How-to · Creator upload
Concrete step-by-step for a creator publishing their first reference photo set on the Apiway marketplace: where the upload form lives, what fields matter, how the credit pool and co-author splits work, where the listing URL and profile URL come from, and how the AI-written listing description and per-photo captions are auto-generated by Gemini in the background — and editable any time. Around 10 minutes from upload to a live, indexable, paid listing.
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Open Creators (sidebar) → Profile and confirm your nickname, avatar, and bio are set. Marketplace publishing requires a published profile — if you try to publish a photo set without one, the form returns a profile-not-published error and walks you through the setup. The nickname is what becomes your public storefront URL: studio.apiway.ai/<nickname>.
Creators → Sell → Sell a photo set. The form lets you upload up to 30 images from a single shoot session, set a working title, define a creator credit pool, and add co-authors (photographer / model / stylist) with credit splits. Each upload is staged to private storage immediately so you don't lose progress if the tab closes.
Drag-and-drop the full session into the uploader. The 30-image cap is a deliberate cohesion budget — buyers pick sets specifically because every frame fits the same vibe. Don't mix multiple shoots into a single set; if you have 3 separate shoots, that's 3 sets, not one. Reorder by drag handle so the strongest frame sits first (it becomes the storefront preview).
Enter the creator pool (default 5 credits — the credits split among you and any co-authors per buyer generation). Apiway adds a platform markup on top to compute the buyer price; the form shows both numbers in real time so you can sanity-check what a buyer pays vs. what lands in your pool. Higher pools earn more per pickup but reduce pickup velocity — start at the default and adjust as you learn what your sets earn.
If the shoot involved another creator (the photographer, the model, a stylist), add them by their Apiway nickname under co-authors and set each share. The form validates that the sum of shares equals the creator pool; the split runs automatically on every pickup, no monthly reconciliation. Solo shoots: leave co-authors empty and your share equals the full pool.
Hit Publish. The set goes live within seconds. The success page hands you two links: Open your profile (your public storefront, studio.apiway.ai/<nickname>) and Open published photo set (the listing's deep link, studio.apiway.ai/<nickname>/photoshoot-idea/<itemRef>). Both are crawlable, indexable, and shareable on social — copy them into Instagram bio, portfolio site, X, or email signature to drive traffic to your storefront.
Right after publish, the listing description shows the placeholder "We are generating your listing description and per-image details. This usually finishes within a few minutes." In the background, Gemini 2.5 Flash writes a full SEO-tuned listing description (mood, style, suggested use cases) and per-frame captions / titles / subtitles for every uploaded image. The watchdog retries up to 4 times every 5 minutes if the first pass doesn't land — you don't need to do anything.
Open Creators → Listings → your published set. The Edit screen shows the full listing description, the H2 title, and a per-photo grid where every frame has its own caption, title, and subtitle field. Override anything that doesn't sound right. The system is idempotent — once you've typed real content into a field, the AI won't overwrite it on subsequent retries. This is the key promise: AI does the boring SEO scaffold, you keep editorial control.
Add the profile URL (studio.apiway.ai/<nickname>) to your Instagram bio, link-in-bio tool, portfolio site, and email signature. Buyers picking creators for paid advertising look at the supply-side trail — a creator with a real social/portfolio footprint earns more per set than an anonymous one. The listing URL itself is the ideal share target when you're announcing a new drop on Instagram or Twitter.
Earnings appear in the creator dashboard per pickup. The economic loop that compounds: cohesive sets + good tagging + strong off-Apiway promotion → more saved-by-buyer events → more recurring pickups. Sessions with strong saving rates can earn for years on a single shoot. Withdraw funds from the dashboard when you hit the payout threshold.
Creators (sidebar in the app) → Sell tab → Sell a photo set. Direct link: /app/creators/sell-photo-set. There's also Sell an avatar (single-image listing) on the same Sell tab; both go through the same publish + AI-listing-copy pipeline.
Two URLs: your storefront (studio.apiway.ai/<your-nickname>) which lists all your sets, and the deep listing link (studio.apiway.ai/<your-nickname>/photoshoot-idea/<itemRef>) which points at the specific photo set. Both are public, indexable, and shareable on Instagram, Twitter, portfolio sites, link-in-bio, anywhere. The success page after publish copies both for you.
Gemini 2.5 Flash auto-generates the listing description, the H2 title, and per-frame SEO (caption + title + subtitle for each image) within a few minutes of publishing — see lib/marketplace-listing-copy-regenerate.ts. You can override every field on the Edit Photo Set screen. The system is idempotent: once you've typed real content into a field, retries won't overwrite it. The AI is a starting point; your edits are final.
The watchdog retries up to 4 times every 5 minutes (LISTING_COPY_MAX_ATTEMPTS = 4). If it's still stuck after ~20 minutes, open the Edit Photo Set screen — the system runs a self-heal regeneration on mount, and there's an explicit retry endpoint behind the scenes. If the listing copy genuinely fails (rare), it falls back to a human-readable failure message and you can write the description manually; saving any real content takes priority over further retries.
The creator pool is what gets split among you and your co-authors per buyer generation. Apiway adds a platform markup on top to produce the buyer price the buyer pays. The Sell form shows both numbers live (and the USD-equivalent in parentheses) so you can model what a typical buyer charge produces in your pool. Co-author splits run automatically inside the pool; the platform markup is computed on top before checkout.
Yes — the Edit Photo Set screen supports reordering, deleting, and adding new images up to the 30-image cap. New images get their per-frame SEO generated by the same Gemini pipeline. Re-ordering changes which frame becomes the storefront preview, so put the strongest frame first.
Toggle the listing to inactive in the Edit screen, or delete it outright. Inactive listings stop appearing in search and Explore immediately; previously-licensed buyers retain rights to imagery they already generated under the prior license (standard creator-economy backstop). Delete is permanent — use inactive when you're not sure.
