), it is a file storage service from Google). Secondly, users store their preview videos on YouTube. And thirdly, our platform runs on WordPress, where content creators can log in and manage their stock store and other additions…

I think TheAfricanDream runs on WordPress, thus you’re familiar with it and how it works.

TheAfricanDream: Yes, we are a WordPress run news blog and verified also on the Google News platform. We have trusted contributors across Africa and the globe who have backend access to our sites through which they help us with contributions. But of course you know this Rexford since you helped to deploy TheAfricanDream and our sister business website and help maintain them. But let’s not make this convo about us, hahahaha.

So, moving on now, how do you make all these technological pieces fit together then?

KhoPhi: Always a pleasure working with and learning from you. So anyway to answer your question about how we pull it all of: that happens through our web application I personally built specifically to simplify the process and guide content creators. You can find the app at app.experienceafrica.today.

It has a 5 step process, which will generate the screenshots, and preview videos needed. The content creator will thus have to upload all the generated files to the respective storage areas, GCS for the original files, YouTube for the video previews, and Experience Africa Media Library for the screenshots.

Then the last step will put all the details together and create your stock footage items on Experience Africa.

TheAfricanDream: We’d be lying if we said we wouldn’t want you to break down further all what you just said since we’ve visited the site and what you to let readers know how very user-friendly it really is…

KhoPhi: Hahaha, of course. On the web app, we’ve provided short video tutorials that assist on each step of the process. And there’s an overview video guide as well.

In addition, we’re ready to have a chat with anyone interested in knowing more. You can reach out to us via our contact page.

TheAfricanDream: Well, we need to start shooting stock footage videos so as to join and earn our 95% revenue on each stock item. Where can we find more info?

KhoPhi: Of course, the earlier you start the better. The app is also designed to create as many stock footage items as possible, so it wouldn’t matter how many you have to share.

The website experienceafrica.today should have all the info you need to get started.

TheAfricanDream: Thanks for joining us today. We are looking forward to the next steps from Experience Africa and wish you and your crew all the best in your adventures as we invite readers to enjoy some of your drone stock footage in the video below.

Written by Oral Ofori