As one of the main visual art forms, Photography is amidst the most accessible and loved artistic directions, when it comes to admiring every aspect of life’s beauty. Nowadays, Digital Photography and Art are frequently consumed online, highly valued and appreciated amongst many individuals, platforms and businesses.
Thanks to the digital era, we’re able to satisfy our visual needs with just one click, and creatives — both amateurs and professionals — can reach their target audience in a more scalable and effortless way by posting their work online.
Photo by Felipe P. Lima Rizo
Whilst the sharing of such content on the web creates significant value for online audiences, the monetization thereof still poses significant challenges for many creatives. Digital photography has a close to zero marginal cost and its ever-increasing global supply — originating from high-end cameras, drones, action cameras and camera phones — gives way to new tiers and additional supply of photography on the web.
As a result, eyeballs on social media are critical and high-powered Instagram, 500px and Unsplash accounts lead direct traffic to where creatives are making a living, in sales, commissioned work and finding new customers.
In the stock photography world, an oligopolistic industry is at play today, leveraging its strength in distribution and curation of content. The major players charge a pretty penny for their services as revenue shares of 50–60% are not uncommon.
For artists this can be a frustrating experience. There is little transparency as to where photos are sold and calculating the contribution of your photo in a collection, that is charged as part of a subscription, is next to impossible.
Photo by Jamie Fenn
At EYESO we believe that it’s all about creation and it’s our mission to support the community by putting the latest technological advancements to use, providing a new approach to digital licensing, network promotion and monetization.
As an artist, we believe you should experience full transparency, control over your work and be adequately compensated at the same time. With the right tools at hand you can focus on what you do best: creating Art and Photography. We are defining distinct roles in our value network, in which all of you can contribute and focus on your creative passion. We’ll be sharing more details about our program with you soon.
To that end, we reached out to our community of talented artists — both passionate amateurs and professionals — to learn more about their experience in monetizing art and services.
After gathering their input, we are now addressing the challenges highlighted by those artists, starting with user registration and identification, license- and asset-tracking with registration on a public ledger, followed by a marketplace that pays out a fair share.
Photo by Gilles Bonugli Kali — one of EYESO’s featured artists
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Stay tuned for more,
Team EYESO