In a press release last week, GoPro announced their new awards program where the company will pay out $5 million annually for great content. It works like this: GoPro users can submit their best content (whether it's a photo, raw clip, or edited sequence). The media will then be judged internally at GoPro, and if it's awesome, you'll get paid in honest-to-god cash money. It's a pretty sweat deal, especially considering that there's no limit on how much content you can submit.


There are also genre-based challenges. Pretty much any specialized area of photography or videography that you're interested in, GoPro has a specific contest that you can submit to. Just be sure to pay attention to the submission deadlines. Here are just a few of the genres available:

GoPro HERO4 Black Edition Front

  •        Action
  •        Adventure
  •        Animals
  •        Family
  •        Motorsports
  •        Music
  •        Sports
  •        Science + How-To
  •        Travel

And here's how to apply, and the monetary rewards that you can win:

  1. Capture your passions whatever they may be. Whether it’s chasing your kids around the playground, getting blasted in a snowball fight, or diving off a cliff – GoPro wants to see it.
  2. Submit your most interesting moments to GoPro. Upload fun, feel good, beautiful or awe-inspiring content for GoPro’s review and consideration.
  3. Get rewarded. GoPro Awards will be given for memorable photos ($500), raw video clips ($1000), and video edits ($5000) in a variety of genres.

The only downside — and it's not much of a downside, depending on how you look at it — is that in submitting your content, you are contractually giving GoPro the right to use your content on its various marketing channels. While it's always preferable to maintain the copyrights to your original content, there are plenty of upsides to submitting to GoPro. First, of course, is the cash. Second is the recognition. Chances are your content will end up on one of GoPro's YouTube channels, which rack up million upon millions of views per year. There's also a chance that it will end up on television or one of the other places the company advertises.

Though the Awards program is only a week old at this point, the company has already paid out thousands of dollars. Here are a pair of submissions that have won $5K:

There are, of course, rules and restrictions that you can read about in GoPro's FAQ and submission agreement. The most important things to note are that you can't use any copyrighted music in your edits, and if they include people, you need to provide release forms in your submission. And finally, if you're ready to submit content, head over to GoPro Awards and give it a shot.

Source: GoPro Awards