Well, that's certainly all well and good and by all means, keep doing it. But what if we told you that you can easily share said pictures on platforms that are designed to sell them to companies for logos, banners, posters, et cetera? With most such apps, the process is easy, straightforward, and catered to the mobile user in a way that it doesn't tie you up to the computer for the submission process. And you don't lose the pictures – the rights that you sell are non-exclusive and non-transferable, which means that a single photo can be sold to numerous buyers, but they only have the right to use them in their own products – no passing it around.
And, apparently, companies are interested in picking up “real” photos taken by “real” people for certain purposes, at least it seems so, as these marketplaces are packed with users, content, and “missions” (company-issued specific requests). So, given the amount of competition, you won't be quitting your day job any time soon (unless you turn photo uploading into a day job), but casually uploading your best shots once in a while and having the chance to get cash for it is cool, no?
So, here are the best 5 apps that will help you sell your photos!
EyeEm
Probably one of the most famous platforms to sell your snaps over. We liked EyeEm for its social networking capabilities, too – it's very easy to find photos taken around you or bearing hashtags similar to your interests. In fact, upon first launching the app, you will notice that it's much more interested in pushing connections in your face, rather than demoing its sales platform. Now, once you take your photos, touch them up with the integrated editor, and upload them, you will need to visit your profile in the EyeEm website to submit said photos for market approval (you will also need to submit release licenses in cases where you've got recognizable faces or property in your images).
The platform also lets buyers create “missions” where specific photos are requested. For the past few days we've seen a couple of missions from Motorola, so rest assured that big fish are also interested in the EyeEm service. The market is still in beta and buyers can only join through an invite, but you can start uploading your images for review right now – for free.
Foap
Foap is another famous social app / photo marketplace. Each time you upload a picture on there, you will be asked to rate 5 other user submissions before your own is admitted to the site. Once you do that, you need to get 5 rates of your own photo and, as long as the rating is above 2 (out of 5), your photo will hit the marketplace. This acts as a natural bottleneck disallowing members to instantly dump hundreds of photos, though, the platform itself is pretty well populated by now.
Scoopshot
Scoopshot isn't as large in scale than the previous two and doesn't really offer a social element to its platform. Rather, it has daily contests to keep you on the lookout for new things to capture, and a separate “tasks” section, which has some longer running theme-based competitions. The service also tries to shake things up a little, as it offers businesses to use the pictures from its library for free if they are to be embedded in an ad. The photographers will, in this case, earn ad revenue from the image.
Clashot
Clashot is about as big as Scoopshot and is similarly small and straightforward. It doesn't have missions or tasks – you are basically on your own with this app. The interesting thing here is that the it advises you to write your photo description and tags in your native language, supposedly looking to cater to local businesses or to buyers looking for authentic descriptions of the shots (for whatever reason).
Stockimo
Shooting images with Stockimo will allow you to sell them on Alamy – a large online stock photo library. Strangely enough, although the app is more than a year old, it has yet to pick up. Perhaps it's due to the fact that the artist share from a sale is 20%, which doesn't look good on paper. But if you wish to maximize your chances of a sale – uploading to Stockimo shouldn't hurt, right?
Photos are rated by the community and, similar to Foap, you need a score of 2+ to have an eligible image. Once a picture reaches the vote quota, it gets admitted to the market.
