HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Who hasn’t thought about making a little money on the side?
Whether you’re looking to build a nest egg, pay for college, or start your own full-time business, everything you need to get started is likely on your smartphone. If you’re the creative type with a good eye for photographs, the smartphone app “Foap” might land one of your pictures a spot in a major advertising campaign.
Foap is a licensing company that works as a clearinghouse, connecting amateur shutterbugs with companies looking for great quality photos. Companies are always looking for unique photos for marketing and web material, but those photos can be very expensive when purchased from professional photographers. Some of those large companies and many small businesses are turning to Foap to license photos for their marketing and web material. It doesn’t cost you anything to use the app but if you sell something you’ll share what you earn with Foap. Fair enough.
Here’s how the app works, and why it may put some photographers out of business:
After downloading the app and creating an account you start uploading your snapshots. Any photo will do provided it doesn’t show someone’s face (you’d have to fill out release forms for that). Once the photos are uploaded companies can find them and make you an offer.
Here are a few pro tips to getting your photos discovered:
- Don’t waste time uploading sunsets. They all look the same and there are thousands (millions?) of them already posted.
- Same with flowers.
- Write a caption for each photo.
- Include tags such as “beach”, “stop sign”, “downtown street” or “baby”. (remember, no faces)
- Research the most popular tags and use them as your own “assignment” to go out and create photos that compete with others that have sold for cash.
- Upload lots of photos, even if some aren’t very good. The more you upload the better chance companies will see all of your shots.
Foap also includes a Missions tab where you see requests from companies. Some of those requests will pay $100 or more for the best photo that’s uploaded. Missions are not free to all users. To take advantage of these requests you’ll need to purchase FOAP coins. I suggest uploading photos to your account first before jumping into something that’s going to cost money.
It takes just a few minutes to get started then you can start uploading. Make sure you look at some of the photos other Foap users have sold so you can get a good idea of what companies typically look for.
You may not get rich with your photos but depending on how much time you invest in both shooting and uploading (and your ability to capture high-quality images), you can make a significant amount of money. Foap is a legitimate website and not a scam. Photos uploaded to the site are noticed and seen by companies large and small.
More tips from Foap users.
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