If you had approached a photographer at the time of Instagram’s release nearly 11 years ago, and told them that the social media platform would gain ownership of all images they uploaded to it, chances are that they would never have believed you.
Fast forward to the present day; not only is this the case with Instagram but virtually every other photo-sharing social media platform as a result of the fine print found within their user terms of service (ToS) agreements. Over the last decade, numerous social media platforms with photo-sharing capabilities have all but done away with the ability for artists, photographers, content creators, and other creatives to monetize the original content they upload to these platforms, albeit not in a direct way.
In more recent years, social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Flickr have come under fire for their licensing of users’ original content and photos to third parties without paying the original creators any royalties or profits from this. Similarly, many of these platforms continually farm personal user data and utilize algorithms driven by artificial intelligence (AI) to control what content – and types of content – users see on them.
With all of these issues facing creators as a result of the digital photo-sharing social media landscape today, it was only a matter of time before another platform came along: one that puts the power of original content (and the ability to be properly paid for it) back into the hands of artists, photographers, and content creators.
An Innovation in Social Media Photo-sharing
In 2012, Tom Oswald, an entrepreneur and amateur photographer based in the United Kingdom, owned a record label along with several radio stations. At the time, Youtube was about to bring out a new feature called “Youtube Red” (now referred to as “Youtube Premium”) which threatened to upend the independent music market as it was known at the time.
Citing the looming danger the feature posed, Oswald took out a loan and decided that, if there was ever a time to try and compete with an internet giant, then this was the time to do it. Oswald began putting a team together and built a platform called Videscape, a digital video-sharing platform he and his team ran for 3 years.
“Youtube ended up dropping their plans [for YouTube Red] a few years after Videscape began operating,” says Oswald, “and our key unique selling proposition (USP) was gone. But as an amateur photographer, I had been thinking about doing what we did with videos and translating it to photos and the photo-sharing space,” which is precisely what Oswald did.
Together with his team, Oswald ended up pivoting Videscape into a new venture aimed at the growing photo-sharing presence in social media, deemed ClickASnap, and released it in 2016.
Unique Features With ClickASnap
Even 5 years after its inception, ClickASnap remains the world’s first social media and photo-sharing platform of its kind. Oswald’s innovative platform allows artists, photographers, content creators, and other creatives to upload their original photos or images to their ClickASnap account, share their content with their followers on the platform, and monetize that content while also remaining full ownership and licensing rights over their work.
In true entrepreneurial fashion, Oswald has designed ClickASnap to focus more on its unique features and its ability to help photographers and other creatives monetize their content. With the help of several digital designers and developers, he has also overhauled the site’s visuals and aesthetics to make it more user-friendly.
Here are just a few of ClickASnap’s key features that set it aside from other, more traditional photo-sharing and social media platforms:
No Farming Personal User Data
One of the most prominent issues with photo-sharing social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook is their use of farming personal user data to program their AI-driven algorithms. Those algorithms can then throttle users’ feeds, hiding posts that they deem unmatching the interests of other users on them.
In stark contrast to this, ClickASnap doesn’t farm personal user data. Instead, the platform’s feed is designed to display posts in purely chronological order. This way, every single photo or image uploaded to ClickASnap instantly becomes organically visible, allowing each user that follows a certain account to immediately view their content. This prompts ClickASnap’s pay-per-view monetization system to pay the creator a rate of 0.60c per view, per image.
As the platform grows, the creator rate steadily increases. Upon the first launch, the platform paid 0.15c per view and has since increased by 400%. By operating this way, ClickASnap’s creators can rapidly begin monetizing their original content, and each user of the platform is in full control of the content they see
Pay-per-view and Subscription Plans
ClickASnap offers affordable plans for all users, whether they are amateur photographers looking to grow an audience for their art or professionals looking for ways to diversify their income. More casual users can sign up for a photo-sharing account with no upload limits completely for free. All users can upgrade to any of ClickASnap’s paid subscription plans at any time, starting at just £2/month to use the platform freely without advertisements, a “Seller” account for £4/month, or a ClickASnap “Pro” account for £6/month. Each upgrade offers premium features that are well worth the money.
Each subscription package likewise includes an unlimited amount of uploads and cloud storage, as well as store credits for ClickASnap’s marketplace that they can use to further promote their work. The higher subscription packages further include a feature that allows content creators a chance to display their original images or photos on ClickASnap’s home page, and even add their custom watermarks to the images they own.
Integrated AMS
ClickASnap has also integrated an automated marketing system (AMS) into its features; a social media management system that allows the platform’s users to schedule cross-posts of photos from their ClickASnap account to their other social media accounts on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. These posts can be scheduled either as standalone cross-shares or at specific repeating time intervals the user sets themselves.
By including this feature, ClickASnap offers its users and creators a way to create immense boosts in their digital engagement with followers, as it brings a greater number of followers to their photos on ClickASnap, prompting them to receive a higher number of views on their content which translates directly into increased revenue for the creator.
If you’re ready to start getting paid real money for your original images and photography content, head over to www.clickasnap.com and sign up for free today!
