Bayreuth, February 01, 2023. According to Statista, there are just under 40,000 registered businesses in the field of photography in Germany, around 7,300 in Austria and around 4,100 in Switzerland. In all three countries, the proportion of one-person businesses in this is very high, in Austria, for example, 85%. Overall, it is assumed that only about 25% of photographers working full-time are economically successful. The per capita income is thereby in all three countries in comparison to other handicraft professions clearly below average.

Therefore, many associations such as the BFF (Berufsverband Freie Fotografen und Filmgestalter e.V.), DFV (Deutscher Verband für Fotografie e.V.), CentralVerband Deutscher Berufsfotografen or Berufsfotografen.de offer economic support in the form of training, marketing, listing, fee calculations and much more. Nevertheless, it must be stated that most photographers have to constantly search for new assignments and sources of income.

Many jobs that photographers used to be able to make a living from have now disappeared. This is because in all those areas where a client only needs a low picture quality, any amateur can take a photo. Often a suitable picture of sufficient quality can be found for a few cents from a stock portal provider or even on free portals. Only a few hundred photographers are so famous that their works are shown in galleries and exhibitions and they fetch five-figure prices or more per picture.

Almost all photographers already market themselves on the Internet with their own appearances and many try to market and sell their works through stock portals. The Internet is full of freely available reviews and opinions of photographers about stock portals and platforms, so everyone can form his opinion about stock portals.

Only 15-40% of sales from stock portals go to photographers

One fact is that when photographers sell their images through stock portals and platforms, they receive only 15-40% of the revenue, often only cents. On these stock portals or platforms, professional and full-time photographers compete with millions of images from semi-professional photographers and active amateurs. According to Statista, for example, almost 8.8 million Germans were interested in photography in 2022 and more than 40 million Germans have some kind of camera, thus the market is highly saturated.

Furthermore, the usually very low revenue shares and royalties are often only paid out weeks, if not months, later. But also, transfers do not always come steadily for photographers and sometimes – as in the Corona time – not at all. Making a living in this way in 2023 is not easy.

With XBANQ photographers get paid 95% of sales immediately

At XBANQ®, photographers get paid 95% of the revenue of their works converted into NFTs immediately upon sale. And this is without cumbersome bank transfers as well as immediately to a wallet of choice, the money is available within seconds. Not only that, on further re-sales photographers receive up to 15% royalties on each re-sale. So, if an NFT is sold for the 2022 average price of €100, that would be €95, and if re-sold for €120, that would be an additional €18. That is probably more than a hundred photos sold through a stock portal.

And, this essentially requires no upfront investment from photographers. Photographers only need to upload their images – a maximum of 5 at a time. For better findability, it also makes sense to tag and categorize the images. For about 100 images, this takes about 1-2 hours according to our experience and testing, depending on how tech-savvy a photographer is. Of course, one needs to also have a cryptocurrency wallet to get paid, but this can be set up cost-free in 5-10 minutes. In case of questions the customer service of XBANQ® is happy to support all creators.

Either when uploading or afterwards, photographers can create their own collections and start so-called drops or auctions. “As a professional photographer, I have countless photos from various shoots, projects and vacations that lay unused on my hard drive. For years I have been looking for ways to monetize my unused images, now I can do it myself at XBANQ®,” says Karolina Parot, longtime photographer, CO-Founder and Chief Creative Officer at XBANQ®.

New customers and digital transition to the future of NFT and Web 3.0

Furthermore, the increasing digitalization also requires photographers to always explore new avenues. Now that most photographers are on social media, the next step is into the metaverse and Web 3.0. This step is associated with the transition from digital photos (jpg, bmp, tiff, gif, png, eps, raw) to NFTs. XBANQ® is the ideal partner to make this step. In addition to the great earning opportunities, the XBANQ® marketplace offers – to our knowledge – the world’s largest FAQ collection and glossary on NFT, crypto, Web 3.0, metaverse, AI, etc. In addition, XBANQ® offers a personal service for photographers to optimize their own profile and the presentation of their own works.

Internationally experienced founders

The new marketplace was founded by Prof. Dr. Nikolas Beutin, Dr. Melanie Carmen Beutin, Daniel Boran and Karolina Parot. Our founders are highly experienced experts with decades of success in national and international companies in various industries.

About XBANQ®

XBANQ® is a premium NFT business marketplace for the sale, purchase, usage, auction, monetization, and resale of valuable digital artwork and photography from artists around the world. XBANQ® NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are each individually unique creative digital artworks that can be traded and used without restriction for commercial, marketing and monetization purposes.

At XBANQ®, we strive to unlock the true value of creativity by leveraging the latest technologies to create a specialized and unique NFT marketplace experience for commercial and monetization use cases that can benefit the entire creative community. For more details please visit xbanq.com