Friday, March 6, 2015

EyeEm Market for your Mobile Photos


While Instagram has become a runaway hit with mobile photo photographers, the platform has never been much of a killer app when it comes to gettting your photos sold. Sure, some photographers have used it as gallery of sorts to sell their wares but this is not the  optimum approach. It is a great discovery platform and this is where it ends.

Berlin based EyeEm is another photo sharing platform which duplicates what Instagram is doing but they hope to sell what you upload to the market place with Getty as a partner. This means that the pictures sold will be done through Getty channels and not EyeEm's own. What EyeEm has done here is to add a layer of validation, to ensure that the pictures meet the requirements for either commercial or editorial use. There is no mention if these photos you submit will be royalty free to the consumer or buyer.

Model and Location Release



This happens to be the same requirement as stock image agencies. This means things which are identifiable needs to be signed for. The only thing exempt are places which are historical or public.

In order to sell photos for commercial use, each identifiable person or property needs a release. If your photo features a recognizable subject or private property - like homes, logos, design elements or artwork - you need permission from a person and/or property owner to make the photo available on EyeEm Market.


Review Process

Nothing explicit here. The review process also seems to be pretty standard. There is no mention of photos having to be shot exclusively using mobile or using the app. So this means there will be a lot of people who will upload DSLR images via the mobile app. So far, there has been quite a few that has been shot that way and there is no distinction made to exclude them from the image market.


The photos will go into review and will be individually screened by our Photo Editors. In most cases, your images will be reviewed within 24 hours. The Photo Editors are checking the images for release requirements and will mark any missing releases, if necessary, which you can then review in your Market Dashboard.

Commercial & Editorial Photos

Again, nothing new here. The terms of use seems to be the same as standard stock agencies and there is no mention of them being royalty free.


Standard Commercial
This standard license applies to photos that will be used primarily for commercial purposes by brands and companies:
  • Social & digital campaigns
  • Print advertising
  • Websites, marketing materials or other innovative projects
You will need to obtain model and property releases (if applicable) to sell photos under this license. These photos can also be used for editorial, non-commercial projects.

Standard Editorial
This standard license applies to photos that will be used strictly for non-commercial purposes, or for newsworthy events that are of general interest to the public.
  • Magazines & newspapers
  • Blogs
  • Newsworthy & general interest events
If you do not provide the appropriate releases for your photos, they can still be sold under this license option. These photos cannot be used for commercial purposes even if it’s for a non-profit organization.

Extended Commercial
An extended license applies to photos with any of the following criteria:   
  • An expected reach of 250,000 print copies
  • Involves broadcast television use
  • Will be featured in a product that has resale value (t-shirts, paid apps, calendars, etc.)

Fees and Pricing

This is where we all get excited but we get led down to the structure to which they are still trying to figure out which is fair to them. The rules of the game is that they have to make money and they have not put down a general pricing formula as of writing.

We’re building our sales tracking system as you read this. You will profit from each photo you sell. You can also sell a photo several times. As clients can only buy licenses to your photos, never the exclusive rights, a popular photo can sell hundreds of times. More information will be provided when EyeEm Market launches.

Stock Demand Index for 2014

If you are curious on the stock image trends for last year, you can view Shutterstock's market index here.



Each region or continent's demand for stock image is listed in keywords and to give you an example of images that sold in the USA for 2014, the keywords were technology, selfie, emoji, selfie, smartwatch, bitcoin and Internet of Things.

For Europe, the keywords were different. Instead you find those listed with sports, ryder cup, winter olympics and soccer world cup, food, street food, ethnic and healthy sold the most.

With this rough idea, you sort of know what sells around the world. So keep shooting and hopefully you'll get some images sold.

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