Today, everyone is a content creator.

 

Our natural instinct when we see something newsworthy - or even mildly diverting - is to take our phones from our pockets and start filming.

 

We have been hard-wired to crave the thrill of ‘going viral’. Our first instinct is to post what we’ve created on social media channels like Instagram or TikTok in a quest for likes and shares.

 

This might work well for footage designed to entertain, but for serious news stories, it creates a paradox:

 

 

For the media, exclusivity is essential if they are going to pay for footage that has been shot by a member of the public.

 

The eyewitness with the once-in-a-lifetime video in their camera roll must curb their natural instinct to post it widely - or even to share it with their friends on WhatsApp. Instead they should try to find a single newsroom to sell it to exclusively.

 

Only if a newsroom can be certain they have exclusive rights will they be motivated to pay for the license.

 

One of our primary goals when we set up Sell-It.Media was to drive this mindset shift within the eyewitness community. We encourage our sellers to upload videos to us, before they share them anywhere else.

 

In that sense, we’ve created a new stream of quality eyewitness footage that has come straight from the source, through our secure auction system and into the possession of a single media buyer.

 

Of course, the big benefit to the media is that they can be confident none of their competitors have the same footage.

 

And on the biggest stories, that is a priceless advantage.