Earning Money by Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism describes stories or media by everyday people, who like to write stories or who do capture photos or videos. This may happen occasionally or more ambitiously. And as there have been several articles at this blog about live broadcasting and storing that live video or photos by personal broadcasting services (see the label live video) and the possibilities of citizen journalism here come some information on how to sell stuff.

So if you really got a story or aim to sell something, it needs some contact to the media. This may happen by a direct contact. Direct contacts often are offered at particular media websites or at newspapers. Usually one uploads the media or send it by multimedia messaging. Some publishers may pay you. iReport.com for example is a website by CNN, where people can upload videos and other media. The most interesting stories will make the way to the CNN news site or tv channel.

A further way are marketplaces specialized in participatory media or user generated content. Some of these marketplaces do welcome or are even dedicated to citizen journalism. At these websites one may list and sell content. CitizenSide is such a marketplace, where photos and videos are traded. They do especially welcome amateur photographers and there are no requirements related to quality. The content is what makes the media valuable. The same is due to Scoopt, which is rather specialized in photos but do market videos, too.