Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2016/07/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Tina, Gerry, Ted I do not think most understand when I say you have to think as a businessman. A competent businessman is always thinking of survival and profits, and accepts that markets evolve, and that the only reality worth considering is the state of the marketplace as it is at any point of time, and plans and runs his business accordingly. Believe me, what you are facing is no different from what any business faces at some point of time or the other - disruptive changes are a way of life now. Think Kodak and Fuji, and their respective strategies for surviving the sudden collapse in their core market, which had remained unchanged in a steady state for 75 years or so before the apocalypse struck. It does not matter whether you approve of the "crap" that rolls out of a million smartphones or not, that is, unfortunately the reality of the market, as is the fact that many are quite happy to sell photos for $2.00 per use. Reality of the market means you have to accept the fact that high margins are a thing of the past in general stock photography, and figure out how to make a living in your chosen profession, i.e. photography. There are basically four alternatives if you are in stock photography, as I see it from the outside - there may be many more niches that I am not aware of as I have never really participated in this particular marketplace: - also start taking "crap" and compete at US$2.00 (or whatever) per use - develop a niche that does not have many players. As the niche becomes crowded, abandon it, and go to the next profitable one (or invent it!). This requires a very high degree of flexibility and risk taking ability. - raise the bar very high on the quality of your photographs, put much less for sale, increase prices, and then vigorously market yourself to targeted large users of stock. Obviously there is a high cost involved in developing a client, there is no such thing as a free lunch in this world. - get out of stock altogether for greener pastures. To my mind it is not true that you cannot make a living as a photographer anymore. There are many niches where the demand for high quality, high margin photography is actually going up - wedding, industrial, fine art, medical, fashion, advertising and event photography are a few that I can think of, as I have friends who make a very good living in these niches right now. There must be dozens of specialized niches that still give a good living, and are hard for the proletariat with their smartphones running amok to duplicate. The fact is that good times are unlikely to return in the general areas of photography, and moaning about the smartphone toting millions with derision will not change anything. The only way forward is to reinvent ourselves, and what we do, as that is the only piece of the jigsaw that we have control of. Incidentally, I really do believe that even getting US$2.00 a month or two later is better than getting nothing. A small anecdote - I was talking with a major Marwari (Indian equivalent of the Jews) industrialist 30 odd years ago, and asked him how his approach to money was different from mine. He replied that he was aware that 100 paise made a Rupee (or 100 cents a dollar), which I was not aware of. In other words, every little bit adds up, and great fortunes are made in increments of the smallest building block over time. I never forgot this lesson - it was a real eye opener for me at that time, and I think I was lucky to learn this relatively early. A last thought - most of you would also be using other services where the charges have plummeted over the years (telephone charges, brokerage, internet, broadband and cable TV charges, travel, etc - the list is endless). Would you like those to be hiked up back to what you paid in the glory days? Cheers Jayanand On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 7:31 PM, Ted Grant <tedgrant at shaw.ca> wrote: > Jayanand, > But that money maybe of nothing more than a mere dollar two today! :-( > If you've never earned your income shooting "stock?" I only did that as a > time killer as 99.9% of my career was on assignment paid by a client. > A much better fashion as it was by the day or on staff. > The stock shooters quite often made far more income. But basically living > and working dangerously as it was very nearly always a kind of on speck. > Today the Iphoners nearly all have a regular job so making money from their > happy snapping is meaningless. > cheers, > ted >