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.

One of the first things to do if you want to sell your still photographs is to understand who the individuals and organizations are that might want to buy your images. You also need to be aware of the changing trends taking place in each market.

A large percentage of the still-photo segment of the stock photography business is related to advertising—either licensing images for use in print ads, or licensing them for use in editorial products that are supported to a great extent by ads. The health of the stock photography business is directly related to the health of the print business. To understand what is likely to happen in the still photography business, it is important to have some understanding of advertising trends.

One of the leading producers of short form business profiles (videos of 45 to 75 seconds) is TurnHere.com. The company has a network of over 8,000 freelance videographers working in over 70 countries. It has produced more than 27,000 short videos (7,000 within the last 6 months) for local business around the world.

What is top-quality photography for a major advertising campaign worth? Evidently, art buyers at Campbell-Ewald, one of the largest advertising agencies in the U.S., think $2,500 for “all advertising” and “all print” rights is fair and reasonable, as evidenced by a recent negotiation for the use of one of Hans Halberstadt’s photos.

Twenty questions to test your knowledge of the photo licensing industry and its future potential.

A huge percentage of all professional imagery licensed is used in one way or another to promote a product or service. But advertisers have recognized that the old ways of promoting are no longer working. They are aggressively searching for new and better ways to reach consumers. Their decisions dramatically impact future demand for photography as will as where and how it will be used.

If you're a photographer shooting fashion, products or doing other commercial work for brochures or print ads you will often need access to good locations. Getting "access" to good locations generally requires considerable effort and often fee payments. This story provides some hints on how to solve the access problem.

The photo discussed in this article is an almost perfect stock photo. It's not cutting edge; it's not trendy. It's not hip or cool. wshat it is is a photo that will license again and aagain for years....extending its revenue stream long after its production costs have been recouped. This is a photo with a very long tail.

We have done a bad job. A terrible job. If picking a photograph is all about its price and not its quality than we, the photo industry, have made a terrible job at selling our work. Every time an editor, whether  from an ad agency or a magazine decides to use an image because it is cheaper than the others, that means we have all failed to advocate for the real value of photography. We have failed, all of us, Photographers, agents, photo agencies to make the new generation of image buyers see the real value in our images. Thus the current situation.

With all the free information available on the Internet why would or should anyone want to pay for information? Many consumers believe that writers should give away their work in order to build a following of customers who will then pay them for some other product or service they provide. Most would acknowledge that some effort and expense is required on the part of the creator to produce good, useful information, but often that is not deemed to be of any economic value. Photographers tend to supply information on their blogs as a way of getting customers to hire them for assignment work, for paid speaking engagements or as a way of selling a book. The other way to earn revenue is to generate enough traffic to your site that advertisers will pay to surround your information with ads in hopes that some or your popularity will rub off on them. Is giving away information the only way?

To the degree your photographic business is based on revenue from advertising, there will never be an economic recovery. It is time to begin looking for other revenue options if you intend to maintain your current lifestyle. Certainly, if your pictures are used in magazine, newspaper or television ads that are designed to appeal to the masses, you can expect a slow but steady decline in those uses. If you produce editorial content for magazines or newspapers, there will also be a continued decline in such uses, because these products are supported to a great extent by advertising revenue. If your pictures are used in any way to promote products or services that are potentially used by a broad cross-section of the population, you can expect a decline in such promotions.

ZenithOptimedia (Publicis) says that global ad spend for 2009 will be 10.2% compared to 2008, but that in 2010 it is expected to be up 0.9% compared to 2009. Group M (WPP) thinks 2009 spending will only be down about 6.6% from 2008 levels and expect the 2010 to be 0.8% above 2009. There is no expectation that ad spending will get back to 2008 levels anytime soon.

Jim Erickson breaks all the stock photography rules and yet is one of the world’s most successful sellers of stock images. Pick any strategy that everyone agrees is the key to success in stock, and Jim Erickson is probably doing the opposite. He sells stock to clients rather than through agencies. Erickson never licenses rights to an image for less than $350, and the average license fee is about $1,800. He produces an annual print catalog and distributes it to only 20,000 top buyers. His gross revenue from stock sales in 2008 was over $2 million and he couples his stock business with an assignment business that grosses an additional $2 million. Read more about how he does it.

In August BIA/Kelsey reported that digital and online’s share of local advertising in actual dollar terms had jumped from 22% in 2008 to 37% in 2009. Earlier in the year the survey organization said that total advertising spend would drop from $155.3 billion in 2008 to $144.4 billion by 2013.

In late June, Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer predicted the continued decline of print as an advertising medium and told attendees at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival: “[In the future,] all content consumed will be digital, We can only debate if that may be in one, two, five or 10 years… In 10 years, it will all be online.”

By 2012 digital advertising is expected to eclipse traditional advertising according to 52% of respondents to Accenture’s 2008 Global Media Survey of more than 100 senior business executives in North America and Europe.

Newspaper advertising rates are based on how broadly the ad is used, not whether the publication is characterized as National, Regional or Local. National publications tend to be toward smaller circulations. Based on this theory, ads in National publications will tend to be priced higher than those in Regional or Trade publications. This story provides suggested prices.

This article provides information on how to price stock photo usages for advertising in National, Regional or Local magazines.

According to ZenithOptimedia, 2008 ad spending worldwide is expected to reach $453.6 billion with 40% ($183.5 billion) in North America and 25% ($113.5 billion) in Western Europe. These figures are down from an estimated $486 billion at the end of 2007.