The greatest innovators are those who identify a common problem then create a practical solution. With the digital photo sharing website Clickasnap, CEO Tom Oswald has done just that by changing how social media platforms value their users.
The Dawn of Digital Photo Sharing
You can trace the roots of digital photo sharing on social media to Blogger and Shutterfly in the late ‘90s, starting as a simple way to publish pictures online to share with friends and family. Over the past two decades, it has developed into a multi-billion-dollar industry, with Instagram and Facebook dominating the scene and causing a shakeup regarding creative rights and licensing.
Why Tom Oswald Created Clickasnap
When you agree to the terms of use for photo sharing sites like Instagram and upload your content to their site, you “grant […] a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content.” This means Instagram can sell your photos to a third-party company royalty-free and profit from your content without having to pay you.
As an amateur photographer, Oswald understood the efficiency of monetizing video with sites like YouTube and Videscape. He wanted to take those ideas and build a digital photo-sharing site that would cater to the user rather than the platform. After calculating that he could run a website at a highly affordable rate with a combination of cost-effective storage, bandwidth, servers, and compression algorithms, he launched Clickasnap in 2016.
Clickasnap was the world’s first paid-per-view photo hosting platform, allowing photographers to post, market, and monetize their photos while keeping sole ownership and licensing of their work.
Oswald prioritized features over appearance to quickly get the site online to start helping photographers, and content creators earn money for their art. Over time, he has added designers and developers to make the site more visually appealing.
Unique Features of Clickasnap That Are Changing Photo Sharing
Clickasnap disables the ability to print your screen, preventing visitors from saving images from the website. Oswald strictly enforces site rules, with photos uploaded by anyone other than the owner of the content removed and the uploader banned from the site.
Clickasnap features a marketplace for users to sell prints, digital photos, create private art galleries, and of course, the ability to license your images without the platform collecting royalties.
“Many platforms, you can sell your content, but all of them overprice your work by up to 30% for their royalties. We charge no royalties.” Oswald said.
No Data Farming
Instagram and Facebook use data farming to program their algorithm to throttle and hide posts that do not match the interests of other users. Clickasnap does not farm user data. The feed is designed to display user posts chronologically, so each and every post is organically visible, meaning that every user that follows you sees your content. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, the user is in control of what they see.
Paving the Way for New Technology
Their success has helped integrate a social media management system called Automated Marketing System (AMS). This system allows users to schedule random images from their Clickasnap account to post to their Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest accounts, at time intervals set by the user. This time-saving feature can create a massive boost in engagement, which can also lead to increased revenue.
Clickasnap Subscription Plans
From amateurs to professional photographers, Clickasnap offers plans for everyone. For casual users, there is a free photo-sharing account with no limits on uploads. Users can upgrade to any of the subscription plans at any time, with each upgrade offering premium features well worth the money.
- Ad-free £2/mo.
- Seller £4/mo.
- Pro £6/mo.
These packages include unlimited cloud storage and uploads, website store credits to promote their work, feature artist displays on the Clickasnap home page, and artist watermarks for their photos.
Clickasnap: Always Getting Better
Tom Oswald is always looking for opportunities to improve Clickasnap and to make the user experience even better. Social media will keep evolving, and Oswald wants to be upfront, blazing the trail.
Sign up for free and see what Clickasnap can do for you.