[Leica] Stock Sales

[jayanand at gmail.com (Jayanand Govindaraj)]

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
>