Hello and welcome to MMOZ, today we are looking at an online service used to buy and sell photos online called Foap. We’ll be giving you our opinion as well as taking a look at some Foap reviews. So if you have a dream to make it big as a photographer, this is a must-read for you! There are quite a few online services now that offer the chance to both buy and sell photos online.
But Foap calls itself “the next wave of stock photography”. Sounds good right? Let’s check it out and see what opportunities this service can offer us.
Table of Contents
Foap App Review – First Impressions
My first impressions of the official Foap website are pretty good. The site has a modern, clean feel and there is also a video that explains the earning potential. We see that there are some top names involved with Foap, such as Volvo, Malibu and Mastercard to name just a few.
Foap App Review – How It Works?
The idea of Foap is pretty much the same as a lot of similar photo websites. The site is aimed at two categories of people. Those people who would like to make money online by selling photos and those who need to purchase images. It’s true that thousands of images are sold online each day, so there is certainly earning potential here. But the question is, does Foap deliver the results?
Many people give this service a try because it sounds like easy money. Foap is downloaded as an app for iPhone users and you simply start snapping away and uploading the images. The website has a system of rating your images in order to be seen more frequently. You upload an image and 5 people will rate it to verify if it’s worthy of going into the marketplace. You are also required to rate other people’s photos. The photos that make it onto the Foap Marketplace are then sold at $10 each and the money is split 50/50. You get $5 and Foap gets $5. Sounds fair right?
Make Money With Foap – Not as simple as it might seem!
Well unfortunately all is not as plain and simple as it might at first seem. For a start off, it would seem that the best way to make money in this way would be to upload as many photos as possible. This is made rather difficult by the fact that the app isn’t really that good! The upload process on a site like this should be incredibly slick as fast. Instead, the process of uploading even a single image is slow and painful!
Understandably this service needs to find a way of rating the photos to ensure good quality. However, this process once again slows you right down in attempting to upload several images. There are users on the site that have clearly been using the site for many months as they have thousands of images uploaded. But be aware, in order to get anywhere close to that would no doubt take you many, many months of work.
The main problem with the Foap App is the fact that you can’t upload several photos at the same time. Each image must be uploaded to the app, one by one. During every single upload, you are then required to add keyword tags, so that the image can be found. As well as rating other people images too. The process is slow and very boring!
Our experience with the Foap App
In our tests, we uploaded as many images as possible in order to test the app. The process wasn’t as easy as I would have expected it to be, however, some things are worth working for. If this process would lead to making money then it would be worth the effort, right? Well unfortunately in our experiment we didn’t make any money with Foap. And it would seem that we are not alone. After having done a bit of further research it would seem that making money with this app is quite rare.
The people making real money with this App are the ones that are working day and night to upload and rate photos. We did come across a couple of people during our research that says they have made the odd $5 here and there. But after watching the video you might be forgiven for thinking that this might have been a bit more lucrative! Of course, if you have made money with Foap, we would love to hear from you. Please get in touch via the comment section on this page.
Is Foap A Scam?
Foap is definitely not what I would classify as a scam and in fact, there is definite potential here to make some money. The sad fact is that this application just doesn’t perform as well as it should and makes the process incredibly dull in my opinion. I think there are better ways to make money as a photographer and quicker ways to get your images seen!
Foap Review – Final Thoughts & Recommendation
In my opinion, the only people that are really making money from this app are the people that made it. Foap offers no real way to earn long term income online due to the amount of time you would need to invest. If you are looking for a way to make money in the world of photography I believe it would be better to showcase your work on your own website.
Dont Share The Profit!
If you really want to make money online in the world of photography then rather than battling to be seen and sharing the profit, why not build your own business? In Foap you need to constantly work for your images to be seen. You then need to share the profit once you make a sale! Why not investigate the possibility of starting your own online business with free training from our top recommendation.
If you are interested in starting a business that you can be passionate about and proud of, then we would love to work with you. Take a look at the very method that we used to build this website and consider the fact that you could do the same with a photography website or any other niche that might interest you. Click the image below to check it out!
I have used Foap for 7 months and have uploaded 70 good photos. It IS a waste of time and effort. It is a VERY smart way of getting people to supply content for THEIR gain. Selling. No doesn’t happen. Nice dream though.
Thanks for posting your verdict! Yeah, just as we thought. I’m really pleased that you shared this with us though as you have quite obviously given this a good try. I really think that affiliate marketing is one of the best ways of spending your time online these days. As you said, making money with photos is a great dream but it just doesn’t work with Foap.
Hi. – I have some good, crisp photo’ that friends tell are good. ( so not total crap ! ) I know lots of very good photographers – better than me !
About FOAB – I have been using for 1 week now. Find it good , relatively easy to use .. I do not expect to earn big bucks from it ..
I am suspicious .. getting the feeling this is all automated .. nobody sells hardly anything .. so many photos are terrible !!
I will watch for a while then probably quietly leave.
Yeah, that was about the same thing that I did. Please feel free to let us all know how you get on with Foap App if you decide to give it a try. Personally I feel that it will be a waste of time, but who knows the site might have improved? We can only hope…
I set up an account with foap 4 days ago. I’ve sold 46 pictures. My only problem is, none of it has showed up in my account.
Well at least you have sold some! I would just get in touch with support and ask why the money isn’t showing up. Would be interesting to learn how you did this. Most people fail to sell anything at all on this platform, due to its restrictions.
Foap app is just a scum app. Try to sign-in your Account in chrome and check your photo, it Says that you don’t have any photo and you need to purchase $180 minimum credit to upload a photo and earn money. It explain why you can’t buy a photo in the foap app.
I can’t say that I have come across this before. The Foap App has always been free to use and upload? Hmmm, are you definitely using the official app?
I hardly beleive you sold that many pictures. In the app you can see the pictures sold and the same ones are there for sometimes a week at a time. What’s your profile name, I should like too see your pics.
Seems a waste of time, haven’t sold anything even though many were rated 5 stars & put on other people’s albums…
Yeah, I think that is the experience of many people! After trying to get things to work with the Foap App for quite some time, I walked away saying exactly the same thing.
Hi, pls after uploading the photos, and a brand buys it, how do we know and how do we get the money?
I believe you enter your payment details within your account. Although I can’t verify how you get paid as I never actually made any money with Foap. In my opinion it is something that should be avoided if you want to make a decent amount of money online. There are far better ways to earn an online income. From what I have seen, most people end up wasting their time uploading photos to the Foap App. It takes a lot of your time and then rewards you with nothing in return. But perhaps you might get lucky?
Thanks for dat reply,u said they are better ways to make money online,pls will u be kind enough to tell me d ways ?
Hey there! Yes, there are better ways to make money! I always try to encourage people like yourself to start building their own websites. I recommend taking the free training at Wealthy Affiliate, and here’s why… You can join Wealthy Affiliate, start building a free website, get free training and direct help from myself. The whole thing costs you nothing! You simply need a bit of time to set up your profile and go through the training. If you have any questions, I can assist you directly through the Wealthy Affiliate system. Whats great about this method of making money is that you can start building a website based on something that you are really passionate about. You can do something that you enjoy and earn money from it! If that sounds like something you might be interested in just click here to check out my Wealthy Affiliate review. You can join on that page too!
If you have any questions just reply to this message or I’ll speak to you inside WA.
Cheers,
Andrew
But wealthy Affiliates is for the people of U.S. what about the Indians like me? Any suggestions/ solution? If there is any, that would be a great help to me.
Hi there Amit! Thanks for getting in touch. Wealthy Affiliate isn’t just for people in the US. People from all around the world make up the community inside WA. You can learn about affiliate marketing for free and get started for free. I know there are a couple of countries that were excluded due to a high level of spamming but most countries from all around the world are allowed in WA. If you would like me to assist you, just join via one of the links on my review.
I am just wondering whether the photo which I posted on foap can still be uploaded on other app since foap is selling it right?
Hi there. I would suggest checking the terms and conditions. Although so long as the image is your own work then I would imagine that you could do what you like with it. How are you finding the Foap app? Have you managed to make any money with it? We have had quite a few reports that suggested that it was still very slow and very difficult to make any money with.
I have already deleted my account
Right. I’m not surprised to hear that really. I haven’t heard of anyone being successful with it yet. Have you tried the free membership with Wealthy Affiliate? That’s the one that I personally recommend.
I downloaded the Foap app and thought it would be a breeze to make money. I uploaded my first photo, added tags and waited. It kept saying that it was still uploading. So I thought maybe if I add more tags it would help the process. I was willing to try anything because you always think it’s operator error right? I got bored and had other things to do so I decided to get in the shower and took a really long one. I came back and it was STILL uploading leading me to think that I had done something wrong or that my phone was frozen up. From reading the reviews I see that it’s not me but the app. Hopefully this one picture will upload and I’ll see if I get an easy five bucks. Otherwise I’m not going to mess with it. Thanks everybody for your reviews
Hi Jen!
Thank you for contacting us. Well, I did wonder if the team behind the Foap App would eventually speed things us. I think you have just answered my question very well! I’m astounded at the amount of time that it takes to upload images to this app. I thought the idea was to be able to make money by uploading multiple images, but that’s just made really difficult by a really outdated system.
With regards to your easy 5 bucks, I hope you get it, however I am rather doubtful. Please get in touch and let us know if you make any money with this app!
Take care,
Andrew
I’ve only been using Foap for a few days, and I’ve got to rant about something that really makes me angry about this app and the users. I consider myself a decent photographer, and if you guys know what missions are, then you probably know only great photos get picked for the missions. After I uploaded some pictures and submitted them to missions, some of them got picked, but I am starting to notice some people are giving me very low ratings on these mission photos! So I thought to myself, maybe it’s because those users are better photographers and they are giving me honest reviews, so I checked out their profiles, and it turned out that these people take terrible photos! The why do they go and giving low ratings on other people’s photos? It occurred to me that there are only 2 possibilities – they are trying to get rid of competition, or they are just doing it out of spite.
Foap really needs to come up with more restrictive rules on how users can rate each other’s photos.
Hi there Shar! I really appreciate you taking the time to post this comment to let people know about this. I think you are quite right in what you are saying here. I have seen similar circumstances within other sites. At the end of the day, if there is a way to manipulate the system, there will be people who will try to gain from it. I have no doubt that you are right when you say that these people will be giving you bad reviews for their own gain. Perhaps its time that Foap took a fresh look at how they could run their service a little better.
Hi,
Interesting article. I’ve been using Foap for sometime now. I only upload photos that I believe are high quality. I have sold one photo for a whopping $5. My big complaint is with respect to the mission. I’ve submitted to a number of missions. Most of the time my photos don’t even show up as a submitted photo, so I assume they just weren’t selected. However, when I look at the selected photos, sometimes I’ll see 5 or 6 almost identical pictures or AWFUL pictures. I’m thinking that they receive tens of thousands of photos every time a mission is posted, so they probably aren’t even seeing my photo for review.
Hello Susan. Thanks for posting your comment on my Foap App Review. I think you are probably quite right in what you are saying here. I think these guys may well get so many photos that they don’t even look at them. I wonder if the process is pretty much automated. It could be that the missions are set and then it’s left up to the computer to select at random. But I get what you are saying about the pictures being really bad. It’s quite annoying! Look on the bright side though, at least you are one of the luck people who managed to make a little bit of money from the Foap App. Even if it was just $5!
If I was you, I would consider setting up a site on Wealthy Affiliate to show off your images. You could make money from selling your photos and as an affiliate marketer.
Take care,
Andrew
Damn right that’s exactly what to do. Low ratings Eliminate the Competition.
Thanks for your input.
agree to Shar & Susan…something wrong in there!!
There is no magic bullet in stock photography and you are correct in that the time consumed uploading can be draining of energy when there is very little if any profit to be made from doing so.
Like all selling professions (and this is selling) it takes time, loads of effort, contacts and persistence to be profitable. For instance, even if you were to actually sell one photo a day on this site for a year (which is a long shot) you would make a laughable $1,825.00 per year. So if you want to do this type of work for many years you may be able to profit from resales of your catalogue.
No one off stock photo site can do this for you. You will have to be a member of many such sites and likely work a day job just to get by. Rags to riches doesn’t usually happen in stock photography unless you have a specialty photo skill and can provide images that are in demand that very few others can produce.
Hi there Jeff. Quite right, I wouldn’t think that you could make a full time living from this unless you had a great niche. On the other hand I would recommend starting up your own photography website and selling your own images. Its easy to set up your own site and if you are a passionate photographer then creating images to sell within your online catalog would be easy. I would much rather take my chances going alone, rather that trying to battle to the top of the pile and waiting endless hours for uploads with Foap.
An interesting article.
The process of uploading photos is becoming easier with each new version but still no income. If we go by the recently sold panel, we can conclude that a maximum of 6 photos are being sold daily.
They should think about checking the photos uploaded to attract more customers and also to go deep in their marketing campaigns.
Hi there. Good to hear that the upload process is getting easier. I have not tried the Foap App for quite a long time now, so its good that changes have been made. Like many sites its a possibility that this system will just get better with time. Perhaps they might need a bit of a clean up with the quality of photos that they have, perhaps they need better marketing. But at least there have been some positive steps to improve this service. Thanks for posting TK!
Regards,
Andrew
Hi,
Well at the beginning of this review I was thinking that I really needed to download Foap because the idea of it is really great. Being able to just upload a bunch of photos that I’ve already taken anyway and potentially make money from them sounds great.
But then of course you hit me with the downside and it sounds too bad to even mess around with. I just don’t have the time to sit there and wait for each picture to slowly upload one at a time. Maybe if they work on improving their system I’ll join this program but not now.
Thanks,
Robert
Hi there Robert. Yes, my thoughts exactly! If the system was to be improved then perhaps this might be an option for making some cash. I really think that this must put a lot of people off from using the system. They could charge a small premium and improve the system so hat it works better, surely that would encourage more members? But for now I’m of the same opinion as you, I simply don’t have the time to wait for single images to upload. Maybe in the future the Foap App will be something to return to.
I’ve actually tried apps like FOAP in the past, because I was attracted by the opportunity of an easy online income – at least it seemed to me as such.
What I’ve learned in the process, is that you really need to dedicate yourself to this process to earn money that way – and I’m not talking about rating others’ pictures and spending the time to uploads tons of photos. Photography should actually be your passion, because nobody will want to buy amateurish pictures, even if there are thousands of them.
Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how it looks like to me.
Quite right too! I really appreciate you commenting on this review. I think you hit the nail right on the head here. A lot of people see this as a quick an easy way to make money on the net, but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. And to be fair, the video that accompanies Foap makes the process sound really easy. It’s a little misleading in my opinion.
But you are right in what you say about being passionate about photography. And I think you can apply this message to almost every business out there. The only way you ever really make a business successful in my opinion is by really working on it and making it as good as possible.
Quality is a must with anything like this. As you say, nobody is going to buy low quality images!
Thanks for your input!