Get paid to take pictures of places you go by using crowdmug

There are a lot of social check-in apps out there. We know that FourSquare, Facebook, and Gowalla are the heavy hitters. There are some niche apps trying to steal a bit of the market with small twists and features. Some of them are even using FourSquare’s API.

crowdmug for iOS is doing just that, by showing you pictures and video in real-time from venues you might be interested in going to. It would also like you to post pictures of places around you, and you could actually earn some money from the community when you do it.

Take a photo, leave a photo

For example, if you’re at a restaurant, just take a picture or video with crowdmug, add the location, which is powered by FourSquare, and you’re done. The next time someone looks for places close to them, they might see what you posted. If it looks crowded, maybe they won’t go at all.

It’s an interesting twist on location and media sharing.

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Earn some money

This feature got our attention. If someone in the community really wants to see what a place looks like through a picture or video, they can submit a request and put a dollar amount to how much they’re willing to pay for the community to do deliver it to them.

If you’re paying for a photo you can make a deposit to the app in any amount using a credit card. If you’ve gotten paid for taking photos, you can ‘cash out’ using Paypal, or by receiving a check.

The only thing I’ve thought of that makes sense for this feature is if you’re apartment hunting and you’re out of town. Perhaps someone can go for you, take a picture or shoot a walkthrough video for you. I’m not sure how much that’s worth though, and we suppose that crowdmug is willing to find out.

Here is a video demo of crowdmug:

You can follow cities, and check out all of the media being shared in real-time if you like. Say you’re homesick to see Philadelphia, perhaps you could check in and hope that people are posting things. There’s not a lot of content yet, as the app hasn’t gotten a lot of traction as of yet. crowdmug promises that an Android version is coming soon. It’s going to take a pretty good sized userbase to get crowdmug off of the ground.