Clickasnap Review in 2024. An Instagram Alternative?

Updated January 30th 2024.

For those of you interested in how much money can be made on the platform, click on any photo in this article to view the image on the Clickasnap website where you should be able to see the number of views and likes for that particular picture. Multiply the views by the current pay per view rate of 0.7 Cents and you will be able not only to work out the rough value that each upload has made, but also what types of picture are the best earners.

Hint: Cat pictures are not big earners.

I’ve been using Clickasnap now for a little over six years and so have a reasonable amount of experience with the platform. Hopefully the following review is useful to anyone who is on the fence as to whether or not to sign up, as well as those who maybe concerned that it’s some sort of scam.

This review may also be useful to those of you who have finally had enough of using Instagram, due to its move away from photography to video “reels”, as it tries to chase the rapid success of TikTok.

Whilst I use the platform frequently, it’s worth me pointing out that I’m definitely not amongst the biggest/most successful users, so when I get to talking about earnings, keep in mind that it is possible to earn much more if you use the Clickasnap website as intended and stay within the rules.

This is one of my latest photos, uploaded on March 28th 2023. Click the picture above to view in Clickasnap and see how many views it has already!

I will most likely be using Clickasnap much more often going forward as finally, after almost three years of waiting, the new version of the site is live!

Whilst there are quite a few bugs that need fixing, the overall look and functionality of the website is so much better than what it was.

So if you are in a similar position to what I was about six years ago, Clickasnap could sound very appealing.

I took up the hobby of photography around ten years ago, and had started to build up a fair amount of photos on my hard drive. Most of them were of course awful but there were still a few that I were somewhat proud of.

Another fairly recent upload of mine. This simple composition has done pretty well, mainly due to the dramatic sky!

The problem was not having anywhere to display my pics, other than the usual places online such as Facebook and Instagram. There are well documented problems with sharing on these platforms which can be read all over the internet, so I won’t bother mentioning them here.

Looking back now though, at least Instagram at this time was still more photography focused.

For me, one of the problems was that I didn’t want to share only with people who I know. I wanted my photos to be seen by actual photographers and perhaps get some helpful feedback.

I’m always proud of this pic as I think it’s one of my better efforts. I think it deserves more views though! ;)

The first place I had initially thought of was the obvious choice of Flickr and I was pretty close to setting up an account. I was however always put off by the fact it seemed like all the other platforms. Posting photos for worthless likes, with the possibility of perhaps having your high res photos screenshotted and stolen.

The other thing I read about that put me off (and that perhaps isn’t completely true, as I’ve never used the platform) is that the community on Flickr isn’t always particularly helpful in giving constructive feedback. I’ve heard it can get quite hostile and didn’t really want to be put off my new hobby with horrible comments about how crap my photography skills were, even though to be fair they would more than likely be totally accurate.

Despite the lens flare, this upload has attracted a decent amount of views.

One evening, whilst doing my daily binge of YouTube viewing, I stumbled upon Clickasnap. It was featured on Mike Browne’s channel, who is also directly involved with the site. I was intrigued to give it a go as there were a few differences from regular photo sharing sites.

The first thing that interested me was that it was completely new. I wasn’t one of the first to sign up but not too far behind. Being part of something new and watching how it grows is pretty enjoyable in and of itself. I actually expected it to fail after a year like most of these things but it’s currently still going strong and the number of new users signing up is ever increasing.

A traditional Turkish tea whilst on holiday can make you a few pennies!

If you’ve read anything previously about Clickasnap, you’ll no doubt be aware of its USP. The most notable feature is of course that unlike other sites, you get paid for views of your uploaded content.

It seemed like a too good to be true scenario at first. However, in fairness to Clickasnap, they have always been very upfront with how much you can make and the conditions necessary to earn money.

The money you earn per view through the site is actually a small share of the ad revenue that Clickasnap generate.

To get started, you first have to create a profile with the usual email and password. Then you need to decide on a plan. There are currently four. There's Free, Upload +, Seller and Pro.

Once you are set up, you upload photos, write a description and tag them appropriately like every other site out there. Then everytime someone looks at your photo for at least 5 seconds, you get a paid or “genuine” view and receive money.

Now most people reading this will be thinking if there are different plans, there are different costs, and if you have to pay to receive “paid views”, then this platform surely can't be worth it right?

Well firstly there is the totally free plan in which you can receive 0.1 cent per view. To be clear, this means you need to get 10 paid views to earn one cent.

If you think this sounds bad, when Clickasnap started, I was earning less than a quarter of this! But as they promised, it did increase rapidly once more users signed up.

Unless you are wanting to take advantage of the Seller and Pro plans features which allow you to sell your photos on all kinds of products, I would personally recommend the Upload + plan.

That means paying £19.99/$25 per year or £1.67/$2 per month. For this you get an ad free experience, unlimited uploads and more importantly a pay per view of 0.7 cents.

This makes a big difference. Bearing in mind that, like I mentioned earlier, I'm not the biggest user, I made $2.50 in four days just by uploading good quality photos and interacting normally with the site and it's fellow users.

Google also finds the photos on Clickasnap and so if you tag your pictures correctly and accurately, as well as writing a nice description, you'll always get some traffic viewing your photos.

Clickasnap advertises a pay per view of up to 0.9 cent but this is only available on the Pro account which costs £59.99/$74 per year. With this subscription cost being triple the price, the extra 0.2 cent per view is not really worth it in my opinion. Unless of course you can get traffic to your profile to buy prints and other products of your images.

I seem to remember the goal for the site was to eventually achieve $0.01 per view and it looks like that's not completely unrealistic for the future. At least for the Upload+ plan. Too many fake accounts trying to upload stolen images take advantage of the free account for the 0.1 cent pay per view to probably ever increase.

Before can get your earnings, you have to wait until you have accrued $15. You can then withdraw your money, which is currently only paid to you via PayPal.

According to owner Tom Oswald, there will be other withdrawal options available in the future. I imagine that now the new version of the site is up and running, this is something that will be changed soon.

I have actually just made my first attempt at withdrawing my earnings from Clickasnap to my PayPal and have documented the process on a separate post. Click here to read how it went!

I thought cats were popular on the internet. Judging by the views, this apparently isn’t the case.

Although Clickasnap is now finally starting to look like a slick, and solidly functioning image sharing platform, it hasn't been a completely smooth ride.

To be fair to Clickasnap, most of its problems have come from the attitude of its users.

The one major problem that arose on the platform back in 2019 was that as the site has got more popular and became better known around the internet, it was suddenly very attractive to a certain type of person who essentially sees the platform as an opportunity to make money for nothing.

Over the period of a few months, a huge number of new users signed up. The vast majority were free accounts. A lot of these free accounts were set up by people who were posting huge numbers of stolen images, mostly from stock sites such as Pexels or social media.

These users seemed to completely take over the platform, with the work of decent photographers being hidden amongst a sea of pirated images.

It got to a point where if you wanted to see the recently uploaded pics, you would have to scroll for an age to find an original photo.

The site owner initially tried to limit the effect of these people on the platform by limiting the free accounts to a maximum of 100 photo uploads. Users were, and still are, encouraged to report suspected “fake” accounts so that they can be banned.

As limiting the free account upload limit didn’t work well enough, and the cost to keep all of these free accounts going was reportedly costing the company 70% of it’s earnings, the decision was taken to demonetize them.

Fortunately now, the free account does earn its users money again and let's hope it stays that way!

If you have been thinking about setting up an account with the idea to try and make money with stolen photos, click here to read my post from a couple of years ago on why you were wasting your time then and still would be today. In 2023, Clickasnap has finally seemed to have gotten a hold on this type of behaviour and the platform is much better for it.

Even holiday snaps can earn you a bit of extra cash! As long as they’re reasonably interesting of course.

There was actually another reason other than the money which really made me sign up to Clickasnap, so I wasn’t too put off by the initial, super low pay per view figure that I mentioned earlier. It’s why I also was not put off by the idea of paying a small subscription fee.

One of the first pictures I took with my Sony a7. I think I overdid the saturation, but it still got some decent interest on Clickasnap.

It was more for the specific community of photographers that were on there.

Because Clickasnap was heavily promoted on YouTube by Mike Browne, who teaches photography to beginners, I presumed it would be safe to upload without getting ripped to shreds

Whilst colour photos tend to do better in my experience, punchy, high contrast black and whites always grab peoples interest whilst scrolling!

As it turned out, that was mostly as it was in the beginning. To my surprise though there were some seriously good photographers on there too that not only inspired me to try new things but offered constructive feedback in a none-cruel or humiliating way.

Today in 2023, whilst you will still have to sift through some poor quality photos, there are many talented photographers on the site which will keep you scrolling for more time than you probably should!

A trip to the zoo can help bring in the views! Maybe something a bit more cheery than a sad looking, caged zebra would earn more though.

Like the pirated images issue, not everything about the platform is great however. The site owner does at least address issues fairly quickly.

One of the initial problems of the site, before the mass uploading of stolen images, was the quality. There is always an abundance of rubbish that gets uploaded to every image sharing site but, once word got out that money was being paid out, a lot of utter trash started appearing.

Blurry, out of focus, low quality snapshots of either random holidays, ducks from half a mile away or stuff I couldn’t fathom.

Fortunately, Clickasnap took the decision to start deleting photos that it deemed were not good enough to be online. It was something that understandably didn’t go down well with some people but personally I think it was for the best.

Photos now need to be good to stay up but having said that, I’ve not had anything removed yet so the bar is not set too high!

Now that the quality is higher, there is a chance of more views, more ads and therefore more revenue to be shared out in the future.

A slightly different coloured edit of this photo appears on Clickasnap. One of my favourites.

Another less serious but truly irritating problem for the platform that suddenly appeared out of nowhere was the arrival of “digital beggars”. These are people who bring vile and irritating Instagram culture to the site, trying to get as many views as possible with “like for like” and “follow for follow” activities.

They do this by spamming the comment sections of people’s uploads with disingenuous compliments, usually followed by a link to or a suggestion that you visit their recent upload.

Fortunately, the comment sections are now much better, with this behaviour largely stamped out. I do fear though that it won’t take long for people’s posts to be littered with this rubbish once again when the inevitable push comes from Clickasnap beginning to market the latest version of the site all over social media.

To anyone thinking of trying these tactics, it’s worth knowing that the accounts of anyone who participates in this kind of behaviour are demonetized, which is great for all honest users.

If you were thinking of signing up to Clickasnap to use Instagram tactics, please don’t. It has been pointless for the last couple of years and most users are good at reporting spammers in the forums, after which action is taken.

Also, nobody who is seriously into good photography wants the site to turn into anything that resembles the current state of Instagram.

Another feature that has been added recently is a rating system that replaces the like button. This should help to keep both the lesser quality and stolen photos, that have usually been uploaded purely to try and make quick money, away from the front pages.

This update is new though, and so we’ll have to see how it works out. I know some people will be upset if they get 1 out of 5 ratings for their pics! I personally like the idea of having genuine feedback from fellow users, but am currently not sure about its implementation.

It is often quite buggy, with ratings not seeming to actually go through. I also don’t like that it has replaced the “like” feature. I can understand why the Clickasnap didn’t like the “like” button, because of how people used it, but now, unless someone leaves a comment, which they often don’t, I have no idea when anyone is viewing my photos. There is no notifications for rating as of yet.

Thankfully, not all updates are focused just on stopping bad behaviour.

A simple update which actually makes a big difference is that if a user now uploads more than one photo at a time, only their first picture will appear in the “Explore” section of the website. This photo will then have a small number in the top corner showing how many they uploaded in total.

So for example, if a user uploads ten pictures, a +10 appears. If you click on the photo, you are taken to a page of the entire uploaded bulk of images.

This basically fixes the problem where if a user uploaded 100 images at the same time, they would totally take over the feed. If you got two or three others bulk uploading too, then there really wasn’t much of a mix of different peoples pictures to see.

Another useful feature is that Clickasnap can apparently check the internet to see if your photo has been stolen and used anywhere else without your permission.

They also don’t take any ownership of anything you upload, so unlike on Instagram or Facebook, you’ll not lose the rights to your images.

Another photo from the Aland Islands taken in the early evening light.

For anyone new to signing up, it’s worth following the Clickasnap YouTube channel by clicking here as this is where the site owner gives regular updates on what is happening in terms of progress on the new version of the platform.

I thought this shot of the Sydney Opera House might be a little too abstract but fortunately it went down quite well!

So as posed in the title of this post, is Clickasnap an Instagram alternative? Well yes and no. Or at least no not yet, but it's getting closer.

Firstly there's no Clickasnap app. Instagram loads quicker and is generally easier to access than a website only platform.

A Clickasnap app has been talked about but considering how long it took for the new site launch, I'm not expecting it anytime soon.

There's also many more users on Instagram, so depending on what your purpose for using it is and how important being able to reach millions of people is to you, it may always be a winner.

However, if you used to like Instagram to post specifically photographs and to follow others that would inspire you to take your camera out, the platform has changed so dramatically over the last few years that it is unrecognisable to most who created an account, even two or three years ago.

Clickasnap provides that user experience that is sorely missed by hobbyist and professional photographers alike.

In addition, your rights to your photos are preserved, you can choose to sell products and you actually get paid at least something, even if you have a free account.

The biggest plus for Clickasnap in my opinion is that there isn’t as of yet any kind of algorithm in use to force content in front of you that perhaps you don’t want to see.

I stopped using Instagram as the few friends and accounts I followed barely ever showed up in my feed. Whatever Instagram decided would be popular that day was always there first. I would have to scroll for what felt like ages if I didn’t want to miss anything, whilst getting sidetracked by cat reels.

Clickasnap is currently like how Instagram and the original Facebook timeline used to be. You only see content from those you follow, or pictures that the people you follow might share. Everything is always in chronological order which makes it a much more pleasing and simple experience.

In short then, is Clickasnap worth it? I would say absolutely yes.

Photographers, just like many artists from any other field can find it hard to get paid for work. It’s something that artists have always complained about and now there is something that has been set up in an attempt to change that.

Although it’s still buggy, the fixes are promised. What it needs now, other than a lot more real users and more good quality photos, is a higher profile amongst other photographers, especially those who are more established.

As far as paying for a subscription is concerned, I don’t see a problem currently having to pay £1.67 per month to use the platform. It’s good value for something that can already return more than the cost of the subscription and will more than likely grow in the future.

The pink and blue hues seen here seem to be enjoyed by viewers. I’ve been overdoing lately though so should probably try something different.

In terms of my personal earnings, it’s worth remembering what I said earlier. I am far behind the biggest users in terms of photos uploaded and time spent on the platform.

In the first four years I made a very lowly $5! But in the fifth year, that rose to a total of $58. So the increase in both the pay per view amount and the number of new users has made a big difference.

It’s also worth taking a look at my total views, which currently stands at around 20,000. The bigger accounts, of which there are plenty, are in the high 100,000s, with a few well over 300,000 and growing fast.

I also only had around 2000 subscribers, most of which in my case, as I have been signed up for so long, I presume were inactive.

I say “had” because since the new site launch my subscriber count reduced to 0! We have been informed that this is temporary as information from the old site is still being transferred.

Either way it hasn't affected how much I earn as most views come from interacting with active users.

Before subscriber numbers were reset, the more successful profiles had over 10,000 followers. So it is possible to garner a decent following if you are committed.

It would be nice now if more experienced photographers, instead of turning their noses up at Clickasnap with reasons such as it being full of amateurs, or having a tiny user base in comparison to the usual options like Instagram, would help push it and support it.

At the very least, any effort to help grow the platform might help change an industry which profits massively from exploiting other people’s work. It’s worth a try anyway.

Quick Tips for Success!

If you want to stand any chance of making a meaningful income on Clickasnap as the site continues to grow in the future, there are certain things you must do.

Firstly, give your image a title! No one visiting the site will click on a thumbnail whose title is a random file number. You don’t need to be super creative or good with words. Take a look at mine for examples!

If you want, just put something really literal, but descriptive. Something like “Sunset in the City”, whilst a bit boring, looks a lot better than “DSC0015”.

Secondly, you must tag your image when uploading, or it will never be found by people who search within the site or, more importantly, by Google!

Thirdly, but most important of all, give your uploaded photo a description! This is almost as important as the picture in terms of getting a paid view, as not only does a short paragraph take about five seconds just to read, but the description can add context to certain pictures which may otherwise not be as interesting.

For example, a picture of a cat is just a picture of a cat. But if you write about things like who the cat belongs to, where you found it, what the surroundings were like, why you photographed it, how painful it was when it attacked you after you pressed the shutter, you add context, you definitely get the paid view and maybe the viewer moves onto your profile to look at your other uploads because they don’t think you’re just a random, soulless, cat uploading robot.

If you are not good with words for titles or descriptions, click here to go to my profile and take a look at the kind of things I write, as it works for me. I don’t even mind if you want to reword some of my descriptions to fit your own uploads. I just don’t want to see another mediocre photo of a random door or derelict building and have no idea of what I’m actually looking at!

Obviously, there is one thing that is more important than all of the above when uploading to Clickasnap. And that is to UPLOAD GOOD QUALITY IMAGES!!!

I’m not talking about “good” in an artistic sense either as it’s all subjective and a lot of us are still learning the art of photography. I mean only upload photos that are correctly exposed, in focus, not completely full of noise and that are at least an attempt at trying to create a piece of art the “says” something.

Please, no more mirror selfies. Or cats.