Photo Selling Options

If you have decided on a career as a freelance photographer your vocation will be marketing and your avocation, or sideline, will be photography. The marketing aspect of a photography business involves identifying potential customers, creating customer interest in the services you offer and building strong customer relationships. It is not unusual for self-employed photographers to spend 80% of their time in the marketing and administrative aspects of their business and 20% actually producing pictures.

According to the World Association of Newspapers and Newspaper Publisher (WAN-IFRA) global paid-for daily newspaper circulation fell 0.8% in 2009 from a year earlier, to 517 million copies sold. Circulation in Europe is down 5.6% and 4.6% in North America. Circulation in Asia was up 1% with India and China seeing good growth. Advertising revenuewas down 25% in North America, 13.7% in Western Europe, 18.7% in Central and Eastern Europe.
 

Phrases like “it’s not all doom and gloom” pop up often, but those who offer such encouraging analysis are typically in the top tier of the profession. While their experience is certainly real and laudable if not amazing, is it representative enough to be touted as a roadmap to a successful career? Common sense, economics, mathematics and every available source of statistical information says no.

Recently on LindedIn Jacintha van Beveren observed that “The old photography business model is gone,” and asked if the road to survival and future success is through “creativity and flexibility or stubborn protection?” In my opinion neither “more creativity nor stubborn protection” will work. Read this story to gain some insights as to why the old ideas no longer work and what might work in the future.

Photographers should be alert to any requests from textbook publishers for a new license to extend the print run on books already published. In many cases they may be entitled to high retroactive usage fees for copies already printed and distributed as well as a fee for the new books the publisher intends to publish.

When I published “Top Pros Stop Shooting” in my other newsletter Selling-Stock received an unusual number of comments from industry leaders. Most of those who commented had some disagreement with the positions I took in the article. Since PhotoLicensingOptions readers will have missed seeing these comments, I have printed them here along with an editorial response.

In the fall of 2009, I estimated the size of the worldwide market for still images and illustrations at about $1.45 billion. In the last 12 months sales overall have probably remained about the same with a few companies seeing sales growth, mostly from taking market share from those that have gone out of business. However, there have been some important changes in how those sales are divided among various marketing groups. I estimate that due to price increases gross revenue generated by iStockphoto in 2010 will be between $250 and $300 million.

Today, a lot of businesses get marketing and branding mixed up. They are confused as to what the differences are, what they both mean or they try promoting their business with one and without the other. Simply put, marketing is how you reach your target market with advertising, promotions and public relations. Marketing is showing the world with what you do. Branding is who you are or what the world thinks you are. Every time a prospect or a potential customer makes contact with you in person, print, virally or by other means, they are formulating an opinion of you as a brand. 

Fine art photographs are an expression of the artist’s creative vision, perceptions and emotions more than a realistic rendering of a subject. Peers may admire such work and judges may occasionally award a dollar prize, but in most cases such images are not deemed to have commercial value. Actually profiting from the creative effort is rare for most photographers who produce such images. They produce them because they feel compelled to do so, not for the money. However, John Math is proving that it is possible to profit from selling fine art images if you take a business approach and develop a marketing strategy.

If you have decided you want to enter the microstock world you can’t get better advice than that given by Ellen Boughn in her new book Microstock Money Shots. She doesn’t promise that it’s easy, or that you’ll get rich quick, but if you follow her advice it will save you a lot of the frustration that comes from learning the hard way by trial and error.

On Linkedin’s Photography Industry Professionals discussion group, Brooke Fagel recently asked: “What’s it like to be a freelance photographer?” These select responses provide a comprehensive picture of what a photographer faces.

Two-year-old Pixmac is banking on its “rapid checkout and download” without the necessity for customers to engage in a complex registration process to help the company expand its customer base in North America.

Many rights-managed and traditional royalty free production companies are having trouble finding photographers willing to shoot for them. Many of the photographers who were RM and traditional RF stars five to ten years ago have given up shooting stock, or at the very least dramatically cut the number of images they produce annually and the amount they are willing to spend on models and production costs.

There is a reason why it is called “social” media and there are rules that you should follow when it comes to employing “social media” to market and brand yourself and your art. Every day I see small businesses that are ruining their brand by abusing social media.  Artists are no different, as they are a “small business” too! Here are some quick rules of social media that you should follow.
 

With more and more art galleries and art organizations using the internet and email as a way to receive and administer their art show entries, an artist needs to follow the rules more closely than ever. I see at least 30% of the artists every month who ignore the rules and prospectus requirements for a particular art competition. The artists will send in their entries in the wrong manner, incompletely or in the wrong form. Failure to follow the rules of an art call is the number one reason why artists fail to get into their share of art exhibitions and art shows.

One of the things RM and traditional RF photographers tend to overlook is average price-per-image-licensed. Photographers worry when their images are licensed for low prices. They track their average royalty-per-image-in-file and the trends of their monthly royalty check. But is a lower royalty check the result of fewer images being licensed, a lower average price-per-license or both?.

When you are a freelance self-employed photographer, getting to the level of earning enough to support yourself and your family is difficult. But you know you can do it, because you are willing to work hard and you produce great, unique images that are better than anything offered by the competition. Here are a few basic principles of the photography business to remember.

When I was recently interviewed by Photonetcast, it became clear that my position on the best strategy for licensing rights to images is misunderstood, so it is time for another explanation. Granted, my position is radical, so bear with me.

In the last few years there has been dramatic growth in the use of images on the Internet, a market for images that virtually did not exist 10 years ago. Some believe that the potential for growth of the Internet is infinite, and that there will always be an ever-increasing demand for imagery.

Has the time come to take photojournalism off life-support? For the last thirty-odd years, Neil Burgess, director of NBPictures headquartered in London, has been listening to people talk about, or predict the death of photojournalism. This article, first published on EP/UK, outlines the sorry state of photojournalism today and comes to the conclusion that there is only one thing to do.

I receive regular requests from photographers who want to know how they can license rights to the images they have created over the years on film. Here’s what I tell them. Licensing rights to images is very difficult in today’s market because there is such an oversupply available compared to the demand.

So far in this series we’ve learned there is declining demand for images that will be used in print, and growing demand for images that will be used online and in electronic formats. Photographers just starting out should be aware of the number of images already in online databases and recognize that any images they produce will be competing against those that already exist.

Though unit sales are declining for many iStockphoto sellers, many of the same people are also seeing significant revenue increases. Here’s how.

Last November Tom Grill wrote on the subject of volume relative to price and said this rather obvious formula is indicative of the reason behind the plight facing contributors to stock photo industry today as it transitions from a high-priced print usage system to a high-volume digital system of economics. Stated simply, it means that a stock photographer today needs to adapt image output to mass marketing at lower prices – something easier said than done. A stock shooter makes the same amount of return from making 50 sales at $200 apiece as making 200 sales at $50 apiece. This begs the question: Is this equation in marketing transition actually occurring? Like it or not, the industry is changing dramatically, and the winners will be those who can adapt to the new paradigm.

More and more people are producing pictures of a quality sufficient to satisfy the needs of many who want to use pictures. Thanks to the Internet -- and to a great extent microstock -- it is much easier than in the past for those who would like to earn a little money from the images they have produced to make contact with customers who might want to use them.