Search Engine Optimization and The Long Tail

I was inspired by an entertaining article I read in today's New York Times titled, The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, detailing the rise and fall of JC Penney's Google rankings. Turns out, JC Penney's SEO consulting firm allegedly bought a huge number of paid links on websites, most of which aren't actual sites at all, but domain names purchased solely for the purpose of placing links to PC Penney. Google takes this very seriously, and has been known to eliminate sites completely.

The rationale for this approach is, as most people know by now, that your ranking is governed most largely by the number of other sites that link to yours. Unfortunately, what many people still don't know is that gaming the system doesn't work. (Link exchanges are a sure way to lower the ranking of both sites that link to each other. That's why JC Penney's SEO firm just created sites that had one-way links.) While it'd be nice to have organic linking, where people simply "talk about you" (and provide a link) on many websites on the net, that's not so easy to do and takes a lot of time.

In this day and age, if you're going to succeed as a stock photographer, you have no choice but to figure this out. This strategy begins with two questions: 1) which keywords or phrases do you want to rank highly for, and 2) how do you seed yourself around the net?

The answer to the second question begins with the first: find the right keywords.

Here is where most photographers (and agencies) get it wrong: they shoot for keywords like, "stock photography," and other industry trade terms. But this doesn't work so well. Google's Traffic Estimator shows terms like "stock photography" yields only about 90,000 global monthly searches. Sites that rank highly for only a few keywords or phrases never do well, even for popular search terms. Instead, reach for many search terms -- as many as possible.

My site (danheller.com) ranks in the top five positions on 751 search terms, and 1205 search terms rank in the top 10 on Google Search results, according to Google's Webmaster Tools. But I'm not actually trying to rank highly for any given search term at all. That would be futile. Odd as it may sound, I rank #1 for "stock photography business," but I swear I didn't try to. Of course not, because that search term doesn't generate enough traffic to warrant investing any special time or effort. That's the point. This is the "long tail" approach to keyword indexing: it's about breadth, not depth. I don't get that much traffic to any single page. By ranking highly in such a vast number of terms, it's the aggregate that matters.

All this starts with simply being indexed. That is, search engines have to know what words and phrases you have before it can rank them. Choosing the right words is one thing, but you also need Google to trust your keywords. In other words, trust you. Unlike standard text on a page, which Google is good at, photos are different. An algorithm doesn't know what's inside a photo -- it has to look at other characteristics to determine its content, such as surrounding text, the name of the page it's on, and of course, its metadata. In particular, the "keywords" tags embedded in the IPTC header of the image file.

Once again, here's where most photographers and agencies get it wrong: they "pollute" their keyword lists with dozens, if not hundreds, of phrases and expressions, hoping the target image will come up as a search result for any one of them. But Google will actually penalize people try to game the system with "black hat" approaches, like using repetition (singulars and plurals together), lots of synonyms, intended misspellings (by seeing both the misspelled and correctly spelled words together), and tons of generic terms (such as "photo", "image", "photography," etc).

Products like Cradoc's Keyword Harvester and A2Z Keywording each suffer from (and perpetuate) this problem. The main reason is because they are trying to anticipate what a searcher might look for. This is not only impossible, but the mere attempt reduces your credibility index in the eyes of almost all search engines.

Almost all? Which search engines does it actually work for? One of the people responsible for this policy told me "microstock agencies is where our customers submit their photos, and those search engines are not that smart. So, we have to be thorough."

True enough, but this raises two issues. First, despite the fact that microstock websites are popular among amateur photographers and a growing population of desperate pros, looking to pick up the pennies from as many sources as possible, the vast majority of those looking to license images don't go to stock agencies. They go to main search engines.

Second, even among the brain-dead search technology employed by stock agencies (except for Getty's whose search technology is quite good), proper keywording techniques still perform quite well at those places. The reason is that people searching for images don't go about it in the diligent, thoughtful way that photographers think they do. People do not search using conceptual terms that those who sell keywording products would lead you to believe.

Keywording properly is really boring, and far less time-intensive than people make it out to be: just the basic "facts" about the photo can be described in a handful of terms. The search engine will do the hard part. Granted, this is a bit simplified, because it doesn't address issues like word definition ambiguity, synonyms, and so on. But this isn't done by humans anyway; it needs to be handled by the search engine's heuristic engine. True, stock agencies don't have them, but again, the trade off is whether to achieve "good enough" with the less-frequently used stock agency or the "proper" method advocated by the search engines.

This is why the "proper" method achieves the best of both worlds: you will be indexed properly and given higher "credibility" with public search engines like Google, and you won't be penalized by the microstock agencies even though images might only use a handful of keywords, rather than dozens or a hundred.

The next question is how to get all those coveted links from other sites to direct traffic your way. This technique is not easy; it requires work. You need to write a lot, post to discussion forums, socialize and network, be on the "inside" with industry people, and above all, talk about what you know. And here's the real hidden secret, I'm not talking about photography. The discussion forums, industry people and the topics you talk about are best when it's something other than photography because it's highly likely that you're an expert at something other than photography.

Of course, if you are well-informed about photography and are regarded as a leader in the field, then go for it. But if you are, then you're probably not reading this... at least, not with the goal of improving your photography business. I am better known for my business analysis, which happens to be in the photography field, than I am for my photography as an art form. That I sell lots of images (prints and licenses) is not a byproduct of my artistic skills. It's the byproduct of having published so much about the business of photography.

The more you engage in discussions online and offer useful, insightful and meaningful commentary, the more people will link to you. Offer to write for magazines. Try even writing a book or two. Sure, it's an investment of time. What'd you expect? That it'd be easy?

The perils of taking advice from pros

I got an email today that seems to be representative of a common thread I'm seeing. I included excerpts from the original sender and my responses:

In Chapter 7 you note that in 2000 you increased your image library, and had a big spike in traffic (2000 visitors/month). If you don't mind me asking, approximately how many images did you have online entering 2000?

I have no idea. And though I appreciate the motivation for your question, the milestone comparisons are inapplicable. The major reason my success back in 2000 was that there was virtually no appreciable photo content online. Anyone that put photos online did well. Most pro photographers were still shooting film, and the time and cost of getting that media scanned and online was a major barrier for photo imaging growth. While digital cameras were around, their resolution and image quality were too low to have much commercial value till 2003 (Canon's EOS 1Ds was the first camera that could produce an acceptable professional image quality for commercial production.)

So, whatever size my archive was, or photo quality, it was easier to succeed. So, don't look at my past as having any relevancy to today's market.

I tried to advise pro photographers to do this back then, but most were adamant that it would cause more harm to have images "stolen", and that film-based stock photo agencies were still the only viable distribution channel. It was this heated argument that propagated my postings (and my website) to other websites, which resulted in my getting so many links, which translated into traffic, which helped elevate my site rankings, which translated into sales.

(Ok, I'll admit it: I probably also had a lot of worthwhile photos to buy.)

A big part of my strategy is blogging on my image creation and some of the places I have visited where images were taken. I'm trying to be as search engine friendly and optimized as I possibly can, per your suggestions.

My suggestion is not to be "search-engine friendly", per se. It's to rank highly in search results. The two are not the same, and you don't achieve high rankings by having search engines merely find you and index you accurately. (That's being "friendly".)

Ranking highly in search engines requires other sites to link to your site. The value of those links are assessed by the ranking of those sites, which affect your ranking. Search engines are aware of people attempting to game the system through "link exchanges". Accordingly, you can reduce your own rankings if you try to agree with other sites to link to each other as a way of increasing each of your link counts. Those sites rank poorly, and so will yours, if you do link exchanges.

So the question is, who do you want to link to you?

Writing articles on "image creation" and "the places you've been" will attract mostly other photographers. And they don't buy photos. While it is certainly desirable to have highly-ranked photo-centric websites link to you, this is a very narrow market, and not one that will boost your overall rankings that ultimately attract image buyers.

If you're going to invest time into blogging, you want NON-PHOTOGRAPHY sites to link to you. How do you do that? By blogging about subjects that probably have less to do with photography as the other subject.

My advice has always been to be an expert in something other than photography. Write about that and cross-post your articles to discussion forums or other formats to attract new and different audiences. If they regard your knowledge and opinions as valuable, they will link to you, talk about you, and regard you as credible. This is what will raise your site's ranking.

Do I follow my own advice? Well, not as much as I should. Yes, my site has a lot content about photography (business and techniques), and yes, I rank highly for that. But again, I did this back in the 1990s and early 2000s, when such things mattered. It doesn't matter that much anymore. I would not be successful today by repeating the same steps I did back then, so don't emulate me just because I capitalized on what was at one time a successful technique.

More recently, I have a great deal of non-photography content as well -- mostly in the form of photos, of course. But here's where I've dropped the ball. I don't spend nearly the kind of time talking about non-photo subjects as I should. I am in the fortunate position where I don't really have to. And that's the part that doesn't translate to other, emerging photographers.

This leads to another point I've made often in the past: don't emulate other pros. What they do NOW, or have done IN THE PAST, often has no bearing on their current success, or yours. Most of them are unaware of this, and erroneously believe they have advice that emerging photographers should adopt.

See this blog post about asking pros for advice. Though it's about pricing, the concept is the same: pro photographers' opinions or experiences are not universal and cannot necessarily be expected to apply to anyone else--especially those still trying to build their careers or a presence.

There's also this related post: this one is about the perils of being a photographer's assistant, or having existing pros be "mentors." Most pros today were successful at a time where their experiences no longer apply today. Having their advice can be fraught with as much poor advice as useful, and emerging photographers cannot discern between the two.

My best advice for emerging photographers in this day and age is not to look at photographers at all -- look at general online business development. There are many texts and periodicals that deal with building business models that are more universal, and can better translate to a photography business than what narrowly-experienced pros can offer.

2009 Year in Review: Content Remains King

In this first segment of my series, "2009: Year in Review," I discuss the role content has played on my business.

As I've preached since the dawn of my writings on the business of photography, the best way to make money on the web is to create as much content as possible. Having more inventory to sell is only a part of the benefit—indeed, a much smaller role than people may think in some cases, as I'll articulate shortly. The main reason content is so important is because it's the nucleus of all other revenue sources and business activity. Content plays an important role for search engines, which not only allow people to find you, but provides other sites with links. As links build, your search rankings increase, which increases traffic, which feed these various revenue streams. I discuss this principle in general in my chapter, Web-based Photography Business, which is part of my series of photo business books. (I discuss 2009's numbers more specifically in the next article in this series.)

As a general business model, I follow my own advice to others: Almost everything you do should ultimately result in new, monetizable content. Once you have it, you can make money with it in perpetuity, with very little (if any) additional overhead or resources. Outside of some initial short-term costs and overhead, your business can scale up to virtually any size by merely adding new content. Whatever short-term income or expense that may be involved in acquiring new content, it should be regarded as part of your investment in the future. (That is, the short term pay or income is less important as the long-term potential.) I'll get back to this subject shortly.

Though people monetize their content in different ways, I happen to choose to be the exclusive licensor of my own content. That is, I do not use stock agencies or other distribution models. I usually recommend this approach to people as a default assumption when considering entering into the photo industry, but one can certainly leverage the sales resources of agencies, if done properly from the outset.

Given that I have over 60,000 images in my online archives now, and the manner in which content can be leveraged so easily, it may come as a big surprise to learn that licensing of still photography only represented 5.8% of my total revenue for 2009, compared to 16.9% in 2008. But don't take this bad news.

First, still photography (the majority of the content on my website) is what I call the "gateway drug" for my clients. People discover my site primarily because of my still images, and end up making more lucrative transactions later. The fact that still imagery licensing has dropped as a percentage of total revenue is more due to the much larger increases in other, more lucrative revenue streams (discussed later). This further underscores the importance of having a robust and diverse business model that can survive (and even benefit from) shifts in the economy. In this context, the recession may have caused some people to spend less, but it also caused others to shift their spending towards me. Those "others" is a much larger population, even though each spends less on a per-transaction basis.

For example, my fine-art sales represented 19.5% of my revenue, up from 12.7% in 2008. This can be entirely explained by the economy and shifting demographics. Buyers on my site in 2008 and prior had been low-end art collectors and enthusiasts (see Selling Photography Prints), whose average purchase was $232 per order. By contrast, 2009 saw the average drop to $188 per order, but I got a lot more orders. Though I may have lost art collectors, they were replaced by high-end consumers were who shifted their spending from more expensive gifts (such as jewelry, etc.) to photography.

Assignments

In light of my prior blog articles on the principles of economics for photographers, assignments are also extremely critical to the acquisition of content. Many photographers scoff at the notion of accepting "low pay" for assignments, or even doing them for free, but this is extremely short-sighted and self-defeating. Acquisition of extremely valuable imagery is key to long-term revenue generation, and assignments are pivotal to that objective. If you choose your assignments well, then the "fee" you charged—be it a lot or a little—is, and should represent a very small proportion of the revenue you yield from the photos you just took. In other words, if you're only revenue form an assignment is the assignment fee, you have an outdated business model; you simply cannot compete in today's modern internet-based economy, especially when millions of people are taking pictures themselves. That assignment rates go down may be an unfortunate side-effect of this growth, but it is merely a blip on the screen when it comes to a mature photo business model.

I'm not dismissing the potential income from an assignment; I never leave money on the table. If the client is well-endowed and I can negotiate higher fees, I do so. Mind you, negotiation is an entirely different subject, which I discuss in greater length here and here. But negotiation is only about optimizing what you can get, and should not be confused with whether you should take an assignment (regardless of price). In short, in mature business and career planning, assignments should be regarded as one-off payments for opportunities to acquire useful images that last into the future. When you amortize your assignment fees over the course of time, it should be negligible. (There are assignments I shot in 1996 that still generate revenue.)

Assignments represented 12.1% of my 2009 revenue, up from 4% in 2008. This substantial increase is due to both an increase in the number of assignments I took, and the amount I charge per assignment. As I said, I don't leave money on the table, despite the fact that I face the same market conditions as everyone else—namely, attempts by other photographers to under-bid me, even offering to shoot for free.

So, why would my clients pay me a higher rate than they used to, despite the increased competition? Because I provide something that cannot be supplanted by the lowest bidder: a track record. My experience, quality, reliability, and maturity in the industry is important to clients that cannot afford to risk getting a photographer to shoot something for free, yet end up with images they can't use, or other bad side effects of working with an inexperienced photographer.

I also choose clients wisely. I don't seek or need clients who can and should be serviced by emerging photographers. My motto is, "real clients don't need newbies." (Any photographer that complains about being harmed by newbies should have moved up and out long ago into the next tier of their profession.)

People often ask how I come up with my assignment fees. It's actually a very simple calculus of two factors: the client's financial condition, and the "value" of the images I can get. Remember, this doesn't govern whether I take an assignment, just what I charge for it once I deem it worthwhile. I emphatically dismiss all of the fee calculators that you see in books and on blogs. For example, most pros will say you should factor in your "costs" for any given assignment into your fee, whereas I feel costs are entirely irrelevant. I am never concerned with whether I'm making a profit for any given assignment because—remember—the true value of any given job is the longer-term potential with the images. Thinking about purely the fees for an assignment prevents you from focusing on career growth.

While I do generate good revenue from assignments, I will still shoot some for free. Last year I'd done two very important assignments, one was for free, and for another, I spent $3200 of my own money to fulfill the job. In this case, I knew that the imagery itself was invaluable. (And indeed it has already paid for itself in the aftermarket.) Better still, once my clients saw the results of the work, I not only sold them additional content that they didn't anticipate, but I got follow-on work to do exactly the same thing at twice my normal billing rate.

Still Photos

Over the past year, I've added about 30,000-40,000 new images, all
entirely from assignments. These include:

1. Cambodia (Siem Reap, Cambodia)
   
2. Laos (Southeast Asia)
   
3. Croatia (Europe)
   
4. Puglia (Apuglia) (The 'Heel' of Italy)
   
5. Jerusalem (Israel)
   
6. Paris, France
   
7. Oregon (USA)
   
8. The State of Idaho (USA)
   

Not included in this list are projects that I haven't yet gotten online, plus thousands of images added to existing galleries, mostly in and around California, such as Marin County (California), San Francisco, California, up and down the central valley, the The California Coast (USA) to the The Sierras (California). I've also expanded my topical pages, such as Doors and Windows, Stairs and Steps, Random Black and White Photographs, and other topics.

Video

As noted above, and in keeping with Truism #4 of my treatise, the Photography Business (1998), my latest expansion into new revenue resources includes video. As you know, video online has been increasing, and the technology required to produce quality video has come down. This has given many people an opportunity to expand their licensing potential in ways they never could before. I'm encroaching into the video turf much the same way consumers have encroached on the pro photography turf when digital cameras and the internet became inexpensive and accessible back in the 1990s.

Prior to 2009, I licensed no video footage. Yet it instantly grew to represent 12.2% of my 2009 revenue. Most of it is time-lapse photography, which I'd produced mostly as a curiosity that I stumbled into when I discovered my camera's cable release had an interval timer setting.

Most surprising about my video revenue is the fact that I have never promoted or solicited my videos. In fact, aside from my blog comments, I never even made it known that I had video content. I hadn't upgraded or enhanced my site in any way to host or license video content, and the only access to it is this page, which is merely a collection of links directly to my YouTube channel.

Needless to say, the natural viral marketing effect of YouTube is self-evident.

One then asks: if my site doesn't support it, and I can't license it through YouTube, how am I conducting transactions? Email! This is exactly how my stock photo business started. From 1996 to 2003, I had never had a shopping cart—buyers simply emailed me and asked to license images, and they'd send me a check.

Of course, that wasn't that unusual back then—few stock photo sites existed, let alone had automated shopping/purchasing systems, so buyers accepted it more readily back then. Times are different now, and so are expectations. All the more reason why I'm as surprised by the degree of video licensing I've done using this archaic model.

That said, I expect to integrate video licensing on my site soon enough.

It should be noted that one reason why my time-lapse footage commands such a high price is because of the way I shoot it. Rather than use a video camera, I use my conventional still cameras and capture each frame in full resolution: 5600 pixels wide. I then string them together into video sequences using either iMovie (for presentation onto YouTube) or Final Cut Express to retain the full ultra-high-resolution. In fact, these clips are so high-res, buyers can pan and zoom within the sequences down to ¼ of the original footage, and still retain enough resolution to achieve 1920 HD. (And even then, most video buyers don't really need 1920 anyway.)

None of this is possible using conventional video cameras, nor is it offered by other video-production service providers. And of course, the quality is much higher than video footage because night-time image detail in a pro-level dSLR far exceeds anything in the video camera category, even the amazing Red One. This strategy anticipates not just every possible buyer, but prepares for the future as well.

One might think that this is a huge shift in my day-to-day shooting. That's where the best news is: shooting time-lapse footage is as easy as setting up a camera for a conventional landscape shot, but instead of pressing the shutter button once, I press the interval timer, and then go away. For all-night images, I just go to bed; for daytime footage, I use my other camera body and shoot stills while the time-lapse body snaps away every 3-5 seconds. This is not to suggest that all time-lapse is easy (or yields successful sequences), it's only to say that it doesn't interfere with my existing shooting patterns.

Note that the videos on my YouTube site do not represent all the footage I've done, either in time-lapse or conventional capture. I've done a number of productions for clients as an addendum to my standard still-photography services. So, I haven't really grown a new business model as much as enhanced my existing assignment services. Also note that my Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the body that I use in standard still photography, also captures HD video, where I do get short segments of conventional video clips. (Always adding to my "content.")

Lastly, don't assume by any of this that I'm moving towards video and abandoning still photography. The kind of video I'm doing is just the low-hanging fruit that happens to be available given my set of conditions (equipment, talent and clients). I am by no means a true videographer that could be hired by a television network to produce content for broadcast. That said, the future of video licensing looks very, very bright, and it would be something I would strongly encourage other photographers to do if they had a propensity for the technology and the clients that would use it.

Consulting and Business Development

2009 saw a big decrease in my consulting revenue largely because I'm shifting away from that business model. I've always used it as a vehicle for conducting research into new and interesting areas of the photo industry. However, my interests are shifting into new directions, and I'm finding that the information many people seek is becoming repetitive, and ultimately fruitless. I'll be posting future articles on some of those initiatives.

Nevertheless, one of the side benefits of all this research is that I produce a lot more content that's not only indexed well by search engines (which brings me traffic, which helps my content sales), but it also leads to publishing revenue. As most of my readers know, I have written a few books on the photo business, which continue to sell quite well on my website. Even though they are "old" by publishing standards, I wrote them with longevity in mind, as they address timeless business principles. In 2009, my book sales and other publishing revenue (see below) represented 12.8% of my income, compared to 14.9% of 2008 revenue. (This aspect of my revenue is and always has been rather constant.)

Another noteworthy fact is that my site outsells ever other book retailer on the net by many orders of magnitude. And I negotiated the contracts with my publishers with this in mind—I don't mind taking less royalty advances on my books in exchange for very advantageous discounts for direct purchasing from them. Though my contemporaries in the photo business publishing world may sell more books on amazon than I do, I sell far more total books because of the volume on my site. There's also the fact that I get $10-15/book, whereas my counterparts get maybe 10-15% royalties on those amazon sales. (I'm guessing these royalties translate to about $1.50 to $2 per book.)

Then there's the revenue I get from publishers who reprint some of these blog entries (condensed down to 1500 words—yuck!) in their columns and newsletters. Interestingly, most are from non-US publishers. (One was translated into Russian. I got a copy. It was weird to see.)

The next article in the series will cover Web Traffic and Visitors, Search Engine Optimization, and advertising revenue. Stay tuned.

Reminder: Cooperation is an Illusion

Before I get to my series on 2009 (Year in Review), I feel compelled to repost an article I published in May 2007 titled, The Photographer's Dilemma: To Cooperate or Not?

I feel compelled to post this now because of a new swell of populist rhetoric in some blogs and discussion forums that preaches that photographers should stick together, and not take low-fee jobs (or work for free), because such actions bring down the collective value of the photo industry and encourage clients to expect more for less.

This very idea is pleasing to believe, and always goes over well with pro photographers, but it runs counter to many proven economic principles. One of the pinnacle truisms of economics is called The Prisoner's Dilemma, which not only shows that such cooperation never helps, but it actually harms those who cooperate more than those who don't. This famous experiment demonstrates the basic principle:

You and a friend have robbed a bank. You almost get off scott-free, except for an old lady who "thinks" she saw you, but isn't quite sure. The police round you two up, but because the witness is uncertain, you and your friend agree that the best thing to do is not confess anything. That is, by cooperating, you can each assure that you will both be protected. But, the twist is that the police place you into separate cells, and interview you separately:

"If one of you testifies against the other, and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free, and the other gets 10 years in prison. If you both stay silent, we can't convict you on the bigger sentence, but we can get you on lesser charges, giving you six months in jail. If you both betray each other, then you both serve two years."

Each of you has two options: stay quiet, resulting in a lighter sentence for each of you. Or, defect from the pact. The table below illustrates your options:

	Prisoner B Stays Silent	Prisoner B Betrays
Prisoner A Stays Silent	Each serves six months	Prisoner A serves ten years Prisoner B goes free
Prisoner A Betrays	Prisoner A goes free Prisoner B serves ten years	Each serves two years

Because you're in separate cells, you have no idea what your friend is going to do. But here's where your mind plays logic games. If you knew your friend would stay silent, your best move is to betray, because you then walk free instead of receiving the minor sentence. If you knew your friend would betray you, again your best move is still to betray him, as you receive a lesser sentence than by remaining silent. Of course, your friend will think the same thing and therefore also betray you. Yet by both betraying the other, you both get a worse sentence than if you both stayed silent. So rational, self-interest plays into each of your decisions, making you both worse off than if you'd "cooperated" on the agreement by staying silent.

This experiment illustrates the most fundamental cornerstones of economic theory and has been tested in many different contexts, conditions, and demographics. It was originally conceived in 1950 by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at the RAND corporation, and became the basis from which John Forbes Nash derived his famed "Nash Equilibrium", which earned him a Nobel Prize for Economics. It has since served as the foundation for most businesses, governments, social policies, and many other aspects of everyday life because it reflects innate human decision-making. So long as there is no interfering body, policing of behaviors, enforcement of compliance, or any other factor to deter this natural human instinct, it is "natural" to serve one's own interests, and also to protect against harm from others by "betraying" them first.

If this is the case, why doesn't society collapse? Because we have an intricate and complex system of checks and balances. We have laws that keep people from stealing or harming each other, police to enforce them, social stigmas, and religious dogma, just to name a few. There's also the fact that society isn't necessarily a zero-sum game: people don't kill each other unless there's some gain in it. In fact, there's a great deal of self-protection in maintaining order and keeping peace.

What does this have to do with the photography business? Because there are more photographers than there is a demand for them. Therefore, it's a buyer's market: people will offer less and less, and there will always be photographers that will take it. Attempting to get photographers to "cooperate" is literally impossible. In fact, those who do cooperate will find themselves harmed worse, leaving an even greater proportion of those remaining unwilling to cooperate.

Unless there is a plausible, accepted, and recognized enforcement of compliance -- such as how laws protect worker's unions from both defectors within the union, and from companies to hire people outside ethe union -- it is literally impossible to effect change through mass cooperation. In fact, this is why union laws were created.

So why don't photographers form a union, or why doesn't the government set up some sort of pricing protection policy? The first answer is that photographers did have a union, but it was broken up in the 1970s for restraint of trade, which was triggered by two events: buyers were harmed because there was no competition in pricing. They had to buy photos only from union members, who, by law, were required to sell their photos at a set price. Secondly, photographers complained that they couldn't work because the union wouldn't let them in. So, too many people weren't working. A photographer's union caused far more harm than good.

As for the government setting up pricing protection, that's not its role or responsibility in society. It has never done such a thing, nor would anyone ever accept it.

Then there are those who feel that you just need most photographers to cooperate. But the Prison's Dilemma game has proven that the core, self-interest behavior has not only been established in small groups of people, but it has been shown that the greater the number of players, a smaller and smaller ratio of defectors is necessary to dilute the effects of the group. In any business model, whether it's a sole photographer, or a larger agency selling the work of thousands, this is this fundamental principle that instantly discounts all arguments made by photography interest groups that "sticking together" works. (That photo interest groups and educational systems continue to advocate this approach does more harm to those in the photo industry than anything else.)

In summary, photographers of today cannot possibly expect to achieve anything by attempting to cooperate with one another. Doing so will only cause more harm to those who try. Making money in photography is about developing a career, not by stringing together one paid gig after another. If you develop yourself as a professional, money comes, and you're paid on many qualities and skills well beyond "photography." If someone isn't willing to pay you more than the competition, you're either not worth it, or the gig is too simplistic to expect it. Real success is having a skill or quality that cannot be provided by the lowest bidder.


For a discussion on that, see Photography and Business Sense.

Weathering Climate Change within the Photo Industry

Unless you've been hiding in the smog in LA, or deep inside a coal mining operation in Pennsylvania, or in an oil slick somewhere near Alaska, you've probably heard about the controversy over Global Warming. There's been a lot of bickering on whether it actually exists, but the key sticking point is what role humans have played in the process. Do they have a material effect on climate, and, if so, to what degree? Or is the world simply going through its normal cyclical swings that it's done for billions of years?

The answers to those questions dictate whether, and to what degree, we need to do something about it. But problem isn't so simple for many reasons and many levels. And it's the worst kind of problem to have because all the solutions are not only very expensive, but the consequences for the wrong decision--in either direction--can be dire. If the problem is real and we don't react strongly enough, global warming can have devastating effects on life itself. If the problem is overstated and we overreact by forcing new and expensive technologies and other changes upon world governments, there could be severe economic hardship that itself leads to worse conditions, such as social and political instability, which leads to famine, war, and possibly the end of Facebook.

Then again, we could just weather the storm till mother nature swings back to the kind of normalcy that we've become familiar with.

What does this have to do with the photo industry? Unless you've been hiding inside a darkroom since the 1980s, you've probably noticed that there's been a dramatic change in every aspect of the business, ranging from photo license fees, to distribution (the internet), to the legal and social sea changes. At the heart of this debate is what role--if any, and to what degree--has the "consumer" played in this climate change? And, how do we react to that? If consumers' role is real, do we alter our "best practices" recommendations as professionals, what technologies we use, how we deploy our imagery, who should represent us as an industry, set new strategies for pricing models? Do we actually embrace consumers as our partners as both producers and consumers of imagery within our business climate? Or, if the consumer's role is minimal, then how do we react to the deteriorating conditions we see?

Then again, we could just weather the storm till mother nature swings back to the kind of normalcy that we've become familiar with.

What the photography industry and global warming and climate change have in common is that they are excellent scenarios for those who study behavioral economics, the field of research that examines how cognitive and emotional factors affect people's decision-making. What people choose to do about global warming--or about the effects being felt in the photo industry--is based in large part by the backgrounds (and biases) of the participants. Odd though it may sound, the "hunches" that people use to make business decisions, stem from predispositions and prejudices shaped by formative events early in people's lives. They establish certain philosophical principles, which serve as one's compass in their business decisions. You don't see medical doctors successfully running cigarette companies, or vegetarians successfully running beef factories, or war pacifists successfully leading infantry platoons into combat.

The question for photographers facing the climate-change conditions within the photo industry is whether their predispositions would allow for taking those actions necessary to survive, unpalatable though they may be to their historical traditions.

We can forecast this in some way by examining how they handle discussions on key points germane to the fundamental issues being discussed. Do they hone in on these major points, or do they get mired in nit-picking unimportant details that don't affect the final analysis? What we find is that most disagreements are not really about details, but in the philosophical positions of the opposing side.

The true test of this can be seen when you ask people how their own views would change if they were faced with the hypothetical premise that their own position has been disproved. For example, how would climate-change skeptics propose we solve the global warming problem if we could wave the magic wand and say, "yes, humans are responsible for this, and the world is coming to an end quickly." Would they turn into born-again converts? Would they say, "You've convinced me. Now, let's put caps on emissions and force companies and countries world-wide to migrate over to clean-energy alternatives."

That won't happen. Of the discussions I've read in a variety of media, their response can be summed up this way: "How are we going to pay for changes that doesn't create a worse situation? We're already in a recessive economy, and this kind of investment will make it worse. Companies and third-world countries would harm the global economy worse than the housing bubble did in 2008, causing global economic collapse and massive unemployment, forcing companies and countries alike to swing in the opposite direction: migrating back towards the cheapest possible energy alternatives, which are more wasteful and harmful than today."

Then there's the other side of the argument: What would the climate-change advocates say if their premise was disproved? That the world's climate is doing whatever it will do, irrespective of human activity, and nothing we do will alter it. Do you think they would swing over and say, "Well, Ok then, let's just keep going on the track we're on."

That won't happen either. They'll say, "It's got more to do than just climate. All sorts of human ailments ranging from cancers to other diseases are the result of waste byproducts in the air, water and land. There are unsafe working and living conditions in every country in the world, not to mention the huge costs in clean-up efforts. There are lost economic opportunities in producing new clean-energy production, not to mention the future technologies developed as a byproduct of research and development. And then there's just the plain aesthetic toll on the environment. Waste is ugly, which itself affects social growth, initiatives and investment."

The truth is, there's legitimacy on both sides of the argument, but it's gotten so heated and partisan--as has our culture--that people feel compelled to simply dismiss the other side's ideas out of hand, and just argue minute details instead of substance.

This is why I try to avoid point-by-point arguments with people who have fundamentally different philosophical foundations. It's not that I disrespect their positions or philosophies--reasonable people can disagree. But discussing such things in an open forum can be fruitless because, even if there were hypothetical agreement on certain facts, opposing sides will simply argue any and all points.

For example, in a recent blog entry I wrote entitled, Why there's no one-stop shop for photo buyers, I postulated that the photo industry is "immature" because it has not yet achieved certain kinds of efficiencies that other, more "mature" industries have, such as electronics.

This prompted a response by John Harrington in his post entitled, One-Stop Shopping for Photo Buyers - Too Complex and Fractured. His post took exception to many of the individual details of my article. The argument strategy is a common one where the real goal is to undermine the underlying premise by discrediting the facts that lead to it. But the details he chose were not germane to the larger point.

For example, John says, ...photography has been in the marketplace for far and away longer than electronics; and later, the photo industry is mature, but fractured. He concludes by saying that photography is a different media than electronics, and that accounts for the differences.

All fine points, but individually unimportant to the larger argument. In fact, I would propose that we don't really disagree on the main truism: pricing inefficiencies exists, and that is due to in some part to a fractured market. Posturing a position of disagreement and discredit for the purpose of undermining a more fundamental principle that he disagrees with is one thing, but the net effect of his post is counter productive: it perpetuates the partisan divide. His readers will be even further convinced that I am off my rocker, and my readers will continue to nod their heads in disbelief that the pundits in the photo industry still have their heads in the sand.

This doesn't lead to addressing the real problems that our industry faces.

Thought we may disagree on the terminology we used to describe the conditions that we both see and agree on, what he didn't address was my larger thesis: why is the market is "fractured" in the first place? (I called it an "immature industry" to be in keeping with more conventional economic terminology.)

So, how do we get the discussion back on track? We can begin by addressing one fundamental disagreement that has fathered all the other disagreements:

What role does the consumer play in the global economic effects we're seeing in the photo industry?

Here are the opposing positions:

1. I'd been arguing since the 1990s that the internet and digital technologies created an environment where consumers would be playing an ever-growing role in the economics of the industry, and that if photographers don't accept this premise early on, and change certain fundamental business practices, perceptions, and other strategic relationships, they would lose control over their own domain. There would be a time when all economic, social and legal matters important to pro photographers would lie outside their sphere of influence.
   
   
2. The counter-argument has been (and continues to be) that pro photographers still account for the bulk of licensed images, and stock agencies for the bulk of image sales. Therefore, economic, social and legal conditions are all manageable within the pro photographer community at large. The challenge has rather been that it's a large and decentralized group of mostly independents, each of whom represent a large swath of disciplines. Getting consensus on how to address certain things may be logistically hard, but doable, and outreach is expensive and education difficult.

These diametrically opposing views of the industry is the source of many, if not every, disagreement I've had with those in the photo industry.

For example, On the topic of price inefficiencies and erosion, I contend that it's due to the huge and disproportionate number of consumers who've entered the market as both suppliers and buyers of image content.

The opposing view holds that it's because too many microstock agencies came online and pros and other agencies were forced to drop their prices.

(My retort to that argument can be found here.)

Depending on which of these two premises you buy into will govern decision-making for your own economic future (if you intend to make money as a photographer). And which of these two premises you choose can be predicted by behavioral economists: cognitive and emotional factors govern decision-making, and those decisions are based on philosophical foundations. My philosophical foundation rests in a belief in open markets, strong competition, and no reliance on peers or "all for one" cooperation to succeed. Therefore, I responded to pricing pressures early on in my career by altering my business model to focus on higher volume, rather than higher per-unit pricing.

The traditional industry professional has philosophical foundations that holds that pros still control the market--not the consumers--so to maintain price stability, cooperation must be maintained through solidarity, which implies not undercutting other pros, never give anything away for free, and acting as a collective in all matters.

You name the "event", and I personally will behave diametrically differently than the traditional pro: Creative Commons, Orphan Works, copyright protection, marketing methods, use of "free" in sales and/or promotion, the use of portfolios, and so on. Every single aspect of the photo industry will be perceived differently between me and most photo industry pundits simply because of this sole, root disagreement about the role of the consumer.

Yet, the elephant in the middle of the room is still a common climate-changing event: pricing, copyright compliance, and distribution have changed. Our greatest challenge is akin to that facing those in the global warming dispute: it's not whether we can come to agreement on basic, core points, it's whether we can move forward with proposed solutions.

I agree that disassociating the two is counter-intuitive. How can you come to agreement unless you agree on the points that lead to particular proposals? Well, the first thing to realize is that one's one philosophical biases may not yield the same perceptions on such points. The different use of terminology between me and John Harrington when referring to price inefficiencies, for example: an "immature industry", or "too fractured?" Does it matter? Yes, points are important, but focusing too much on them can stall forward movement. Sometimes, solving these issues is more like solving a maze: start at the finish line and move backwards.

The way to test that theory is to probe what the either side would say if the underlying premise (the role of the consumer) is or isn't true. I'll start:

1. Let's say that my premise is false: that the role of the consumer has not been substantial enough to affect pricing or other issues facing the industry, and that photographers have a direct and strong influence on shaping the future of the industry. In such a case, I would say that the basic philosophies of the trade associations and recommendations by pro photographers are well-considered and actually spot on. The real problems are political: there's lack of unity among the trade associations (they should be merged into one or two), there's too much homogeneity (dissent and differing views are not well-accepted), and there's a deficit of intelligentsia. (No one does true research or recognized economic modeling; most studies I've seen wouldn't pass muster in basic college statistics classes, mostly because of the sample sizes of surveys aren't representative enough of the population being studied.)
   
   I've written longer manifestos detailing all these ideas, most of which were published in the 1990s, back when I did believe that the photo industry still had such control. (I was warning that, unless these changes were adopted, then the industry would lose control, which I believe happened in the early 2000s.)
   
   
2. I now put the question to the other side: "If you believed that pro photographers were so outnumbered by consumers as both buyers and sellers of photography, that pro photographers and trade associations has absolutely no material influence on all aspects of the industry--economic, legal, social and legislative--how would you alter your approach to addressing the "climate" problems in the photography environment?"
   
   You have 30 minutes. Use a #2 pencil. Go.

If your answer to that is, "If we're entirely powerless, what point is there to answering the question. There's nothing we can do!"

Au contraire, mon frere. There's plenty you can and should do, and these come in two forms: inward and outward.

Looking inward, assistance to photographers should include helping them better compete under conditions where their main competition is no longer other pros who will recognize traditional professional courtesy. Marketing, pricing, promotion, assignments, contract negotiation, and everything else necessary to succeed at photography is different when you're dealing with a base of photographers that don't recognize past professional principles. I won't get into the details of that here; my books and articles from my blog index already discuss these in depth.

Then there's external outreach. I'd recommend pro photographers and trade groups try to recruit consumers, to get them into the fold, to be more and stronger advocates for the cause. Initial tasks would include lowering membership fees to $25/year, advertising and promoting photo trade organizations in consumer trade publications, having photo trade publications highlight and profile consumer-photographers who themselves can serve as role models for others, contracting with mass consumer marketing and PR organizations to help re-educate traditional pros and trade groups to better understand consumer behaviors (as buyers and sellers of photo content), and so on.

In short, one must appeal to non-professional photographers en masse, and you do that by understanding their personal goals and desires, not by trying to change and mold them into the old world.

And it's this very premise that will alienate most pros and trade organizations. Their visceral and palpable response is rooted in the core philosophical rub--a disagreement of gargantuan proportions. Pros and trade groups will not be happy that consumers will not accept the traditional pro photographer mantra. Consumers and non-professional photographers are not opposed to "free" to promote themselves--because it works. They are not opposed to "undercutting competition"--because that's how the open market works. They are not worried about entering photo contests that ask for "rights grab" terms because this is what gets them visibility. They are not opposed to "work-for-hire" contracts, because those pay the bills. They are not going to sign up for a "solidarity" mindset, because a successful market is one that advocates strong competition. Photographers must dispense with the "union" mindset.

Now, I fully appreciate that all this is a hard pill to swallow. But, the climate is changing--the question is, "what are you going to do about it?" If one does not accept that the consumer's role is significant, there's not a whole lot of discussion to be had. But, if one does accept the premise, the industry's philosophical paradigm must shift.

The behavioral economist in me predicts that most pros would simply bow out of the business all together. Their "cognitive and emotional faculties" would not accept such a premise easily, and the cognitive dissonance would compromise their philosophical foundations.

Then again, we could just weather the storm till mother nature swings back to the kind of normalcy that we've become familiar with.

Marketing Tasks vs Positioning Strategies

In a discussion forum on LinkedIn a while ago, a photographer in the UK named Clare-Louise posts a question, "What's the best way to market myself?"

The responses come flooding in: "Put your best portfolio together and send it to as many people as you can," writes one. "Do a direct mail marketing campaign," says another. "Build a great flash website," chimes a third. "Write about yourself in a blog," echoes the crowd.

All these ideas are those you've no doubt heard a million times, and many people swear by them, citing personal anecdotes to success. Yes, one should do these things. But that's not saying much. Everyone does these things. If you were to interview a room full of lottery winners, each will tell you their technique. But as you know, picking numbers is, despite the claims of the winners, nothing but luck. And so is photography, at least insofar as the marketing is concerned.

It's not that some photographers or their works aren't genuinely "better" or more appropriate for a given client than others. There are differences. The randomness comes in from the sheer volume and noise received by those who sift through it all, because they are flooded with portfolios and emails from people just like you. No matter how much you tweak, or categorize, or improve, or anything else to differentiate your photography or your presentation, the huge volume of noise that photo buyers/editors get means that such attention to detail is not going to yield much more of a difference than random chance—that someone just happened to be in the right frame of mind when he saw your portfolio.

Yes, you will find the winners that say, "I wouldn't have gotten that job had I not sent in that portfolio!" But what about the hundreds or thousands of others that did exactly the same thing, but didn't get hired. If you were to look at their contributions, you would be hard-pressed to see such a discernable difference as well, helping you appreciate just how arbitrary photo editors and art directors are.

Predictably photo buyers would strenuously disagree with this. They genuinely believe that they have unique insight into which photographer is the best one to hire. And in their minds they're right because of their own track record; their ratio of success to failure is so high because they're smart.

This is what I call this the inverse-lottery game, where almost every ticket is a winner. For them, the photographer they choose will likely do a good job because, despite what they'd like to admit, almost all of them would be perfectly suited. It's like the game that toddlers play where they pick from a tubful of rubber duckies that has a star taped underneath. In their world, they pick a duck, turn it over, and surprise! They win! They really think they knew what they were doing. But the reality is, all the ducks had a star.

That's OK. Let them think that. Here's where your strategic planning can be put to best use: When you contact someone, don't even mention photography. Instead, discuss business. Keep in mind this truism: A great photographer with bad business skills will rarely get work, but a mediocre photographer with great business skills will rise to the top.

Note that I'm not saying you shouldn't send in portfolios and try to establish first contact. You should! But that's not the whole picture. The problem with this approach is that it's based on a faulty premise: that getting hired is all about your skill as a photographer. The point is, these are tasks, not strategies.

Marketing tasks is one thing. Positioning is another. Most photographers don't position themselves. And positioning is how you establish how you are perceived as a whole, not just as an artist. Whether buyers know it or not, they have bias towards individuals that are in tune with their businesses and the issues they face. Positioning yourself as such a person is your goal.

Effective positioning can be done in an infinite number of ways, each of which involves writing and speaking authoritatively on matters pertinent to your target clients. You need to articulate a vision statement about their business.

If you really want to jump ahead of the class, you need to make yourself stand out in ways that make you more than just a photographer--you need to appear as an expert in the business of your target clients. You want to be seen as someone that can help with their business objectives by offering the "outside expert" insight, to help them see the forest for the trees that they can't do because they're in the woods. You need to offer perspective from a broader industry outlook because you have your fingers on the pulse of many companies, perhaps even their competitors.

It may sound like I'm suggesting you to actually be an expert, or to sound like a CEO. I'm not. I'm merely suggesting you talk about things you know, and use them in your promotional materials, especially in ways that are either independent of photography, or which use photos only as examples to illustrate business points. Not as a demonstration that your photography is great. (You already do that with your portfolio, website and other stuff.)

The advice above usually throws off most artists right off the bat. They think it's entirely counter-intuitive to talk about anything except photography if that's their ultimate goal. Worse, they vastly underestimate their knowledge and experience in the fields of their own photography, and they certainly underestimate the relevancy of this knowledge, especially when they are emerging in their careers and trying to get work. When I've done individualized consulting for those who get "stuck' in their careers, simple discussions on these subjects often reveal that their insight and analysis on matters in their subjects is quite advanced.

So, let's now look at Clare-Louise that started this discussion. Her website, which is at www.clare-louise.co.uk, is full of self-produced images, but you'd never know it--they look like pieces she's done for other clients. So when she posted her question to the LinkedIn forum, I was curious as to the story behind the story.

When we started talking, I probed into what here interests are, what industries she knows, her experience and expertise, and so on. This got her talking about topics that she thought was mundane and unimportant; to me, her knowledge was way over my head. She clearly knew about fashion design much better than I did, and I've known some good fashion photographers. I can only imagine she'd hit it off very well with photo buyers or editors.

Her problem was that she was only contacting them as a hungry and unemployed photographer. The psychology aspect alone put her much further behind everyone else. If, instead, she approached prospective clients with a more business-oriented approach, she'd get much better responses.

So what should she – or anyone – do? Positioning is key, and that's done by demonstrating your knowledge and expertise about a subject. Obviously, blogging is the best way to do that. If what you say and think is truly useful and wise, then your career will follow. You need to talk about stuff that buyers are interested in. Don't talk about yourself, your personal life, or what you enjoy about photography. Buyers don't care about these things -- they won't even go to your blog. You want people to land on your blog as a search result they did on a keyword that you talk about.

Another good way is to frequent discussion boards on the subject of your expertise, not photography discussion boards. Get to know people in your industry, network with them, socialize with them, and join their professional associations. If you know who's who in the field of your photography (not the photography itself), you'll have much better insight into where opportunities are.

Let's say you're a fashion photographer that focuses on children's clothing, and you wanted to contact a potential buyer at Sears. You Google her name and see what she's written, where she posts things, a blog she might have, or any other mention. Now, imagine what response you'd get if you started with, "I saw what you said about last year's catalog. Did you see the line-up for kids this fall? The fashion magazines are calling it a big departure for the pre-teens, and I hear Macy's is stocking up ahead of the curve. What do you think?" She wouldn't possibly know that this is a pitch from a photographer looking for work. This is just business banter between colleagues in the same industry.

You are more likely to not only get a reply back than if you just sent a cold-call email asking to send a portfolio. You're starting off as peers, not the master-servant relationship they're used to. Here's your opportunity to foster the relationship. The nature of your discussion will start off on a professional level, far from what this person would have ever expected from a photographer--certainly not a new and inexperienced one. Your goal is to show that you know this topic because you're experienced and informed on the subject (even if you aren't—you're also learning). Before you know it, something about "photography" comes up in conversation, and you'd be in a much better position to posture as someone she could use.

So, yes, contact clients, send portfolios, write a blog, have a sexy website. But those should be minor and incidental tasks that you take up every so often as a regular course of business. Spend your time and resources developing serious and valuable materials focusing on your knowledge of the businesses and industries that are the focus of your photography. Once you have those things, you can reshape them any one of these marketing forms long into the future.

I discuss this topic in much greater detail in my book, Profitable Photography in the Digital Age, which can be found at http://www.danheller.com/books

Photo Agencies and The Stock Industry: a Matter of Proportion

In my blog post, "There are Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics", a series of email replies inspired me to post a follow-up. I'll get to them at the end, but first, a recap:

In that article, I mentioned how a Shutterstock survey focused on a small, select group of traditional image buyers to gauge their purchase expectations over the next year. I went on to say that it is the result of surveys like this (and others) that most stock photo analysts draw the wrong conclusions about the nature of the broader stock photo marketplace, which itself leads to a trickle-down effect of misinformation throughout the industry. In this case, the Shutterstock survey lead many to conclude that the industry is growing. And this perpetuates another misperception that agencies represent the lion's share of sales and revenue, which itself leads to the misperception that making money in stock requires joining an agency.

Each misperception leads to another, and another, and another, until finally, the industry is full of chaos and confusion, myth, and suspicion.

For now, I want to clarify that, just because it's easy to see how most analysts misinterpret information, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy to know how to do it right.

A primary example of this can be found in a July 18 article in the New York Times business section, titled, A Matter of Opinion?. The issue is how credit rating agencies were giving high marks to the very companies that were ultimately responsible for the credit crisis that lead to our current economic meltdown. After facts were uncovered, many feel these credit agencies should have known all along that banks and other institutions were engaged in speculative and complex financial instruments that would lead to this.

And that's how I feel about those who cover the photography industry. The evidence is so overwhelming that the predominant view of the stock photo industry is so wrong, that it is flatly irresponsible of the press and analysts to perpetuate that view. It's also important to point out that this is not the company's fault. Their survey and their data is just fine -- their goal was to illustrate other points more german to their businesses. The problem rests entirely within the press and blogosophere who are inappropriately using that survey to support (and perpetuate) incorrect conclusions about the industry at large.

First and foremost: The stock photo industry does not revolve around stock photo agencies. Though there are no scientifically viable surveys that show the total size of the market -- and therefore, the proportion that agencies may represent -- there is a great deal of asymmetric information (indirect data gathered from independent sources) to support the premise that agencies' role is minimal.

I've written many articles that cite multiple data sources that suggest that most stock imagery is licensed on a peer-to-peer basis--directly from photographers. Even though many of these individuals do tiny amounts of licensing annually for themselves, it's their collective economic activity that has far more gravitational pull on the industry than the entirety of stock photo agencies combined. (They are what my books call the "dark matter" of the photo industry: you don't see them, but they are there, and they account for over 80% of the stock photo universe.)

Once taken into account in discussing and analyzing the nature of the stock photo industry, a great many assumptions and other factors are instantly called into question. For one, the effects of pricing and other actions taken by agencies. If, even for the sake of argument, one assumes they are not the center of the universe, but rather, involuntarily pulled by everyone else, how they are presented and covered would not just change industry perceptions, but it could have a trickle-up effect, putting more pressure on industry executives to make better, more economically viable decisions that lead to industry growth.

As for the stock agencies themselves, I have no qualms about how they conduct their businesses, per se. True, I think they leave a lot of money on the table with their pricing, and I think they miss out on a great deal of consumer opportunities, but I don't think this harms the market at all--again, they do not "set trends", they are inadvertent followers of larger forces. I also understand well that running a profitable business is difficult, and growth is often fraught with risk. The graveyard of companies that tried to migrate to a consumer-oriented business is crowded.

Nor do I have an issue with how they market themselves. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the Shutterstock survey that I alluded to in my prior article. Shutterstock's business is to sell stock imagery, and their survey happened to focus on a particular market segment that they felt was their primary buyer base. That this segment of buyers (narrow, though it may have been) happened to show certain behaviors that also happens to underscore Shutterstock's future prospects shows that Shutterstock has a bright future (at least for the short term).

Also, the PR agency that helped promote the message, Morton PR, was particularly honest, insightful and articulate, not just about the survey itself, but in its own recognition that the survey was not (and did not intend to be) reflective of the industry at large. Not every survey is designed for that purpose, and Morton was uncharacteristically open about this, as compared to other PR firms that have contacted me as representatives of other stock agencies.

I also happened to point out that iStockphoto also had a banner year, and is showing signs of improvement for next year as well. This fact being anecdotally supported by a comment from Lee Torrens at microstockdiaries.com on his own bump in sales, despite the fact that he hasn't increased his submissions to any stock agencies.

So, if that data isn't representative of the entire market, what kind of conclusions can we learn about industry trends? And what data do we use to learn this information?

In the spirit of setting expectations correctly, I can address these questions by proxy: my replies to the emails I get on this subject.

First, there's the most common question: "How does a photographer succeed at selling stock if not through agencies?"

Begin by dispensing of the premise that agencies are the de facto channel for stock photo purchases. You can (and should) sell directly yourself, irrespective if whether you also sell through agencies.

As an added note: I strongly discourage anyone from signing an "exclusive" arrangement with an agency that did not reciprocate by prepaying minimum royalties. After all, this is standard boilerplate contract language for book publishing. Why allow a stock photo agency better rights than a book publisher?

Once you take out the exclusivity clause, you can and should sell your images through any and all channels you can. Including--and especially--your own website.

Selling your own stock is easier now than it ever has. Many applications allow you to build your own stock site, that even the most technically squeamish can produce. It's beyond the scope of discussion to address that; I talk about it more in length in this article, which also happens to be in my book on building a photo career.

The barrier to success in stock photography is less technology as it is psychology. Most don't think it's possible (the "agency" fallacy), or they just don't want to put the time and resources into it. There's also a misperception of time: that sales should come right away. Or that they'd come sooner with an agency. No -- It takes time for your stock images to derive revenue, regardless of where they are for sale. Yes, the revenue curves are different between a personal site and an agency site, but "different" isn't necessarily better. After one year, you may get more revenue from an agency site than yours, but over five years, you're sure to get more from your own site. This is usually because you will charge more on your site (because buyers are more willing to pay higher prices--a factor that most agencies don't really understand yet), you will keep more of the revenues (in fact, all of your own revenues), and your own site will likely get more traffic to your pictures than the agency's site will.

The assumption that the agency is going to do better for you and every other contributor is naive. There's going to be an uneven distribution of traffic to contributors on agency sites, and there's a 90% chance you're going to be on the short-end of that stick.

Which leads to next question I get: "It just doesn't seem to me to be that smart to be in a situation where you give away 80 to 90% of your profit. I want to create something where I keep 80 to 90% of the profit."

Stock agencies get 90% of the profit because they're doing 90% of the work. If all you do is take pictures and upload them, then all you deserve is 10% (IMHO). The value of stock photography is not the photo. It's getting it sold. If you go to the effort of creating your own website, generating traffic, building a buyer base, then you too can earn 90% of the profit (the 10% you don't get goes into your cost of setting it all up). I talk about that in my two articles on stock agencies, here and here.

This next email question represents another misimpression about stock sales: "...discussions among a number of us who primarily do landscape, scenic, wildlife photography [...] lead us to think that there is no significant stock market for this type of work. What are your thoughts?"

Most stock photo sales are done in vast, wide, disparate and unstructured transactions around the world. There actually is a very big market for landscapes and scenics and wildlife photos, but there are also billions of such images from millions of photographers too. Even bad photos sell. The problem isn't that there isn't a market--it's getting noticed among the crowd. This leads to two points, one of which I've already made: getting noticed and ranked is a function of building your own personal site and personal presence on the internet.

The second point is that stock photography should not be regarded as a vehicle for generating lots of money with little work.

Stock photography touches many people as either a buyer or seller of a photo. So much so that it is so thinly distributed among people around the world, it's fool-hearty for an individual to approach it with high expectations.

So, what does all this say about selling stock photography as a form of personal income?

For so long as the industry remains chaotic and unmanaged by any central body, stock photography will also be unstructured. There will be little innovation that helps sort, rank and distribute photos based on merit--it'll remain as it is now: arbitrary. And just as you should not rely on buying lottery tickets to sustain an income, neither should you rely on on stock imagery when it is so highly subject to sales channels that are diffuse and arbitrary.

In this day and age, stock falls into Truism #4 of my list of The Five Truism about having a Photography Business, which I originally wrote in 1998. Truism #4 says Diversify Your Business. Only a very few who truly know and perfect the stock photo marketplace should do nothing but stock. For everyone else, you don't "succeed" at stock so much as you use your existing imagery from other sources to augment your income.

Most who sell stock -- even well -- do it as fun way to earn a bit more from their hobby or as a lifestyle business. That's how it was for me for well over ten years of my photo career. And as I am more into consulting now, it's that way for me again.

In closing, I will summarize by quoting my last blog:

Turning a blind eye to the rest of the stock photo universe affects decisions about where to put marketing dollars, where to do research into buyer behaviors, pricing, and business development. If it were generally accepted that the market were larger, agencies could form partnerships with other media licensing agents, social groups and legal networks that reach that larger market.

In negotiations, consider Career Development

Today, I want to return to a particularly important issue facing emerging photographers: a reminder that career development is a multi-faceted animal, and it should be part of all business thinking.

For example, I got the following email recently:

I am in negotiations with a travel company based in Tanzania. I'm asking that they provide me with a 3 week package to go on a Safari, hike Kilimanjaro, and a trip to Zanzibar plus $2000. In return I will give them photos (which they desperately need) of the travel experience, portraits of their workers (~12 people), architectural photos of their facilities, etc. External expenses such as airfare will be covered by myself. Do you think I'm pricing this fairly, to myself or them?

The problem facing most photographers who face this dilemma is that they don't have the empirical experience of multiple sales and sales contexts to know what might be an appropriate fee. So they rely on others for guidance. This is intuitive, but is fraught with all sorts of problems.

Namely, what may be a good deal for one photographer may not be for another because a "deal" usually involves more issues than just the simple exchange of money. There are actually two factors involved: the money, but also the objective of "career development." It turns out that both tie to the same thing when you're just starting out. When it comes to negotiation, you have to evaluate the total value of what what you get from the deal, not just the money involved. Similarly, the other party does the same thing. If both sides perceive a balanced weighting between what is given up and what is received, then "fair" has been accomplished.

Career Development is most important in negotiation
When you're a new photographer, it's important to identify what your longer term goals are, and understand what you need to do to get there. This will help you establish what you perceive to be valuable, which itself evolves as your career does. For example, consider these intangible benefits that most photographers don't factor into the negotiation process: (I am paraphrasing from my chapter on "business sense" from my first book on the photography business which you can see here).

1. Is it the kind of trip that can yield photos with stock potential?
2. Is this a long-term business relationship? or a new one? Might this be the kind of client that you may work with for a long time? Or is it just a one-off opportunity?
3. Would this trip give you good and new experiences at the business of being a travel photographer? That is, would it give you credibility that, without it, you lack?
4. If you could afford to pay for it yourself, and if you felt that there was value in the photos, would this be a trip you would go to your own expense to cover? (Hence, it's "value.")

These are the questions you ask yourself to determine the inherent value of the trip as it pertains to your longer-term career objectives. Obviously, you want to optimize your financial gain in any negotiation; no sense in leaving money on the table if you don't have to. But at least having a sense of the value of the other things I just listed gives you a broader perspective on just how high or low you're willing to go to get the gig.

My experience with Kilimanjaro and the safari in general is that it's great stock footage, so speaking strictly from a financial point of view, it's a trip that yields long term financial returns, especially if you're trying to spread your photo assets across many subjects.

Another thing about Kilimanjaro is that it's very expensive for a tour operator to send a photographer, so if you have it under your belt, it's a good sign for other (future) clients that you've been deemed trustworthy by at least someone else for such an expense. This is often a door-opener for many photographers to new clients. So, again, there's a lot of value to that.

Similarly, the fact that you've been there "on assignment" gives you tangible experience working with clients and staff together. This not only has inherent value in itself, but you can be more articulate about the business to future clients, giving a stronger sense of your worth.

The question is back to whether they would pay you in addition to sending you, and if so, how much. Here's where it comes to your thinking on this: do you risk losing it all by bidding a price they wouldn't accept, or should you leave potential money on the table (amount unknown, of course) just to assure you get the gig?

Foot in the door
Speaking from personal experience, when I was getting started, I was more than happy to take this kind of trip and shoot it for free (though, they would pay all expenses). I would not only have the value of the trip I just listed, but I established a relationship that could lead to more work that is paid. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened.

Some in the industry vigorously respond, "but you just underbid another, hard-working photographer, stealing his business." First, if that were truly the case, chances are more likely that the client hired me because the other guy was deemed not to be worth what he was charging. Even then it's not that simple--taking a risk by hiring an unknown photographer has its downsides as well. Thus, the assumption that it's just about money is naive. In the travel business, the "cost" of sending a photographer has multiple line items: trips themselves are substantial, often far exceeding whatever his day rate is, but there's also the good will with the clients, which a "green" photographer can damage pretty quickly. (And the cost of that is priceless.) Finding a good, worthy photographer who gets good images is easy. The hard part is finding someone that actually contributes to the trip--knowing how to interact with clients, acting as a virtual "leader." Finding such a person is hard enough--you don't just let go a good one just because some unknown photographer came by and offered to shoot a trip for free. That'd be stupid.

So, why shoot for free if you don't have to? Foot in the door. Much the same way people will use discount cards to try a new restaurant they might not otherwise choose. Or two-for-one coupons to try a new product they might not otherwise try. Discounts are used everywhere throughout every aspect of every industry. If you're trying to penetrate a new market against competition, discounting is usually an effective way. And if you don't have anything else to offer--like experience and a portfolio of high-end clients--then this is often your only option.

Just as I know there are other photographers try to unseat my current position with that client by offering to shoot trips for free, my client knows that my value is a known quantity, and it's not worth risking whatever my day rate may be for a given trip, just to get an unknown to screw it up. In short, I'm not just a hired guy to take photos--I represent the company when I go.

Obviously, I no longer need to shoot trips for free, but that doesn't mean that I don't continually weigh the cost-benefits for any new client. Even at this stage of my career, it's not just about money. It's never just about money. Anyone just starting in the business should thinking about money last. All the other factors associated with "building a career" should come first. Yes, do what you can to optimize your financial return, but negotiation is the hardest thing to do in this business, and doing so from a position of inexperience is the worst position to be in.

Going too far
On the other extreme, you can go too far: I've seen people pay for the trip themselves, and still give the images to the client in hopes of getting more work. That doesn't work so well simply because the same thing can be accomplished by not giving them the final images, but by merely showing them to the client. In fact, this is how I got my very first assignment. I was a regular paying client for a company, and I shot for fun. I would show them photos I took on each trip, till they asked me to shoot for them.

The lesson here is: don't give away for free what doesn't get you anything in return. Remember, there should be an sense of equal value for what you exchange. Granted, that analysis isn't easy--and people make mistakes all the time. (Experience is the result of having learned from your mistakes.) As such, some people will simply never succeed as photographers, or in many other professions, simply because they don't have a good sense for this sort of thing. That said, you don't get better at it by asking other photographers for advice--their needs and experiences are too different from yours, and you need to think intuitively on your own. Never look at a single assignment and be concerned about what to do about it. Think about longer-term objectives, and consider those issues that contribute to it. The chapter in my book that deals with "business sense" outlines the kind of questions posed at the beginning of this article for how to do that analysis yourself.

There is no such thing as a "base rate" or any kind of formula that one can identify as "fair" that spans across the industry, or among individuals, It's all subject to where people are in their careers, and their self-recognition of these factors.

Still, there are methods
Now, with all that said, there are some tricks to negotiation that can help minimize damage. For example, never initiate an offer to shoot for free--you look desperate and, worse, too inexperienced (at maturity, not just the photo business). It's always important to gauge what their perceived need is in the first place. Trying to convince a company that their photos are bad and that you can do better for them is starting from a very weak position. If they aren't aware of the value of photography in their marketing materials, then you'll have as much luck as asking someone out on a date that doesn't find you attractive in the first place. It's best to move on.

If they're teetering on the fence, it may not be a great long-term client (because it's so much better to have clients who themselves have good business sense), but it may be worth getting a free trip and some experience under your belt.

And then there's the client that knows the value of photography in their business, and is eager to find a new candidate to work with. This may not only be a good long-term client, but if you're good at sensing their need, you may be able to capitalize on it by having them propose a "rate" to you, rather than you to them. whatever it is, chances you are that you take it because you've already found a potential long-term partner, and you don't want to appear "difficult." In fact, I've been in weird circumstances where it was to my advantage to just say, "pay me whatever you think is fair--I'll take it." This reverse psychology can yield interesting results... and even if they offer you nothing, if you come away having done a good job, you'll have some tokens on your side that will be much easier to cash in later.

If they haven't done this a lot either, then they may be as unsure about it as you are, putting the question of "day rate" back to you. Rather than each eying the other, this could be another opportunity to work on longer-term goals: offer to shoot two trips over the course of a year, and then come up with a number if the relationship is to continue. by that time, you'll have learned a lot, and it'll be much easier. When two parties get along, such questions work themselves out.

You can almost always tell what kind of company you're dealing with by looking at their existing marketing materials--from their website to their printed matter--as well as where they advertise, and other things. You can tell how seriously they take photography.

If you're dealing with a company that appeals to the budget traveler, don't even consider convincing them of paying you money on top of the cost to send you on the trip. If they are an up-and-coming high-end business, they may not be able to afford to pay you a per-diem day rate now, but they will later, in which case (again) the real value is the long term relationship. In fact, I once told a company I would shoot the trip for free if they guaranteed a follow-on trip at my normal day rate. If they chose not to, they'd pay me for the initial trip and we'll call it square. They accepted the proposal and loved my pictures, but in this case, I opted not to work with them because they were excessively high maintenance in other ways. (Asking me for help in the photo department that I had no time or incentive to offer.)

Again, the retort to "free" or "discounted rates": there are undoubtedly photographers who will respond with, "if you let them take advantage of you now, you'll never get paid a fair rate." Or that "you lose respect by shooting for free." That is not only over-simplistic nonsense that has no basis in economic principles, but it begins a relationship on an adversarial tone. "Being tough" only works if you have the knowledge and experience that people can sense. If you're green and naive, you can't possibly mask it, so your best bet is to allow it to work to your advantage.

Yet, the original premise still exists: everything has weightings, and you factor into the bigger picture whether any given assignment (or client) is worthwhile. If you shoot for a client for free to get your foot in the door, and they never want to pay you more because you've already established your lower rate, you move on to the next client. Armed with more photos and experience and wherewithal, your "entry" doesn't have to be free. In fact, jumping ship to a new client for more money is a well-practiced tradition in many industries (in the United States at least).

Even for those rare clients that would "take advantage," They are easy to spot as business people before you get very far. But even a bad client can provide good opportunities--a free trip to Kilimanjaro?! Who's taking advantage of whom?

In summary, consider long-term career goals when entering the photo business. Putting too much value on the "money" aspect is not just short-sightedness that will never serve you well, but you'll also fail to adopt better methods of negotiation that can only come from seeing how broader issues tie together to lead to more beneficial conditions.