What is EyeEm?
EyeEm is a plaform like Instagram, where you can upload, edit and share your photos for examply directly via your mobile phone. Nothing special or exciting but it became interesting to me when they offered the possibility to upload multiple photos using a web interface including an automated tagging of photos. For guys like me this is huge since I am really lazy when it comes to tagging my photos and it’s also not really creative what I do there. This is what it looks like when you upload photos using the webinterface:
The tags you see on the picture are provided by EyeEm – so it was able to recognize the cat and also other parts of the photo have been analyzed and suggestions for the tagging where provided. Of course, it’s not perfect but I’m impressed with what the engine is able to “see” on the photos. You can upload up to 50 photos at once, mark several photos and provide the same tags or locations – very intuitive and easy. It’s possible to upload your portfolio to the Market in no time by using this way. My EyeEm acount is available here.
The EyeEm Market
The photos you uploaded are verified by the EyeEm team and consequently granted access to the market or rejected. It’s also a benefit for the user that EyeEm has a cooperation with Getty Images, a popular platform regarding the licensing of photos. Your photos on the EyeEm Market are checked by Getty and if they want them in their portfolio, too you get an email where you can agree to this or not. It’s a little harder to get your photos on the Getty Market so my photos there are only a subset of my EyeEm Market portfolio. There are other cooperations like one with Whitewall, where your photos might be offered as prints. On the following screenshot you can see what I uploaded to EyeEm, what has been granted access to the Market and what Getty considered as good enough for their platform. Please consider that you need releases when you want to offer photos with faces so consequently my street photos are not on the market since I don’t have such written (or email) releases.
How much money can I earn on EyeEm?
The price model is rather simple. You get 50% of the money someone pays for a photo license. Yes, EyeEm makes good money from your photos but it’s worth it for you anyway in my opinion. The individual photo brings $5 to $125 for you, where $5 is a simple Getty licence while $125 is an extended licence for multiple use. I already sold photos in all categories. Since I use the Market I sell a couple of photos every month. I am not (yet) getting rich from it but it’s more than I sell in my own online shop. These are some of the photos I sold on EyeEm so far:
The photo subjects are quite diverse as you can see so I really can’t say what sells best. Just try it out yourself if you didn’t make the step to sell you own photos yet, maybe you can buy a new camera from your earnings ;).
Do you have own experiences with EyeEm? Please write it in the comments!
Greetings,
I have newly started (2 months) putting some of my photos on the EyeEm Market. Most of my photos were shot over the span of maybe 15 months (the time I started shooting digital).
Most of my photos maybe more than 95% get accepted to the Getty collection (unless there’s an issue with a release) which did not suprise me because I’m only putting the good stuff that are also technically problem free. The subject matter is quite mixed actuallly with some travel photos, cityscapes, landscapes, stray & wild animals and even some close-up work.
I have around 160 photos on the EyeEm market, with allmost all of them accepted for the Getty collection. To date, I have not made any sale from the EyeEm market, and even though it has been 2 months, none of my photos are visible on Getty either.
I have read that it can take up to 3 or even 4 months for the photos accepted to the Getty collection to show up. I’m not sure if every accepted photo goes on Getty either. It’s very hard to find this sort of information anywhere.
I have 3 questions for you.
1) What are your processing times? For me it’s usually 8 days for a market review and indefinite for the show up on Getty.
2) What percentage of photos accepted for Getty, go on Getty in your case?
3) Do you have more sales on Getty compareed to the Eyeem Market (I hope and expect)?
I could have tried some other big microstock website but I felt that my photos were more in line with the “real photography” concept and the fact that Getty was a partner really pushed me.
Market features aside, EyeEm is a great place for a photography lover. There’s always a mission that can interest you and you get to meet some realy talented people over there.
Hi Nat,
Thanks for stopping by and telling me about your experiences with EyeEm.
Regarding your questions:
1)
I have the same experience regarding Getty when it come to the time needed until the photos are available on their market. It takes months and the last time I checked some weeks ago about half of the accepted photos were available. It takes EyeEm about a week to decide whether or not a photo goes to their market, then a feew weeks later Getty wants the photo on their market (or not) and then it takes months until it’s finally online on their market.
2)
About 60 percent are now online (see numbers below).
3)
Currently I have more sales on EyeEm, I guess because there are much more photos available yet (1630 on EyeEm, about 500 out of 940 accepted photos on the Getty market online).
I also like the platform very much and the “non-stock style” is also more what I like to do. Maybe there is also a market for your analog photos since the “instagram old school filters” are quite popular and you would have a niche not many photographers cover in the digital age.
Cheers,
Pierre