How Tom Oswald changed digital photo-sharing with ClickASnap

Entrepreneurs within the realm of photography - particularly digital photography and photo sharing - are no different.

Since the late 1990s, digital platforms such as Shutterfly and Blogger have granted ways for photographers to publish and share their photos online. With the advent of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram in the late 2000s and early 2010s, however, the digital photo sharing space has grown to become a billion-dollar industry where artists and photographers can not only share their work, but build a personal brand and even get paid for their work, although this evolution is not without its own unique sets of challenges.

Noting the ever-evolving trends of these photo sharing platforms, as well as photographers themselves, one entrepreneur set out on a mission to generate more photographers to receive greater monetization opportunities while simultaneously retaining ownership over the photos they post and share online.

As an amateur photographer himself, Tom Oswald understands the challenges that come with monetizing visual content shared by creators to digital platforms like Spotify and YouTube. In recognizing those challenges, Oswald wanted to create a digital photo-sharing platform that would cater to each content creator, rather than simply benefit the platform itself. After discovering that he could build a platform that included compression algorithms, servers, increased bandwidth, and cost-effective storage at a highly-affordable rate for its users.

The result was ClickASnap, the world’s first-ever paid per view (no you don’t pay to look at the photos! Like YouTube revenue is created using advertising) photo hosting and sharing platform, which Oswald launched in 2016. In creating ClickASnap, Oswald wanted to prioritize an inclusion of unique features rather than simply aesthetics, to rapidly move the site online and start helping content creators such as amateur photographers generate revenue for their art.

Over the last five years, Oswald has also worked with developers and designers to add even more attractive features to ClickASnap’s platform. These changes have not only made his website and platform more visually appealing, but have addressed many challenges faced by photographers and other digital content creators in today’s world.

One of the largest challenges amateur photographers and content creators face is the data-farming aspects of platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. This aspect causes the platforms to automatically hide posts that may be deemed “irrelevant” to certain users, limiting the reach of content creators on them. Similarly, images shared to these platforms can easily be stolen by users via screenshots or saves, and then reposted to other websites or platforms by other users without crediting the original creator.

“Many platforms like Instagram actually do more to harm photographers and other creators than they do to help them,” Oswald says. “Algorithms can automatically throttle the potential reach of a post or creator, and other photo sharing platforms upcharge creators to sell their art on their platforms.”

As Oswald mentions, ClickASnap not only does not charge photographers and other artists royalties for their work, but also never farms user data. Instead, ClickASnap’s dashboard is laid out in chronological order of each post submitted so that users can view and share each post purely organically. In this way, users need not worry about their followers missing any content they share or post to ClickASnap and are truly in charge of their unique content feed.

Another unique feature of ClickASnap is Oswald’s inclusion of automated marketing software (AMS), which allows ClickASnap’s users to schedule randomly-selected images from their account to be shared to their accounts on other social media platforms such as Pinterest, Twitter, and others. The reason, according to Oswald, for this feature’s inclusion is two-fold: in saving time, photographers and other content creators can unlock additional opportunities for their followers to engage with their content, and that increased engagement in turn leads to an increase in revenue generated via ClickASnap’s pay-per-view platform feature.

ClickASnap is positioned as a true disruptor in the field of amateur and professional photography alike. Casual users can sign up for ClickASnap at no charge, with no limit on the number of images they can upload to their account. ClickASnap also offers subscriptions for more professional users looking to diversify their revenue streams from their unique content, with additional premium features being unlocked at the £2/month, £4/month, and £6/month tier levels.

To learn more about ClickASnap and its features, head over to www.clickasnap.com and get started with a free account today.

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