Licensable NFTs For Stock Photos, Footage and Vectors

Licensing NFT Introduction

In this post, I'm going to explain exactly why I think NFTs are going to completely change the stock photo and video market over the next ten years. I'm going to start by going through how the stock photo and video market works today, talk about what the disadvantages of this are and how they can be solved with blockchain technology in a few years.

Current State of Stock Photo and Footage Industry

Well, they're talking about how stock photos are bought and sold today. OK. So that's what I'm going to start. You know, if this is something you already know, you already know exactly how different ways people can buy and sell stock photos.

Direct Stock Photography Sale

The first way that I can do it is a direct in-person sale. This almost never happens. Actually, this really never happens, right? But it's totally possible that somebody can come up to me and say, Hey, I want to buy a license to one of your images, and I happen to have a hard drive with those images. They then copy them and they hand me the money like, hand me the cash. OK, now, if they were to do that, then 100% of the money, all the money that they sold for the license would go to me.

OK, now that is very rarely the case because most of the photo sales that happened these days are happening online. But I wanted to talk about that. It is possible to sell photos without a middleman in between.

Sell Stock Photography With an Ecommerce Website

It's just very rare that that actually happens. Now, obviously, a lot of people aren't going to want to email a photographer every time they want to purchase a photo. So because of that, I sell my photos online. I've got a website and I can go on to that website. I upload all my photos there. I've got a clearly marked price. So anybody who wants to purchase a license can go to my website and see what the price is and decide to purchase it.

And I personally use SmugMug for that. There's lots of other solutions out there, but they all work in similar ways. They are, portfolio sites and ecommerce sites allow photographers to sell their photos. And you know, the advantage of this is they take a relatively small percentage compared to what like an agency would take. So, for example, at SmugMug, the markup is 15%.

So if I want to make $10 for a photo, I can charge $10 for the photo. The end customer will end up paying $11.50 a dollar 50 that goes to SmugMug. $10 of that goes to me. And the advantage of that for the buyer is that all the photos are up there they can easily go through. Now the disadvantage of that, obviously, is there's a lot of photographers out there and I don't have a photo for every single advertising campaign, right?

So you know what buyers would typically prefer to do rather than going to every photographer's website and purchasing, although they do definitely do that. Sometimes they prefer to go to an agency where they can search a large number of photos and more quickly find the photos they're looking for.

Selling Stock Photography Through A Microstock Agency

And that's where micro stock sites come in. Sites like Shutterstock, Alamy, you know, Adobe Stock. A lot of what I talk about on this channel, all of those are Microsoft sites and micro stock sites work differently. What they're doing is they're creating the collection and they're selling the collection directly to the customers, and they're really keeping the photographer out of it. The photographer doesn't necessarily even know specifically. In a lot of cases those who purchase their photos.

Microsoft sites also do a lot of advertising. So when you look at a SmugMug site or when you set up a photography website, you're responsible for driving all the traffic there. So if you want to, you know you can do Google ads, you can do social media, but it's your responsibility to get people to that website

Microstock sites work differently, they actually bring the customers to the website, so they run advertising campaigns, email marketing campaigns. They do a lot of work to try to get customers to come in, and oftentimes they run a subscription base as well, too, so they offer subscriptions. Now the reason buyers like these sites is they offer a consistent pricing. So every photographer has to agree to the site's pricing before they get in there, so it doesn't matter which photo they find. They can basically get the same pricing on it.

These are big companies with more advanced web sites. They can add more features to their websites because of this and because of that, they're very popular. Most photos these days are licensed on Microsoft sites.

However, these Microstock sites have a very large markup. The market is at least 100%, so they're at least doubling it. But that's very rare. Most of the time, it's a 500%-750% markup. And this is, I think, where the opportunity lays. We can do is reduce the amount of markups that these middlemen are taking. And that's how they want to talk about what NFTs can do in just a moment. OK. Before we get into that, there's other ways that photos can be purchased, right?

Other Stock Photography Middlemen

This industry of middlemen is just expanding and it continues to expand. The thing about Facebook, for example, Facebook has ads, OK, so Facebook wants to sell ads to small businesses. Well, those small businesses sometimes don't have stock photography. They don't have good photos for their ads. So Facebook saw an opportunity here. They said, we have, you know, people that are coming to our platform. They need to purchase stock photography. Why don't we sell them stock photos directly? When they're creating the ad, they'll buy more ads. We can also make a bit of money off star photography. But Facebook had a problem.

They don't have a collection, so what are they going to do? How are they going to sell photos? They want to hire a bunch of photographers to go out there and recreate photos that are all already available. They also don't want to go out and try to get photographers to upload photos to their platform. It's a lot of work to get, you know, millions of photographers and cases of shutterstock.com, and the other sites to upload their photos there.

So what they'll do is they go to Shutterstock and say, Hey, sellers. Shutterstock, you know, can we resell part of your collection? And this is set up via all programmatically done via programs and an API. But then what Shutterstock does is they can say, OK, here's your price on Facebook for these particular stock photos.

And obviously they're marking up, 250 to 700%. But then Facebook can mark that up further. OK. So as an example, I could be selling a photo for $1, right on Shutterstock. And then somebody goes onto Facebook and purchased that for $12 or $13. Well, I had that $1 goes to me, let's say two or $3 goes to Facebook. And then $8 goes to Shutterstock. So you see here that again, we're starting to talk about a thousands of percent markup to buy on these particular platforms.

Sublicensing Stock Photo Collections

These are platforms where people upload their photos and what they weren't able to do is they weren't able to go and find buyers. Another thing that's really difficult to do is find buyers, and they couldn't find buyers. So what they did was, they still wanted to make money from photographers' photos. So they took those photos and they basically sold the rights to resell the collection to some of these other sites. So you can go on to, Getty Images, and you can purchase photos that were uploaded to 500px. And again, everybody takes a cut here when the photographer ends up getting the smallest one.

Why Does Stock Photography Require Middlemen

The vast majority of the money that's made from selling stock photos goes to intermediary companies, not the photographer. And another way to put it is that intermediary companies do vast, very high markups based on all these digital photos that people have taken in the past.

And there's good reasons why the stock photography industry has evolved this way. Buyers want to go to a website and search through a large collection of photos, and they want to be able to know that the photos they find, if they find the ones they're like, they're going to be part of their budget. And so the only way to do that with the technology is the way that it stood was for a company like Shutterstock or Adobe Stock or and these other sites to set up a website, set up the servers to do all the technology.

And because of that, the stock photography industry has really stagnated around these top players. They do acquisitions if anybody comes up with a good idea that they may be able to compete with them, they end up purchasing those companies and integrating them into their own. So over the past couple of years, there hasn't been a lot of changes to the way the stock photo industry works. However, I think that is going to change. And the thing that changed is NFTs in the blockchain, and I believe that the blockchain with NFTs is, if done correctly, can give buyers everything they want without a middleman. And because there won't be a middleman, they will be getting rid of the middleman price, price markups. And without those price markups, I believe it is possible to compete. All right. And that's why he thinks that NFTs are really going to be able to disintermediate the stock photography industry over the next ten years.

Current Types of Photography NFTs

How are the ways that NFTs exist today? They're not really suitable for disintermediation in the stock photography industry. I want to get a bit more into the details on this, though getting way too technical.

ERC721 NFTs for Photographers

But there's two types of NFTs that you see out there are ERC721, which is used for collectibles.

So when you think of NFT use, you probably think of what these collectible NFT is, where basically someone creates a unique NFT and then they can then go and sell it to someone and that person can then go and resell it to someone else. And they're basically used as collectibles like trading cards would be.

ERC1155 NFTs for Photographers

There's another type of NFT use that are called ERC1155, and they're basically NFTs that can have quantity to them. So they're kind of more like print.

If you think of a photographer who creates limited edition prints, they go out and do 50 prints of the exact same and then people can then go buy those friends and resell those prints. But there's more than one. It's not a unique thing.

There's like 50 of them, So it's more of a limited edition. These have become very popular for collectors. NFTs have become popular over the last year, but they don't really help stock photographers because what stock photographers want to be able to do is they want to be able to license their photos to many people, not not just a limited number of people. And that is where the technology needs to be improved. So what I'm proposing is the creation of a new type of NFT being a licensable NFT.

Licensable NFT for Stock Photographers, Videographers and Vector Artists

The way a licensable NFT will work is, it will kind of be the best of both worlds. When a photographer uploads a photo, they will upload a photo and it will create an NFT. Now that NFT will represent the copyright for that photo, most photographers will never transfer that initial NFT. However, when they upload that, they say they have the copyright. They will then be able to license that photo. So what a buyer can then do is come in and say, I want to buy a license the photo for use.

And then what they would do is pay what the photographer is asking. And then they would pay that money to the photographer. It would go directly to the photographer and then they would receive an NFT that represents the license.

OK. So what I'm saying is we need to have kind of a dual NFT system where an NFT represents a license to someone who's purchased it that's going to prove that they've purchased it. And we also need an NFT that is the copyright for the particular photo.

So if you can imagine, let's say somebody you know has a large collection of stock photos. They could then go and say this is what my minimum price is for each of these photos, then upload them to this new NFT service. So let's say they're already selling their photos on Shutterstock, and they're willing to sell a license for a dollar. So when they create that NFT, the minimum price to buy a license in that NFT would be $1 right now. Anybody can go through and purchase that now. If we go back to the original example that kind of replaces the direct sale model where basically someone can go through it and purchase it directly. But as we know, that's not going to be the only way the photos are going to be sold.

So it's possible to use the exact same NFT to do direct sales, but then use the same NFT on a photo right now. third party agencies could also use this as well, too. I think the thing that you know a lot of people tried over the years is to get rid of the whole agencies, but we have to realize that agencies are going to be part of the stock photography industry forever.

There's a need for them to provide, you know, a valuable service. Maybe today they've got a bit too powerful. But they will be around, but I think they'll probably be a new agency if they come up as part of this. Now what an agency can do is they do all the things that agencies do. They can set up subscriptions. They can go and they can do marketing. But the way the NFT is, the work is there's that minimum price set by the photographer.

So if somebody wants to go and purchase a license, what these agencies can do is basically advertise that license for $5, and then they can when they purchased that license for those dollars they can keep.

And one of those dollars has to go to the photographer. The way this works differently is the backend system for this will be NFTs and blockchain. It won't actually be the servers run by the company. They'll have to have their own web servers.

It may sound similar, but there's a technology difference here in that the photographer is putting things on a blockchain. And then every other company that wants to sell photos is referencing that blockchain, and they can sell them for as much as they want, as long as the photographer gets the minimum amount.

And what this is going to allow people to do is because they're they're going to allow much better competition between these stock companies and because of the stock companies. I think what you're going to see is that those margins with that markup is going to go down.

Well, what this is really doing is it's taking the contract away from the agencies and putting it onto the blockchain where basically everybody can see it. It's much more accessible to everybody. So now I've tried to keep this video as non technical as humanly possible because the real target audience for this is photographers and creators to kind of understand how this technology can work. However, I'm a very technical person and I have been working on this and it is technically possible to do all these things.

However, it doesn't exist yet. There's no such thing as a licensable NFT. This is the first blog post where I'm kind of explaining it in a bit more detail, but this is something that we're working on creating, not something that exists out in the world today.

Now, if this interests you at all and you want to be involved in this project, once we get it going and you can go to uniquestock.io. You can go and sign up for the mailing list, and I'm going to keep you in the loop of what's happening and how are developments going because we are going to need obviously a lot of people to upload their photos to this if we really want to be able to disintermediate the stock photography industry is already kind of starting to collect those names.

And you know, we've already got thousands of people that have already signed up for that mailing list. However, we are in the really early stages and when I say early stages, we've kind of got a proof of concept for how the technology is going to work with the so a lot more work that needs to happen at the blockchain development side of things.

Here is the Youtube video that inspired this blog post

How to create NFTs(non fungible token) for art photography and sell them on crypto marketplaces like Opensea

There has been a lot of news about NFTs recently because of big sales from artists like Beeple and big bands like Kings of Leon selling their music as NFTs.  In this article I am going to walk about what this means for photographers.

I will start by explaining NFT’s at a high level, not going to get into any technical details but you kind of need to know to create your own NTFs on Opensea. Then I will show you how to sell your photo RAW files as NFT’s on the Opensea NFT marketplace.

What is an NFT?

An NFT is a digital token that is unique and easily verifiable by the blockchain.  But what does that mean, let me give you some real life examples of other things that are unique tokens and easily verifiable. 

US Copyright Office

Anyone can go to the US copyright office website and upload their photos then pay a small fee to get a registration number. That number is like the NFT token, anyone can easily verify it by going to the US Government website and looking it up.  It shows that you registered your photos copyright and gives you some benefits under US Copyright law.  However, this isn’t exactly like an NFT because you can’t resell your copyright registration.  

Internet Domain Names

Internet domain names are also unique and easily verifiable.  I own souvenirpixels.com because I bought  it from a reseller but there is an organization that keeps track of who owns souvenirpixels.com, it is unique, if anyone else tries to register that domain they can’t.  Unlike the copyright example, I can resell my domain name.

Sale of Limited Edition Prints

One last example is if a photographer decides to sell limited edition prints and probably the most accurate is limited edition prints.  A photographer can take a photo, make 5 prints, sell them as a limited edition.  Each is one of a kind because it is 1 of 5, 2 of 5, etc.  This is a better example because whoever purchases the print can easily resell directly to another person, or put it on auction through an auction house, or even just sell it on Facebook marketplace.  It is theirs now and they can do what they want with it.

Where to Sell NFTs

I know this is very abstract so let just take a look at an NFT Marketplace.  Marketplaces are used to buy and sell NFTs.  The largest NFT market is Opensea, think about it as the Ebay of NFTs.  This is where I decided to sell my photos.  Here is my Unique Stock Photos NFT collection on OpenSea

How to sell Photos As NFTs

To start my NFT collection, I decided to sell NFTs of my RAW files.  So, these photos you see here were taken 7 or 8 years ago and have been posted on multiple websites, they have been downloaded thousands of times on Stock sites, millions of times on free sites and they have made me thousands of dollars.  

You can go to Shutterstock and buy the full size version for a couple of bucks or download a slightly smaller version for free of Pexels, so why would anyone buy the NFT.  Well first off, it is the same with the Beeple items, he publishes his stuff online, has a huge instagram following but the NFTs still have value because they are unique.  Anyone can download the photo from the web but the NFTs are unique so they have value.

Now, I am no Beeple, so I decided to add something else to my NFT’s.  The owner of the NFT gets access to the original RAW file for the photo.  So, although these photos are on thousands of servers all over the web, the RAW files from my Camera that I used to create these photos have never been released before.  So, the person who buys these NFTs will be the only person who has access to that RAW file other than me.

One thing I should note here is that I am not saying, “This is the right way for Photographers to sell NFTs”.  Right now this technology is in its infancy, I will say there is no right way yet.  This is the way I am trying, you may decide to try a different way, I may decide to try a different way next week.  Photographers and the photography community are going to need to experiment with this technology to decide how we are going to adapt it.  I will talk about that more later, for now, let me show you how I created my NFTs.

I am using Opensea to sell my NFT’s, I chose it because it was the largest marketplace out there but there are others that work in a similar way, like Superrare, Rarible or Mintbase.

Setup an Ethereum Wallet

To be able to sell on Opensea you need to have an Etherium wallet setup.  I use Metamask, if you are new then just use the same one, I am not going to go into how to set that up in this video, just google it, there are lots of other resources about how to set it up.

How to Create an Opensea Collection

Now to create a  NFT on Opensea you need to create a collection.  Every NFT needs to belong to a collection.  You will probably only one to create one collection for all your photos because there is a cost the first time you sell a photo from a collection, so you don’t want to use them like albums on your website because it would cost a lot more to sell your photos.

Anyone can create a collection for free.  I decided to call mine Uniquestock because I typically sell my photos as stock photo and they are unique.  Now I could have decided to use a collection called Souvenirpixels, my photography website is Souvenirpixels.com, I’m souvenirpixels on Instagram, twitter, etc.  but the things about collections is they don’t need to have one creator, so my user is souvenirpixels but my collection is unique-stock.  The reason I did it this way is because in the future I would like to allow other people to sell their NFTs within the same collection.

Once you have your collection create you can click the edit link then fill in the options, they are pretty self explanatory.

How to create an NFT

Now for creating the NFT, while in your collection, click the Add New Item Button

Upload your NFT file and enter name, please note that the name is the only thing searched right now on Opensea so make it search engine friendly. Next if you have an external link then you can add it, along with the description.

Next we have properties, levels and stats.  These took me a while to figure out but basically they are just filters attributes to be used as filters. You can checkout my collection filters here.

Again, no right or wrong way to do this but I set it up this way because I want the collection to be easily filterable by potential stock photo buyers as it grows.

Click save and it takes a couple of seconds and the NFT is created. Now, you can get this far without paying any money, but if you want to goto the next step and put the NFT up for sale, it starts to cost money.

Now, what you need to pay, isn’t a fee to list on opensea, you actually aren’t really paying opensea at all, you are paying the blockchain to process a transaction, this is really where you need to understand a little about “the blockchain” so I am going to try to explain in the simplest terms.

This is also where people are going to ask, why do I have to pay for the blockchain when I don’t have to pay for other services, so lets look at it in that way.

If you are new to the site, you may not realize that although Photerloo is the name of the channel, Photerloo is the name of our channel it is for our company called Photerloo that I am a cofounder of.  Our companies goal is to help photographers monetize their photography. We have built a website that will take your photos and upload them to multiple other sites, so every month thousands of photographers upload their photos to Photerloo and our servers push them to other sites.  Now some people us our software for free but they can only upload 5 photos a week and others pay for unlimited uploads.  However, now they all run on the same servers and we pay for the servers for all the users.

However, when you list your item for sale, you are listing on the Ethereum blockchain, which is a decentralized software platform.  This isn’t a server owned by one company for use of that company like with Photerloo.  Anyone can become part of the software platform by setting up a computer and connecting into the network.  So, the computers that process this transaction are owned by many different people or companies.  But it costs money to host servers, why would anyone want to add a computer to the network, well because people who want to run transactions on the network pay to run the transaction. It is called the gas cost and opensea won’t pay it for your so you are going to have to pay it the first time you list item from your collection.

Now, when I listed my first item it was $85, but that will change widely depending on the current price of the Etherium cryptocurrency and the load on the network.  So, if you are following along at home it could be significantly more or less.  The way you pay it is via your metamask wallet so you will need to have some ether in the wallet, I am not going to go into that on this video because buying cryptocurrency will differ based on which country you are in and change overtime, but there are lots companies that will convert your countries currency into Ether (the crypto currency that runs the Ehteriyum network.  So, you can go and buy it, transfer to your Metamask wallet and then list your item.  

Couple of things to note.  When you first setup your collection, it is unverified which means that if I search for unique photos on open sea, I won’t find my photos yet.  They say that if you get more activity then they will consider verifying a collection, so would really appreciate it if you shared my collection or even better bid or bought some of my NFT’s so I can get the unique photos collection verified.  

But even being unverified, they are still for sale and you can share on twitter.  I also setup an NFT section of my website.

So, that is it.  You now know how to create an NFT and start selling your photos, but will anyone buy them? Obviously, there have been some very well known digital artists that have done very well with NFT’s but I don’t know of any photographers who have the same success.  

However, one thing to realize is that this technology is really still its infancy.  At this point you need to use your imagination a little to see the possibilities but I strongly believe that the underlying technology of the blockchain and smart contracts will completely change the business of photography in the future.  

In this video I walk through some of my ideas on how NFTs will grow for the photography video, check it out.

Photerloo 2.0 Released

Photerloo is the world's first AI powered smart uploader that helps photographers build a strong online presence.

To stand out, photographers need to be extremely proficient at their craft and have a strong online presence.  In 2021, having a strong online presence means being active on multiple social media and photography sites.  However, each site has its own requirements for example, twitter descriptions need to be under 280 characters, Instagram requires hashtags, and stock sites require keywords.  This makes building an online presence a very time consuming but important task.  Photographers need to have a streamlined process to get their photos online to multiple sites to be successful these days.

“Creating amazing images is only the first step, photographers need a strong online presence to get their photos in front of potential clients.  We built Photerloo to streamline the uploading workflow with AI so busy photographers can focus on creating photos.”

— James Wheeler, Photerloo co-founder

Photographers using Photerloo upload their photos to the Photerloo website, then the website distributes these photos to all their online accounts.  The smart uploader suggests captions, hashtags, and keywords while allowing photographers to easily customize their description for each site.  In addition, the Photerloo scheduler lets photographers schedule their uploads to the sites in the future so they can work on other projects while uploads are on auto-pilot.

This video walks through the new features.  Click here to sign up for Photerloo for free.

Photerloo has a free version that allows 5 uploads a week and a 14 free day trial of their paid unlimited version so photographers can try it with no risk.

Where to find your Freepik contributor FTP ID (username) and password?

Photerloo requires your FTP ID and password to upload your photos to your Freepik Contributor account. The FTP ID is different than your regular Freepik login ID and is not your email address.

Please note: you MUST BE A LEVEL 3 CONTRIBUTOR to use Photerloo to upload your photos to Freepik, if you are not a level 3 contributor yet then upload photos via the Freepik website to increase your level ranking.

Click here to go to your Freepik contributor FTP upload a page then you should see your FTP User and FTP Password, similar to the screenshot below:

If you don’t see a page like the screenshot above then follow these steps in your browser to navigate to that page.

1. Click here to go to the Freepik contributor website then click Sign in.

2. On the left side navigation bar click files then upload

3. You should now see the screen above with your username and password

If you don’t see the screen above then try this direct link to that page.

If you see the page but not your login information then check the box in the top right to confirm you are level 3, you will need to be a level 3 contributor to use Photerloo to post photos to Freepik.

If these steps don’t work then Freepik may have changed their site, let me know in the comments and I will update.

Best Apps to Sell Photos Online in 2020 Revieww

Reviews of Best 9 Apps To Sell Your Photos Online in 2020

In this post I am going to review the best 9 apps to sell your photos online.  I will walk through exactly how you make money on the app, how much money you can expect to make and what I like or don’t like about the app.  

Now I have ranked the apps based on how much you can potentially make from the app, not based on how fun it is, easy to use or anything else but I will talk about that as I go through the reviews.  Also, all the apps on the list are available for both iOS and Android. 

Each app I reviewed does have a slightly different target audience so you may find that #3 or #4 is best for you and I will try to explain who might like the app as I go through so you don’t need to install all 9 to see which one you like best.

Also, I didn’t just install and try these 9 apps, I tried around 20 of them, but the rest I tried were a waste of time in my opinion so I am not even going to discuss them.  However, if you use another app and actually make money with it I would love to hear about it in the comments below.

In general, the apps I reviewed all allowed you to make money in two different ways: selling your photos as stock, or paid competitions.  

Selling as stock is the same way to make money as the other posts on the blog, you upload your photo to a Microstock site and if a buyer purchases it then you get a portion of the sale.

The competitions work a bit differently, literally each app has different name for it like, Missions, Challenges, Quests, Briefs, Contests but they are all basically the same, a competition is setup for a specific type of photo, you can submit your photos to the competition and you can win a cash prize.

Now based on my experience, competitions can be more fun so if you are looking for entertainment then apps with competitions should be on your list, but selling your photos as stock will typically make you more money with much less effort in the long run.

Luckily, some of the apps offer both so you don’t have to choose also, you can upload the same photo to multiple apps so you don’t have to choose just one, you could try out a couple to see how they work out for you.

#9 App for Selling Photos Online - Foap

Now Foap just barely squeaked in under the waste of time criteria, but I felt that I had to include it because on the surface it looks really good.  

When I was doing research for the video Foap was listed on multiple other sites as the best app so it really surprised me when I installed it and found that it didn’t seem like you could really actually make any money from the app.

They do have a stock photo marketplace and competitions that are called missions so in theory you could make money, but I found that Foap doesn’t really market to buyers and from what I can tell, very few buyers purchase photos from Foap compared to other apps I am going to talk about later on the list.  

When it comes to the competitions, most of them are “premium missions” which means you need to pay to enter them.  So they charge you a buck to enter a photo at the chance to win $300 but you are competing against 1000 other photographers, you would be much better odds of taking that dollar and playing almost any game in a casino.

Also, this is the only app on the list that is littered with ads, which I think is proof that their marketplace doesn’t make many sales because every other app on this list can make money taking a cut of photo sales and don’t need to put ads on their app.  So, Foap might be #1 in the search results but it is at the bottom of my list.

#8 Agora - Best App Photo Competitions

Now it is low on the list because I think it would be difficult to make consistent money with it but if I was ranking for how well it was designed or for entertainment then it would be much higher on the list.  

Agora wouldn’t be great to earn money because it doesn’t have the ability to sell the photos as stock but its competitions are really good.  Right now the prizes range from $1000 to $25000, and you can upload one photo to each competition for free then you can then watch ads or pay to upload multiple photos.  

Of course, your photo might be competing with 20 000 other photos for a $1000 and there are some great photographers on the app so even if you have a great photo it is still very unlikely that you will win but the way the competition and voting works makes it really fun so if that is what you are looking for then you may want to check this one out. 

#7 App For Selling Stock Photography - Getty Images Contributor app

You can use this app to upload your photos to iStock and other Getty images sites.  Getty is a huge player in the stock industry so they have a lot of regular buyers so your photos are more likely to be seen by buyers. They also had a couple of missions on the app but there weren’t very many missions and they didn’t seem to update regularly.

Also, this app was the hardest to get setup, first you need to apply to be a contributor then wait a week to see if you are accepted, then you need to go to another website to get fully signed up.   

Then once you get into the app it is dated and difficult to use compared to the other apps on the list.  Also, there are two apps higher on the list that can also be used to upload photos to Getty so it isn’t the only way to get your photos in front of their buyers.  

So, maybe an okay app if you are already a Getty or iStock contributor but there are better apps later on the list if you are just getting started.

#6 App to Sell Photos as Stock - Dreamstime

Now Dreamstime is a Microstock site that has been around for a while but most stock photographers have found that sales are declining year over year so it seems to be on a downward trend but there are still buyers frequenting the site so I do still see some sales on it.  

It is pretty easy to get signed up and although the app looks a little dated and took a while to get used to the upload wizard, you get used to it.  The one feature I really liked is you can see your sales by photo and it will also show what the buyer searched for to find your photo, this can be useful information to help when you keyword future photos.

The main reason it is #6 is that the sites later on the list have more popular sites among stock buyers.

#5 App to Sell your photos Online - 500px

Now you may be familiar with the 500px website and the app is really just an extension of the website.  

Now 500px isn’t as popular as it used to be because it has fallen out of favour with a lot of photographers, including myself because of certain decisions they made that benefited the investors but not the members but it is still a popular site with a large social component to the site and app.  

When you upload photos to the site you can have them sold as stock on their partner sites which includes Getty images so they can get in front of a lot of buyers. There are also competitions called Quests and the prizes can be products or cash in the couple hundred dollars range.

Also, just like the website 500px is really good at discovering good photos so browsing through the popular section of the app shows some great photos that could be used for inspiration.  Overall a pretty good all round app and service.

#4 App to Sell Photos Online - Snapwire

Overall the features of Snapwire are very similar to 500px, they both have marketplaces and competitions.  However, it seems that the Snapwire competitions are more frequent and more winnable if you have a really good photo.

Snapwire also has a cool points system that is used to decide how many photos you can upload to competitions, the more sales your photos get and the more your photos get nominated by buyers then the more uploads you are allowed, this is a great way to manage it because it motivates you to upload the best photos but then also the buyers don’t need to wade through a lot of spam photos.

Overall it is a great app and marketplace.  Also, if you already have a lot of stock photos you want to get up on their site they do support FTP but you need to send them a link to your portfolio to get approved to upload your photos via FTP.

Snapwire is one of two apps I tried for this video that I didn’t already have installed but plan to keep on uploading to after this video.  The other app I am going to add to my regular uploads is higher in this list.

#3 Stock Photo App - Shutterstock Contributor App

Now we are getting into the top three, really you can’t go wrong with any of the next 3 apps, starting with #3 which is the Shutterstock contributor app.  

Now Shutterstock doesn’t have a competition feature like many of the others but Shutterstock is one of the top Microstock sites with a lot of buyers so most people, including me, who upload their photos to multiple sites find that Shutterstock delivers the most sales.  

So, of course the app is more likely to make you money than any of the apps I have discussed so far. Also, there is no waiting period to become a contributor so you can install the app and start uploading  Now, the photos are reviewed so not every photo will make it to the shutterstock site but is still a great place to start selling your photos online.

Overall the app is simple and does everything you want it to, including suggesting keywords and showing your sales in a lot of detail.  And of course, if you are already a Shutterstock contributor then you can just login with your regular Shutterstock ID and start uploading.

#2 App to Sell Photos Online - EyeEm

Onto #2, this app has been around for a while, I tried it years ago but decided not to keep it in my regular upload rotation of sites, but installed it again to create this video and love it, I have been uploading everyday since I installed it and plan to keep it in my regular rotation going forward, the app is EyeEm.  

Similar to 500px and Snapwire, Eyem has both a stock marketplace and competitions.  Also, similar to 500px, Eyem has a partnership with Getty so your photos will get onto the Eyeem marketplace but may get added Getty if they are accepted.  

Also, they have a very nice social feed and a lot of great photographers on the site.  The app is beautiful, easy to use and very quick to upload photos.

Now, I am just starting to get all my best photos onto the site so I haven’t seen many sales yet but based on research and I have found that others seem to be making decent returns from their portfolio on EyeEm, maybe not as high as Shutterstock but still up there.  

I am looking forward to seeing what kind of results I get. If you are interested then make sure you subscribe to the channel because I do monthly photography sales reports where I share how much I made on each site so you can see where Eyeem ranks on the list next month..

#1 Best App To Sell Photos Online - Photerloo

When it comes to making money from your photos none of the other apps on this list can really compete with Photerloo because it can uploads your photos to many different stock marketplaces including Shutterstock, Adobe stock, Bigstockphoto, depositphotos, Alamy, in addition you can set it up to upload your photos to all the social sites like your facebook page, twitter, instagram, flickr, and smugmug.  

Also, the app has stock keyword suggestions.  Now all the other apps on the list could only upload to one or maybe two stock marketplaces so of course you can’t expect them to make as much from the photos as an app that uploads to many sites.  

However, Photerloo probably won’t be the only app you have installed because it doesn’t have the social features or the competitions of the other apps, however it is great if you just want to get your photos into a lot of stock marketplaces and social sites to make money from your photography.  You can click the buttons below to install the app.

Anyways, hope you found this blog post useful, let me know in the comments which are your favorite apps.  Best of luck selling your photos online.

I also have a Youtube video where I show the apps while I review, here it is.

Stock Photography Contributor Sales Report - April 2020

Well, it is time for my April stock revenue report, and it isn’t good, as I speculated last month, the types of photos I upload to stock sites aren’t doing great in the middle of a global pandemic.  However, it isn’t all doom and gloom, but let's just jump into the numbers.

#1. Pexels Donations

The top site on my list this month is Pexels with $63.40 in donations, this is the second month in a row where a free stock site generated more revenue than the traditional paid Microstock sites from the same photos.  This is a lot of revenue to Pexels but I think the reason is that I uploaded a lot of photos in March and April.  

At the start of the Covid lockdown I went into a photo editing and uploading frenzy.  For me, the only thing better than travelling to a new location and taking photos is sitting back with a beer and editing those photos so when this whole thing started, I needed to deal with the stress of everything so ended up with 100 plus new photos for social and stock sites.

So, I used Photerloo to schedule a photo to be posted every other day until the end of June.  However, I can’t use Photerloo to upload to Pexels so as I scheduled those photos to be uploaded to my social and stock sites I put them on Pexels at the same time.  

If you are interested in signing up for a free Photerloo account signup here.

Like many other social sites you will typically see a bump in your numbers as you upload a bunch of photos.  At the time my all time pexels rank was 101st but after these uploads I pushed into the top 100 and right now am at 98th.  So, I think that is why my donations went up by so much.

However, it isn't realistic for me to upload this many quality photos every month, I was working through a backlog of photos taken over a half a year so don’t expect to see $50 plus every month going forward but it would be nice, especially with my revenue from other stock sites in decline.

#2. Shutterstock Contributor Sales

Next on the list is Shutterstock with, now $50 from Shutterstock isn’t bad for me and even a bit above average for this year but $23 of that came from one video sale.  

If I just look at photo sales then I only made $27 which is the lowest revenue from Shutterstock for photos in the past year.  If you take a look at this chart from the Shutterstock contributor website, the red line shows how my image sells from April compared to the past year.  Not great.

However, not sure if you can see the shading in the chart, not sure why Shutterstock uses light blue to show image sales and a slightly darker version of light blue to show video sales but that blue above the red line in April represents my stock video sales.  That is my first video sale in over a year.

Back a number of years ago I went through a phase where I was having a lot of fun with timelapses and uploaded them to the stock sites and they have made a couple of sales over the years but nothing worth noting so before this year I didn’t have much stock footage for sales online.

However, recently I decided I want to learn how to become a better video shooter, so I have been going out early in the morning and shooting some video clips at sunrise and have been uploading them to Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Depositphotos and Pond5 to see if I would get any downloads and this is my first one.

Personally, I don’t think my video clips are anything special and I have a lot to learn but this one of some birds on the beach caught a buyers attention and earned me $23.  So, pretty happy about that.

#3 & #4. Fine Art America Print Sales and Depositphotos Contributor Sales

Next, I made a sale on a smaller print on Fine Art America that made $21.17 and Depositphotos was $16 which is about average. 

#5. Adobe Stock Contributor Sales

However, 5th on the list was Adobe Stock with only $11, that is really low for me on Adobe stock to give you an idea, here is a chart of my Adobe stock revenue by month over the past year, April was by far the worst month.  I think it is pretty safe to say that drop is related to the coronavirus.

Rest of the stock photography sales

My April 2020 Stock Photography Sales

The rest of the sites were about normal or below normal.  So, not a great month but some bright spots.  As I mentioned in my last video, a lot of my portfolio is travel photos and the travel industry isn’t doing that well right now so it isn’t unexpected to see a drop.

I also created a video about April 2020’s stock photography sales below.

Depositphotos Contributor Earnings Report

In this post I am going to review my earnings on Depositphotos, look at my best selling photos and show some advanced tips and tricks on Depositphotos.  But before I do, if you are looking to learn how to become a deposit photos contributor, I am not going to get into that in this article but I do have another post about getting started as a Depositphotos contributor.

Depositphotos Contributor Earnings by Year

Lets jump into the stats, so far I have made about $1500 on Deposit Photos, now that is a lot less than some of the other stock sites I contribute to like Shutterstock and Adobe stock, so I haven’t spent as much time uploading photos to Depositphotos as a result.  Pretty much just uploaded a bunch of photos 7 years ago and left it.  This chart shows both my earnings and number of uploads by year.

The red line is the number of uploads in that year and the blue bars show the earnings each year.  Notice that in 2012 I uploaded 50 photos but made only 30 cents, 2013, uploaded 141 photos and made under $40.  

I haven’t uploaded a photo since 2014 but in 2019 I made over $300 from those photos I uploaded six years earlier.  Now, I recently uploaded over 100 more photos in 2020 to see if I can raise my 2020 earnings. 

Depositphotos Contributor Earnings Best Days

Looking at the chart, 2017 stands out, no uploads in the preceding two years but more than doubled in revenue. Lets dig into what happened there. 

Looking at my Stats, on June 23, 2017 I made over $60 with 36 on demand sales and on Jul.01, 2017 I made over $120 with 72 on demand sales.  Those two days accounted for almost 40% of my yearly revenue, crazy.

On Depositphotos you can see all your sales so I can go back and see what sold on those days and all those sales were for only one photo.  

There is no way for me to figure out why it happened because I didn’t notice it till afterwards but I figure Deposit photos included my photo in an email campaign or maybe added it to the homepage for those days, that is the only thing I would explain such a sudden increase followed by a decrease.

Depositphotos Contributor Sales by Photo

Now let's take a look at how my sales break out by photo.  One cool thing about Depositphotos is they make it really easy to see a list of your photos with how many people have viewed, downloaded and how much you have earned with each photo.   However, one not so cool thing is they don’t have an easy way to sort the list, so you can’t just click a link to see your top photos.

However, it wasn’t that hard for me to cut and paste into a Google sheet so I could sort by sales.  Now, as you can see, the vast majority of my sales come from one photo.  I uploaded this back in 2012 and it still gets downloaded almost daily.  The main reason is that it ranks high in a lot of search results. 

Buyers searching for just “Canada” in deposit photos are going to see it on the first page and if you type in “Canada Landscape” then it is currently the top result.  

Now search results change over time but fairly slowly.  Now I say this not to brag but to give you an idea of what you can expect if your photo makes it to the top of the search results on this site.

My number two photos are on the first page if you search for “Toronto” definitely not as popular a search as Canada but still give it the number 2 spot on my download list, and the third one is on the first page buyers search for Vancouver.

Depositphotos Contributor Tips

Now if you are reading this article and have never uploaded any of your photos to any stock sites before and this is motivating you  to upload to Depositphotos, that's great but I would suggest not starting selling your photos on Depositphotos, I make a lot more money from the same photos on Adobe Stock and Shutterstock so they are a better place to start if you are new to stock photography.

However, if you have already seen some success on other stock sites then definitely consider opening a Depositphotos account.  But as you know, uploading to sites can be time consuming and adding another site is adding more time to your workflow.

Using Photerloo to Upload to Depositphotos

That is why we created Photerloo, which is a website and Mobile app that uploads your photos to multiple stock sites making it much easier to sell your photos across all the popular sites.  So, you just upload the photo once to Photerloo, the app suggests keywords then uploads it to all your stock sites for you.

If you don’t have a Photerloo account yet, you can click the button below to sign up for a free account..  

Connect Depositphotos Account in Photerloo

If you already have an account then all you need to do is link your deposit photos account.  To do that, click the connect sites links on the left side then click the Depositphotos button and enter Depositphotos username and password, one thing to note is that you can’t link your Depositphotos account until after you have been accepted as a Depositphotos contributor. 

That is, now when you upload to your other stock sites Deposit photos will be available to upload at the same time.

I also posted a Youtube video about my earnings that you can check it as well.

Depositphotos Contributor Tutorial and Tips for Beginners

If you are just getting started with Depositphotos and need to get setup then you are in the right place, in this post I am going to show you how to signup for a contributor account and upload your first photos for sale on deposit photos, but before do, I am going to review how much money you can earn selling your photos on this site.

How much money can you make on Depositphotos?

Deposit photos is a Microstock site, you can upload your photos and then Deposit photos will sell them to their customers and send you a portion of the sales.  The cut you get from each photo sale depends on two main factors, how much the customer paid for it and your level as a contributor. 

Depositphotos Image Pricing

First, let's look at how much customers pay for your photos, there are a lot of different options but they can be broken into two main types, subscriptions or on demand.  

Subscriptions are for companies that constantly need photos each month and is the best deal for buyers while on demand is buying a group of images and the more you buy the cheaper it gets, also it is possible to buy an on-demand extended licence which allows people to sell merchandise with your images on them.  That is how much the photo buyer pays, now let's look at how much you get paid as a contributor.  Depositphotos pays based on your level and your level is based on your sales.  Here is how it breaks out.

I have about 1500 photo downloads on Depositphotos so I am at the bronze level.  So for every subscription download I get 31 cents and on demand downloads I get 36%.  The most expensive on demand licence is the extended licence for $89 so for that sale I would get about $32.  So, it is a pretty wide range for what I could make off any download from 31 cents to $32.  Unfortunately, the $32 downloads are few and far between, while the 31 cent downloads are pretty frequent most of the time I get under $2 a download.

How to become a Depositphotos contributor?

Alright, so now you know what to expect, let's get into how to sign up.  Follow this link to take you to the contributor signup page.

Step 1: Fill out the form on the first page

Make sure you enter all the information in accurately and it matches your ID (which you will need to upload in a later step.

Step 2: Submit 5 photos for review

After you submit the form you will need to upload 5 images for review, when you do this, choose your best 5 images because Depositphotos is going to review those images and make a decision if they will approve you as a contributor.  I am just going to upload 5 of my photos that haven’t been uploaded to Depositphotos yet.  

Step 3: Upload a copy of your ID

Next you will need to upload a copy of your ID, they need this for tax purposes and they will be checking that your ID matches what was filled out in the form.

Step 4: Add links to your other portfolios

Lastly you can add links to your other stock portfolios, there is where you should add links to your Shutterstock and Adobe stock accounts, including these links will increase your chances of being accepted as a contributor so add them if you have them.  

If you filled everything out correctly then you will receive a message that your application will be reviewed, you will need to wait until you are accepted as a contributor before you can start uploading more photos.

How to upload a photo for sale on Deposit Photos?

Next I am going to walk through how to upload your first photo after you are accepted. 

Step 1: Upload the photo

Uploading a photo in Depositphotos is straightforward.   Navigate to the seller menu then click the file uploader link or just drag a photo into the uploader window.  You can upload multiple files from the page but I am going to just do one right now.  Next just click the Upload files button and wait for the file to finish uploading.  

Step 2: Review Uploaded Photo

Once it has finished you can close the uploader but you aren’t done yet, you need to review and submit the file.  So, click on the Unfinished button, if you don’t see your photo here yet then just wait a couple of minutes, sometimes it takes a little while before it shows up.  

Step 3: Enter description and keywords

This page is where you enter your description and keywords, now if you added a description and keywords in lightroom or another program before exporting the photo then you will see them here already but you can add more.  

Your description has to be under 250 characters and you should try to put some of your keywords in the description because it does help with the search results.

Next is keywording, you can enter up to 50 keywords per photo.  if you aren’t sure how to keyword your photos, I have created a whole Youtube video about keywording and will put a link to it up here. 

Step 4: Add your model and property releases

Next you need to add releases, if you aren’t sure how to use releases then checkout my Shutterstock tutorial, I go into a lot of detail about releases for Shutterstock in that video and everything I say is also relevant for Deposit photos. 

Step 5: Submit for review

And that is it, click the submit button and they are sent to Depositphotos for review, Depositphotos will email you after the photos have been reviewed letting you know if they were accepted or rejected.  

How do you see the status of my submitted photos?

You can also see the status with these buttons at the top, pending are photos waiting to be reviewed, online are your accepted photos and your rejected photos are over here.

Depositphotos vs Shutterstock vs Adobe Stock

Now depositphotos is a fairly large Microstock site but not as popular as Adobe Stock and Shutterstock so most photographers find they make more on Shutterstock and Adobe Stock than they do on Depositphotos with the same photos.  

I actually get asked a lot in the comments if you can upload the same photos to multiple stock sites and you can as long as you don’t sign an exclusive contract with any of the stock sites which fewer and fewer are offering these days.  So, if you are just getting started in stock I would recommend starting with Shutterstock and Adobe Stock before using Depositphotos.

If you are already posting to those sites then Depositphotos is a great additional site to supplement your income but it can get time consuming to upload your photos to all these sites and it is the most boring part of the process.

How to upload to Depositphotos with Photerloo?

Photerloo is a website where you can upload your photos then Photerloo uploads the photos to all your stock sites.  It also suggests keywords and just saves you a ton of time getting your photos sold online. 

Step 1: Login to Photerloo and click Options

Just login to Photerloo then click options and Link deposit photos. 

Step 2: Enter your Depositphotos credentials

Now enter your deposit email and password.  One thing to note is that you can connect your depositphotos account ONLY after you have been accepted as a Depositphotos contributor, which will give you an error if you haven’t been accepted yet. 

Step 3; Upload your photo

That's it, now when you upload a photo depositphotos will be one of the stock sites available for upload and your photos will go to deposit photos at the same time as your other stock sites.

If you haven’t signed up for Photerloo yet then click this button to get your free account now.

I also created a Youtube video about this topic that you can checkout below

Where to find your Adobe Stock contributor FTP ID (username) and password?

Photerloo requires your FTP ID and password to upload your photos to your Adobe stock account. The FTP ID is different than your regular Adobe stock login ID and is not your email address.

Click here to go to your Adobe Stock upload a page then click learn more like the screen shot below.

If you don’t see a page like the screenshot above then follow these steps in your browser to navigate to that page.

1. Click here to go to the Adobe stock website then click Sign in.

2. Click the sell link at the top of the page

3. Click the upload link at the top right

4. Click the learn more link (see the screenshot below)

If you aren’t able to get to the screen above, try this link and it should take you directly there.

If the steps above don’t work then Adobe may have changed their site, so let me know in the comments and I will update this page.

Shutterstock DMCA Take Down Notice Template

Here is the template that I use to send to Shutterstock to get them to take my photos uploaded by others off the site.

Pursuant to 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A), this communication serves as a statement that:

1. The original photos, to which I own the copyrights, can be found at: ENTER LINK TO WHERE YOU ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED HERE

2. The unauthorized and infringing photos can be found at:

   ENTER LINKS TO PHOTOS ON SHUTTERSTOCK HERE

3. I have a good faith belief that the use of this material in such a fashion is not authorized by the copyright holder, the copyright holder's agent, or the law;

4. Under penalty of perjury in a United States court of law, I state that the information contained in this notification is accurate, and that I am authorized to act on the behalf of the exclusive rights holder for the material in question;

5. I may be contacted by the following methods: 

   ENTER EMAIL HERE

   ENTER PHONE NUMBER HERE

   ENTER POSTAL ADDRESS HERE

I hereby request that you remove or disable access to this material as it appears on Shutterstock in as expedient a fashion as possible. Thank you.

Regards,

James Wheeler

Below is a video where I show how to find if you photos have been uploaded to Shutterstock and how to use this email template.