How To Make Money Selling Photos Through An App
If you’re like most people, you have a smartphone on you most of the day. The technology for cell phone cameras has gotten so good that many people don’t have a need for another camera.
If you have a library full of thousands of photos, instead of leaving them to take up space on your phone, sell them on a photo marketplace.
Below, I go over the best apps to sell photos as well as how to sell photos online as a beginner.
Shutterstock Contributor
Shutterstock has been around for over 15 years and has millions of photos. They’ve paid out over $1 billion total to their community of contributors.
To sell photos on their platform, you must become a Shutterstock Contributor. A contributor can earn between 20-30% of the price depending on what type of subscription the customer used on the site.
Being such a huge, well-known company can make it hard for beginning photographers to break in. You’re not bound to only sell in Shutterstock’s marketplace so this may be a good second app choice.
Some positives are that the photographer retains the image copyright and you get a credit listed beneath the photo on the site that uses the pic. This is great for getting your name out if you’re an aspiring photographer.
Snapwire
Snapwire has close to 800,000 content contributors. You get to keep your image copyright too.
You can earn two ways using Snapwire: through your portfolio & marketplace and with requests & challenges.
Marketplace sales get a 50% commission but requests and challenges earnings keep 100% commission.
Their app was built exclusively with content creators in mind so it’s easy to use and intuitive.
Twenty20
Twenty20 app has each photographer create a gallery. You get your own personalized link where you can promote and sell your photos.
You can also add your best photos to showcase and get more exposure. Each photo sold earns a percentage of the subscriber’s share.
For instance, if a subscriber downloaded 20 photos in a month and 6 of those were yours, you’d earn 30% of that subscriber’s contributor payout.
If you participate in the challenges, you can earn more. You get to keep 100% of the commission if a brand works directly with you through the Twenty20 platform.
This platform is non-exclusive so you can use other photo apps as well. You keep your copyright to all your pics.
Foap is one of the most well-known photo apps and can be a profitable selling platform since some large brands buy photos from there. The commission structure is set up where the photographer gets 50% of the profits.
One unique aspect is that for every photo you upload, you have to rate 5 photos from other people. These ratings are used to help rank you and your pics.
Foap
Foap is more than a marketplace people upload pics into. Brands and companies send Foap a request for photos that they’re looking for. They’ll give information on style and type.
Then, Foap sets up competitions or Missions where photographers submit their best photo or video. If your work is chosen, you could easily make a few hundred dollars.
Keep in mind, your pictures need to have a minimum resolution of 1280 by 960 pixels but you can continue to resell the same picture over and over again.
EyeEm
EyeEm is a network of over 25 million photographers around the world. Similar to other apps, you make money through selling your photos in the marketplace but also with missions from brands.
In the EyeEm marketplace, you retain the copyright and receive 50% of the commission every time the photo sells. The lowest license they sell is $20 a photo so you’d earn $10 each time!
This is a non-exclusive marketplace so you can put the same photos up on multiple sites.
EyeEm’s goal is to create a creative global community so they offer free tutorials and tips to help you to improve your photography skills.
source:moneytamer.com