Promotion is the part nobody budgets for. These pieces cover what it costs to be considered, who actually reads submissions, and which of the paid routes publish their rules openly enough to be worth the money.

Paid submission is now the default for blogs, curators and video sites. Here is what each of the main routes charges, what it promises in return, and which promises are actually written down.

Two directors described their constraints publicly and in detail: a £2,000 guerrilla shoot with seven hours of footage and ten days to cut it, and four scenes from a television drama restaged across South London in a single day. Both are more instructive than any campaign with a hidden budget.
$1 → $0.78 a creditPaid submissions to curators, with the only response guarantee on this list that is written down properly.
€2 per contactEuropean alternative with a seven-day response rule and automatic refunds.
MonetisationThe platform waives its revenue share for a midnight-to-midnight window eight times this year. Three of those days are still ahead: 2 October, 6 November and 4 December.
PR & PressThe 2026 rounds at the UK Music Video Awards, the Young Director Award and Camerimage have all closed. For a video finished this year, the next entry window opens in November.
PR & PressFour outlets that actually publish their submission rules, with the fees, the runtime limits and the one that closed its doors this year.
Social videoIt is called Related video, it appears under your channel handle, and it needs advanced feature access on the channel before it will show up at all.