Frequently asked questions

Citizenside: How does it work?

Citizenside: What is it?

With Citizenside, you can share and sell your news images.

♦ Share: Citizenside is a community of citizen-reporters around the world who send, broadcast and comment on their news images on the site. Rejoignez-nous !
♦ Sell: Think you got a scoop? Citizenside can sell your images to the international media in one click. Citizenside works like an agent between you and the rest of the world.

Citizenside negotiates the best sales prices for your content and gives you back up to 65% on the final price.

Note from the editors: the documents must be high-quality, newsworthy, and relevant to recent events.

Why choose Citizenside to sell your images and not deal directly with the media?

You might not know the real value of your scoop, but you can be sure that our clients do! We've seen many amateur photographers or videographers that thought they were getting a good deal when selling photos or videos directly to buyers in the media -- images and videos that could have been worth much, much more.

By selling your images with Citizenside, you automatically guarantee them exposure to media houses around the world.

Thanks to our extensive network of clients (300 in France, 7,000 internationally) and the exclusive Citizenside auction system, we can offer you the opportunity to sell your work to the highest bidder IN EACH COUNTRY in which we have clients, and to maximize your return.

The more your photograph is worth for a particular client, the higher your earnings. If your photo or video is sold to many buyers, you will receive a commission from each sale.

What do I make if Citizenside sells my images?

We, the Citizenside team, like to keep it simple. As such, we've listened to our members' feedback and simplified our commission system. Here's how it works:

♦ 1 - You, the reporter, will get a 65% return on images sold to traditional media outlets (like newspapers and magazines) in your home country (that is, wherever you signed up with Citizenside).
♦ 2 - You'll get a 50% return on images sold to online media outlets (like to Slate.com or HuffingtonPost.com).
♦ 3 - You'll get a 50% return on images sold to media outlets outside of your home country (like when a French paper picks up a photo from a Swiss member).
♦ 4 - You'll get a 50% return on content that was validated on our over one month ago and has been put in our archives.

How does Citizenside sell my content?

When you send Citizenside an image or video, you automatically grant us an exclusive worldwide license to market that document for a period of fifteen days.

During that fifteen-day period, you agree not to publish the document anywhere else (you're encouraged to post links to it all over the web though). When the fifteen days are up, the license becomes non-exclusive. We will still try to sell your images, but now you will also be able to publish them yourself on a photoblog or a picture-sharing site -- wherever you'd like.

If we don't think that your photo or video will sell immediately (if, let's say, it's not a scoop), we will tell you within 48 hours and it will be treated with a non-exclusive license and sold at fixed price from our image bank (which means you can publish your document outside of Citizenside).

We understand that the work is yours and that you should have the right to share it. However, it is important to likewise understand that we must have an exclusive license for truly newsworthy images in order to get you the best possible deal for your work.

What is the difference between an exclusive license and a non-exculsive license?

It's an important distinction. When you send a photo to Citizenside, you sign an agreement to not sell that photo to another site, publish it elsewhere, or share it in any way for a period of fifteen days. This is a fifteen-days exclusive license.

After these fifteen days, the license becomes non-exclusive. Your image is integrated into our image bank and can be sold or distributed elsewhere.

Can I change my mind after sending a photo to CitizenSide?

No. When you join Citizenside.com and send us a photo, you automatically grant us an exclusive worldwide license for fifteen days.

This is a legal agreement that cannot be revoked even if you leave Citizenside.com. After this fifteen-day period, the license becomes non-exclusive but perpetual, meaning the image will remain in our image bank.

Why can’t I buy pictures on Citizenside.com?

Citizenside is a marketplace that works on a consumer to business (c to b) principle. It means that anyone over 18 is allowed to sell his or her images, but only professionals can buy them.

If everybody could see the scoops you send us, they would lose their value because they wouldn’t be scoops anymore!

I am a buyer for a media agency and I want to get a photo.

It's easy! Just join Citizenside Pro. It will only take a few minutes. You will gain access to all of our scoops and our archived image bank, and contact us immediately.

Where can I find your full terms and conditions?

Right here (but it's only in French for now). You must read these terms and agree to them before you join Citizenside.com.

How can I send in my photos and videos?

How can I upload my photos and videos to Citizenside?

We only accept uploads from Citizenside members. Click here to Cliquez ici We only accept uploads from Citizenside members. Click here to send your photos and videos. We recommend sending photos from your computer, to make the identication of your images easier. You can also send images from your Iphone.

What is the maximum size for my photos or videos?

We accept large files up to 200 Mb. Do not compress your videos or photos before sending them, as this will reduce their quality.

Sending your photos and videos can take a long time depending on the size of the file and your connection speed. Sending a 5Mb video with a DSL connection at 512k can take as long as 5 minutes. If your video is too large, you can also cut it in parts.

Why can’t I put more than 20 photos in a series of images?

Most scoops consist of three to ten photos. It is important for the Citizenside community, and for our media clients, to be able to see easily what a bulk of photos is all about.

Nonetheless, we should be able to choose between all the pictures you took of an event. Don’t forget to take different angles: take some close-ups, some medium shots, and some wide-angle shots so we can get a feel for the whole scene that took place. Only one photo is almost never enough to form an opinion, tell a story, or convince a buyer.

If you have a big series with over 20 equally imortant photos to offer, you can write this down in the description when you upload the photos and send it in two parts to Citizenside.

What format should I send my photos and videos in?

Nous acceptons la plupart des formats utilisés actuellement.

For your photos: JPEG, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIF, TIFF (RAW files are not accepted).

For your videos: MP4 (H264), MOV, WMV, AVI (and many other formats as well).

Video resolution: preferably 640x480 or 320x240.

How do I make sure you received my photos or videos?

You will receive an e-mail from our editorial committee confirming that we received your submission. After our editorial committee has reviewed it, you'll either get a notification of its validation, or a message explaining why we could validate it and some helpful links to point you in the right direction.

What photos or videos should I send in?

What photos or videos are published and sold first?

Citizenside is website where you share and sell your news footage. Did you witness a big event, a fire, an accident, a crash, a natural catastrophe?

Did you film or photograph a specific protest, or a sports event, or a celebrity? Were you at the right place at the right time? You might be in possession of a scoop!

Sometimes we publish and sell old photos or videos, but only when they are exclusive, have a particular interest, or when these images bring forth unpublished information.

On the other hand, the pictures taken during your holidays, that are a few years old but with no new interst, or are of bad quality will not be published on the website or proposed to Citizenside clients.

Submit your images as quickly as possible!

A scoop is only worth something if you send it within minutes or hours of the event taking place. You know that old "time is money" cliché? In the media, we really mean it. The more you wait, the less your images are worth. Send your news images quickly to have a chance to sell them to newspapers and magazines, or to the TV and web clients of Citizenside. Download our iPhone or Android apps to upload your images immediately from the scene.

Submit all your images -- not just one photo!

Avoid sending only one photo of an event. Seeing just one image is often not enough to have a clear idea of what took place.

Send an array of photos from various angles (close-ups of faces, wide-angles of the whole scene) so the Citizenside community and our clients can understand what exactly what you witnessed.

Why send all my series of photo on the same subject?

It's very likely that you'll take several photos of the same event. If and when you do, it's critical that you send us all your photos in the series.

Here's why: Let's say you send us just one photo from the series and we sell it to a newspaper (great!). The newspaper publishes the photo on its front page believing it has a scoop (and pays for it accordingly--great again!). But unbeknown to us or to the newspaper, you approach a different publication and sell a similar photo that shows the same thing from, let’s say, a different angle. The first newspaper is going to be furious (the second one, too!) and demand its money back. Not so great.

Therefore, please always send an entire series to us. If there are too many photos to send at one time, send us a representative sample and tell us there's more where those came from.

What information do you need from me when I send you my images?

An image can’t be validated if we don’t have all the necessary information.

You must, at least, provide us with the following information:

♦ Who is in the photo/video, and what we see him or her or them doing
♦ Where (exact location) and when (what day, what time) you took the photo/video
♦ Why you think it is newsworthy
♦ Any other circumstances relevant to the time you shot the footage
♦ If the photo is alone or if it is part of a series

When you upload content to our website, you will have the opportunity to include all these details. If you use e-mail to send your submissions, you must answer the above questions in the body of the message. If we need more information, we might contact you by e-mail or phone.

It is fundamental that you be completely honest from the start, and continue to be so should we ask for more information by e-mail or by phone.

IMPORTANT: Newspapers and magazines have "deadlines" and can't wait around for answers to their questions. If you want a better chance of selling your work, be sure to be quick to answer our questions and be easily reachable by email or phone.

My images are too blurry or too dark… can I send them anyway?

Citizenside prefers good quality content to offer the best photos or videos to their members and to the media.

If your images are too compressed, too blurry, too dark or are too pixelated, Citizenside's editorial committee might not validate them. However, if your images have a specific interest (if they comprise a big scoop and your photos or videos are exclusive), then these documents--even of bad quality--can have a real interest in the media!

Do you alter my photos?

We may resize, crop, tweak, sharpen, recolor and otherwise enhance a photo for publication, and indeed any publisher may do the same. However, we always keep an original unaltered copy of every photo you send us.

Can I send my photo records?

Citizenside prefers timely news documents.

If your images are a few months or years old, they are less interesting for our community and for the media. Nonetheless, if you think you have in your possession exclusive, interesting pictures that portray a past event in a new perspective, then please don't hesitate to share them with us.

How are my photos and videos sold?

Which submissions sell best?

Citizenside sells all kinds of photos and videos to the international media: events, accidents, sports, celebrities, miscellaneous stories... Most often, images sold are those that have a close link to news events. Our members that send us their exclusive content quickly are the most successful. Often their images are the first and only ones of a particular event, and they take a series of images or a series of videos varying in angles and with different kinds of shots (close-ups of people's faces and wide shots of the whoel scene). Their submissions are of good quality and are not compressed.

How are my images sold?

Here's how it works:

You send us your photo or video submission. After it gets validated by our editorial committee, it is immediately presented to our clientele of international media houses. If your document is a scoop, we then negotiate the best price for you (and for us!) and give you up to 65% of the sale price.

If your document isn't considered a scoop, it becomes integrated into the Citizenside image bank after validation by our editorial committee, and is immediatly available to international media to be sold at a fixed price. Just because your image isn't a scoop doesn't mean it doesn't have value. Think about how many times you see the same photo appear in different newspapers or magazines? Each time it does, the owner of that photo (in this case, you!) gets paid.

Strictly speaking, we don't "sell" images at all. We are instead a broker between sellers (you) and buyers (the international media). The seller licenses the buyer for publication in a number of different ways. This is an important disctinction because it means that the image remains your property at all times. In a legal sense, you retain the copyright.

Why do I want to sell my images in series?

By putting your images into the same series, you raise the value of your scoop by presenting exclusivity to one buyer. In effect, if you sell your photos of one series to multiple newspapers, it will no longer be a "scoop" because they will all be sharing the information. Buyers are primarily interested in exclusivity and high quality, both of which can increase their sales.

How do I know that my images were sold and published in the press?

We will keep you updated, by e-mail or by phone, of propositions to confirm the price of your scoops and we will do our best to let you know about intended dates of publication.

Do I have any say over where my images are sold?

Sellers and buyers remain anonymous.

When will I be informed that my submission was sold?

You will be informed as soon as the sale is finalized.

How will I get payed?

Congrats, hotshot! You made a sale. Once the auction on your image is over, the buyer pays Citizenside. Citizenside then pays you after a 60 day "safety period" (to prevent abuse of the agreement), which begins when Citizenside gets paid.

Ce délai est un délai dit de "caution", qui permet de régler les litiges éventuels.

You will get paid directly into your PayPal account. If you do not have one, subscribe for free at www.paypal.com. If your country is not eligible for PayPal, we will transfer the payment directly by electronic transfer into your bank account or by check. Please note that we will never ask you for your credit card number.

How much is a scoop worth?

As much as an editor is ready to pay to publish it. Most scoops go for anything between a couple hundred and a couple thousand euros. More exceptional or exclusive images can bring in more money. For example, the photos of Princess Caroline of Monaco's daughter at her birth were sold for nearly 1.5 million euros in 1999. For that reason, Citizenside holds a competition between different media outlets to get you the best price out there.

What are the fees taken by Citizenside?

Citizenside doesn't keep any fixed fee. We keep a commission from 25 to 35% of the sale price. Therefore, if we help you sell a scoop for 20,000€, you will be paid up to 13,000€.
If you'd like to know more, sign up to Citizenside and check out our commission rate card.

What is the difference between an exclusive license and a non-exculsive license?

It's an important distinction. When you send a photo to Citizenside, you take take an on agreement to not sell that photo to another site, publish it elsewhere, or share it in any way for a period of fifteen days. This is a fifteen-day exclusive license.

After these fifteen days, the license becomes non-exclusive. Your image is integrated into our image bank and can be sold or distributed elsewhere.

I am a professional. Can I sell my photos on Citizenside?

Of course! You just have to give us your contat information when you register. You might even enjoy a better commission rate, depending ont he volume of sales that you have on our site. Citizenside works with different kinds of professonials. We work with:

♦ Photographers
♦ Photo agencies (who want to sell their scoops at the best rate)
♦ Celebrity agents (wh want to sell exclusive interviews)
♦ Celebrities themselves (who want to sell special pictures of weddings, holidays...)

Legal issues

My photo could be a breach of privacy...

The laws regarding privacy rights are different in every country. In France, the legislation i very strict. If your submissions infringe on the law, they will not be validated. If we have doubts, we will place your submission in the "private" section of our site, which is not visible to the gneral public, and/or part of your submission may be blurred out.

What if I photograph a crime?

Different crimes should be treated in different ways. We will strive to retain your anonymity whenever possible, but in some cases we might be legally bound to advise the police of your contact details.

However, even in such cases it may still be possible to publish a picture with incriminating details (such as faces, license plates, street names, etc.) removed or blurred out.
Please note that we won't hesitate to contact the police if we believe that you yourself were involved in the crime, such as in a 'happy-slapping' case.

Keep your photos authentic!

Citizenside only offers original, authentic, unaltered photos and videos to the media.

Also, please don’t use Citizenside as a forum for free advertising. We do not want to be the unintended spokespeople of advertising agencies.