While most people are taking beautiful photos and posting them freely online, some ordinary UK citizens are making money using the Takumi app or at least that is what the 3 people found by the daily mail said.
24 year old Christopher Rusev of @ralics only just graduated from university but has made this lifestyle a full time job having only just discovered the UK based app 4 months ago.
He opened his Instagram 3 years ago, saved up to buy a proper camera and started taking beautiful pictures. In turn his followers blew up to a now staggering 56k+.
Via the app, he has worked with brands such as Microsoft, Haagen Daaz and Domino’s Pizza, sometimes earning £80 per picture, and posting almost daily.
Ivona and Nell also give their account and you can read their full story here – Daily mail
How does it work? The criteria according to the app:
Minimum of 1,000 followers –> download the Takumi app –> check out the offers –> seen any you like? then sign up –> start promoting and you can receive a slice of money
Supposedly these are all you need with starting minimum pay from £40 but one company tells a different story…
This was written 2 years ago by an individual who tried the scheme. The story could be different today but here is their story extracted from Debrif
Weeeeeeeelllll, actually, that’s not quite how it works in our experience.
At the moment, there only seems to be one gig available – for winter clothing wear brand 66°North. To get cash you need to post a picture of yourself in something from the brand that you’ve bought off their website, tag them in and get paid £40 –bish bash bosh.
For starters though, I don’t have a 66°North coat. ‘No problem!’ say Takumi, which is happy to provide a 30% discount on its website (which is actually pretty good – the stuff looks super well made and hella warm). The cheapest thing I can find on Takumi’s site is £13 for a hat so, once you’ve purchased it and posted your picture, you’ll make yourself a tidy profit of £27 quid. Banging. And you get a hat.
But, here comes the problem. The app promised £40 if you’ve got 1000 followers. I obviously don’t have that many because I only post pictures of me and my friends getting pissed and/or my cat Gandalf. So I signed in using The Debrief account which has 17.7k followers and averages around 2-300 likes per post. It is, by all accounts, a healthy mid-sized social media presence.
But alas. That isn’t enough for Takumi! When I try and ‘reserve’ the 66°North gig, I get an error message: ‘Instagram profile was flagged. Engagement levels too low’. Gutted, mate. Guess this wasn’t the golden pony I wanted after all.
Who knows, perhaps as the app grows and more and more people and brands sign up, it might work as it says it’s supposed to. It’s definitely an interesting business model, probably one we’re likely to see more and more in the coming months and years. This time though, it’s back to eating baked beans out of a tin.
Would you want to try it?
