Get tipped for the photos you share

How to set up Brave Rewards for your online portfolio

Digital photography heavily relies on technology. The tools we use to organise, develop, and share our work define our workflow. Even those who haven’t been actively sharing or selling their photos online would hardly deny that opportunities are there and get more tempting by day…

Some may still disagree with me about tempting, and they have a point. The rules by which the market of digital content works nowadays are far from being fair for these creating quality content, photographers in particular. The major platforms, so-called gatekeepers, dictate their terms which are discouraging for many. Set aside issues like collecting data and privacy violations, certain disregard to creators rights, freebooting and so on…

It is not all that bad, though. There is a promising trend towards decentralisation and open-source. More and more projects focus on the rights of a user and implement a privacy-by-design approach. Troublesome as it is, the digital content market has a growing number of these projects.

This article is the first in the series about user-focused and open-source tech solutions for photographers. We know that turning digital photography space into a fare and safe playground is not possible without photographers and other content creators embracing the change. By understanding the value of data we are giving out in exchange for “free” services and willing to act on protecting our rights by taking a simple step of switching to a safer option photographers can make this change happen faster.

That’s why we start spreading the word about the projects that bring about the change. Today it’s about how photographers can be Brave and earn some extra coins from their online portfolio.

Brave Browser and Brave Rewards

Brave is a new privacy-first browser known for its unmatched speed, security, and trackers blocking. It works both on desktop and mobile and rewards users for their attention if they choose to see the ads. If you haven’t heard of Brave yet, it definitely worth checking out before we move on.

While Brave is cool in many ways, in this article we will focus on its one particular feature: anonymous donation system. Brave Rewards is a new way to fund content on the internet and to reconnect creators with their audiences. Hundreds of thousands of websites, such as Wikipedia, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The LA Times, NPR.org, VICE, Vimeo and Khan Academy, as well as YouTube creators, Twitch streamers and many more receive monthly contributions in BAT tokens from their audiences as Brave verified creators. Why photographers and visual artist can’t do the same? No reason at all.

Here’s how you can join Brave Creators

If you have your online portfolio, you can get tipped for the work you share. In fact, you may already have some rewards to collect without even knowing. Your viewers who use the Brave Browser may have contributed money to you while surfing the web through Brave Rewards that was launched in April 2019.

How to find out? Simply sign up as a verified content creator on Brave Rewards and start collecting your contributions. As soon as you verify your email, you will be sent to your Creator account at Brave Rewards, where you can see if there any rewards pending. There is no reason to be discouraged if there is nothing yet. Instead, let’s follow a few simple steps to create your first creative Channel.

As Brave supports creators of content of all kinds, you can see several options where you can receive donations for the content you publish. To connect your online portfolio choose ‘Website’.

Next, enter your website domain, choose whether or not you want Brave to show ads on your website (you can change your preferences at any moment later) and press ‘Continue’.

Now you need to choose the verification method and follow instructions.

(A) Download a trusted file, will allow you to complete the verification almost instantly while with (B) Edit DNS records you might need to wait a couple of hours while the change is being propagated.

Whichever method you chose, within the next 48 hours or less, you will be a verified Brave creator and ready to receive your donations in Brave native tokens, BAT.

As a next step, you might what to connect your Brave Rewards account to a digital wallet to manage your funds. Click on “verify wallet” in Brave Rewards to initiate this process. You will be redirected to an authoauthorisation page at Uphold, a digital money platform that Brave partnered with. Here’s a video instruction on how to connect Brave rewards to Uphold.

Add a Tipping Banner, make it personal

As soon as you connect your first channel, you become a verified Brave creator. Your website visitors can see your status and send you tips by clicking on the triangle Rewards iconon the right-hand side of the address bar.

But there is yet another thing you can do to better connect with your audience. Brave Publisher Dashboard allows verified creators to set customised Tipping Banners. The process is very straightforward, and you can use your own message and images to encourage users in supporting your work if they feel like it.

Brave users will see your banner appear when they visit your website or channel and click the “send tip now” button in their browser’s Brave Rewards panel.

Support fellow creators

Now, when you’ve learned the basics, feel free to practice by tipping your fellow creators. You don’t need to deposit your own f to start. Just opt-in to Brave ads and start collecting your rewards in BAT for seeing relevant ads. You can always adjust the maximum amount of ads you see per hour in Settings.

To recap, here’s a Video Tutorial on how to tip websites with BAT. Start using Brave, get tipped and support others. After all, it’s all about giving publishers and creators back their fair share of Internet revenue.

At Sensio, we believe that the rules of the digital creative market need to be transparent, the concept of privacy and the rights of the creator should be in the system’s core. Our team is working on a collection of services that will allow photographers and other creatives to stay in charge of their work and private data at all times while managing, sharing and selling work online.

If you want to learn more, check out Sensio wiki.
Our Discord server is the best place to get in touch, ask questions and share your ideas.

Have fun and stay safe 🖖