DEMOfall 08: Photrade lets photographers license and track their photos online

Photrade hopes to make the web safe for photographers. That is, it has a technology for tracking photos so that photographers can control the spread of their photos and get paid by those who use them.

It connects photographers, advertisers, and web publishers in a marketplace where publishers can access photos legally and photographers can get paid each time their photos are viewed.

We wrote about GumGum’s business for licensing photos so that photographers can get paid for their work. Photrade is doing the same thing. But its solution isn’t as restrictive as GumGum’s, which wraps the photos in a layer of Flash in order to track them.

“We’re democratizing photography with a visual marketplace,” said Andrew Paradies, chief executive.

With Photrade, photographers can choose their licensing business model, including making photos free with ad support. The company has built a protection platform, with technologies such as custom watermarking photos, that makes it harder to steal images. It tracks the photos and reports back on usage.

When a photographer logs in, he or she can set prices for each photo. You add tags to it to make it easy to find. A blogger looking for a stock photo can use a photo for free by getting the photo and its accompanying advertising code which goes with the photo. The publisher gets the photo for free and the photographer gets revenues from the ad.

You can use Photrade as a personal photo selling site. The Cincinnati, Ohio-based company was founded in 2006. It received angel funds in January from Flashline Partners and Empower Media Marketing.

Besides GumGum, Photrade competes with Kickapps, Mochila as well as stock photo companies such as iStockPhoto. The latter stock photo companies typically license a photo for a flat fee but don’t pay per usage. The site is now live.