Fileship.io Forces Your Clients to Pay Before They Get Their Images

You’ve probably heard the horror stories… they go something like this: photographer gets job, photographer does job, photographer delivers images to client, client disappears without paying photographer. It’s a tale as old as time, and it’s exactly what a new service called Fileship.io intends to stop.

Fileship.io is an incredibly simple idea that can be summed up in a few words: a file sharing service that puts your work behind a paywall.

Like Dropbox or WeTransfer, you upload your images to the service and get a private, sharable link to send to your client. Like Dropbox or WeTransfer, clicking on that link takes your client to a page where they can access and download those files. Unlike Dropbox or WeTransfer, the client has to pay you before they can actually download their images.

It’s all explained on their about page:

The service works in concert with PayPal, so when you upload the files for delivery and name a price, you’ll also enter your PayPal email address. The files will exist at the link Fileship sends you for 7 days, giving your client 7 days to pay and download the photos before they go away and you have to reupload.

According to Quartz, the service is totally free for you to use. Fileship makes their cut by charging the client a 5% commission on top of yours and PayPal’s fee. So if you ask for $100, the client is billed $109.39.

It’s a simple solution for photographers who have been burned one too many times… or just don’t want to get burned in the first place.

To find out more or try out the service for yourself, click here.