We recently reported on
Foap.com, a Swedish site where photographers can sell pictures they take using their cellphones. Now the developers of the Finnish company
Scoopshot, which offers a similar service, tell us that their best selling photographers, Arto Mäkelä, has earned more than $19,000 from pictures he ha taken on his Android smartphone and uploaded to the free-to-download Scoopshot app.
Arto made his money by responding to a task set by
Fonecta, a Finnish directory services company, which asked Scoopshot’s users to send in pictures of businesses across the country. Sensing a golden opportunity Arto jumped on his bike and got snapping. Whenever he had the opportunity, he went from city-to-city capturing thousands of pictures of businesses and selling them to Fonecta for around $2 each.
Fonecta is a Finnish online Business Directory. Prior to the partnership with Scoopshot they only published the company name, address and map location besides in addition to other business infomation. Now, thanks to Scoopshot photos they are able to publish a photo of most companies (buildings, facades) listed on their site.
Scoopshot launched its service in 2010. To date 114,117 people from 165 countries worldwide have downloaded the Scoopshot app and uploaded a combined total of 291,282 photos. Over the last 6 months, Scoopshot’s user base has grown by 1400%! The company has paid out royalties of a little more than $300,000 to date, or roughly $1.00 per image uploaded.
Scoopshot is working with 50 media publications worldwide including Metro International, a free newspaper published in 56 daily editions in 19 countries and 15 languages. One advantage for creators is that they can set there own prices for usage. However, if the price is unreasonably high the image simply won’t sell. Currently the average price for a photo that is used editorially is about $23.50
Scoopshot operates a commission-based business model taking 30% of the fee collected and remitting 70% to the photographer. There is also a system where companies can submit “tasks” and establish a price they will pay for such photos. Scoopshot’s contributors can then choose whether they want to contribute based on the fee offered.
Only about 1% of the current contributors are in North America but Scoopshot expects that number to grow significantly as they develop ongoing media partnership relationships in the US and Canada.
Arto Mäkelä said, “I downloaded the Scoopshot app thinking I might be able to make a bit of spare cash, but before I knew it I was making something like $500 a week. Over the course of a few months, I kept on sending in photos and the money kept rolling in. Soon I had made enough to book the holiday of a lifetime in Miami and the Caribbean.”