Photo Selling Platform

When I signed up for using the ClickASnap.com photo sharing platform I was drawn to to as a place where I could display my photographs and generate sales of prints. The marketing copy said they were a global operation and people would be able to see my work and go to the integrated Seller Shop to purchase what they had just been seeing. A perc was that people who who viewed my pictures long enough would generate a small revenue. At the Free subscription the amount would be $0.001 per view and $0.009 per view at the Pro subscription level.

I opted for the Pro subscription and generated about $180 in the first 12 months. It's not a great deal of money but it does pay for the subscription fee (for the current year and now for 2024). 

All the work I did to prepare images was not for the token view-fee but for the exposure being on an international, long established platform would get for my photography. In that first 12 month period 45,000 + views were registered with about 46% of them being long enough to generate the fee. So, yes, people did see my images.

The benefit of being present on a major platform has not born any fruit. The vast majority of people viewing my work came from my own marketing efforts to drive web traffic TO the ClickASnap platform. Organic visits by other subscribers has been minimal. In short, being associated with ClickASnap has had little benefit (as of this writing). I could have written my own display platform in HTML and driven its functionality by Javascript and PHP server scripts. It was the promise of a fully functional POD "Sellers Shop" which informed my decision to go with the CAS platform.

POD is "Print on Demand". Such systems serve to accept customer orders, produce the items, ship them and do all the billing so the shop owner can concentrate of creating new items. It soon became obvious the CAS platform was woefully primitive when it came to media selection and the ability of the Seller to position images on the paper. After some level of internal dialog the CAS management decided to scrap their native POS operation and embrace the MERCHR platform. 

Both CAS and MERCHR are UK based companies. MERCHR is mainly a products based POD for all sorts of bags, clothing, objects, etc. Their forte was not printing on paper or canvas. Even after a few weeks of "settling in" they are not up to the challenge of printing photographs for wall hangings.

The integration between MERCHR and CAS it also primitive at best. Maybe the two companies will eventually get the navigation and functionality issues sorted out, but CAS photographers are getting discouraged. This one in particular.

Recently I discovered Darkroom.com and decided to give it a try. Their navigation is flawless. Their paper type and size selections are quite wide and varied. They do offer a free subscription level and a $15.00/month level with additional services. I am currently evaluating it for its functionality and for how it fares as a source of traffic to my photos for sale. 

Stay tuned for further insights into how well it performs that task.