Travel photography today is easily monetized with convenient applications for iOS and Android. The scheme is simple, and it doesn’t matter what you shoot – a simple smartphone or a DSLR. After uploading photos to your phone, you can send the frames to one of the special applications, from where in just a few minutes (or at least a couple of days) the pictures are transferred to stock photo banks. Often – fairly large and well-known stocks, where millions of various buyers hang out. How to make money from travel photos?
Fotolia Instant
A mobile app from the Big Four stock photo bank (which includes Shutterstock, iStock, Fotolia, and Dreamstime), which is very popular among designers, build editors, and other creative units.
You can shoot any historical ruins and landmarks – the creators of the application ask only to avoid shots of food, flowers, and pets. However, this condition still leaves a lot of room for maneuver when it comes to travel photography. You shoot or upload stills from your camera to your smartphone and send them to the Fotolia moderators, providing each picture with a set of keywords. The latter is extremely important if you still want to sell a photo – potential buyers will search for the desired images precisely by keywords.
It is important to understand that in this, as in other services, by supplying your content to photo sellers, you will forever remain the copyright holder of the photo – the buyer only acquires a license to use it. At the same time, as a rule, the license does not oblige him to indicate the author of the photograph. But they will not pass off your picture as their decent people, and they periodically arrange raids on indecent photo stocks and build sophisticated legal intrigues.
Fotolia Instant is a rather conservative application and there are no indulgences to mobile photos – they will judge the quality of work by the general requirements of the “parent” photo bank Fotolia. From the hopeful: recently, Fotolia is wholly owned by the American giant Adobe. Further, different scenarios for the development of a mobile project are equally possible here: from rapid development to complete attenuation – as is often the case after major mergers and acquisitions.
Twenty20
The American service, originally from Southern California, has a much lighter format, nice design, and a rather thoughtful interface. In the same way, here you can upload any pictures from your travels, and most importantly, it is not forbidden to post food and cats here: but we came here to sell photographs of Icelandic waterfalls and sunsets in Vanuatu, right?
A nice moment: you can follow other authors and view the most popular shots with buyers. This makes it easier to navigate what is really in demand. More importantly, there are tasks – Challenges: you are offered to upload photos of a certain subject. Challenges last for several days, and at the end of the term, the authors of the best photographs are threatened with fees of up to $ 50.
Clashot
Perhaps the most experienced players in this young market – the service gained momentum two years ago and was created by one of the world’s largest photo stocks – Depositphotos.
Clashot combines the functionality of the two previous applications: friends feed, tasks (here they are called “Offers”), popular reportage feed. As a bonus – the ability to link uploaded photos to locations, the usual Instagram hashtag search, and view the latest pictures uploaded by users near you – it will be immediately clear whether to take the 100500th photo of the Sagrada Familia from this point where you are now standing, or you can move away 50 meters to the side for a more original perspective.
There is an excellent Russian interface and even Ukrainian because the application was adapted to our realities right in Kyiv, where a significant part of the Clashot developers are quartered. In other words, from the entire list, this is the most native and understandable service. In addition, there are tasks specifically for authors from Belarus. For example, during the World Hockey Championship, Clashot bought pictures from Minsk for $ 10-30. So go ahead, light a red light outside their gates!
Scoopshot
Not a bad alternative to Twenty20 with a very similar concept and task orientation (called Tasks here). The application appeared almost the first of its kind, but did not receive wide popularity in the CIS and outside of Northern Europe – Scoopshot is being developed and supported in Finland.
There are no friends’ feed here, but there are quite a lot of thematic tasks – up to selfies in the car, so it seems that you can try your luck with any shots from your travels.
It’s hard to vouch for high sales on Scoopshot, as the service isn’t backed by any of the stock giants. Some advantage can be considered the ability to post pictures anonymously.
Snapwire
Another Californian startup, very creative in setting various tasks – here you will definitely find where to attach almost any travel shot.
The service itself differs from others in a rather convoluted gamification and level system for photographers. True, after sitting in Snapwire for a day and understanding, you can steer along a simple guideline: you collect points by simply uploading pictures or rating other authors. A certain number of points takes you to more and more new levels – from beginner to professional. The higher level gives the opportunity to participate in more difficult tasks with the best royalties from major sponsors like the Huffington Post and Getty Images
Foap
Some more old-timers of the young market and also representatives of Northern Europe. The project with Swedish roots, just like most of the previous apps, will give you a lot of tasks and topics.
Foap is trying to build its own photo bank, where the company has already managed to collect several million images, mainly mobile photos. It’s funny that the decision about whether a picture is suitable for sale is made by the users themselves, evaluating each other’s photographs on a five-point scale. Received more than five ratings of three or more – your frame will be sold in the Foap Marketplace.
Eyem
The latest product that can help you pay off half a ticket is a bit like Instagram, but it has a much more convoluted ecosystem and seems to be trying to grasp the immensity. There are built-in filters for images familiar to many, and search for pictures near your location, like Clashot, and tasks, like all other services presented, as well as a friend feed and its own image market.How to make money from travel photos?
There is no definite answer to the question of how much you can earn on such services. With some luck and perseverance, it is quite possible to sell for $ 500-700 per month. Moreover, one and the same picture can be placed even on all stocks at once. However, it is more realistic to perceive mobile photo stocks more as entertainment with the possibility of a small cash bonus than as a source of stable income.How to make money from travel photos?
The money earned is transferred to PayPal, and in some applications, like in Clashot, also to the Skrill payment system. If bank cards in your country do not support PayPal, you can make purchases and book tickets directly from your account. How to make money from travel photos?
