Royalty Free no longer exists

I have always gotten a continuous stream of questions about Royalty Free vs. Rights-Managed images, and I usually just send people to numerous posts I've written in the past.

But a recent email to me concerning Photoshelter's use of the terminology compelled me to post a short blog entry on the subject to try to make it even simpler to understand.

Royalties are payments made to authors (photographers in this case) in exchange for the right to sell works (images). The moment any photographer is ever paid anything by an agency, s/he has received a royalty. Even if it's a one-time payment.

Rights Managed ("RM") means that someone has the right to say how a photo may be published. There's always someone that has the right to manage a work's usage terms. Yes, "unlimited, unrestricted use" is still "managed" if that's what the rights manager wants. Even public domain and creative commons are terms stipulated by someone -- usually the author.

By definition, ALL images are Rights Managed, even if the manager chooses not to assert those rights, or is very liberal about how others may use the photo.

Royalty Free ("RF") refers to a special kind of license agreement that can only take place between two stock photo agencies. Here, the primary stock agency grants another agency the right to resell images, and that second agency is under no obligation to pay royalties back to the photographer.

Why would such a thing happen?

Before the internet (and up till mid-1990s), distribution of images to buyers was difficult. Smaller stock agencies that couldn't sell some supply of images started selling them to OTHER stock agencies with better distribution channels (usually, the early internet adopters). Because these images were usually lower quality, the concern was that these images might not sell. In order for the deal to make financial sense for all parties, the photographer was paid a one-time royalty for the transaction, the primary agency got a single, lump-sum payment from the secondary agency, and that second agency was now on the hook to make some money. Sometimes they did, but often they didn't. But they could only agree to take this risk so long as they were not obligated to pay royalties back to the photographer. These were royalty-free images. 

At the time, photographers were finally making money from images that would have otherwise sat unsold, and the smaller agencies were often seen as tributaries to the main stock agencies, who themselves were taking advantage of a very quickly expanding base of buyers because of the growth of the internet.

As the idea showed profitability, more agencies started selling and reselling the same images in the same way to many stock agencies, creating a huge market for RF images. Each time, the photographers would get royalties from each such sale. And, in each case, the "royalty free license" meant that each (secondary) agency down the distribution channel was not obligated to report sales or pay royalties to the photographer.

The tipping point came when the ease and cost of access to the internet allowed those smaller agencies to sell directly to the buyer. And, for the buyer to find those images through better search engines. The need to feed the primary agency networked collapsed, which coincided with the time when Getty's stock price was plummeting from the mid-$80s to the low $30's, when they were finally taken private. Note: Getty's price didn't plummet because of the rise of RF images. The entire economy of images was falling precipitously because no agency could control (choke) the supply channel any longer. All agencies were hurting and RF was no safer than traditionally-licensed images.

I am currently unaware of any actual Royalty Free Licenses being used in photography. I believe it no longer exists. (The practice is still used for clip art, icons and some other kinds of media (smaller music labels) where channel distribution is still difficult.)

So, why are the terms, "RF" and "RM" still used? 

Remember how those secondary agencies were on the hook to monetize these images or lose money? They did so by enticing buyers with very liberal license terms, such as "unrestricted (use), unlimited (time)."  Thus, photographers (and later, newbie agencies that didn't understand history) misunderstood RF as implying these unrestricted usage terms. For a long time, RF really did mean "unrestricted."

But I rarely see such license terms anymore. Even the license terms used by today's agencies for their so-called RF images are often not as liberal as the original RF terms once were.

Today, the terms "RF" and "RM" are interpreted mostly by PHOTOGRAPHERS to mean that they will make more money with RM images than RF, even though those economics are not as predictable. My personal opinion is that the terms remain simply to attract (and direct) photographers towards certain business terms with the agency. Most buyers have no idea what they mean... nor do they care. They only care about the terms of use, which has nothing to do with RF or RM.

Market Efficiencies and Stock Photo Pricing

In my last blog post, Selling Stock: It's About Search Rank, Not Price, I argued that the price variability in the stock photo industry can be exploited by those who garner high search rankings. The rationale is that the direct and indirect cost (overhead) of finding an image so far exceeds typical license fees, that photo buyers are more indifferent to those license fees than sellers believe. Thus well-ranked photo sites would be able to command higher license fees, simply because they have first access to the buyer.

In fact, well-ranked photo websites are undermining their own profitability by lowering prices unnecessarily, mostly because they are following their perceived competitors, not because the customer is demanding lower prices. Their rationale would follow traditional economic theory under most market conditions, but therein lies the exception. The photo industry does not represent "normal economic conditions." Indeed, the photo industry represents a classic case of an "inefficient market."

Let me explain by starting with the definition of an "efficient market." It can be summarized as a market of buyers and sellers engaging under conditions where all information is available to parties on both sides of a transaction. (See this wikipedia link for extended definitions, examples, and citations.)

Examples of efficient markets are exchange-traded commodities like oil, orange juice and automobiles, among others. Here, producers of commodities make their wares generally available, and market-makers trade on this information. It is exceedingly difficult (if not impossible) to have inventory that the market is unaware of, or to purchase commodities without the broader market's awareness. These are the conditions that lead to the definition of an "efficient market."

While there will always be price volatility, it is almost entirely governed by predictions of how supply and demand might be affected by external events. The weather affects the price of Orange Juice; war and instability affects the price of oil; and a litany of factors affect the auto industry.

When it comes to image-licensing, most buyers and sellers do not have that much information about the "global" market of buyers or sellers, let alone access to conditions that can affect future supply and demand. This results in "market inefficiency," which results in price inconsistencies, precisely as predicted by economists. Therefore, prices vary from high to low across the spectrum, depending on the perception of the buyers in any given time/place. This is because they have limited and incomplete information about the global supply chain.

This also explains why people objected to my proposition from my prior article. They do not have access to "all information," and worse, they are unaware that their worldview is limited. That is, most pro photographers are under the illusion that the entire market of stock photos is monopolized by a small number of stock agencies.

Ironically, the other markets (non-agency buyers/sellers) don't see the other side either. These discrete and separate markets will, by definition, find different prices than buyers in other markets. Stock agencies will view one another as competitors and lower their prices, whereas websites that are unaware of stock agencies (or don't attempt to compete with them) will command higher prices.

To optimize prices and create an efficient market, the following would have to take place:

• Stock agencies would have to expand to cover a larger proportion of the image-buying market. As my prior article advised, the way to do this is to partner (or merge) with photo-centric websites, whose proportion of global internet traffic is very high. This will allow "more information to be more universally available to a greater proportion of the buyers and sellers." This now leads to market efficiency.
  
• Once the market became efficient, it could then be automated through predictive pricing algorithms, precisely the way Google automated online ad prices using an auction-based mechanism. No doubt this is not a simple algorithm, and it took years to evolve, requiring considerable data mining to determine optimal market pricing. But it was achieved to a point where it is now a highly viable (and mutually beneficial) economic model for buyers and sellers. The market of photo buying is similarly large, and there's enough economic activity that appropriate data-mining efforts could lead to similar algorithms for auction-based image license pricing.

The question is whether anyone is willing to invest enough into this untapped market.

Selling Stock: it's about search rank, not price

Yesterday, I reposted an article I originally wrote in 2007, discussing the misconception that microstock pricing is what's driving down overall license fees.

I got a few emails that still challenged my assertion, and it appears I haven't emphasized strongly enough the most compelling arguments supporting this thesis.

All of my research supports the premise that the primary cost of licensing images is not the license fee, but the overhead associated with finding and acquiring the right image. The overhead and administration of a project that would involve photo licensing shows that the actual license fee ranks very low on the budget -- hence, low on the buyer's priority list. My 2007 surveys of buyers showed that.

If the person responsible for finding images for a project is paid $60/hr, and this person spends 2-3 more hours looking for a photo just to pay $1 vs. $50, this translates to paying someone $120-180, just to save $50. People who control budgets know that the license fee for photos is negligible to the total cost of production, even at the traditional stock photo rates. The bigger the project, and lower the proportion of the license fee for the image(s).

Those who sell images are dropping their prices because they're looking at their competition, not the buyer. Further, there is absolutely no evidence to show that sites that have lower prices sell more images. There is definitely a perception that there's a correlation, but that's because people are comparing apples to oranges. Getty sales vs iStock sales are not apples-to-apples because the two entities vary dramatically in search engine results (and other important factors). People talk about microstock sites more, and they link to them (in blogs, discussion forums) and the quantity of images on microstock sites is rapidly growing. So naturally, these sites get higher rankings in search results. Search engines don't rank sites because they have lower prices. They rank sites by size (content), links, and a black magic formula that is best described as "dispersion of discussion in and around the net." In short, microstock sites have more content and get more attention. Hence, better rankings, which translates to more traffic, which attracts more photographers to submit images to them, perpetuating the feedback loop.

In my 2007 survey, those who indicated they were aware of--and use microstock sites-- most don't go to them because the prices are lower; it's mostly because those sites ranked higher in search engine results, where the buyer starts.

Because search engine ranking drives traffic -- especially the untapped (and unaware) segment of the global economy that doesn't use stock agencies -- and because the greatest cost in photo acquisition is time, not the license fee, 90% of the time-savings is the image results the user gets on that initial search. If it takes the buyer to a stock agency site -- microstock or otherwise -- then the deal is nearly done. Price notwithstanding.

This is primarily why I have advocated for years that stock sites should focus their entire effort towards optimizing search engine rankings. While they could have done something about it in the past, the rise of social networks and the plethora of image-related websites and apps has made it impossible for agencies to rank highly on image-search rankings on their own. In today's market, they have no choice but to either partner with, or acquire/be-acquired-by a social-networking site.

The Getty<->Flickr combination is a very pragmatic example. Yahoo is circling the drain, and it needs to shed its non-performing assets and focus its attention on ... something. Whatever that is, it isn't Flickr, and there aren't a lot of buyers that would be interested in that asset, except for Getty or Corbis. The combined product would involve retooling Flickr to be far more socially active (to keep up with modern social networking trends), and to integrate licensing/acquisition into the user/social experience. Most importantly, to provide incentive programs for photo submitters to participate economically. (I've written a great deal about this in the past.)

Of course, perhaps Yahoo should just buy Getty. Facebook is getting into the game, which tends to lead one's eyes towards Google, but they are still struggling to play catch up in the social-networking arena, and their photo division is not run by someone with a disposition towards stock or an awareness of the economics of the photo industry. The company is more interested in building assets that support their advertising model. There's no evidence that "licensing" is on their radar--a pity because they would be on the forefront of the Web 3.0 economic model, where images would play a huge role. (See here.)

In the meantime, there's a $25B shadow economy in peer-to-peer photo licensing that's up for grabs. (See here.)

So, you ask, "how do you convince agencies of this?"
I've been trying since 1998.

(For fun, see this web archive of my site from 1999 discussing this topic.)

Creative Commons Effect on Photo Licensing

Julie Bernstein asked me the following question: "I am curious if your views on Creative Commons have changed since the four articles you published on this topic in '08."

Julie is referring to these articles (part1, p2, p3, p4) where I describe the CC as a great licensing method for almost all media types except photography.

In summary, what the CC has done is create a legally legitimate infrastructure for those who freely share copyrighted works. Before CC, such activity was technically an infringement, because the the publication of creative works requires consent of copyright holders. CC clears up that technicality, which is great. But it has inadvertently given people the impression that it has affected the licensing industry's pricing structures.

CC has not affected the greater licensing market (or prices), largely because of risk: CC has no centralized authority to assure that content is either submitted properly or used properly. Because it's so easy to game the system on either side of the photo (the supplier or the user can sue the other by luring them with a legally misleading scenario), the financial liability for anyone with a lot to lose is simply too high, especially given that traditional license fees are so minimal. So, the majority of image buyers simply stay away from CC.

Now, this is not to suggest there's something wrong with the CC model in principle. I'm a big advocate for it in all other contexts. Indeed, it was born out of the "free software" meme that was popular in the 1980s and 90s, when Gnu Public License (GPL) and other models were the precursors to the "open-source" model we still enjoy today. These are great innovations in licensing because they allow intellectual property to be used for the greater good, while also allowing for commercial use of those innovations.

But CC in the world of engineering is entirely different from photography. Engineering takes a considerable amount of time, resources and (usually) teamwork to produce anything of value that those in the open-source community would use. As such, the kind of content there is proportionally minimal, and each work is substantial and recognizable, making infringements quite easy to spot.

None of this is true in photography -- trillions of images are produced daily, it's impossible to track any given photo, or whether it is "legitimate" (either by the owner or the user).

So, sure, in a world of honest people that want to freely share their content in a peaceful corner of the image licensing market, CC is great. The CC market is growing, but the perception is only as a measurement of itself, not the total licensing market. An article on that topic can be found here:
http://www.danheller.com/blog/posts/total-size-of-licensing-market.html

Lastly, it's natural to ask, "If CC is so easy to game, why haven't we seen it?" The answer is because the market is so negligible. Economists often use crime data as a reality check on the economic activity they think they're aware of. The higher the crime rate, the more economic activity there is, and there's usually parity between that activity and the presumed size of a commodity's market. If there's little crime, the market size isn't big enough to warrant the effort. If CC were to genuinely gain momentum, it would attract those who would game the system for profit, which itself would have a cooling effect, bringing its popularity back down.

For the record, I've proposed that the best way to assuage people's risk concerns about CC is to use the "copyright registration" system. The CC foundation should have a submission system where those who want to submit images for CC licensing would bulk register those images to the copyright office. This gives them the right to file claims on behalf of the copyright owner, which is how major stock agencies like Getty work. Registered images are eligible for higher level of copyright protection, and there are federal penalties for fraudulent use. This means that users of CC images can be protected from invalid claims by those trying to game the system because this is built into the copyright act's provisions. Similarly, authors can be assured of CC compliance because non-compliant users could be subject to an infringement claim. Yes, you can sue someone for copyright infringement, even if the license fee were zero, because the infringement is another form of "breach of contract." Here, the user of a CC image agreed to the terms of CC by (for example) citing copyright ownership. Failing to do so is an infringement of that contract, and is therefore subject to the statutes provided by copyright law.

This would not only allow CC to have actual teeth, but the trust would go up as the risk comes down.

But such an infrastructure would be quite expensive to operate. That'd be a tall order just to create a system that brings the license fee for a commodity down only a few dollars, even if it is only to zero.

"Commercial Uses" and Model Releases

In my last blog post, "Myth-Busting Model Releases", I received quite a bit of email from people about "commercial uses"of images, pointing to other discussion forums where, again, myths and hearsay prevailed among many misinformed, but well-intentioned photographers.

The common assumption is that "commercial uses" of images require model releases, but that's not actually true. The sole trigger for whether a release is required rests on whether the subject can be perceived as supporting or advocating a particular idea, product or service. True, many "commercial" uses of images do have people appearing to be advocates, and this is where the oversimplification begins. People overlook the many commercial uses where a person can be presented without appearing to be a supporter or advocate. Similarly, there are non-commercial uses that do portray the subject as a supporter or advocate, which would require a release. Two examples follow:

On the commercial side, there are companies that sell books, magazines, newspapers and other forms of media. While the content of their media may be editorial in nature (which doesn't require a release), the promotion of their products is commercial in nature. Just because they may be promoting an editorial product, it's irrelevant. Promotion is a commercial activity. Full stop. But again, "commercial use" does not itself trigger the need for a release.


For example, a highly critical book about Rush Limbaugh ("The Most Dangerous Man in America"), by John Wilson) sports a photo of Rush himself on the front cover. And given the scathing nature of how Rush is portrayed in the book as an irresponsible, sexist, racist, ideologue, one would expect that Rush signed no model release or provided consent of any kind to have him or his likeness be associated in any way with this book. Obviously, the text is editorial commentary about the controversial radio host, so no consent is necessary for using the photo on the book itself.

But what about the promotion and advertising for the book? Both of those are "commercial" in nature: profits are made, and the book itself is a product. Again: promotion is "commercial use." Full Stop. So, one would think that Rush would have his lawyers find any legal position possible to stop or slow down the supply chain, from the photographer to the stock agency to the publisher. Yet, there it is in full color, used to both promote and advertise the book.

The reason a release is not required is not because this was the photo used on the book, but because this photo—or most any photo—would not cause a common person to believe that Rush is an advocate or sponsor of the book. (If there were a photo of Rush standing proudly next to a poster sized replica of the book, then such a photo could suggest he advocated the book, although the existence of such a photo would be unlikely.)

So, the fact that a photo is used as part of a promotion is a red herring. Photos may be on web pages, in portfolios, and presented for sale, yet the "advocacy" question is not satisfied simply because photos are displayed. There has to be more context to imply advocacy.

This is true of non-commercial uses as well. Non-profit companies often believe they can use photos of people in their materials because they are implicitly "non-commercial." But again, the determining factor is whether the person could be perceived as an advocate or sponsor of the organization.

Speaking of supply chain, note that the photographer who shot the photo of Rush Limbaugh didn't need a release to take the picture or to sell the image; he didn't need to know what the buyer was going to use it for, assuming he was even aware that someone was buying it. Similarly, a stock photo agency can display the image online, which is how the book publisher (Thomas Dunn Books) found it.

The moral of the story is, take "commercial use" out of your vernacular, and only focus on the "advocacy" question. And while that's the right place to start, such assessments are not always easy; people disagree on specific cases and argue incessantly.

A common example is photographer's own self-promotional pieces. Naturally, most believe that these are "commercial use" of images, but again, that's not the sole trigger. Most images used as part of a piece that promotes someone as a photographer is almost universally interpreted by the public as "examples" of the artists' work, not necessarily as advocates for them. Such an assertion would require text, often in the form of a quote praising the photographer's work. That context would require consent from the person depicted.

As for being in the business of selling photos, photographers are never responsible for having to know the answer the "advocacy question." Someone else is going to publish their pictures, which means that the buyer bears the risk. Photographers or stock agencies can't be responsible for how other people use the images they acquire, especially because one can't make the advocacy assessment until the photo is ultimately put to use, which is long after the financial transaction took place.

Lastly, there are portfolios: Photographers do not need releases for photos for these.

First, a portfolio is rarely considered a "promotional" item, unless it's put together very poorly. Professional portfolios consist of a collection of artistic works that demonstrate the skills and talents of the photographer. For any given image to be interpreted as to suggest the subject were an advocate for the photographer, particular text would have to be used, which is not typical for a good portfolio, which means that permission is not required in order to use photos of people. This includes all forms of publication of the portfolio, whether in physical form, or as a website, or other media.

The one thing to be aware of, however, is that sometimes photographers take pictures of people in special, "closed sessions," where an agreement was made ahead of time—before the photo was taken. If a subject posed for a photographer with the pre-arranged agreement that the photos would not be used in a portfolio or any other manner, than that agreement takes precedent. (Of course, a new agreement, such as a model release, can supersede it.) Such an agreement would have to be established first--it cannot be retroactively enforced.

That said, any good photographer would honor such a request, even if he or she didn't have to.

Busting Myths about Model Releases

The internet is a virtual echo-chamber of facts and myths of all sorts. When something goes viral, there's no stopping it. Even the most blatant falsehoods can perpetuate for years if they cause no harm in believing them. An example is the myth that the different regions of the tongue tastes different types of things: sweet in the front, sour in the back, etc.. In fact, all taste buds are identical, but the myth started from a single, faulty study in the 1800s that was published in a school text book, and it's been repeated ever since.

In the photo business, the greatest myths are those involving model releases. If you have ever considered selling (or licensing) photos on your own, or through a stock agency, you've probably been told that photographers need "model releases" to sell photos of people, and "property releases" to sell photos of buildings and the like. Some stock agencies actually reject images unless these photos have releases.

While it's true that model release are necessary for certain situations, the actual laws about these issues are deep and complex. As rumors and hearsay perpetuate on the net, the over-simplification has resulted in virtually all the "advice" and conventional wisdom about model releases to be entirely wrong. And the reason why these myths perpetuate is because they cause no harm. No one ever got sued for having a model release. So, people follow the advice because they (and others) seem to be safe, perpetuating the myths.

So, why address the myths about model releases? Because photographers are losing enormous opportunity by not trying to sell the images they don't have releases for, and by going to great lengths to get releases they don't need. Despite the rumors, most publications of photos are not the type that need releases anyway, resulting in an enormous market of buyers. Most photographers could continue to have very successful businesses without ever getting model releases, all while doing exactly what they are doing today. Sure, releases are important for many types of publishers, so if you do get releases for their benefit, you can expand your buyer base by getting them. But it's a proportionally smaller market than people think, and the time, effort and resources necessary to properly obtain, manage and catalog releases is rather substantial. This investment will rarely be offset by the incremental income from sales of images that actually do require releases.

This article attempts to help the photographer looking to make money by setting the record straight on the most common myths about model releases.

Fact #1: You do not need a model release to take pictures.

Nuff said. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Everyone in the world has a camera on their phones, and photos are taken constantly. You don't need someone's permission to take their pictures. Now, just because you might eventually intend to sell your photos has nothing to do with the ability to take pictures in the first place.

Fact #2 You do not need a model release to sell pictures. And "profit" has no effect on whether a release is required.

First, newspapers buy photos, and their use of the photo is unlikely to need a release. So, selling a photo (and making a profit doing so) to a newspaper also does not require a release. And because the law does not require you to have any knowledge of the buyer or their intended use of a photo, you are always allowed to sell photos without a release.

Fact #3 You do not need a model release to make photos available for sale, either on your own website, or through a stock agency.

If one can sell a photo without a release, one must also be able to "make photos available for sale" without a release. This includes the publication of such photos in a manner that would allow potential buyers to find them.

The legal case that established precedent for this was Corbis vs. James Brown, where the judge called the depiction of a photo as being for sale a "vehicle of information". Here, consent from a subject is not required.

Therefore, one can make photos available for sale in any manner of publication and media, whether it's traditional print or online formats, including personal web pages, photo-sharing sites, social media sites, stock photo sites, or mostly anywhere.

For detailed information, see the article, Model Release Primer.

Fact #4: A "property release" is NOT required to sell or buy photos of buildings or people's personal property (like land).

The root of this misunderstanding is complicated. The term "property" in an actual "property release" refers to two particular forms of intellectual property: trademarks and copyrights. Examples include logos, designs and other works.

Now, just because these are "protected" works, it doesn't mean that one cannot publish photos of them. It only means that the manner in which such works are depicted cannot cause confusion among the general public about who "owns" the properties, or other legally complex factors. It is impossible for a photo of a bottle of coke to cause the general public to suddenly think that the Coca Cola company was now owned by a freelance photographer in Topeka. If the photographer sold the image to a publisher, and the publisher's use of the image would imply that it had a unique and special business relationship with Coke, then that would trigger a trademark infringement claim. But that would be with the publisher, not the photographer, nor the stock agency that sold the image. Furthermore, such an infringement couldn't possibly happen by merely the photo being printed. Text around the photo would have to give this impression. And, since the photographer or anyone selling such a photo cannot know or control how a publisher uses a photo, they could never be held liable for the infringement.

Like the myth about the tongue's different taste regions, the history of the "property release" stems from a single misimpression from long ago. Certain physical structures, such as the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica building in San Francisco happen to be registered trademarks. And, they have been infringed upon inappropriately in the past, but these were cases that have nothing whatsoever to do with photography. And at the time, news of these suits briefly caused publishers to shy away from publishing photos of such places unless photographers could provide property releases for them. Those releases were not for the buildings, but for the right to use the trademarks. This was very short-lived, however, because it is impossible for photographers to obtain "true" (and legally valid) property releases for trademarks without paying enormous sums of money. So, even though the publishers stopped asking for those releases, the rumor perpetuated nonetheless: photographers erroneously interpreted these requests as "mandates" that all photos of buildings required "property releases." And they've been behaving that way ever since.

To be crystal clear, property releases are not required to sell or resell photos of buildings and other real estate (or physical property of any sort, such as land, pets, livestock, homes, etc). If something happens to be a registered trademark (building or otherwise), then the publisher will already be quite aware that they are the ones that need to obtain permission from the trademark owner (which may not even be the building owner). Any permission obtained by the photographer would be entirely useless to the publisher. In fact, every single property release used by photographers gives no legal right to use a trademark, and since buildings and other items do not require consent for photos of them to be used, these property releases are worthless pieces of paper. But they also cause no harm.

For more, see Photographers' issues concerning trademarks and photography.

Fact #5 You usually do not need permission to shoot pictures of (or on) private property.

While it's true that property owners can restrict photography, that's not saying much. They can also stop you from picking your nose. It's their property, so they can stop anyone from doing anything. You've seen signs that say, "No shoes, no shirt, no service." There's also the sign that reads, "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." In short, property owners can apply restrictions indiscriminately and inconsistently and arbitrarily.

But, the owner has to proactively take an action to prevent you from doing things. It's not that you're prohibited from actions by default, and they then grant you permission later. So, most of the time, there are rarely (if any) actual restrictions property owners enforce.

This includes taking pictures. It's permitted by default, and to prevent it they must take explicit actions, including (but not necessarily limited to) posting signs, as noted above. If you are not stopped (or are given reasonable advanced notice), any photos you take are legitimate, and can be sold legitimately. (See later section on "ownership.") Further, one may not retroactively enforce their restriction. That is, if you were at a private event, and then later told you were not allowed to take pictures, it has no affect on your photos or your ability to sell those images. (Publishers, on the other hand, may need releases if the nature of the publication would require it. But that doesn't affect the photographer's liability.)

So, if you're in a bar, or in an amusement park, or touring a winery, you are allowed to take pictures unless you're told not to while you're there. And if you do take pictures, you can sell them to any buyer willing to assume the risk, if any exists.

Sometimes, photographers will often seek permission to shoot pictures ahead of time. This is not only unnecessary, but invites someone from stopping them. If you know ahead of time that you will need permission, that's another story.

Fact #6: You do not need releases for Art, Books, Exhibitions, Presentations, Fairs, Contests, Postcards, Calendars, Etc.

At the risk of over-simplification, the only time a release is needed is if a person can be seen as supporting or advocating an idea, product or service. True, there are often disputes about whether a given publication of a photo of someone could be construed in such a way, but the dispute gets closer into the safety zone when that publication is a form of artistic expression. The First Amendment of the US Constitution protects "artistic exhibitions" (and publications) as a form of free speech, so consent from anyone else—by definition—is never required. Money or profit has nothing to do with whether a work is published or "depicted in an artistic manner."

Again, people argue frequently about whether such depictions are, in fact, artistic in nature, which leads to a complex argument: is it art, and if not, is it a promotion, and if so, is it the type of promotion that should have required consent from the person in the photo?

While these are all good questions, the reality is that no one has ever successfully won the argument that a model release was necessary for a photo that was used in a book, in an art gallery, or at a fair, or any of the items in the above list. In short, the law is on the side of the First Amendment by default - a claimant bears the burden of proving otherwise, and that's a difficult and very expensive bar to clear. While is indeed a very deep and complex subject, those wishing to seek quick answers can feel relaxed: "don't worry. You're fine."

For for more info, I encourage you to read this.

Fact #7: Photographers do not need releases for photos in their portfolio.

A portfolio is a collection of artistic works that demonstrate the skills and talents of the photographer. Permission is not required in order to use photos of people in a portfolio. This includes all forms of publication of the portfolio, whether in physical form, or as a website, or other media.

The one thing to be aware of, however, is that sometimes photographers take pictures of people in special, "closed sessions," where an agreement was made ahead of time—before the photo was taken. If a subject posed for a photographer with the pre-arranged agreement that the photos would not be used in a portfolio or any other manner, than that agreement takes precedent. (Of course, a new agreement, such as a model release, can supersede it.)

For more on this, see Personal Privacy and Model Releases

Fact #8: Posting photos online is just another form of publishing.

What determines the need for a release is whether a photo makes someone appear to support, advocate or promote ideas, products or services. The medium itself is irrelevant, whether it's traditional physical media, or online/electronic media. One cannot say whether a release is required for photos "posted on the web" because it depends on the way the photo depicts the person in it.

When photographers put images on their professional website, they think that this suggests that the people in those photos could be construed as sponsors or advocates, but that's not complete. Putting photos online to "sell" does not require a release, depictions of "art" do not require a release, and a "portfolio" does not require a release. The only way a photo would require a release is if the photographer created a self-promotional piece (such as an ad) that promoted his or her services, and used a photo of someone that might suggest it is a client.

Fact #9 Ownership of physical pictures and ownership of rights are different.

When people hire photographers to take pictures of them, they think they own the photos, or have rights to publish them. They don't. This has to be agreed upon, usually ahead of time (but it can be negotiated later.) Normally, this isn't a problem. But where things break down is when subjects don't like the photos of themselves. Here, they try to demand them back, but they don't have this right. (They also cannot retract permission if it's been granted in writing, such as a model release.)

The same thing is true of pictures taken on (or of) people's property. They think that because it's their house, or their private event, or their pet, that they have the rights to the photos. They don't. Nor can they stop the photographer from publishing those photos. Non-humans do not have inherent rights, unless protected by trademark or copyright.

Concusion

The reality is that photographers (and stock agencies) don't get sued for the publication of an unreleased image. And given the very high cost of suing someone, litigants are usually told by their lawyers to go after the "publishers" of the images in question, as they are the ones who bear the true legal liability.

As an active photographer, understand that most people are entirely uninformed about model releases, and factor this into your business dealings. Publishers, stock agencies and many others may vehemently demand a model (or property) release before buying photos, or for accepting your images into a stock agency. Despite their being wrong, this is the way of the world, and you can only do what they ask, or don't play.

But don't underestimate the sales potential of your unreleased images, and the large market of buyers who don't make such demands.

For those with interest in reading the details, I have many articles that answer all the technical questions, like this one and this one. I also wrote a book called, Photographer's Guide to Model Releases.

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.

Flatter Stock Licensing Tiers

I was recently sent email from someone who asked very good--and very common--questions, and I thought it might be apropos for my blog:

Do you think that a price does not depend on target audience? I imagine that for web use it has not a sense, but for books, newspapers, magazines, CDs: does not it have still importance in current market?

The current stock photo market is such that simplicity is king. For the most part, buyers are no longer accustomed to pricing tiers based on the criteria you mentioned above. Back before the internet, buyers and sellers had those pricing tiers because the economics permitted it. That is, buyers understood that different uses and tiers made it possible for them to get access to commodities that used to be under much tighter controls. In the 1990s and before, stock photography was sold through glossy, elaborately designed books; if a buyer wanted a photo of a tiger, there was a page with about 10-15 images, and that was the entire lot to choose from. When the supply of images and the distribution channel are tightly controlled, the distributor has much more control over the pricing structures.

Furthermore, the supply chain between image creators and users was more complex and expensive: there's the overhead of having slides sent (both ways), the overhead of scanning and touching up photos, personnel and expertise in design and technology, all of whom were skilled and nuanced trades.

The combination of a controlled distribution channel and an expensive supply chain implied a delicate balance in the financial flexibility between buyers and sellers, each wiggling up and down in price negotiations to settle at an equilibrium: a pricing structure that allowed lower-revenue editorial clients to participate alongside their commercial counterparts. This inherent inequality was balanced by those very pricing tiers, where buyers could plan their publication budgets so that they could put more money into images that appeared on more prominent positions (e.g., a cover shot vs interior pages), or to buy more or less "exclusive" content that fit their needs.

But then the internet and digital photography came into the picture. Here, the cost of creation and distribution of images went to zero, which subsequently opened up the channel to everyone that was previously locked out: consumers, hobbyists and semi-professionals. These two factors contributed to the collapse of the entire economic "reasoning" behind the pricing structures of stock licensing. Back in 1999, I said that it'd take about 10 years for this to filter through the economic ecosystem, and the supply/demand imbalance would erode those tiers, and the pricing structures would invariably flatten.

Indeed, publications no longer hire high-end photo editors with an art degree, skilled in design, and savvy in the business of creating quality publications. As lower-skilled (and lower paid) workers leveraged increasingly more sophisticated page-layout and print software, very high-quality publications can be created at much lower physical and employment costs. This has created a fundamental shift in the economics of every single business that uses imagery, not just photographers and agencies. Every company in the world uses photos of some kind at some point in the company's lifetime, and since companies employ people, one can say that the entire world's cultural attitude about imagery shifted: it's no longer considered a skilled labor, but that of a commodity, where just about anyone can do "a reasonably good job" (not that all of them actually do).

The net effect on the photo industry is a recycling of the photo-editor staff to an entirely different kind of employee. This new photo buyer is not only unaccustomed to any of the historical tiers of pricing rationale, but they are financially constrained to work within a budget that, like it or not, yields no material difference in the overall business. In a difficult economy, where companies share the financial challenges as the employees they employ, those who try to be the Good Samaritans and help the needy photographer only find they suffer at the bottom line.

Now, all that said, there's one overwhelming factor that can be used to preserve pricing structures: the fact that the most overwhelming cost associated with acquiring images is not the license fee of an image, but the cost of search and acquisition. The huge supply of images on the internet, and the exceedingly poor search mechanisms on all search-based sites (ranging from Google to the common stock agency) means that finding images is a very costly endeavor for photo buyers, irrespective of their "skill." As I've written in the past, it often takes anywhere from 1-5 hours per image for a photo researcher to find a set of images that exceed the lowest-threshold of acceptability for their needs. The actual cost of the license is negligible compared to the cost of search and acquisition.

(Note that the latest Pulitzer Prizes for economics has gone two to economists who've used the same mechanism to explain the disparity between the high rate of employment at the same time as there is also huge amounts of unfilled jobs. They came to the same conclusion: the cost of "finding where those jobs are" exceeds the feasibility for the job-seekers to go get them.)

Accounting for this economic reality, I have flattened my pricing tiers from the more traditional menu of editorial/commercial use and "placement", to that of a single metric: the size of the image. I don't care about anything else because I'm reflecting the attitudes of modern photo buyers: they don't care or understand the older pricing rationales and just want to get the image they want and get out. They are more prone to buy when the licensing mechanism is fast and simple.

Though my prices have also lowered a bit, they have not dropped nearly at the same rate as the pricing structures found in stock photo agencies, big and small. The rate of photo buying on my site has not dropped, despite the fact that my prices are 100-1000% higher than those on microstock sites. But don't let the huge percentage ranges fool you: just because I may sell an image for $50 when a microstock might sell the same image for $1 doesn't really mean anything to the photo buyer. That cost differential is largely irrelevant. They know that in order to save $49, they have to go back to the research stage, retrofit new images into their page layout, get new approval from clients, and so on. That's not worth the $49 difference.

What about exclusivity? Have you ever licensed an
image with a exclusivity clause for a certain amount of months/years?

Perception of exclusivity is way overblown. While all buyers love the idea of using an image that no one else will use -- which often causes them to "request" exclusivity -- the economic reality is that there's very little market for that. Whenever anyone asks for it, and I quote them any kind of upcharge, they always say, "nah, forget it." The issue of exclusivity turns most photographers into worry-warts, concerned that they'll fail to get the gig, or license the image, or scare away the client... And of course, they don't know what to quote, which they feel they need to do because the client asks for a quote.

My recommendation is not to worry about this, but instead, give a simple explanation to the client that the need for exclusivity is largely overblown. Unless the image was specifically shot for the client and contains very unique or proprietary information (people, things, or access), the upcharge for exclusivity will not pencil out to be worthwhile. In a global market of many images and many businesses, the risk of having the same image used by a competitor (or anyone else) is too low to bother paying the upcharge. Yes, I am aware of the famous 'oops' stories -- these are anomalies, not truly representative of the market.

... how could you manage everything before becoming a full
time photographer? I mean your previous job, photos, website, business
analysis, blog, wife and a child?...

I have always recommended that no one should ever enter into the business of licensing photography as their sole source of income. This is not the type of job that you jump into and instantly start making money. You should always start with photography as a hobby, build your inventory, establish your web presence, participate in social networking, and set up a stock-licensing fulfillment system. And do all this while you have a real job (or income) doing something else. If you go about your hobby efficiently and effectively, your licensing income will grow, and more importantly, be sustainable and predictable. Your traffic to your site should be a repeatable wave pattern (high traffic during the week; lower on weekends), and your sales should be similarly consistent. If this data is erratic, your business is not yet established well enough to rely on it as your sole source of income.

There are many other career-building aspects to this, and I cover them all here: http://www.danheller.com/biz-sense

2009 Year in Review: Web Optimization

In this second segment of my series, "2009: Year in Review," I discuss issues related to managing my web presence. Some of these methods directly result in income, such as advertising dollars, whereas others indirectly affect income, such my ranking in search engines or by directing traffic towards monetizable content. Nothing discussed here addresses my actual sales and licensing methods, which was addressed in Part 1 of this series.

Web Traffic and Advertising

Traffic to my site has marginally increased by 16% from the same time last year (2008). More specifically, I averaged about 15,000 visitors a day in 2009, but the number would have been much higher had it not been for a technical mis-decision I made during the summer months that dramatically dropped my rankings, which had to do with "keyword stuffing", discussed later. Normalizing for that, my traffic has been pretty steady at around 16-18K unique visitors a day, compared to 14-15K/day in 2008. (Stats can be seen here.)

While that may sound impressive, it's not that simple. There are a number of devils in the details, and sifting through the data is only half the battle. For example, the bounce rate (the rate at which people leave my site after viewing the first page) rose to 8.5%, and the average time on site dropped by 11%. In other words, people are leaving my site sooner than before.

One would think that this is a bad thing, but there's other data that suggests otherwise. For example, advertising revenue more than doubled; in some cases (some pages and topics) tripled and quadrupled. All those people "bouncing" away without spending time on my site are clicking on ads. For 2009, advertising revenue jumped to represent 17% of total income.

One might say that I'm losing potential buyers to advertisers, but that's not what's going on. Most of the ads on my site are not for photography prints or licensing, which is the lion's share of my online transactions. That is, people are clicking on ads because they decidedly do not want anything I have to offer. I don't care that they leave; it just so happens that they're paying me a effective "exit tax." Or rather, the people who are getting my traffic are paying that tax.

Indeed, this turns out to be mutually beneficial: advertisers whose own sites don't rank well for some search terms, actually get a lot more relevant traffic from my site than they would if they paid to get onto Google's search page directly. That is, they'll pay ten cents to a dollar per click to put an ad on my page (through Google's adwords program), compared to twice or three times that much to put the same ad on Google's search results page. They may not quite get the same number of total traffic, but they'll get much more relevant traffic that converts to revenue if they place those ads on my site (or any of the other top-ranked sites). This kind of advertising-indirection costs them less, they get better bang for the buck. Best of all, I get a cut of it. :-)

I should point out that this isn't always so straightforward for advertisers, because targeting a specific site can be costly (in the form of lost opportunity, not necessarily money) if that site isn't consistently well-ranked. That is, if they target a site that appears to rank well sporadically (because their content changes), they could get a boost of traffic for a short time, and then go dark. Since my site has been around for a long time and is generally stable, this risk is not a concern.

In fact, many advertisers come directly to me and pay me to put their ads on my pages, rather than going through Google. There are advertising aggregators that have clients that pay them to do this analysis, and my site is coming up more often in their radar. My advertising rates are not based on clicks or impressions; they're flat fee rates, which advertisers like a lot for a high-traffic site like mine.

This then begs the question: what was the actual end-user looking for that they landed on my site, even though I didn't have what they were looking for? Why am I ranked so highly for them? Isn't that a problem with the search results?

First of all, the bounce rates are still quite low. Google does accurately put users on pages that match their searches. Of the low number of people who bounce, it's usually because they used the wrong search terms in the first place, and Google couldn't possibly know that ahead of time.

Take the Olympics in Vancouver, for example. If you search for "photos of vancouver", I'm currently ranked #8 on Google. (Before the Olympics, I was ranked among the top three.) So, I get a lot of people looking for olympics photos, even though they didn't use the term, "olympics" in their search query. When they don't see such images on my Vancouver page, users click on an ad that gets them where they wanted to go.

Vancouver is only one of a long list of examples. At the moment, I score very highly for phrases like:

1. "black and white pictures" (Google Rank: #4)
2. "what kind of camera should I buy" (#6),
3. "learning photography" (#2)
4. "photography business" (#1)
5. "model release" (#1)
6. "star trails" (#1)
7. "fill flash" (#1)
8. "photographing people" (#1)
9. "selling prints" (#1)
10. "photography marketing" (#3)
11. "sahara desert" (#5)
12. "stairs" (#6)
13. "photos of doors" (#1)
14. "photos of new york city" (#3)
15. "photos of san francisco" (#1)
16. "photos of kids" (#1)
17. "photos of united states" (#1)
18. "photos of patagonia" (#3)
19. "photos of cuba" (#1)

These are but a few among hundreds of phrases that Google ranks my site and/or pages among the top-five. But the key is that these terms are generic and they themselves do not bring traffic that can be attributed to a single dime of sales revenue.

While they are good for generating advertising revenue, there's an even better benefit to ranking high for generic search patterns: Non-buyer traffic out-strips buyers by orders of magnitude, and any traffic--buyers or not--contributes to the overall ranking of my site. When people search using more specific terms (for content that they do want to purchase), my site will rise in those search results, yielding sales.

So the objective is to have as many pages rank as highly as possible. One key strategy here is that I don't particularly care to rank highly for any single or small set of search terms--that doesn't necessarily benefit me. It's just having my site itself be indexed well for whatever content the search engines deem appropriate. And therein lies the question: how do they determine what search terms should send users to my site? Since they cannot determine what's inside of a photo the way a human eye does, search engines look for other clues to determine the content of a page that otherwise has very little text: metadata.

Keywording

I've blogged before about keywording; it's a huge topic. I'm not going to reiterate points I already made, but to appreciate how and why I employ my keywording methods, you need to at least understand this very basic set of truisms:

1. Most image buyers use search engines first, stock agencies second.
   Search engines act like "metasearch" for all the stock sites, as well as many other image sources, including mine, yours, everyone else's. It's best to use keywording techniques advised by search engines, not stock photo agencies.
2. Search engines are intelligent about search queries.
   Unlike days long ago, they know all the synonyms that are related to a common root. So, you do not need to include the singular and plurals, all the variants of "dog" (canine, puppy, pooch, etc.), and so on. What's more, intelligent search is becoming more common, even among stock agencies. The need to stuff your images with synonyms and other related keywords to make your list "more thorough or complete" is gone. In fact, attempting to do so can backfire on you. (More about that later.)
3. Controlled Vocabularies are a complete waste of time.
   There was once a time when such lists were useful, because it made the job of image search much easier for unsophisticated (brute force) search algorithms. Controlled vocabularies helped you use a small, consistent set of words, which kept you from using dozens of similar words that might come up with different search results when the user input search queries.
   
   While that premise was useful, it only addresses half the equation: the weakest link in search is not you, it's the end-users. Or rather, the search queries they submit. These people are not going to conform to controlled vocabularies. So, in order to map their queries to your images, their input text has to be converted to root words anyway. If the search algorithm is going to do this to end-user queries, it can (and should) also do it with your keyword list. Forcing you to conform to a list becomes a waste of time.
4. Keywording should take only a few minutes and minimal thought.
   It's very easy to over-think how people might find your images, or to worry that your images might not be found if someone uses a series of queries that you didn't think of. But this kind of over-thinking can negatively affect if and how your images are found. End-users learn very quickly to be very conservative in their search queries, or they will get a lot of irrelevant results, rapidly wasting their time. They may experiment with creative, conceptual, or "refined" queries to see what they get, but it doesn't take long to learn to "keep it simple." So should you. Keywords should include only the most basic, obvious, and prominent items in the photo. Search engines also rank the quality of photos (and the sites that host them) on their brevity. More than ten keywords will diminish a photo's rank because it usually means that someone is going to stuff the keyword list with unrelated words in an attempt to game the system. This is a common technique among photographers who submit their images to dozens of microstock agencies who do not enforce such restrictions, and who use brute-force (letter-for-letter) search algorithms. Keyword stuffing--also known as "keyword pollution"--has proven to be effective for such photo sites because it allows those images to be found ahead of other, potentially more relevant results for any given search.

In fact, I fell victim to "keyword stuffing" myself midway through 2009. In my automated keyword algorithms, which normally strips redundant or "similar" keywords, I had thought I was being clever by adding in location information (city, state, country) into the keyword list. Yet, what I found was that because the IPTC data already had these keywords, which search engines tap into, and because my keyword list grew (unnecessarily) by three more words, this dropped my rankings down by several notches, which kept me out of the "top fold" of search engine results. It's a huge deal dropping from #3 to #6 or #7 for a given search term, and you can see the results of this in my site traffic data over the summer of 2009.

Needless to say, this cost me quite a bit in traffic, which affected every other aspect of my business, from sales to advertising rates.

You can imagine, therefore, that "effective keywording" (so that images and website are deemed "credible" and ranked highly) is a hotly debated issue in the photo community. It's also one where entrepreneurs try to come up with solutions--some good, some not so much.

One example is a product "imense annotator" (annotator.imense.com), which has some interesting ideas, such as an image-recognition algorithm that tries to guess keywords that might describe the people in an image. It will do a reasonable job in ascertaining the ages, sex and ethnicity of people in a photo, and then attach those keywords to your images. Clever, and possibly quite useful more to a stock agency than an individual. This is because agencies have millions of images to process, none of which have been (or will be) seen by company staff. On the other hand, original photographers that shot the images could do this task quite easily on their own. One can only shoot so many images in a day, and since one has to eventually go through a manual (if not minimal) keywording phase anyway, one can assign the keywords associated with the "people" photos as part of that process. This shouldn't be all that time-consuming for reasonably well-disciplined photographers. And human analysis on such things is always going to outperform a computer. (Yes, I say this as an active programmer.)

(Note: The annotator only does people/facial recognition.)

All other aspects of annotator look and sound cool, but are considerably less effective in practicality. Again, these include "commercial vocabularies", "crowdsourcing" and "controlled vocabularies." As noted earlier, these ultimately contribute to the perils of keyword stuffing that search engines don't like--and which only serve to confuse stock agencies' less sophisticated search algorithms.

Another thing to keep in mind is keywording is often done once, and then you never touch those particular images again. Therefore, whatever you use as keywords today are likely to stick with your images long into the future. But technology doesn't sit still--especially image-recognition and search algorithms. For these, time has a tendency to speed by rather quickly. Before you know it, most search engines will be incorporating the same sort of algorithms like the annotator above. In fact, Google's own image recognition features are rather well developed, and can be seen in action if you use their Picasa image management solutions.

In any event, the point is that keywording is a classic case where "less is more." Images should have minimal base tokens in the keyword list; the search "intermediary" interprets the uncontrolled end-user queries and maps them to the minimal keyword list in your images. This is and will always be the most effective way for images to be found.

While I don't necessarily fault software companies for coming up with creative ways to "enhance" keywording, I draw the line when companies actually recommend methods and behaviors that are wholly counter-productive. An example is Cradoc Software's latest product, fotoKeyword Harvester, a product that does a form of semi-automation of keywording your images. While I am a fan of the company in many ways because it tries to also be the photographer's "coach" on many vital business matters, it has never been on the forefront of the photo business--rather, they seem to be stuck in the 1990s with many of them. Alas, most of their advice, while applicable 10-15 years ago, is well behind the times today.

In the case of the Keyword Harvester, the company sent out an article titled, "best ways to keyword images using concepts and attributes." A quote is: "You'll need to start paying attention to how images convey messages in advertising." They say:

One of the most valuable types of keywords for an image are things called Concepts. A concept is a term that describes non-concrete aspects of your image, an abstract idea. Concepts are used by advertisers to sell their product with the use of your image. They want the consumer to think of something specific when their product is thought of. (...) For example: Wells Fargo Bank uses images of cowboys, wagon trains, horses, and the wild west to promote their business. The concepts for these images are: excitement, freedom, trust, historic, strong, powerful.

There are several problems with all this. First is one I highlighted above in my bullet list: photo searchers (commercial or not) do not use conceptual search terms very often--at least, not with much success as they once did when the stock industry was far smaller, before digital images, and before the internet--a time when almost all stock sales were dominated by Getty Images. Back then, yes, conceptual keywords worked. And this was because Getty internally controlled all keywords for all images. Also, they had their own intelligent search, and they controlled the images in their databank.

Today, images are found in many places, are keyworded by arbitrary staff--or worse, photographers--and the consistency is impossible to centralize and manage. The direct result is that photo buyers don't search the way they once did. (This is an example of Cradoc seems to be stuck in the 1990s.)

It's easy to put this to the test: go to images.google.com and search for the "conceptual keywords" that Cradoc said represented the kind of themes Wells Fargo uses in their imagery. I tried every word on their list, as individual search terms, in pairs, in triplets, and as the entire group. Not one single set of results from these queries contained images that would ever be used by Wells Fargo. They are totally unrelated to all their business models. This is not unique; it's rarely ever the case that conceptual keyword searches yield desirable results. That's why most searchers don't use them anymore.

By contrast, if you search for images based on the actual elements used by Wells Fargo imagery -- cowboys, wagon trains, horses -- image search results show many images similar to those the bank actually uses.

Again, the lesson: keep it simple. Don't get clever. Do not try to anticipate what the searcher might use as search terms. Photo researchers are more afraid of you than you are of them. They are going to keep it simple, too.

I can verify this with my own statistics: My site gets about 19,000 search queries a day on my own search pages. Of the search terms I get, 99% are for very specific items. Furthermore, when someone actually licenses an image from me, and I track their search patterns that lead up to the sale, it is never the case that people use conceptual terms.

In preparation for this article, I interviewed one particular client about how he tends to search for images. He said, "I found that sites are so inconsistent about search terms, that I've learned not to use big words. Just be as specific as possible to the actual things I want to see in a photo."

When I asked him how he chose the particular photo he licensed from me, and what search terms he used leading up to it, he said he wanted a "futuristic landscape." When he tried that phrase (and derivatives, such as "future" and "cityscape") on Google, Getty and Corbis, he got nothing like what he wanted. So, he just got specific: "glowing buildings", which lead him to the image he licensed from my site, which can be seen here.

Keywording Methods

So, let's get to brass tacks: how should you keyword your images? Google has a document called, Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, which includes tips on optimizing your images for search. It all boils down to:

1. The image's filename should include the most relevant elements of the image.
   For example, if it's a photo of a boy and a dog, use "boy-dog.jpg". If you have many such images, use sequences: boy-dog-1.jpg, boy-dog-2.jpg, etc.
2. Use keywords sparsely.
   The more keywords you try to associate with an image, the more you dilute it, bringing down its "rank" and relevancy (and credibility) with search engines, or with given search queries. This is because search engines use two key metrics to determine how well a given image matches a search parameter: the ratio of matches between an image's keyword list and that of the search query, and the filename of the image. For example, if the user entered the query, "boy and dog", the search engine sees two words: "boy" and "dog." (It throws out filler words like "and.") Here, the image named, boy-dog.jpg has a 100% hit ratio of query terms with keyword terms, and the keywords were in the filename. Note that the actual photo itself may very well be that of a fish and a boat. (Google doesn't actually look at that, because, well, it doesn't know how.)
3. Avoid using synonyms and other "related" terms in keyword lists
   That is, do not attempt to be thorough in describing images with keywords. That's not your job. Search engines already know how to do that. They've got thousands of programmers with PhDs doing that for you (and for the end-user). The more you try to "help," the more you're actually interfering with the process, which reduces your relevancy and ranking.

The good news about keywording is that proper and effective use of keywords is extremely simple and shouldn't require much (if any) thought or time. Using myself as an example, my workflow involves two phases: the edit phase (where I rename all my photos so that their filenames reflect their content), and the keywording phase, where I apply individual words to images--usually in very large batches.

For example, let's say I'm on a photo shoot of a boy and a dog. After editing out the stuff that gets tossed, I'm left with several hundred images, where I then name them just as recommended by Google: boy-dog-lake.jpg, boy-dog-bridge.jpg, boy-dog-1.jpg, etc. In order to assure the highest ratio of search queries to keyword terms, I try to limit filenames to two to six words, though most are either three or four. This is a difficult decision because if I use too many words, I may "match" more queries, but the ratio will be diluted. If I use too few words, I will rank highly for very narrow searches, but may miss more opportunities. This trade-off is a zero-sum game, so rather than try to game the system, I just be honest: determine what's in the photo, and use that as the filename.

Any words that may be "in" the photo, but seems to be less relevant are then added to the keywords list in the image's metadata. And even then, I rarely add more than two or three words, usually modifiers such as "young" or "funny."

Naming files is often very quick because most are batches of similar images. One only needs to browse a given gallery on my site to see the number of similar images that are shot together. The keywording process is similarly fast, also involving mass-assignment of specific, unambiguous words to large batches of images. My rule of thumb is that keywording thousands of images should take no more than 30 minutes.

Most any image-management software can add keywords; I happen to use Adobe Bridge, which is bundled for free with Photoshop or any of the creative suite products.

Note that if you inspect the images on my site, you may notice that they appear to have lots of keywords. Most of these keywords aren't actually in the images that I process--these are added later by an automated post-production algorithm that generates all my static html pages. I do all this to present hints to the end-user for suggested related search terms to stimulate new search ideas.

Maps

The newest addendum to my website is the use of Google Maps. Essentially, each of my web pages incorporates a google map to represent where every photo was taken. While it may seem frivolous, there's been great advantage to the maps. (It also wasn't entirely easy; Google set up the whole mechanism for the sole purpose of presenting maps based on specific street and/or mailing addresses. I have no interest in that level of detail; I just wanted to generate maps for generic locations, like city/state/country. Well, that isn't quite so easy because there are many streets named after cities, states and countries, and there's no way to tell Google maps that I'm not interested in street addresses, just general city maps.)

Though I instituted maps onto my site late in December, the effect its had on my traffic and ranking has been a surprise. Search engines seem to give extra boost to web pages that are geo-tagged--that is, they indicate location. When people search for images where the search parameters include a location, my pages get an additional bump. I've seen about a 10% boost in traffic two months after having introduced geo-tagging onto my web pages, and I look forward to seeing more data to quantify the extent to which geo-tagging has long-term benefits.