Assignment sales update

While the internet advertising continues to pull in a few enquiries the major play I will be making is to make direct contact with second tier design agencies in London. Yesterday I took receipt of 500 postcards designed to attack the market for the photography of "Real people" in "Real locations". It's what I do best and generates photography for brochures, websites and annual reports.

I am convinced that companies and the better designers will soon realise that yet another brochure or website populated with sterile iStockPhoto images will be a disaster. High budget shoots with models are, well, high budget.

The best people to project a business in images are the company's own people.

Tomorrow I take delivery of 800 address labels for these second tier agencies.

Tomorrow, however, is also stock shooting day. Right now I'm looking at Heathrow Terminal 5 and some unglamorous West London industrial architecture. I am anticipating that Terminal 5 will be so chaotic that no one will notice me.....

Photography and the credit crunch

In my new disciplined time management regime, Thursday is due to be my "stock shooting" day or "awayday" as I sometimes put it. A day to get out and do some stock photo shooting - but it's going to be cold, wet and windy, surely a day to stay indoors?

No, hang on, after years of an artificial smile all over the face of businesses pretending that all is well, bonus induced smiles on the face of those who just happen to to have been in the right place at the right time (while there, just following the herd), and a smile on the face of all those dollar stock photos being sold for identical uses on the websites and brochures of businesses pretending to full of 'nice' people, we suddenly face a crunch. A reality check. Thursday should surely be the day to get out into the City of London and take photos of miserable people on a miserable day....

Except it's not like that. It's Joe Ordinary who suffers when the people who run the City fantasy world get things wrong. Joe Ordinary sold a loan by the commission led salesman, who got a bonus on his commission because he sold Joe an insurance policy that won't pay out, a salesman who worked for a company with a huge call centre and a $1 photo of a girl with an artificial smile on its website, a company that got the money it lends through a multiplicity of clever deals all organised by clever people at another bank to stay (just) within the letter of the law in terms of the policing of a marketplace where all is geared up to give overpaid and under-talented people big bonuses for making more clever deals.

When it all this cleverness goes pear shaped, Clever Jim won't suffer. At least not in a way that normal people use the word. He'll just get a reduced bonus, or perhaps none at all, but he still earns 10 time what Joe Ordinary earns. Sure, some Clever Jims will lose their jobs, the unlucky ones, but not many. The system will have a quiet year or two, a few more years of relative conservatism before swinging into action again in mutual cleverness because if you are not inclined to be clever (or lucky, or of course arse lick) you are left behind. The surest way of all in this environment to lose your job.

How will this affect the assignment photographer? At least in my line the number of assignments should not fall too far. But art budgets for brochures and annual reports may be slashed. I see this as an opportunity for me to compete in new markets; I don't want to present myself as being cheap, undercutting, but if I can get across that the way I work allows people to generate the images they want in less time and less cost because of my methods and lower cost base.....

If there is a move towards using more 'real' people (rather than the artificial smile) then I stand to gain. The 'real' message is one I intend to push. Will the photography market reject artificiality? There's a section of the market that will always do out and buy the $1 pretty girl but I think there will be many out there who see that it's time for a mood change. We will see.

Enough S&M?

The timetable that I set up in my last post is still on the wall.... and more to the point I have been looking at it and trying to follow it! No matter that I've not spent as much time as I should on each of the business tasks, I have spent time on each of them that I might not have otherwise. I've also even found time to to some minor improvements in the home....

And I feel better because everything seems more in control, I'm in touch with all the important bits that I need to be in touch with and I have less to worry me.

So it does not matter that yesterday I did only a couple of hours of S&M. No Sales activity at all (because I'm still not 'there' to present my portfolio) but on the Marketing front I did choose and buy a more suitable portfolio box, and a nice bag to carry it in, so when I turn up at a prospect I can now actually look the part and just as importantly more confidentially feel the part.

I also prepared a few more images to go into the portfolio including the best one from the recent opera shoot and the one you see here of my daughter on a tram in Bilbao (I spent a little time on this one using layers to balance the interior and exterior light - a perfect example of the more personal image that is good for the portfolio).

Backup online - Photoshelter archive

Try as I might, I fail to come up with a backup strategy for my images which I can trust. The problem of tracking multiple backups to hard disks and my inability to then get hard disks out of my home always worries me. As does my daughter who has twice come close to burning down the house...

So I have succumbed to joining Photoshelter Archive, accessible from my Photoshelter Collection account (that's the edited online stock photo library) but otherwise quite independent of it. I have 10Gb of space at $9.99 per month and that will be enough to keep me going for a while.

As I write this all the images that I have so far prepared and submitted to the Photoshelter Collection are uploading in the background. These were chosen in the main as being my better more interesting stock photos (or at least the first ones that came to hand!) - fortunately I kept these images stored on my hard disk after preparation so now I can bulk upload to the Photoshelter Archive.

Curiously I'm uploading ALL the images again because I cannot transfer from Photoshelter Collection to Photoshelter Archive - but I can send images the other way. So in future I will upload to the Archive and then across to sell on the Collection. If they are not rejected by the editors, that is.....

Some of these stock photos being uploaded were rejected for the Collection. But I can now put them on sale through the Archive where the commission is only 10% - an alternative way of completing sales requests off photoconnect....

I'm fascinated by some of the other options on the Photoshelter Archive - including setting up a 'virtual agency' which allows for me and other photographers to share a separately branded sales platform - it could for example sit within photoconnect. Or anywhere - to compete with Photoshelter Collection using the same engine (more or less). But what a waste of time without a huge marketing budget, which Photoshelter Collection allegedly has.

The Photoshelter Archive is about more than storing and selling stock photos. It allows me to store:

• crucial client photos from assignments
• images from my portfolio and
• personal images that I do not want lost

It's also an alternative to email for securely transferring images to a client.

Images can be kept private, put on sale, shown in public portfolios or shared with individual clients.

Because I'm being reasonably fussy about what I store, and I am storing prepared high quality .jpgs only (not RAWs) the storage should go a long way - 2000 images maybe. This is good because the next level up in terms of membership is $29.99 per month - an interesting option if I wanted to showcase stock images on the Light Touch site - although why I should do this I'm not sure when I have photoconnect!

Selling assignment photography

Spent much of the day on a course at the Association of Photographers - a lot of demand with 20 there - far more than I thought. I was relieved not to be the oldest there!

There was lots about cold calling, about which I learned a lot, and about dealing with a 'go see' about which I learned less but when I'm in front of someone I'm rather more confident anyway.

The main points for me were:

• Use email to get something (eg image & link to website) in front of people
• That email's then referred to in a follow up call
• The statistics may seem loaded against (know what they are!) but this is moving into territory with much higher potential gains
• Every failed call is a statistical necessity to earns you ££££'s (always look on the bright side......)
  
• The pay for editorial shooting is rubbish!
  

There was a suggestion that in the event of someone requesting to unsubscribe then one should send some written material (eg a card) - I have not quite worked that idea out yet.

After the session I met a potential assistant who it turns out has telesales experience. Nice unassuming guy, with great enthusiasm. And cool too....

Starting again!

My writing here has been really sporadic but I'm going to turn my attention to it again to coincide with launching a new brand for me - on advice of friends and a little nagging doubt in my own mind about the use of 'ScottyH', I've decided to go for a touchy-feely branding in the shape of....

Light Touch

"Recording Light, to Touch the emotions"

or perhaps

"A photographer with a Light Touch"

and the domain is LightTouchImages.co.uk

This is of course my commercial photography outlet. The site's a mess right now but it helps to have it there for the search engines to pick it up. I'll be sending people to the old Scotty H photography site until I've sorted out the design but I'm going to push on now and look to get some real marketing going in a month or so.

It's all quite exciting for me;

Yell(p)!

A year ago I signed away over £700 to to Yell to market my website for me online.

The final outcome - 174 visits, about 5 enquiries, no clients.

That's about £4 per click, and a lot of money in the hands of someone else..

On Google Adwords I pay about £1.00 - £1.20 per click. I've spent about £800, got over 700 visitors and about 20 clients.

What's the difference?

Well on Adwords my photography services are presented in a tailored way, to businesses. So clicks start off as being of a high quality.

On Yell, it's all a bit general. So I imagine lots of the clicks are wasted. And the effective cost per click is far greater.

So I tried you Yell (in fact twice, because this was me giving you a second chance) - gone, but not forgotten.

Marketing update

I am plotting on this the blog the success or otherwise of various marketing tactics that I have employed.

Now, I do not consider myself to be an expert at marketing (and photographers should not read this in that light) but I can usefully report on the success or otherwise of some options that I have tried to sell my services as an assignment photographer (not my stock photography where of course I rely on Alamy and the pulling power of this site on the search engines).

I'm prompted to make this post by the latest monthly bill from yell.com.....

In December Yell sent me 20 visitors of which an astounding 35% became 'conversions' in the sense of getting to my contact page - but only one actually contacted me. It was one of those chummy approaches which make you think that the job is already sold but after I quoted came a deathly silence. So still no work from Yell.

I continue to get most of my work from the rather more cost effective Google Adwords adverts, and a free advert at the Creative Match website. I have since shelled out over £100 for an enhanced listing there - so far this has not brought an explosion of visitors but we shall see.

'Organic' visitors from the search engines to scottyh.net continue to grow, in particular for models looking for portfolios. I also gained an assignment in the City of London from that source. Evidently the fact that I charge puts most models off but there is something for me to work on there.

I also conducted a mailshot to about 300 publishers. This was conspicuously unsuccessful investment of about £150 in total and a fair bit of time. I am currently doing a similar but smaller exercise with design firms in London which is pulling in visitors to the site in rather greater numbers than the publishers that came but no contacts yet.

More next month........

Shock Horror! Yell works! Sort of....

Well it's not a new client but I did actually have someone contact me as a result of my Yell listing. And it was one of the UK's biggest advertising agencies to take pics ay their Xmas party.

I did not get the job (apparently they changed their mind on the actual coverage they wanted) but my name was passed to the Production Director re possible photography for their clients.....

The theory that I have heard is that if Yell do work then they get you important clients. We shall see, there's a long way to go yet.

Acclaim Images

Acclaim was at one time one of Photoconnect's direct competitors in that it it took in images from other photographers and garnered business by doing well in Google searches. Now it too has put up the signs regarding not taking in new photos - or photographers presumably.

After I stopped taking in new photographers here and Photoconnect became essentially just me, I felt fine about trying to sell my own images through Acclaim and uploaded about 80 images. Of these I only fed about 30 through to go live on the site because although my images carried IPTC data, it was still an unexpected slog getting them onto the site proper.

Athough on the outside Acclaim seemed a slick operation, on the inside things were a little different and the clarity of purpose seen in Fred Voetsch's postings on the StockPhoto group etc was replaced by a variety of messages giving the impression of a folksy setup trying to mix it with the big boys. In particular the obscure and/or lengthy image requests were coming thick and fast, a little like MyLoupe (another failure for me) and I was getting the impression that I had signed up for OnRequest images, not a stock photo site.

I looked at the sales page (for the whole site - they are quite open with this information) a couple of days ago and while I would be very happy to see something similar at photoconnect in terms of the number of images sold, there was no way that I could see this level of sales supporting Acclaim and its staff. That has been borne out by today's news of 3 staff being laid off. Since 2 are family members it must all be a bit emotional right now.

So it seems that Acclaim, like photoconnect, will sit there high in the searches and continue running. It seems that there will be a purge of images (there was a pointed post on StockPhoto a couple of weeks ago re similars).

Now where for photoconnect?

An encounter with Yell customer services

I raised the issue of London Commercial Photography very nice person at Yell Customer Services

"I am sorry that you feel like that" she said about 6 times (as a carefully worded alternative to "I am sorry we are crap") as I explained that three clicks a week would as likely as not get a nil return on my over £700 investment in Yell.com services. I explained that other photographers would like me jump ship at the end of the term and if this happened they would be left with one advertiser occupying all the positions.....

She had explained to me that as long as an advertiser had an arrangement with someone in the building, even just to collect mail, then it was a legitimate use of the premises from the point of view of Yell.

From the point of view of Yell, LCP's contribution to their coffers would be a lot more than mine so you might not be too surprised that they were not volunteering to do anything...

Free photos! (Maybe.....)

It's been a while getting around to it but at last I've set up my fight back against the relentless march of the micro agencies - yes free photos!

Well not quite free of course. It's a pretty restricted list of beneficiaries and anyone using a photo has to provide a link back to this site. That link helps with the Google ranking here and accordingly will help the site get found by people who will be paying for photos.

And what is the point of giving away images to governments and schools? Easy - no link is of more value than one from an educational establishment or government organisation. Links from these sites are a huge spur to online marketing efforts because they are so difficult to get and they are going to be genuine. So links from them give a site credibility and Google regards them as of being of much greater value than other links.

And some photographers object to giving photos to charities. I've always regarded giving money to certain charities as being a waste of money. For example, hospitals. Give £500m to the health service and the government (who will always fund it to the lowest level that is politically acceptable) will give £500m less. But overseas charities are different. No one cares too much how much is given to support people overseas, so they need it more.

And the page itself should of course pull in the punters looking for free photos. With the new watermark (it's not actually on the photo but it will seem it is) and the photo click protection the defences are up. It's not foolproof but it makes it just a bit more difficult.