Are You Giving Away Photos?
The grocery store gets you to come in by offering a coupon that makes you an offer you can’t refuse.
COUPONS  –  COUPONS
Car rental places are catching on, so are even stock photo agencies.
What could be better than free photos?                  Stock photography sites are drawing photobuyers into their websites with the alluring come-on of free photos that are, in effect, coupons.
Should you resort to “coupons”?                  This kind of marketing tactic is one that editorial stock photographers don’t need to employ, because their editorial photos grow in value as time moves on –unlike commercial stock photos that are more closely tied to trends or conform to current design dictates, and consequently fall out of fashion.
However, there’s no doubt it’s the way of the future – giving away photos. Free.                   What’s the catch? Do stock photo companies have an overflow of extra baggage that they’d  like to get rid of? Or are they wisely launching a marketing technique that is sure to be followed by the $5-a-picture on-line microstock business?
                The latter. Microstock companies are following a new Internet trend that has been used for years by the brick-’n'-mortar people: overstock.                When a product’s shelf life has expired (it’s not selling) they usher the items off to a second tier of businesses that are willing to take on the product (cheap!) and sell it to “dollar stores” or similar enterprises. Everyone benefits, including the customer. Extra baggage in the stock industry means extra administrative time, extra storage space, and extra keywords, not to mention disappointment on the part of buyers. Depending on the category –teens, office workers, industry, etc. – Microstock pictures have a shelf life of between two to five years. After that, they are usually relegated to the trash bin. But how does a photobuyer benefit? Well, everyone likes something for free, whether it turns out to be useful or not. The “free stock” purveyors say that this technique opens the door to many new and potential customers. Some may never have heard of the stock agency offering free photos, some may be former customers who forgot about them, and some may be window shoppers – all of whom just might go on to become long-term customers, once they have visited the website.
It’s not unlike the supermarket that offers an introductory coupon ($2 off this product). It’s called a loss-leader. Customers will come in the store drawn by the bargain, and look around and perhaps move beyond this back door bargain section into the front of the store.

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It works. And we can               expect that many stock photo               agencies will follow suit               and employ this strategy.
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Now that microstock has been around for a few years, the $5-a-picture industry has come to the realization that their exquisite clichés have a limited life span. Limited shelf life in the microstock industry is a fact of life. Styles, trends, and buzz-pix become popular, then become stale, and then die. (Remember those earlier pictures of suit-with-laptop-case-in-hand, rushing down the street? Do suits still carry laptop cases, or has the style moved on to shoulder slung satchels, or backpacks?)              The pictures that are given away will be only images that have been online for at least one year, and have had no sales.

THE EDITORIAL DIFFERENCE

In our field of editorial stock photography, we see an opposite effect.

Unlike commercial stock photos                 that have a short ‘shelf life,’ editorial stock photos often                 gain in their marketability                 with age.

The editorial stock photographs you are capturing today can easily experience an increase in their marketability as the years move on. A commercial stock photograph taken in the early 2000’s may have already lost its marketability, but an editorial stock photograph of an aborigine listening to a transistor radio in the 90′s will increase in its salability and become even more useable in this century.
Whether your interest area is the environment, politics, education, etc. your present pictures will be marketable not only today but also in the future. You’ll even be able to pass your collection on to your heirs as an annuity. Is this a new phenomenon? It has existed to a degree all along, but now it’s getting big.
Now that the publishing industry, which includes physical markets (print markets, on-line newspapers, etc.), but also “air-space” on TV, blogs, the Internet, social media, and future channels of publishing, has realized that nostalgia, entertainment, history, and memorabilia sells. (Who would’ve thought just a few short years ago that there would be a history channel on TV?)
If you are following a stock photo career of taking pictures in a category you love to work in, you will become a contributor to history.            Unlike the microstock companies who consider their throw-aways as dead-weight and un-saleable, your editorial stock pictures are becoming more valuable as time moves on.

As an editorial stock photographer you are going to find much more enjoyment when you are photographing subject matter that you like to take. Learn more about how to sell your photos at PhotoSource International and the PhotoSourceBANK, Pine Lake Farm, 1910 35th Road, Osceola, WI 54020 USA. Rohn Engh is director  and publisher of PhotoStockNotes. E-mail: info[at]photosource[dot]com Fax: 1 715 248 3800; www.photosource.com 

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