Turning Photos Into Cash With Foap – Is It Worth It?

The world around us can’t seems to get enough of photos, especially digital ones, and you probably have a lot of them in your mobile phone right now. The good news is, there’s a new way of turning those photos into cash with a smart app called Foap. Everyone is raving about it, but what exactly does it do and most importantly, is it rewarding? This review will walk through every detail you need to know before getting started.

Foap At A Glance

Foap is a stock photo marketplace that collects and organizes random photos from around the world, for the general public and companies to buy through the platform.

Anyone can upload and list their photos without any fee, and this can easily be done through the Foap app which is available in both iOS and Android devices. However, if there are recognizable human faces in the images, you need to submit a model release form to prevent getting into any legal troubles. A PayPal account is required in order to receive payment and this must be verified when setting up the seller’s account.

Photos can be classified into any of these 2 categories;

Commercial – The usage is part of something that is designed to make money. 

Editorial – The usage is to accompany a story, article or text (i.e. photojournalism) and NOT for advertising purposes.

In either case, Foaps photos are royalty free. That means, once sold, the buyer can use the images over again without having to pay the seller additional fees. When someone buys an image from the marketplace, the seller gets $5 while Foap keeps the other $5. When a brand or company buys, the offer could range between $100 to $2500, but such opportunity can be very rare.  

From the surface, it does seem effortless, therefore it’s quite expected that people are drawn to think that they can earn money easily from this app. The reality however, is far from that. Like most marketplaces, selling requires hard work and where creative skills are concerned, it’s even more challenging.

The Competitive Marketplace

Since the platform is non-restrictive, a lot of people have flooded the platform, leading to a common situation seen on marketplaces, which is overcrowded. For the buyers, I guess you could say that it is a good thing because there’s ample choices and consumers like that.

However, the same cannot be said for sellers as there are more than 2 million creators, currently using the site. That’s basically the number of competition we are looking at, if you are thinking of selling. And this hasn’t included the numbers of images per category just yet.

So I toured the marketplace and much to my surprise, I found a large percentage of pictures to be quite outstanding. Yeah, there are a few which are dull and mediocre, but for the most part, they are gorgeous. I am guessing that this has a lot to do with the advancement of mobile devices or maybe, some of the creators are actual photographers by profession – hence the quality of their work.

I did a quick search for a random keyphrase “white dog” and Foap returns me over 2 million results. Wow, I wasn’t expecting that number! Also in the mix, were some rocks and cats, so obviously the internal search isn’t a perfect system.

When I browsed the Photo Mission sections – the part where companies put up their offers – the competing numbers are within the range of hundreds, which is less intimidating.

The reason I am showing you all these is to prove that the competition is real and in order to sell anything online, whether it’s through a website or on a marketplace, you need to first know how buyers are going to find the products, in this case, your photos. If there’s a system in place, how are you going to leverage in order to give yourself the best advantages.

Fortunately, Foap does provide a few ways for this to happen. Firstly, the photos need to be tagged with keywords and apparently, it could go up to 100 keywords, as long as they are relevant to what the image portrays.

Secondly, you need to earn ratings from the community and a good method to achieve this is by uploading plenty of photos, follow other Foapers (yes, that’s what they called themselves) and leave your ratings on other people’s work. In other words, when you reciprocate, others will do the same too.   

Clearly, the earning process isn’t as simple as uploading, kick back and relax. The way I see it, some criteria are needed, whether you want to earn $10 or $100 from Foap.

• A strong passion in photography would go a long way because you can experiment with different techniques to produce more stunning and cutting edge images – even on your smartphone.
• Don’t just think beautiful, but also think about commercial values when snapping the shots because that’s where the big money is. Clean and sleek images are far too common – what’s more appealing nowadays are the stories behind the images. If you haven’t quite figured that out yet, then you’ll need more practice.
• The next thing you want to do is to grow your portfolio over a period of time. Foap isn’t Facebook. You don’t just post and forget. Instead, you need to work on getting people to come back and see what’s new in your collection. That means adding fresh images frequently, following the work of other Foapers and participating in the community activity.

Having said all that, Foap MIGHT NOT be your cup of tea if;

• You think very highly of your work and wish to be paid more than what is being offered. I am sure professionals can relate to this.  
• You don’t want to split the profit 50/50 – maybe keeping 100% is a better idea?
• Taking photos with your mobile is just for fun and it’s not something that you are committed to.
• You prefer working from a desktop (big screen) over a mobile phone (small screen) – this matters to some people.
• You are always taking the same type of pictures and nothing else interest you.

So, Is Foap Worth Your Time?  

A small number of people have made good money with it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can, OR can’t, for that matter. I guess the only way to find out is to try it yourself. Find the app on your phone, download it and see if it’s an application that would work in your favor and expectation. Since it’s a free tool, there’s really nothing to lose.

If you are interested in other creative ways to turn photos into cash, then I highly recommend to start a blog in this niche instead. You can incorporate many more products (not just photos) or better yet, sell something from your own creation and keep all the profit 🙂 You can learn all these from my recommended training platform, even without any experience.

Well, I do hope you’ve found some values in this review. If you’ve used Foap or other similar apps before to make money, please share your experience in the comment space below. We would love to get some discussion going.

Talk to you soon.

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6 Simple Steps to Start Your Own Photography Business Online