The business side of photography
The following quotes are from a web forum used by art directors, marketing and public relations people, web designers, and other marketing “experts”. The topic was: how much to pay a professional photographer for business portraits to be used on a business web site.
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Advertising either works or it doesn’t, there’s no middle ground. If an ad is going to work, it will work right away. To know whether an ad is working, it must be measurable. If results can’t be measured then the ad is a waste of time and money.
I’ve been using Google Adwords for just over three months and I was planning to use it for at least one year.
After three months of using Google Adwords:
• My ads have been served up about 2,300 times per month.
• The click-through rate is about 1% (21 to 25 clicks per month).
• Number of enquiries is 10% of the click-throughs (about 2 or 3 per month).
• Number of paying jobs is 0.
Yesterday the Canadian government announced proposed changes to its Copyright Act. While it contains many changes for music, video, performers, schools and libraries, it also has a some important changes that will affect photographers.
(Usual disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer so don’t believe anything after this).
1) Bill C-32, the Copyright Modernization Act, proposes to repeal Section 10 of the existing Copyright Act. This will mean that the person who takes the picture will be the Author of that photo. This sounds obvious, right? But under current law, the party that owns the film or memory card used to take the picture is the Author.
“Author” is an important legal term because: (a) only the Author gets Moral Rights and (b) the default position is that the Author owns copyright, unless proven otherwise (more on this in section 2, below).
Two weeks ago, after being questioned by German authorities, Google admitted to invading people’s privacy in at least 30 countries for the past three years.
While Google was busy photographing everyone’s homes for its “Street View” project, it was also recording fragments of people’s online activities that were being broadcast over accessible WiFi networks. Six hundred gigabytes of data were collected.
Initially, Google admitted only to scooping up WiFi network names and MAC addresses, but later said it also grabbed a lot more information.
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Who determines your company’s place in the market: you, your competitors or your customers? Are you a top-ranked business because of your efforts or because of your competitors’ mistakes? Does this even matter if your market position is determined by your customers?
Remember the 1960s slogan for car rental company Avis: “We’re number 2. We try harder.”
That slogan, along with some clever ads, helped Avis gain marketshare but not at the expense of the market-leader, Hertz. Instead, Avis gained at the expense of its many other competitors whose marketing efforts were weak by comparison.
In a crowded market, consumers will think that being “number 2” isn’t that bad since it’s right next to the top company. Since consumers perceived Avis to be almost like Hertz, Avis got their business. The brand value of Hertz helped lift the brand of Avis and in doing so, helped distance Avis from its other competitors.
Avis didn’t compare itself to any of the other lesser car rental companies but only to the market-leader. In the end, Avis never became “number 1” but it did secure a bigger slice of the car rental business.
Lesson to be learned: compete with businesses which are where you want to be and not with those where you are, (within reason). Or, to use a sports analogy: punch above your weight.
This will force you to up your game, try harder and work smarter. Even if you fall short of your goals, you still end up ahead. (Of course, if this was easy, everyone would be doing it.)
Photographers, how often do you bathe? No, not wash yourself but how often do you clean your photo equipment?
After a particularly dusty, sandy or otherwise dirty job, I make it a point to clean all my cameras, lenses, laptop, flashes, light stands and other gear by using compressed air, isopropyl alcohol and sometimes an ammonia-based cleaner.
Depending on the item being cleaned, cotton or paper towels, lint-free wipes, a nylon brush, camel-hair brush and even a toothbrush can come in handy. This is also a good time to check that all the little screws in your equipment are tight.
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Since 2005, Facebook has been modifying its privacy controls for its users. But each round of “improvements” created more problems, more confusion, and less privacy.
Yesterday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed these concerns in a Washington Post op-ed column.
Zuckerberg wrote, “There needs to be a simpler way to control your information. In the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use.” (The link is here but beware that the Washington Post makes it difficult to get free access). A Post reporter’s comments are here.
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