Get Paid to Take Pictures With Your iPhone

Attention iPhone owners! Get paid to use your camera while walking around various locations where you’re already at! Say what?! That’s right, I just discovered a new company called Gigwalk that creates photo assignments for you to pick up and complete. For that, you get a simple commission.

I downloaded the app and began the signup process, but it looks like they don’t accept just anyone. I’m actually in a virtual line to find out if I’m approved. How they pick and choose who get’s access is beyond me, but until I get an answer, I’ll at least go over how this new service works.

Photo Assignments

Gigwalk uses pre-assigned tasks to hand out to the community of app users based on a number of various requests such as verifying street signs, business locations, interior photos of restaurants, etc. Once you choose an assignment that is close to your current location, Gigwalk will tell you the instructions for what kind of photos you need to take, how many and any other instructions that are required. Once you complete the assignment and it gets approved, you get paid.

So who’s paying for all this and why? It’s business owners and anyone else interested in obtaining photos from people using the app. As an example, if you own a local restaurant and you want Gigwalk users to come take photos of it, you create a new assignment (a Gig) dictating what you want a Gigwalker to take photos of and where to do it. The assignment is then sent out to all the local Gigwalkers and they begin to take the photos.

These assignments can range from the mundane like taking pictures of toilets in bar or the detailed like exploring the ins and outs of a swanky hotel. The cost of these assignments can range drastically. In the case of the toilets, you could make about $4, but the hotel review could bring in about $35.

What’s all this for?

Just like Google is out there mapping the world with street view access to almost any populated area on the Earth, Gigwalk decided to take things a step further. For one, they’re not investing in a huge fleet of camera vehicles that simply drive around and take pictures of whatever it sees. Plus, it allows businesses to decide how they want their businesses to be presented.

For users, I think the biggest benefit is to have more accurate information at your disposal. I’m sure you can understand that one of the most frustrating things about using a GPS or even Google Maps Street View is when you finally locate a business you were looking for, but when you drive to it, it no longer exists. Gigwalk can help with that by providing verification photos of things that have changed.

An example of this might be a user complaint that says such and such restaurant is no longer there, so a Gigwalk assignment is put out for someone to go take a picture of the empty building or even the name of the new place.

My two cents

Of course I can’t actually review the service as I haven’t used it yet, but from the surface, it looks very promising. Since I’m an iPhone owner and I like getting out, I know this will be just one more thing I can do with my device while I’m on the go. And if I make some money doing it, then so be it! I’ll report back with my findings if I get chosen to become a member.

In the meantime, go check out Gigwalk.

Visual Design – Stock Images and Graphics

Naturally you need images to help add to the design of your website and in the case of managing a blog site, you also need them to help sell your point. There are millions of images all over the Internet, but the problem is that you have to contend with copyright laws and trademark issues.

So what’s the answer to this dilemma? Basically you have three choices. One, create all the images yourself. Two, find royalty-free images to use. Or three, consider purchasing/using stock images and graphics.

What are stock images and graphics?

Stock images are usually a generic image of something that you use to sell a product or add dimension to a piece of writing. You might have seen on eBay for example an item listed and a caption underneath stating stock photo. This just means that the picture you’re looking at is not of the actual item for sale, but it is an image of the item.

Stock photos are also used for magazine, newspaper and blog articles. I picked up the image above right off of one of the sites below and added it here to create some color for this post.

There are companies out there that specialize in the distribution of images and graphics that were created by various people for the express purpose of using in specific applications. Some stock images are free, most you have to pay for. Sometimes, you must also take into consideration the format in which they are allowed to be used.

Where do I get these images?

There are plenty of places online offering stock photography and a quick web search will do the trick, but here are a few of the ones I find to have the best quality images

  • Stock.Xchng – This site is considered to be the leading stock image site for FREE images, so you may want to make this your first stop before paying for photos elsewhere.
  • Getty Images – If you want to search through over 24 million photos, this is the only place you can do so. You have probably seen many, many photos in magazines, web articles and more that have a photo credit to Getty Images. Well, now you can get access to these same images!
  • BigStock – The thing I like about this site is that you buy credits to use for purchasing images and not every image is the same credit price. Plus, the more credits you buy up front, the more you save.
  • Shutter Stock – Here’s a great royalty-free collection of images that I just recently came across, but it seems to have a lot to choose from.

My two cents

Use photos as often as needed, but don’t overdo it! You don’t want to crowd your page design with images and graphics that don’t apply to your content. Last but not least, never use copyrighted images without permission! People like me, who create original content, do not appreciate it when people simply take our creations for their own advancement. Speaking of which, you might want to check out my copyright information to see how I allow my site to be used!

<< Back to Software Forward to Layout >>