How to Use Foap App to Sell Your iPhone Photos
Want to earn real money by selling your iPhone photos on the Foap app? Read this guide which includes pro tips from a regular Foap user.
Whether you’re a professional photographer or an enthusiast with a mobile phone, you’ll find that learning how to use the Foap app to sell your iPhone photos is an excellent way to generate revenue.
Foap offers a convenient and relatively passive income stream for photographers. It’s a great place to start if want to turn your hobby into a lucrative side hustle or even a career.
My finger is never too far from the shutter button wherever I am. So using the Foap app to monetize my efforts as a photographer seems almost too easy an opportunity to pass up.
What is Foap?
- Multiple ways to earn
- Free to register
- Intuitive mobile app
- High competition
- Limited earning potential
Foap is a photo-selling app and digital marketplace where creators can sell their iPhone photography and video content.
The platform boasts tens of millions of photos and videos from a community of more than 3 million people.
The concept is similar to that of stock photography websites. Once you create your Foap account, you’re free to start uploading photos to your own web portfolio.
In this Foap app review, I will walk you through the platform so you can start selling your own photos and earning extra money from your favorite pastime.
How Does Foap Work?
On the consumer side, Foap is a market where well-known brands, marketers, and individuals can purchase photography and video content.
Buyers can browse the Foap library or create what they call a Mission, which is not unlike a casting call – more on that later.
For creators, the Foap app lets you upload photos to their platform for sale or submit content to a particular mission with greater earning potential.
Photographers can also cross-promote their content through social media or SMS marketing.
To get started, you only need to download the Foap app, create an account, and upload your photos directly from your iOS or android device. You can post as many photos as you like.
As your work sells, your earnings are recorded in your Foap account. From there, you can withdraw money to your PayPal account.
How Much Does Foap Pay You?
Foap offers a few ways to earn money by selling photos through their platform. Therefore the amount you can make varies.
Typically, photos on Fope sell for US$10. When your photos sell, you keep 50%, while Foap keeps the other 50%.
You can potentially earn anywhere from $5 to $2,000 when you sell photos through the Foap app. So ultimately, it depends on how you sell.
Foap lets you unlock different ways to make money using Foap coins. These aren’t technically earnings, but they have value in that they give you access to higher earning opportunities.
Thumbing through Foap reviews, I often see people asking, “Is Foap legit?”. Well, it’s certainly not a scam.
You get real money when you sell your photos on Foap. However, you could be forgiven for doing a double take when you see that Foap claims 50% of the sale of your photo.
- Read more: How much does ClickASnap pay?
Really, relative to other stock photography websites, Foap sharing 50% of the sale price of your sold images is a good deal. Compare this to Getty Images, where contributors earn between 25% and 45% of the sale, and Shutterstock, where contributors earn between 15% and 40%.
The prices on Foap are decidedly less than stock photos from the more well-established sellers, but uploading photos through a smartphone app couldn’t be easier with the user-friendly interface of the Foap app.
So is Foap worth it?
With 3 million creators using the platform, it certainly seems to offer enough genuine value to be worth a try.
How to use Foap App to Sell Your Photos
The Foap Market
After you upload photos and videos to your profile, they are available for sale in the market. This is where buyers can search for and purchase photos.
The upload process is simple; you can post photos of essentially anything.
- First, open the Foap app.
- Locate the camera icon at the bottom of the screen.
- Tap the icon to upload photos from your camera roll (you will have to permit Foap to access the photos on your device).
- Select the picture(s) you want to upload.
- You’ll need to provide a brief description for each photo and add at least five tags. You’ll see a list of suggested tags and a space for adding your own tags.
- Hit publish or upload more photos.
Before you publish, Foap will ask if any people are visible in the picture; this is for legal purposes. A model release must accompany any photos of people to be allowed for commercial use.
You can find a sample model release form on the support page on the Foap website. You need to provide a release form even for your selfies.
Foap Missions
You can also join Foap Missions. When an agency, brand, or buyer creates photo missions, they ask creators to submit photos or videos of a particular subject, product, or theme.
A Foap photo mission is like a contest. To join a mission, you need to go through the Foap app.
Here’s how you join a Foap mission.
- Open the Foap app and find the bell icon at the bottom of the interface. Tap the icon to view the current missions.
- You will see three tabs at the top; Active, Joined, and Winners. “Active” will show you a list of missions to which you can submit photos.
- Scroll through the active missions; you can tap the thumbnails for more information.
- Here, you will see a description known as a mission brief, the time remaining to join, the potential rewards, and some example photos.
- Once you find a mission you want to join, hit the camera icon to access the photos on your device.
- Select your photo(s) for upload.
- Provide a brief description and at least five tags.
Photos must be approved before they are entered into a mission. Foap will review each submission and determine whether they’re suitable for the mission and do not violate the Foap terms of service.
For every mission, only one submission is typically chosen and awarded a sum of $50 to $200. Even if your photo is not selected as the mission winner, your photos are still eligible for sale at $10.
Photos sold in exclusive missions will fetch a higher price. With these missions, the brand or buyer maintains exclusive rights over the chosen photo.
In this case, the price of the photo can go up to as much as $60 but cannot be sold again.
- Read more: How to Make Money With Stock Photography
Premium missions
Then there are premium missions. You can access premium missions by using Foap coins.
You can earn Foap coins by watching ads or you can purchase them through their website.
To access Foap coins, go into the Foap app and tap the hamburger menu icon at the bottom right of the screen. There you will see numerous settings for managing your profile.
The first setting item on the screen is Foap coins. Tap this to buy more coins or earn them by watching ads.
Once you have coins in your balance, you’re ready to search for premium missions to join.
- First, open the Missions menu.
- Look through the Premium Missions for one you want to join.
- Choose “Unlock” and pay with your Foap Coins to unlock it.
- You’ll now be able to see photos in that mission and add your own.
- Each time you want to add more photos, you’ll have to spend more coins.
These Missions work much the same as regular missions but differ in some fundamental ways. Premium missions don’t require photos to feature a specific product and are designed to allow a broader range of Foap creators to participate.
They usually have multiple winners, as many as 60, and offer higher awards of up to $2,000.
Finally, you can earn with Foap by adding content from other creators on the platform to your personal album. If a buyer purchases someone else’s photo from your album, you get $0.25 from the sale.
This speaks to another benefit of using Foap to get some extra cash – the community element.
With Foap, you are in the company of like-minded individuals, amateur photographers, professional photographers, brands, and marketers. If nothing else, Foap can be a great way to get your work out there for the public to see.
4 Tips for Selling Photos on Foap
With such a large pool of creators using the Foap platform, competition is high. You will need to work hard to ensure that your photos catch the eye of potential buyers.
So, here are a few tips you can follow to increase your chances of getting your work sold on the Foap app.
1. Search optimization
With every photo you add, you can attribute tags and descriptions that make your photos more likely to appear when a buyer searches for a particular type of image.
The Foap admin recommends adding as many relevant tags as you can.
2. Take quality photos
Your iPhone camera can take amazing photos. Clear, well-composed shots are more likely to appeal to brands and buyers with specific needs for their business.
So be as artsy as you like, but consider how to make your photos suitable for commercial use.
One thing to consider is that you may not want to manipulate your photos too much before uploading to Foap. Heavily stylized, doctored pictures can limit the appeal of your work to some would-be buyers.
You can certainly spend some time in post-production. There’s nothing wrong with a little cropping, healing, and color correction. But avoid submitting images that are dense with effects and filters.
Remember, if the buyer wants a stylized image, they can always apply their particular visual standards after they purchase. Otherwise, it’s best to submit images that are true to life.
- Read more: 25 iPhone Photography Tips
3. Build a diverse photo library
If you’re a nature photographer, your photos certainly have broad appeal. But still, you will be invisible to brands seeking photos of products, food, or portraiture. So don’t be afraid to step outside of your box.
Again, think commercially. Pay attention to trends. You shouldn’t have to go far too out of your way to capture beautiful photos that speak to brands and marketers.
You can even go industry-specific. Ask yourself, “What type of imagery are tech companies buying?” or whatever your target industry may be.
4. Know the competition
See what other users are successfully selling. You can browse the Foap market or check out the winners of previous missions.
And pay attention to the way others are tagging their images. Creators who effectively use tags are the ones who show up in searches and are likelier to get their photos sold.
FAQs about Photo Selling App: Foap
Does Foap pay real money?
Yes. You earn a 50% commission when your photos sell through the general market and are eligible to win cash prizes through Foap photo missions. You are paid through Paypal.
How much can you make on Foap?
Anywhere from $5 to $2,000.
What kind of pictures sell on Foap?
You can sell pictures of virtually anything. See their terms of service for details on restricted content. Missions often require submissions of a particular theme, style, or product.
What is the Foap payment method?
You can transfer your earnings to your Paypal account directly from the Foap app.