Taking the First Step: My Journey Into Selling Photos on EyeEm

Yesterday, I finally took the plunge and joined EyeEm! I had been thinking about it since last week, so I’m glad I made it happen. I didn’t want to procrastinate any longer, so I decided to take the first step.

If you’re wondering what EyeEm is — it’s a marketplace for photos and illustrations. Yes, you can actually earn money by selling your photos! With today’s advanced phone cameras, you already have a powerful tool that can help make this possible. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself over the past few days while convincing myself to make the first move.

EyeEm Page: https://www.eyeem.com/search/pictures/curamax?q=curamax&replaceQuery=true&sort=relevance

TikTok Page: https://www.tiktok.com/@city.life.explore

And so I did. I signed up for EyeEm (which is free) and uploaded my first 10 photos! That really lifted a burden off my shoulders, knowing I finally took action.

Sometimes, the first step is all I need to build momentum — just like what’s happening on my TikTok page. About a month ago, I posted my first video, and I’ve been consistently uploading ever since.

If you’re wondering why I even started selling my photos, well, it’s because I wanted to make the most out of my photo walks.

Initially, I started photo walks because I wanted to share something nice with the Hive community. I hoped to showcase the beauty of my city and create a resource that readers of my blog could refer to when visiting Singapore. It’s always satisfying when someone gives me feedback about how beautiful the photos are and how amazing the places I feature look.

I genuinely enjoy photo walks. Eventually, I wanted to level up my skills by taking short videos of the places I visit. And what better platform to post short clips on than TikTok, the very popular social app? Now, by doing both photo and video walks, I feel that my time visiting these places has become even more productive. I get to post photos on Hive and showcase short videos on TikTok at the same time.

Since I enjoy both activities, I figured — why not add an extra income stream from the photos I take? That sparked my research into which photo marketplace would suit me best. Among the platforms I explored, EyeEm stood out as the most interesting.

The interface feels familiar, almost like Flickr, and the uploading process is very straightforward. I find it user-friendly, and they even have an auto-tagging tool to help during the posting process.

Each photo is reviewed by the EyeEm team, so it might take a while before your uploads are available for sale. To give you an idea, the 10 photos I uploaded were reviewed, and so far, only 3 or 4 have passed and are now live in the market. The rest are still under review. Anyway, I’m glad that at least 4 of my photos are now ready for sale!

Now, it’s just a matter of time before my photos are found by potential buyers and supporters — hopefully, that happens soon!

I'm excited to see where this new journey with EyeEm will take me. Whether it's through photos, videos, or blog posts, I'm grateful for the chance to share my passion with a wider audience. Thanks for following along, and I hope you'll stick around for more updates and adventures ahead!