Andre P.

After being a Premium Member for a few years, I think i can share a little bit of my experience with this site.

Things i like about ViewBug:

Plenty of good photographers and good photographs, makes it really hard to even think about winning a contest, so I've given up on that haha. I had a photo chosen as a finalist twice, that made me happy!

The design of the site is al-right, it displays the photos in a good way and disables right clicking, which is good to discourage thieves!

I've got quite a few awards from the ViewBug team, which i think is really awesome. One of my photos was featured as the cover of the site for a day. I'm not sure if they still do this, but i thought it was really nice and definitely encouraged me to keep shooting, back in 2013 :) So thanks for that ViewBug!

The whole contest thing, what ViewBug is really about, is amazing and it makes Viewbug a very unique site! It's really easy to join contests, there's no confusing stuff or anything involved, and you maintain the rights to your work. This is 100% why i joined ViewBug in the first place, to enter contests!

It's hard to know how well your photo placed, as many people have said. Yeah that's true, but it all comes down to a Jury so if they think your photo is good enough to be the winner, it will be. So i don't really care much about how well my photos did, as long as i have a chance to win.

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Things that i do NOT like about Viewbug:

You can report a picture a thousand times for being inappropriate, nothing happens.
You can report it for being stolen, nothing happens.
I've seen many profiles with stolen photos, photos that have almost won contests, I've reported them and nothing happened. This is definitely the thing that worries me the most. One time i even contacted the real photographer to let him know that his photo was stolen, he said he contacted ViewBug about it, but it's still online and gathering likes and peer awards.

Memberships are too expensive, especially if having a Premium, Pro or Lite membership makes no difference to you. If you are sure you have what it takes to win a contest, then pay for the PRO membership and enter as many contests as you can.

View count is depressing. If you post a photo and don't add it to any contest or photo challenge, that photo will get maybe 2 or 3 views in a month.

Right now i have 4745 followers. Posted a photo a few weeks ago, and it has 34 views. And yeah it's a really good photo. This isn't the site to get views, so i wouldn't bother joining if that's all you're interested in. Join 500px or Instagram for that.

Bot members. Yes there are plenty of bot members! These are members who award everything and like everything! It's super annoying, I've got a few of them following me and whatever it is i post, they like and award. Even if the photo is completely white or black, they will like and award. They are real accounts with real photos, but they probably use bots or whatever, to like and award everything they see automatically. So they end up with thousands of followers, even if their photos are bad.

Stuff i do not care about:

Points and being a curator ( you can be a curator in 1 day if you really apply yourself by liking and awarding everything you see). By being a Curator, you welcome other people to the site, comment on their photos, like and award, ask them to join contests and photo challenges and whatnot. I've never done that. Sorry!:)

I'd give 3.5 / 5 stars.

Conclusion on a very long post:

If you're interested in joining photo contests and growing as a photographer, JOIN!
If you're interested in views, comments, awards, whatever, but don't really want to push yourself to have a chance at winning contests, then don't bother joining.