Photo sharing sites are increasing in popularity for amateur or professional photographers alike, and as a source of photos for others less creative to use when creating content for blogs, websites and more. With slightly different features offered, here is our quick guide to some of the best sites out there.
Flickr
Created by Ludicorp back in 2004 and currently owned by SmugMug since 2018, Flickr was among the first image hosting and sharing sites. Encouraging amateur and professional photographers to share their high-resolution photos with their online community, Flickr offers a free photo/video option but limits you to 1000 photos, making it very limited in raw storage capacity even for many amateur or hobby photographers.
Flickr offers sharing, storing and organising through one of the largest worldwide photo communities. If you are prepared to pay you can access higher storage capacity and premium features with Flickr Pro you get unlimited storage, ad-free browsing and advanced stat features. You can also benefit from features such as discounts when you take a 1-year subscription, and you upload more photos and longer videos. Available on iOS and Android App, it has now, for some users, become slightly disorienting to navigate, and some may say outdated in its design elements.
ClickASnap
Next, we move to the newest on our list. While it only started in 2016, we certainly think it earns its place amongst the best photo sharing sites available. ClickASnap is the only platform in the world that pays you when a photo is viewed, and unlimited storage is standard.
You have to reach a minimum $15 credit in views, but with over a million members signed up already, great photos will be noticed and used, and this will help talented photographers earn. It’s free to sign up and their watermark less image protection and ‘print screen’ theft technology ensures that your images can’t be copied for free.
You can integrate your social media, choosing your times to post, and they take care of marketing through photo promotion for you too. With pro accounts from just £6 a month you can unlock features unseen on other sites.
Founded in 2010, Instagram is perhaps aimed more at social media photo sharing, and this means no desktop software. It does offer unlimited storage space and is certainly quick to share images with others, however, photo resolution isn’t the best.
Instagram also offers Snapchat-like stories that stay for 24 hours, and you can create Pinterest-style personal photo boards too, although this is perhaps more of interest to the hobby photographer. Whilst easy to use and privacy settings mean you only share what you want to, it doesn’t offer some of the more ‘shareable’ benefits that others do.
500px
500px was founded in 2009 and aimed perhaps more towards the subscription paying professional photographer, as their free version only allows for 7 free image uploads per week. However, by paying around $50 per year you can upgrade to unlimited uploads or pay more for added features. So what makes it worthwhile?
500px will pay royalties if anyone buys your photos and the more interest an image gets the higher the rankings and chance of attracting more people. Opinion is that 500px has a more intuitive interface than Flickr where photos, not features, attract the attention. They allow photo feedback too. However, cons suggest there are much fewer community members, and it will cost to unlock some of the more flexible features and extra image uploads.
Whichever photo sharing site you opt for, make sure you know what features are free and what you’ll have to pay for. That way you won’t encounter any nasty shocks that affect your photo sharing profits.
