According to Matthieu Stefani, Co-Founder of ScoopLive, “Every event has its witnesses.” And with camera phones being so prevalent, every witness now has a chance to make some real money on what they’ve captured.
The Web has exploded with amateur videos of everything from the Saddam Hussein hanging to Michael Richards hanging himself - all filmed by “citizen journalists.” Up until now, though, cashing in on these stories has been hard to do.
A Marketplace for Monetizing Scoops
ScoopLive just announced that it was out of beta in the Tech Crunch forums as one of a handful of entrants into the on-line marketplace for monetizing scoops, whose competitors already include Scoopt.com and SpyMedia.com.
The solution doesn’t make as much sense for professional photojournalists that use well-established photo and press agencies. It makes far more sense for the amateur market that may only sell one photo or video, but it could be the one picture of Paris Hilton that nets them $50,000.
ScoopLive was initially launched in the European market with approximately 150 buyers in 15 countries. The site has attracted 2,500 reporters in 60 countries and has already been successful in brokering sales including a cover image for Voici, the French equivalent of People Magazine in the U.S. (it’s the photo of two famous French actors kissing each other at a night club, but the real story is above that photo).
Join, Upload, Sell
Users of ScoopLive can create a free account and begin to upload their media, tagging it so that it can be found by buyers (my camera phone video of fans rushing the field after OSU stomped Michigan may not make me rich).
If it’s a scoop, the media will be auctioned off to buyers and sold with a 30-day exclusivity clause. If it’s just an interesting item, it will go into ScoopLive’s image bank and be sold at a fixed rate. Sellers retain the copyrights to their media and can earn up to 85% of the final sale to a buyer.
Popular and Profitable
Today the average citizen journalist may think uploading a video to YouTube is a big deal. But in the near future sites like ScoopLive will allow authors to not only make their content popular, but profitable as well.
Wil Schroter is a contributor to TechCrunch as well as the founder and CEO of GoBigNetwork.
Ideas I wish I thought of myself….
Another concept to Market
Great article - I’ll be sure keep my camera phone ready! I might as well retire now with all the dough I’ll make there! Also looking forward to reading more from Wil!
Arrington’s moving up in the world! He’s on the cover of a French tabloid!
Another awesome idea for the internet masses. Not too many celebrities around here, so I guess i need to keep my day job, but when the chance comes i will have my camera phone ready.
HA! GO WIL!
I enjoy frequenting Go Big forums. It’s great to now have you on TC!
The forum link doesn’t work… remove the ? at the end of the URL.
Just saying
If Flickr and PhotoBucket implement something like this, then all these companies will be out of business since everyone already hosts their pictures on those sites. I sure hope they all have back up plans.
Frankly, if I had a real scoop, I’d try to contact the magazine on my own, thus increasing the chances of exclusivity for them and the payoff for me. These days, everybody knows how much money a picture can be sold for, since magazines can’t manage to keep the figures confidential. I think this business model, if it works (which it probably will) is more suited for “midsize” scoops, local D-listers.
In any case, I live in Paris, and boy am I glad I’m nobody interesting and totally anonymous.
Do any services like these have USA footholds? I see they all work for Americans - but I get the feeling those two news sites are really geared for those overseas. Any sites like this in the USA?
@ Mister - take a look at SpyMedia.com which is U.S.-based.
@ Andrew - you’re the first to notice my photoshot re-touch of the cover. Now can you translate the caption?
NowPublic.com is probably the biggest in north america. there’s another called citizen media based in nyc…probably others too.
While the article’s ideas are timely ( after all the time person of the year : You - should be getting some of the financial rewards too… )
- this was a really crass and sensational juxtaposition of sentences:
The Web has exploded with amateur videos of everything from the Saddam Hussein hanging to Michael Richards hanging himself - all filmed by “citizen journalists.” Up until now, though, cashing in on these stories has been hard to do.
@jean
You must not have ever read Wil’s stuff then…
Great article!!
Nice find. I had no idea you could get paid for that. Any idea on what type of numbers people are seeing from submitting the photos?
Methinks jean poole = jealous hater
@ transburgh, I agree. I wonder how many submissions are made vs. how many photos are actually accepted/checks written.
@ Jerome - I agree with your comment. No need to hate here.
This is nothing new, you already have http://www.shutterpoint.com for REAL photos, http://www.scoopt.com, http://www.photorazzi.com and more…. On top of that you have sites like http://www.constant-content.com who have the writer market cornered that are planning to get into the game as well. These small ones won’t stand a chance!
Wow! 50k for one photo sure sounds nice.
Wil, as a matter of fact, I think I can.
“Je ne savais pas que Madonna allait adopter mon fils!” translates to “I didn’t know Madonna was going to adopt my son!”
And above that, “le cri du père du David” means “The cry of David’s father”
Basically, you made Arrington the father of Madonna’s stolen/adopted son. Nice one
P.S. It was cool to meet you tonight…
Transburgh, just to give you an idea of numbers, have a look at http://www.scoopt.co.uk/members/v.aspx?n=49. A shot of storm damage sold for £850 last week.
Maria, the trouble with going direct is that you really have to know what you’re doing. If you manage to keep copyright and can exploit multiple sales and secondary rights, fantastic — often that’s where the real value is, not just the first ‘exclusive’ sale. But it’s not easy. Scoopt was set up in July 2005 precisely to make it easier for people who are NOT comfortable dealing directly with the cut-throat press.
Ricky, re Flickr, see http://www.scoopt.com/news/article.aspx?a=135 We’re already in there, sort of
We sell in the US…
And if Scooplive is ‘out of beta’, how come they’re still using Scoopt’s FAQ, lifted verbatim from our site last year?? Compare and contrast:
http://www.scoopt.com/faq.aspx
http://www.scooplive.com/faq.aspx
Les parasites paresseux!
Citizen journalists have other channels of monetizing scoops when it comes to video. There are various video sharing sites that offer revenue sharing, or pay per view models.
I’m surprised that they weren’t mentioned here…
Retards read this kind of crap with dumbass stars and faggots kissing on the cover.
@kula - stay classy
It will be interesting to see how well ScoopLive performs versus some of it’s competitors. They’ll have to broker the sale of quite a few photos to really be successful. Even if they manage to sell a photo for $50K, they’ll probably only see about 10% of that (just a guess). That’s not much of a revenue stream and won’t be viable until they’re selling thousands of photos per month at that rate—not likely.
Personally, I am a big proponent of revenue models structured around user generated video. I think ScoopLive has something special here. It’s a great way to empower the citizen journalist to not only create content, but be on the lookout for and create GOOD content.
This is an invitation for the semi-skilled and talented digital artists to game this environment for profit. “Photoshop skills” are quite common today, and that extertise in video is getting more commonplace everyday.
The same way that Michael inserted himself into that magazine cover, others will create fakes whose verification will consume significant time and effort for the staff of these sites, damaging any value and credibility of the service.
There’s a reason we have professional celeb journalists - if they try to sell fakes, they get drummed out.
Michael: Ever notice that the common counter is off by one?
@ Mingus - I inserted Mike into the cover as a joke, but your point is correct - people are going to continue to game the system of “what’s real”. We are to the point now where even video can be successfully manipulated. To suggest that fakes will destroy the service is an oversight, though. If that were the case fake auctions would have destroyed eBay years ago. Fake posts would have destroyed Craigslist. I think if there is more value in the positive than cost in the negative a service can succeed (though execution counts for a LOT!)
@ Andrew - good call on the translation. I hope Madonna and Arrington can sort out their domestic issues!
DON’T USE IT.
WASTE OF TIME.
Told me I couldn’t register because I’m under 18.
I’m 33.
I entered my birthday correctly.
Also wouldn’t register w/o a cellphone# — I DON’T HAVE A CELLPHONE, but I have pics I would maybe sell.
But not through these guys.
TechCrunch: If the registration form doesn’t even work yet, DON’T LINK TO IT.
What a waste of time.
DEAR JAMES,
As you can see on the website, birthdate must be written like this : DD/MM/YYYY
There are choices to make when you develop a website and want it to be “International”. This is one of them.
Hundreds of people have registered today and didn’t mention any problem.
We are very sorry if you think we’ve wasted your time, and will try to make this point clear for everybody.
Best.
M/
I just tried to registered, but ended up canceling out of the registration. Here are a few issues I saw:
1) The user agreement is French language only. While I speak a very small amount of French, it is nowhere near enough to sign/agree to a ‘legal’ document in that language. I do not yet trust online translation engines to correctly handle nuance. If they are paying attention, this should prevent most non-French reading users from registering.
2) It asks for birth date and location. Even though you can lie and put something else in, this seems problematic as it does not appear to have a valid use, at least for this US resident. After all, payments are via PayPal, which only requires the sender to know an email address. The worrisome part for me is that birth date and location can be used for purposes of identity theft (at least partially). Site security is a bit suspect as this information is not even sent through https. If even that cannot be done, how secure is the back end likely to be?
Count me out for now.
Tim
Will it compete, then, with TMZ on the paparazzi/celebrity side? I would kind of like to see that.
This stuff creeps me out. At some point, I bet we’ll see a big crack down on people filming you without your consent - from my understanding, in many cities it’s illegal to - and on top of it, posting it to the Web?
It’ll take a while though. That’s for sure.
Patricia - I think 5 - 10 years from now the idea of privacy will have changed significantly (whether we like it or not). It’s Pandora’s Box, so while we will continue to fight the change, the change is comnig and we are certainly going to have to learn how to deal with this environment.
@ Wil, I know what you’re saying. It still doesn’t mean you can actively photograph and film people who aren’t aware, without any notice, then publish online and monetize, though. We photograph people on the streets and are legally required to have each sign a release form - per our attorney - to ensure we can’t get sued later. When it’s a celebrity, that’s one thing - private citizens, though, I think might get a little sticky.
I would be interested in knowing how a site like this will protect the people feeding its content in the event that somebody files a lawsuit. I think if Girls Gone Wild can get sued by consenting people we can expect there to be a big backlash with non consenting consumers. There was a case not long ago of men using cell phones to take video and snap photos underneath the skirts of unsuspecting girls that I believe sparked a ban of photo and video use in malls, or something.
Just sayin’. Great idea - seems to have some bugs
Patricia- that’s a really good point. Let’s assume that initially the problem hasn’t changed - people can still post a picture of someone on their blog and sell ad space via Adsense without ScoopLive, thereby monetizing the picture in that manner.
But I think as citizen journalism becomes more popular (and mainstream) the notions of getting consent and owning up to the law are going to become far more apparent (which is probably a good thing). I think the Internet gets a whole lot of slack because it’s relatively new still (see what would happen if NBC started showing Family Guy episodes from Fox versus YouTube displaying them.)
I like the idea that companies like this are forcing the issues to the surface and I certainly agree with you that they are very serious.