Don't Post It. Not Yet.

You just filmed something. Your thumb is over the share button. This is the most expensive 30 seconds of your life — here's what to do instead.

 

We first published this warning in 2018. The advice hasn't changed. The stakes have.

If you've just captured something that matters — a crash, a fire, a storm surge, an arrest, a moment of chaos or courage on an ordinary street — you are holding something a newsroom will pay for. Right now. Today.

And you are about thirty seconds away from giving it away for free.

What happens the second you post

Post it publicly and three things happen fast.

• The value collapses. Newsrooms pay for footage nobody else has. That's the entire basis of the price. The moment your video is on a public feed, it isn't exclusive, and what a buyer will pay drops to somewhere near nothing.

• You lose control of it. Within minutes it's screen-recorded, reposted, cropped, watermarked by an aggregator account and pushed out to a million people with someone else's handle on it. You can't unring that.

• Someone else gets paid. Not always — but often enough. Your footage runs on a bulletin, an aggregator monetises it, a rights agency licenses the reposted version. The one person reliably left out of that chain is the person who actually filmed it.

The footage that leads the news is rarely shot by a broadcaster. It's shot by whoever happened to be there. That's you. There is no reason it should also be free.

Why this matters more in 2026 than it did in 2018

Back then, posting first mostly cost you money.

Now it costs you the ability to sell it at all — because of verification.

Newsrooms in 2026 have a problem they didn't have eight years ago: it is trivially easy to generate convincing footage of an event that never happened. So no serious outlet runs eyewitness video without establishing where it came from and who shot it.

Here's the trap. Once your clip has been reposted through four anonymous accounts, stripped of its metadata and re-encoded twice, nobody can establish that chain anymore — not even you. It doesn't matter that it's real. It becomes unverifiable, and unverifiable footage is unusable footage.

The original file on your phone, unpublished, with you attached to it, is worth real money. The same video after a day on social is worth nothing to anyone. Same pixels. Completely different asset.

While you're filming: 5 things

If you're safe and you have a moment, these dramatically change whether your footage is usable.

1. Shoot horizontally. Still the single most important one. Landscape fits broadcast and every news player. Vertical footage gets cropped, letterboxed or passed over.
2. Hold it steady. Brace against a wall, a car, a fence, a friend. Shaky footage is hard to broadcast and harder to sell.
3. Hold each shot for seven to ten seconds. Editors need sustained, usable clips. Constant panning gives them nothing they can cut.
4. Don't zoom. Digital zoom destroys quality. If it's safe, move closer. If it isn't, stay wide — context is worth more than a blurry close-up.
5. Say what you're seeing. Where you are, what's happening, what time it is. It adds authenticity, it helps establish provenance, and audio can always be stripped later.

And the one that overrides all five: don't put yourself or anyone else at risk for a shot. No clip is worth it, and if someone needs help, help them. Put the phone down.

What to do instead

Send it to us before it goes anywhere else.

1. Upload it. Submit the original file at sell-it.media, with your contact and payment details. For breaking news, speed is money — the first hours are worth the most.
2. We moderate and verify it. We check what it is so buyers can license it with confidence. That verification is what protects the value — yours and theirs.
3. Newsrooms bid. We notify the outlets that want this kind of story, and they bid against each other. Competition sets the price, which is the only honest way to find out what your footage is actually worth.
4. You get paid. The winning outlet takes a 12-month exclusive licence. You keep the original file. If nobody bids, it comes back to you and it's yours to post wherever you like.

You aren't handing anything over on trust. Nothing gets used until a transaction happens — which is precisely why it's worth money instead of being scraped off a feed for free.

Is what you filmed actually newsworthy?

Reasonable test: if you watched it back and thought people need to see this, there's a good chance a newsroom agrees.

Newsrooms want footage that's timely, in the public interest, significant, and hard to replace. Accidents, extreme weather, crime, protests, rescues, sport, genuine remarkable moments.

What they won't bid on, however good it is: pets, sunsets, night-sky lights, everyday life. Beautiful, sometimes. Not news.

The 30 seconds

You'll get one chance at this, and it happens before you've had time to think about it. That's why it's worth deciding now, while nothing is happening.

Next time you're in the right place at the wrong moment, and you've got something on your phone that the world hasn't seen yet — don't post it.

Sell it.

Upload your footage →

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