After 15 years in real estate, Luke Tomaszewski noticed how cumbersome it was to get up-to-date photos of properties in order to assess their condition. So, he set out to create an app that enabled real estate companies to get images of properties without having to drive from place to place.
In May, Tomaszewski launched Proxy Pics, an app that allows consumers and businesses to pay individuals to take photos of the location or item of their choosing. Users can purchase photos for $5 per image and photographers get paid $3.25 per image. Photographers must take the photos using the app. Proxy Pics maintains the rights to the images and licenses them out to requesters.
On average, the company receives about two photo requests per address. Since the app launched, it has attracted about 7,000 users, though Tomaszewski said he’s focused on attracting more users to the platform. The app currently notifies users of photo requests within a 5-mile radius, but the company is working to narrow notifications down to 1-mile radiuses for city locations and allow users to set their maximum distance for photo requests.
In its inception, the app was conceived with potential business-to-business applications in sectors such as real estate, banking and insurance. The company is building out a user dashboard for enterprise clients. For banks looking to speed up property loans or line of credit applications, for example, the Proxy Pics app could get property photos uploaded in a few seconds. Today, lenders often hire inspection companies to dispatch inspectors who take photos for the lenders to use.
“With all the power that we have with our phones now … why are we waiting? Why are we driving? Why are we wasting gas? The technology’s there,” Tomaszewski said.
Though the app was conceived with business-to-business uses in mind, Tomaszewski noticed consumers using it to make unexpected image requests, such as photos of a restaurant line to see if it’s worth the trip, or photos of a street sign to see if they needed to move their car.
The company landed on that price per photo, because some clients weren’t enthused about paying $10 per photo. And while talking to Uber and Lyft drivers, Tomaszewski realized that some drivers received around $5 for a short trip. In Chicago, the minimum fare is $4.20, out of which a driver receives $2.25, according to June 2018 Ridester analysis. So, he figured $3.25 per photo was a sensible price point for everyday individuals looking to supplement their income.
Some clients, however, wanted to pay more per photo, Tomaszewski said. The average U.S. photographer’s salary is $32,068, according to Glassdoor. In 2016, the per photo rate between student and top professional photographers can range between $25 and $1,500 per image, according to PetaPixel.
In the future, the company wants to separate photographers into tiers for requesters who want photographers with specific certifications, such as a real estate license. For those higher-level tiers, requesters will be charged more per photo and photographers will undergo a background check and certification verification, Tomaszewski said.
In six months, the company plans to introduce profiles for users with specialties in specific industries like real estate and insurance and allow buyers to pay higher commissions for high-end photos. Down the line, the company also wants to roll out a desktop dashboard for professional photographers to upload higher quality DSLR photos.
“The gig economy continues to grow … and I think we’ll be able to take advantage of that,” Tomaszewski said. “Real estate is always behind the tech field, the medical field [and] anything like that. This, I think, will launch real estate into the future.”
