= =
= = = = = = = "Free
Report"
8 Steps To Becoming A Published Photographer
= = = = = = = = =
Pricing Website Use
Advance Notes: A client wants to use one of your photos on his website. What do you charge the client? Here's an easy formula to use.
WEBSITE PRICING is easy if you use the "Hits Formula." It applies to both editorial as well as commercial markets. A client asks, "What do you charge for website use?" Return the question with your question, "How many hits does your site get each day?"
This question may stump them, and they may admit, "I don't know." But you can easily look like the expert when you return with, "Just a minute, I'll let you know."
Using the free software from www.Alexa.com (a company owned by Amazon.com) you call up Alexa.com. Type your client's website address in the search bar. Once a page comes up, at the bar at the bottom of your screen, click on, "traffic." The statistics will not only show you the owner and address of the company (you can spout that back to them also for verification) but the number of "Alexa hits" they get each day. Alexa has its own secret formula for determining the number of web traffic hits, but it's generally regarded as close to accurate.
Now that you've determined this figure, you are ready to apply the "Hits Formula." Most inquirers contacting you for a photo to use on the Web, are interested in acquiring a photo for their Home Page, and the formula applies to this usage.
THE FORMULA*
If your client currently receives 50,000 hits a day, you will charge them $25 per month. If they receive 100,000 hits per day, you will charge them $50 per month. If they receive 200,000 hits a day then their monthly fee would be $100.*
A client may be just starting out and not have stats available yet at Alexa. Your response: "Who are your competitors? Can I assume you plan to keep up with them? Let's see what they are getting in the way of daily visitors."
Of course, if your client receives very few hits per day, a minimum you would establish is $10 per month.
Some companies may plan to use a number of photos at various places on their website. In that case it's discount time. The monthly fee for the initial, primary photo will remain the same, but for the extra photos, divide the monthly fee by the number of photos they plan to use. This will give you the per photo fee to charge, for those additional photos.
You might find it necessary to make some bargaining concessions. To keep the style consistent in their website, they might want to use only one photographer's work - and plan to use many photos profusely throughout their site. It may be good politics to adjust your price for volume purchase.
For non-profit organizations that might have a high visitor count but a low budget, be prepared to make adjustments.
* Multiply the number of hits by .0005 to get the dollar amount you will charge them each month for the use of your picture on their home page.
Rohn Engh, veteran stock photographer and best-selling author of "Sell & ReSell Your Photos" and "sellphotos.com," has helped scores of photographers launch their careers. For access to great information on making money from pictures you like to take, and to receive this free report: "8 Steps to Becoming a Published Photographer," visit http://www.sellphotos.com
Welcome
to PhotoAim.com. Here's where you'll find information
about stock photography, editorial stock photography,
specialized photography, stock agencies, mini-stock
agencies, selling pictures, and social photography.
The Mini-mini-mini Photo Agency
Advance Notes: When it comes to agencies, most stock photographers think in terms of thousands of photos and hundreds of markets. However, if you follow the principles outlined below, you can become a mini-stock agency with your own photos and with a client of one.
----------
Many stock photographers who enter the field of stock photography arrive at the gates with misconceptions. And to make matters worse, they compound those misconceptions by continuing to follow the same path.
No wonder they soon run out of motivation, ideas, and -yes, cash.
In my consultations with people just starting out in stock photography, I've seen over the years that most entry-level photographers make the same mistake in their marketing strategy. They take bundles and bundles of photos. After a few years when they think they are ready to tackle the stock photo industry, they attempt to find markets for their pictures.
WRONG WAY STREET
This of course, is the wrong way to go about it. The marketing secret is to reverse the process. Before you take a picture, ask yourself if it will be on a specific photo editor's desk tomorrow.
You're asking how can a picture be on an editor's desk 24 hours after you've taken it? How do you know if the photo editor will find the picture acceptable? How do you even know the editor's name or email address?
You know the answer to the first question: thanks to today's electronic delivery capabilities, transmission of images can be immediate.
The answer to the next two questions takes some preliminary homework on your part.
1.) Single out one of your prime photographic interest areas.
2.) There's bound to be magazines, periodicals, possibly book publishers, committed to your choice of subject matter. They need photos.
3.) Because you are a devotee to this special area of interest, you won't mind the initial chore of finding your markets.
GOOGLE TO THE RESCUE
Google is a big help nowadays. Just type in the search bar
Magazine and your special interest area
Several dozen names will come up. The chore begins because you'll want to also type in the word
periodical or publisher or website.
Try it.
For example, if you specialize in photographing dachshunds, don't type dogs, but instead type dachshund magazine.
Up come your market(s). They are waiting for you to bring your photographic expertise about dachshunds to them.
Out of the scores of potential markets you'll find, you're going to find a dozen or so that like your work.
Out of that dozen you are going to get along especially well with one publisher. Everything will click. They like your work, you like their company and the way they work.
You might earn as much as $1,000 from them over a year's time. And since our statistics show that a photographer will stay with a publisher on average ten years, you've gained a $10,000 client.
You'll learn the ropes with this client, in effect as your own stock photo agency with one dependable client. Then of course you can expand this success to include a gradually increasing number of other markets - clients.
THE BETTER WAY
You'll agree this is a better way to approach your stock photography:
* Focus on one of your prime interest areas
* Research the markets for this specialty
* Go for it
And now you know that the picture you take today will be on a certain photobuyer's desk tomorrow. And because (at first) you have only one client, you speak their language, and they know the picture you send them is going to be on-target. Even if it's not something they need immediately, they will add it to their database and probably use it within the year and send you a check.
You can find more detailed coverage of this marketing system in my first book, Sell&ReSell Your Photos. The first edition was published back in 1981.
Yes, 1981, and the marketing principles outlined there for stock photographers hold true today.
I'm not trying to sell the book here in this article - you can buy it for $3 or $4 on e-Bay or Amazon.com. I don't get a penny from the sale. (The postage will cost more than the book!) But the book will be a goldmine for you if you buy it and study it with a highlighter in hand.
As far as the non-targeted photos you've so far built up in your files, all is not lost. Enter descriptions of them in text form on your website so that the search engine web crawlers can pick them up and direct traffic to you. This works well also for descriptions of your more arcane photos that major stock photo agencies are not going to have. If you don't have a website to list your photos on, look into getting your own page on the photo website www.photosource.com/bank, to list descriptions of your photos. This website gets traffic from hundreds of photobuyers daily who come there searching for the photos they need.
Become your own mini stock agency, and watch your client list build!
Rohn Engh, veteran stock photographer and best-selling author of "Sell & ReSell Your Photos" and "sellphotos.com," has helped scores of photographers launch their careers. For access to great information on making money from pictures you like to take, and to receive this free report: "8 Steps to Becoming a Published Photographer," visit http://www.sellphotos.com
STARTING OUT. Break into photography
by taking an online photo course. This website maintains it
will help you avoid the usual pitfalls of beginners in photography.
Designed for all ages.
Rx for RF
Complaining about those Royalty-Free prices you see talked about on Internet chat groups? Don’t waste energy on the subject. Put that vigor towards an alternative method of selling your photos: Become a valuable resource to publishers of magazines, books, and other products that cannot use Royalty-Free photos for many reasons:
The RF picture 1.) is (trendwise) out-dated. 2.) the models in the picture are too over-refined-looking. 3.) the design/color/composition of the photo “jumps style” of the publisher’s usual material. 4.) is not on-site specific (too generic). 5.) clothing does not match the theme of the publication. 6.) competitors have already used the same image. 7.) competitors might use the same picture in the future. 8.) and many, many more reasons.
RF pictures serve well for generic projects where a picture fills a void in the layout. From time to time, I will use an RF photo to break up a page of text. Publishers are always looking for bargains (like $4 and $5 photos). But most of the time, for publishers who serve a specific audience of readers and advertisers, generic images won’t fit the bill. If you can supply the content-specific need of the art director, you will receive a fee ranging from $50 to $75 from small, regional publications and trade magazines, to $100 to $350 (one-time, inside use) from major publications. And that’s a lot more than that RF $4 or $5. -RE
Q: "I had a friend approach me and said that I should put a few of my photographs on a calender and mail them to some of my clients as a way to have my name in front of them all year.
Do you think this is a good idea? …How about putting the photos on a digital Photo Album,
and send them also?"
- - - - - - - - - -
A: Regards the latter, if you mean a CD with a selection of your photos on it -- no, ---it's not a good idea. Reason? Photobuyers are known to stand over a trashcan when they answer their mail. Unsolicited CD's most always are dropped into the trash.
Photobuyers are not known to look at the CD's of "unknowns."
Don't despair, -it happens in all the creative fields: songwriting, script writing, fiction, music, dance, painting -- all of them.
However, as a photographer, you have an advantage - the following three promotional tools are usually accepted by a photobuyer: postcards, calendars, and posters, in that order.
Postcards: There's no envelope to open, and a sample of your photography is on the other side. Standard postcard size will pull just as well as the larger postcard (that costs more to mail.) Some recommended places to find mailing lists of photo editors/art directors: freshlists.com (1 800 322-3985); adbase.com (1 416 960 4240); photosourcefolio.com; (1 877 464 6243).
Magnet: Those small credit card-size notices that have migrated from the fridge to the filing cabinet are an excellent reminder to photobuyers where to find you. Two places to buy them: http://www.vistaprint.com & http://www.4imprint.com .
Calendars: If the photobuyer has wall space (at home or office) they might use it, especially if your specialty area matches their special interest theme. But calendars are expensive to produce. IDEA: Talk a local business (such as a nursery, architect, interior designer, etc.) into paying for the whole calendar production in return for your producing the images.
Posters: Hardly anyone wants to throw away a poster. But would you be throwing away money? It depends, -the quality of your image, the mailing list, the size of the poster. You are competing with the top dogs when you are producing posters, but why not? Just be sure you go with quality all the way.
Rohn Engh, veteran stock photographer and best-selling author of "Sell & ReSell Your Photos" and "sellphotos.com," has helped scores of photographers launch their careers. For access to great information on making money from pictures you like to take, and to receive this free report:
"8 Steps to Publishing Photos," visit his website at PhotoSource International or call 800 624-0266.
Need the answer to a stock photography question? At our website www.photosource.com/board you'll find our Bulletin Board, called "The Kracker Barrel." Check it out. Our staff answers marketing questions; fellow photographers offer their input and experience.
