Archive for sales – Page 6

Guide to Keywording Images – Part 5: by Jody Apap

By Guest
Thursday, October 20th, 2011

How Should I Keyword the Where and When of an Image?

Here I am again with another installment of my guide on how you should be keywording your images to maximize sales.

So, you think that the WHERE and the WHEN of an image should take about 5 seconds to cover. Well, the way most images are keyworded for these concepts, it’s easy to believe that most photographers think this, but there are several layers of keywords worth using to ensure your images are looked at by as many appropriate buyers as possible.

If you’re not convinced that its not worth your time coming up with as many correct keywords as possible, then you better read Image Keywording: The Best (and cheapest) Marketing You Can D0.

WHERE

The where of the image should be easy enough.

This image is of the Eiffel Tower, but don’t forget Paris, France, and Western Europe. That covers the place name, but you better also use the keywords landmark, tourist attraction and tourism. While someone might be looking for Eiffel Tower, other buyers may simply be looking for landmark Paris or tourism France. Remember, you cannot know exactly what the buyer will be searching for.

While this takes care of the proper place names, you should also use generic place keywords, such as:

  • exterior
  • interior
  • outdoors
  • studio shot

There are other aspects of WHERE the image is set that you should keyword. Read More→

Categories : Guest Bloggers, Make Better Photographs, Stock Photography
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Marketing Campaigns for Photographers – The Discount Book

By Michael Shilling
Friday, October 14th, 2011

There are dozens of different discount or voucher books available for all sorts of different industries. I’m sure at some point you’ve been offered the opportunity to appear in one, for a small fee of course.

Like many of the other marketing campaigns in this series this idea comes from something that already exists and can be successful. The difference being you create your own. Do a bit of the donkey work and save yourself a considerable amount of money.

Putting a discount book together is an easy enough task and just requires a bit of time on the phone and on the computer.

This campaign can work well for most industries but it is particularly good in the wedding and baby marketplace.

The voucher book

A set of discount vouchers which offer between 10% – 60% off retail prices. Thanks to daily deal websites people are used to receiving large discounts but really you want offers that are appealing whilst still allowing businesses to profit.

How many businesses you want to get involved is up to you but what you need is a good spectrum of services within the same industry.

You also need a good balance of specific businesses and not to have too much competition for each specialisation.

Read More→

Categories : Grow Your Business, Marketing Campaigns
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Guide to Keywording Images – Part 4: by Jody Apap

By Guest
Thursday, October 13th, 2011

How Do I Keyword the Objects in My Image?

This is the fourth in a series of posts about how to keyword your images. While this guide is written primarily for stock photographers who need great keywording to ensure robust sales of their images, any photographer or image librarian would do well to think about the concepts being covered.

This post will cover the details of keywording the WHAT in your images, basically anything that is a “thing” in the image, including the subjects of the image and the background things.

The first thing you should be keywording is the number of objects, animals or servings of food shown in the image.

  • one object
  • two objects
  • three objects
  • four objects
  • many

The object keywords should be used for the main subjects of the image, a close up of three balls. Don’t try to count all the objects in the image, just the subjects. Think of a child’s counting book, it should be instantly obvious what is being counted and how many there are.

  • one animal
  • two animals
  • three animals
  • four animals
  • group of animals
  • one serving
  • two servings
  • three servings
  • four servings

The animal and serving keywords have less strict guidelines for use. Any animal in the image should be counted, and any serving of food, as long as easily seen should be counted.

While this first step in keywording objects is pretty straightforward, choosing which objects to keyword and which to ignore is a source of debate and difficult, if not impossible, to definitively define. Read More→

Categories : Guest Bloggers, Make Better Photographs, Stock Photography
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Marketing Campaigns for Photographers – Shooting Santa

By Michael Shilling
Friday, October 7th, 2011

When I talk about Shooting Santa in the run up to Christmas other portrait photographers often look at me baffled and ask ‘Why do you bother? You can’t make much money doing that.’

In a way that might be true but short term financial gain isn’t what I do it for. My real reason for shooting Santa……. Data collection and promotion.

Last year I had a Santa set-up at a Christmas market which cost me nothing as I agreed to take a handful of ‘promotional’ shots for the event organisers. I wasn’t by any means the official photographer for the event but as they had paid for the Santa they just wanted some images of him walking around a bit. For the sake of a few happy snaps I’d saved myself a nice bundle for the pitch rent and my model fees.

I had done similar shoots in the past and experimented with selling and printing onsite. This always proved to be a logistical nightmare and the weather always threw it’s spanner into the works.

Last year I changed tactics and rather than worrying about making a little extra pocket money I concentrated on getting the numbers in and capturing data.

The set-up was simple enough….. Santa sitting on a chair….. Put child on Santa and shoot.

Instead of putting images online or previewing the shots on a laptop I simply showed the the back of my camera and offered the parents the digital image for a small sum (about £5). I then got the parents details and emailed them the image the very next day. Read More→

Categories : Grow Your Business, Marketing Campaigns
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Guide to Keywording Images – Part 3: by Jody Apap

By Guest
Thursday, October 6th, 2011

How Do I Keyword the People in My Images II

In my last post I covered the major elements to keywording people:

  • Number of People that are the subject of the image.
  • “Industry standard” age/gender groups such as male adult and female senior adult.
  • Family relationship portrayed in the image.
  • Ethnicities or races of the people in the image.

This post will cover a lot of the other keywords you should be adding to your images of people.

Angle of View and Body Length

These two are much more important that you might think.  Editors often know what kind of shot they are looking for and these are two qualities that they are often looking for.

There are three basic angles of view:

  • front view
  • side view (profile is a type of side view)
  • back view

Every person has one of these angles to the viewer, so you might as well keyword it.  A few other searches at Alamy.com gave me these results:

  • woman: 2,580,483 results
  • woman front view:  282,273 results
  • woman side view:  158,651 results
  • woman back view:  54,448 results

Less than 20% of images with women in them have any angle of view keywords with them.  A rough extrapolation indicates that there are about 1,000,000 images of women that are front views that would not be shown to buyers looking for women front view.

Read More→

Categories : Guest Bloggers, Make Better Photographs, Stock Photography
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Marketing Campaigns for Photographers – The Pop-up Studio

By Michael Shilling
Friday, September 30th, 2011

Pop-up studios and shops have become increasingly popular in recent years and not just in the photography industry. This is by no way a new type of marketing for photographers, in fact the UK’s most successful photography franchise is built around leads from mall stands.

Not only are these cheaper than a permanent location (unless you’re going to have a popup 54 weeks a year) but it creates excitement around your business.

The Pop-up Studio Concept
Often know as ‘studio days’ the pop-up studio concept has become popular in many different children’s clothing stores and play centres. Basically you are offering studio taster sessions which is more of a bite sized version of what you already do in your studio.

It is important to play the numbers game and to not spend too long on each session. Set-ups in shops are best suited to baby photography as space can be limited whereas play centres offer a bit more space and possibility for a more elaborate set-up. It is also possible to rent space in shopping centres but be prepared to pay a fair amount or these.

Studio Days
Approach local businesses and ask about the possibility of renting a space in their premise for either a single day or more. If successful it is worth doing this on a regular basis, perhaps once a month. It’s always a good idea to do it at the start of the month when people have been paid and are more likely to make spontaneous purchases.

Once you have a business on board then you’ll be able to promote your days with posters and flyers. Visit the businesses during their peak times in the run up to your events to actively promote them. This will also give you the opportunity to make bookings.

Undoubtedly the venue will be happy to promote your events but remember that you are the best ambassador for your business.

Read More→

Categories : Grow Your Business, Marketing Campaigns
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