What the Tech? Make Money with Your Smartphone Camera
With so many people looking for work these days there are several opportunities to earn money with your smartphone. If you have an eye for photography, several apps allow you to sell photos to companies worldwide.
Foap is a smartphone app for iPhones and Android devices that has been around for some time. It’s easy to upload photos from your smartphone that can be purchased by brands and bloggers who are looking for graphics and images for their websites.
The Foap marketplace is a popular destination for designers who are looking for just the right image for ad campaigns and other branding purposes. Photos are purchased for $10 each and the photographer gets half of that, so every photo you sell will earn you $5. That doesn’t sound like much (and it really isn’t) but remember you can sell the same photo multiple times.
Actually, you’re not selling the photos you are licensing them to companies and brands so you retain ownership. You’re able to set the parameters for usage.
While you can make some extra spending money selling individual photos the bigger money is with campaigns or missions. Many large companies are looking for a specific type of photos such as shots of sunsets, photos with red as the primary color, pictures of autumn, and people working in their business. One of the current Foap missions is sponsored by Eucerin, a company that makes lotion.
It is currently looking for photos of people using their product and will pay $100 to license a photo for its website and branding.
To enter a photograph in a mission, you will need to purchase Foap coins but there is no charge for uploading photos for sale.
Twenty20 is another app for the iPhone that pays $2 for any photo that is sold. That is even less than on Foap but Twenty20 also offers challenges. These contests pay anywhere from $100-$150 to a winner voted on by other users.
Current challenges are for photos showing American Football Fans, Wild Animals, Picking Fruits & Vegetables, and Guy’s Night.
Uploading photos to Twenty20 is very simple. Once the photo is uploaded you add a description and keywords to help brands and bloggers find the photos they’re looking for. Just like Foap, you are not necessarily selling the photos but licensing them
for use so a photo can be used or licensed multiple times.
Apple also hosts contests frequently for photos taken with iPhones. Shot on iPhone is sometimes very specific such as videos, shot on iPhone XR or iPhone X. To enter these competitions you simply upload the photo to Instagram with the hashtag #shotoniphone You can see previous winners of Apple’s contest here:
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/shotoniphone/?hl=en These photos are exceptional and you can find lots of inspiration for your smartphone photography.
The camera on your smartphone is as powerful as many professional cameras and probably takes better photos than anything other than some DSLRs. The best camera they say, is the one you have with you. So the next time you’re snapping a photo think about how you can make it good enough to earn some extra money.
Some tips for taking photos that sell:
● Photos with people tend to sell better than any photo of a sunset or landscape
● Photos of people tend to sell better if the person isn’t looking directly at the camera
● Photos of people should also be unstaged
● Photos with identifiable logos on shirts or caps are not ideal unless you are shooting
specifically for that brand
Also, keep in mind that more people are working from home now and have started their own businesses and blogs and are in need of high-quality photos and images for their websites. Now is an excellent time to try your hand at smartphone
photography.
