In light of the demise of Digital Railroad, a few readers have written expressing concern about the future of PhotoShelter, and what their closing of the PhotoShelter Collection means. So, we thought we'd ask them how things are going, and we turned to Grover Sanschagrin for answers.
1) Some readers were concerned about the closing of the PhotoShelter Collection and seem to be confusing that with the entire PhotoShelter service. Can you shed some light on this?
We closed down the PhotoShelter Collection because it wasn't cost-effective to keep it running considering the current economic climate. The last thing we wanted to do was put the PhotoShelter Personal Archive in jeopardy. This is the product we started with over 3 years ago, with over 35,000 photographers subscribing to it. It was a difficult decision at the time, but it was the right decision. Doing so allowed us to cut the burn rate - and "cutting the burn" is the key to survival right now.
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2) So, the PhotoShelter Collection was an effort for PhotoShelter to get into the photo agency business, marketing and licensing images collectively for those PhotoShelter users that wanted to participate?
Exactly. A global search across all archives has always been possible with PhotoShelter. But the Collection added photo editors, a sales staff, research people, and a beefed-up marketing department. It was free for photographers to participate, and when sales were made, PhotoShelter's take was 30%.
3) When Digital Railroad was in its' final death throws, PhotoShelter was very active behind the scenes trying to figure out a way to help stranded photographers rescue their images. Do you feel that most photographers were able to get their images off the DRR servers in time?
Unfortunately, most people didn't get their images off in time. The longer someone waited to get their images, the less likely they were to experience successful transfers. The people who jumped on it the moment you started writing about it on your blog were able to get their entire archives safely ported over to PhotoShelter.
4) Of the reportedly 1,400 or so active DRR photographers, about how many are now PhotoShelter customers?
This may sound like a non-answer, but we really don't know for sure which of our newest customers are from DRR. I can tell you, however, that signups have *definitely* increased. If I were to make a rough estimate, I'd say that somewhere around 35% of the total DRR population have signed up with PhotoShelter since the news first broke.
5) Prior to the demise of DRR, it was said that PhotoShelter (as separate from the PhotoShelter Collection) was a cash-flow positive business, so it would stand to reason that the addition of that 35% who migrated from DRR would make PhotoShelter even more stable moving forward. Can you expand on this?
I can't really expand on that at all, at least not with the kind of specific details that I know you want. But I will say that I am proud of our management team, and that the decisions made were difficult but right, and the company, and product, has never looked better as a result. As a company that takes its archiving responsibilities very seriously, we're not interested in taking chances. We're interested in long-term survival, and putting the company in a position it can happen -- even during an economic downturn.
6) What growth areas do you see for PhotoShelter in the future?
Now that the Collection isn't such a large focus anymore, we've turned our full attention to the Personal Archive. We plan to continue with our aggressive development calendar, and respond to the ideas and suggestions of our customers. Making the product stronger is our main focus.
7) We've previously highlighted the new embed-able galleries features, as well as the incredible shoot-to-live-online capabilities. Are there any exciting new features you can tip us off to in the near future?
Are there exciting new features coming? Yes. Will I tell you what they are? Not exactly. I'm not sure if people realize just how amazing our engineers are, and how fast they can turn an idea into a reality. With their full attention on the Personal Archive, my job has never been more exciting.
8) What can the average photographer be expecting to spend each month on your service?
We've got several different price points, starting with a Free account (with only 150mb of storage) to allow people to get in there and check it out for as long as they'd like. We've got accounts at $9.99/mo (10GB), $29.99/mo (35GB) and $49.99/mo (100GB). Adding more storage can be done on-the-fly and at extremely affordable rates.
9) Shouldn't that nominal amount either be an easily absorbable figure into a small businesses' overhead, or billable out as "online image delivery" to a client when an assignment is delivered that way? (in other words, are other photographers doing it that way?)
Considering what you're getting for your monthly subscription, it's an absolute bargain. A serious photographer using PhotoShelter to drive their business has no problem covering these costs. Wedding photographers can charge a bride/groom for an online digital archive; Retouchers can avoid the costs of DVDs by selling archiving space to their customers; Photographers of all kinds can open up brand new revenue streams with print sales or by making personal-use downloads available, etc.
10) What seems to be the one stumbling block that a potential user is not surpassing that is precluding them from signing up, and what would you tell them if you were talking to them one-on-one?
Many photographers think that in order to make use of PhotoShelter, they'd first have to spend hours and hours uploading their entire archive, and this is time they do not have. I regularly tell photographers to just get started today, and worry about the past later. Tomorrow will eventually be yesterday, so the longer you wait to get started, the more of a chore it will be when you finally get around to it.
I also think that many photographers look at PhotoShelter and ask themselves if it can do everything they need it to do in terms of how they are running their business, instead of how PhotoShelter can, through innovation, actually improve HOW the are running their business.
My favorite PhotoShelter user is anyone who is curious, willing to experiment and try new things, sees the Internet as an opportunity, and is innovative in their business strategy. This kind of attitude and outlook is critical to success and long-term stability - something we should all be thinking about.
Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
If your best client came to you and said "learn Spanish, or you're no longer going to get hired by us." Would you?
If your best client came to you and said "The slang and odd language you use isn't condusive to a constructive dialog when we're working together. If you can't speak proper English we won't be able to work together anymore." Would you drop the street talk and keep the client?
If you answered no to either of those questions, you need to think again. This is business, and if you want to do business, and keep doing business, you need to set aside any attitudes like "Who he think he is tellin' me I can't talk street, yo?" and realize that businesses do whatever they can to keep their clients. It's not personal, or an affront to you, it's just business.
When a client thus, comes to the determination that the language you've been using to describe your licensing is the equivilent of ambiguous street language, and decides that they're tired of intepreting what "collateral" really means, and in turn, they specify the use of the Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS) system be incorporated into the licensing agreements you convey to them, you'd better step to it.
That is exactly what's happened with the top three image licensees in the US. These three major publishers have called for the adoption of the PLUS standards by picture archives, photographers, illustrators and all other image suppliers. Representatives of McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Pearson each announced that they will adopt the PLUS Picture Licensing Glossary definitions in their contracts, and that they encourage image suppliers to begin embedding PLUS license metadata in all images within one year.
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"We are very pleased that these major publishers - the largest image licensees in the industry - are aligned in their support of the PLUS standards," said Maria Kessler (LinkedIn: Profile), President of the Picture Archive Association of America.
Bonnie Beacher (LinkedIn: Profile), Senior Director of Contracts, Copyrights and Permissions at McGraw-Hill Education, said "The PLUS standards benefit publishers and their suppliers by simplifying and clarifying the process of licensing and managing images. We are in the process of implementing PLUS standards, and we would find it very useful for our image suppliers to adopt PLUS standards as well."
Jeff Sedlik (LinkedIn: Profile), President & CEO of the PLUS Coalition, said "The PLUS standards will allow publishers to leverage embedded license metadata to increase automation and more efficiently manage images in their digital asset management systems."
What this means is that the Getty, Corbis, Alamy, et al licensors of the world will now be implementing PLUS language into every type of licensing that they do. The license will have to be PLUS compliant, because they won't know if the person browsing their site is a McGraw-Hill person, or a magazine photo editor, as they are filling up their cart full of images, and selecting the licenses they need. So, when the client is considering your work, you'll have to use the same words as the Gettys of the world so that a client can properly manage all images in their digital asset management system.
Clients have already specified to you they need an invoice before they can pay you, and it needs to say "Invoice" on it, be dated, and have your contact information, and so too, the need your tax id # (SSN, EIN, etc). There's little difference here in the standardization of the language for licensing.
When it comes to licensing language clarity, and agreement cross-industry, PLUS is a monumental collaboration, and one we have hearlded from this soapbox for some time. As an individual photographer, it's free for you to use, and you would do well during your down time - like excising the street from your talk, to get to know PLUS better. Your clients are demanding it. RELATED:
Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
I love books. If I were to have only one regret this life, it would be that there wasn't enough time to read all the books that I want to. My reading list is a long one, and so often, new books have to fight hard to cut the line. I also collect books, and nestled amongst my signed editions of Ansel Adams' The Negative, The Print, Natural Light Photography, and Artificial Light Photography (note: I am still seeking Book 1), several Sam Abel books, signed limited editions of all the great surf photography books, and books like Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, is a book by the legendary Howard Chapnick - Truth Needs No Ally: Inside Photojournalism. I was honored to have him sign mine, and yes, be represented by his agency, Black Star. Yet, there's no bias here - his independent status as a legend probably preceded my birth.
So, it is with reverance that another Chapnick - John Chapnick - comes forth with a new book - Photojournalism, technology and ethics - What's Right and Wrong Today? Oh, and get this - it's a free eBook! Hit this link for the PDF.
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In the book, Chapnick states the obvious. Obvious, that is, to those of us who have been doing this awhile. Things like "altering photographs is unethical." Then there's "Staging photographs is unethical." Now, I know these things, yet I see these things happen all the time, and we read time and again about altering photographs and then their appearing in newspapers. Yet Chapnick delves into these issues, citing the policies of wire services and newspapers around the country, and then proffering the thought process:
The rhetorical justifications for these axioms center on public service. Rather than simply selling newspapers or attracting TV ratings, journalists have a higher calling—to provide their audiences with the knowledge required to be informed contributors to a democracy. And this can only happen when the public believes in the newspaper’s authority.
Ahh. Now some lightbulbs are going off in readers' heads. So, where does the money trail meander? Chapnick goes on:
Beyond this consideration, credibility is essential to mainstream news organizations from a business standpoint. If audiences don’t believe they can trust what they’re reading—and seeing—it’s the equivalent of a broken product. And consumers don’t buy broken products for very long.
Indeed!
Chapnick then goes on to address the excuses we're hearing from our motion picture brethren, that staging is justified "for purposes of editing", or "for purposes of time", or "for purposes of storytelling", even when the audience is not told of these "re-creations". One field notorious for staging photography is in the field of nature/wild animal photography, with all manner of baiting, pens, and so forth creating a reality that never existed, but which yielded a cover photograph on the front page of the most prestigious magazines of our time.
In the end Chapnick also offers solutions for the digital era, and it's a solid read, primer (or reminder), for anyone who professes to produce editorial images. So, hats off to John Chapnick for a well written and thoughtful perspective on the issue of technology and ethics in photojournalism today. While ethics need no ally, its' furtherance surely needs this roadmap to ensure that tomorrows' photojournalists earn and keep the reputation of truth-telling - no more, and no less. Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
When, several years ago, I was assisting a friend in getting his first Capitol Hill press pass, as we arrived to proceed into the building, I handed him one my disposable razors I keep in my car, and in said "you need to run this over your face." "Why?" he asked? "It's a simple matter of respect", I noted. To this day, he gives me a hard time with that phrase, and we're such good friends that he didn't take offense at my counsel. (and he did get his credential.)
Yesterday, when I turned up at the White House for my planned coverage of Barack Obama's visit, I was dressed in a suit. That's just me, I guess. Others were not similarly attired, but there were a half-dozen other still photographers wearing ties. I recall with great respect then Agence France Presse photographer David Ake, 15+ years ago, always came into the White House well dressed, and he recieved the respect due a properly attired photographer. Today, Ake is the head of the Associated Press' photo operation here in DC, and he remains well dressed.
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Re-enter my good friend and colleague, David Burnett. David is a classy guy - top of his class in so many ways, and his class can surmount jeans, except when it's a random challenge by a press operation that has lost much of it's knowledge-base because of the few days left in it's existence. David recounts on his blog - Common Sense, Not Very Common, (11/11/08), writes:
So last Thursday, at what will no doubt be President Bush’s last cabinet meeting, Paul Richards of AFP and I were singled out of the crowd of a dozen still photographers, and refused entry to the photo opportunity in the Cabinet Room. Like Paul, I have been on the road for months doing the campaign. We were both surprised, unhappily, when we were informed that with just months to go in an 8 year tenure, the White House has decided to ban jeans from the Oval Office, and (apparently) the Cabinet Room if worn by photographers.
While I concur that David shouldn't have worn jeans, he would have learned that 7+ years ago had the current administration instituted that rule - and enforced it - way back then. To enforce a rule they've previously not enforced, or been lax in enforcing, is just petty, and belies the mindset of the outgoing administrations attitude towards the press.
While you ponder this, check out previous blog posts on this subject:
So, as the saying goes, dress for who you want to be, not who you are. Wait, I want to be David Burnett...but can I do it without wearing jeans? Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
Below you will find formal notice about DRR's suitor - Newscom - recinding it's interest. Of particular interest is the following:
"The creditor will have all information erased from the storage devices and then sell the equipment at auction."
The concern is that someone will simply do a simple erase, and anyone with recovery tools can recover ALL of our images. ALL OF THEM. Stories abound about people's private information getting found on a company's old servers (Government probe launched after details of one million bank customers found on computer sold on eBay, 8/28/08, among others). Here, we have images which will be recovered and then someone will decide they have this huge library of images to do with as they please.
Someone needs to get information on just how they plan to do the erasing.
Formal notice after the jump:
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November 10, 2008 To Digital Railroad Members and Customers;
As reported on October 31st, Digital Railroad (DRR) had received a letter of intent (LOI) to purchase specific assets of DRR, namely its hardware and application software used to store and retrieve images. This LOI was rescinded on November 5th.
On November 6th, a second company became interested in purchasing some of the assets of DRR, but late on Friday, November 7th this company also ended its negotiations.
Without a commitment for the purchase of its assets, DRR’s senior secured creditor will move to take physical possession of the hardware on which the intellectual property of DRR and the copyrighted images of its customers and partners reside. The creditor will have all information erased from the storage devices and then sell the equipment at auction.
Digital Railroad had hoped that it could preserve the images on the storage devices so that the owners of these images could recover them. Unfortunately, this was not achievable. We apologize for the difficulties that this has created but without additional resources we have no other recourse.
With regard to images in Marketplace that have been downloaded and/or used, and for which the publisher has not already made payment, we will work, with the assistance of photographer associations to have the publishers pay the photographers directly.
Please check the Diablo Management website www.diablomanagement.com for regularly updates regarding Digital Railroad. The DRR link is at the bottom of the DMG Home page.
Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
My good friend and colleague, David Burnett, who wrote this really great piece about his experience "in the buffer" covering election night in Chicago - History In The Buffer - and which is a remarkable diary of his election night experience, and well worth a read, has put together a really interesting piece about his experiences behind the scenes at the Olympics. Check it out!
Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
One of my daily reads is Seth Godin's blog. He has a lot of good things to say, and I know that others, including Leslie Burns Dell'Acqua reads him daily as well, and she too highlighted his message for the day about mediocrity. I'll take a similar tact.
When you are not paying attention to the details, you could well cost your business a lot of money, and certainly a diminished reputation. Today, Seth wrote - The sad lie of mediocrity - "The sad lie of mediocrity is the mistaken belief that partial effort yields partial results. In fact, the results are usually totally out of proportion to the incremental effort."
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Here are a few examples:
1) Recently, a colleague of mine wrote to someone, and addressed them as "Mrs." The problem is, she is a he.
2) An estimate went to a client with a DC and a NYC office. The address error to someone paying attention was something like below:
John Smith Big Corporate Client 1234 Madison Ave, 5th Floor Washington DC 10017
John Smith Big Corporate Client 1234 Madison Ave, 5th Floor New York NY 10017
Because a large majority of our clients are DC based, the software we use auto-fills in Washington DC for that client, but someone wasn't paying attention when that estimate went out.
Paying attention to details, smiling when you're talking to clients, being upbeat and positive during those interactions, saying things like "let me figure out a way to make that happen..." instead of "I don't know if that's possible", and so many other variations on that theme are what differentiates you from your competition. Don't say "the problem we might run into with doing it that way...". Instead, try "we'll have a bit of a challenge in trying to make things work that way...", which suggests you are up for the challenge, and are thinking of ways to solve the problem.
Excellent customer service is key. Customer dis-service, distain, or mediocrity when cast in their direction is a disaster. You just might not realize it until it's too late. Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
Thanks to a reader of the previous post on StockShop, who alerted me to the fact that Pixish has ceased to exist. We wrote rather critically - Pixish, Stupid is, as Stupid Does (2/12/08), about their business model, because, well, it was a bad idea.
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So, we tried to visit their site, and it's dead. Blank. Goes. And? Oh right - Good Riddance!
A cached version if their notice, found on Google, posted on October 31st (scary),reads:
Pixish will be closing its doors at the end of the month.
Why? Mostly because of personal stuff. Pixish was created by four people as a side project. Between us, the last year has brought births, deaths, and too many job/client changes to remember. As a result, we have not been able to give the site the time and attention it deserved.
On the other side of the equation, the site's community never really gelled. In nine months we only grew to about 5,000 members. With time short and usage low, we've decided it's time to pull the plug.
What went wrong? In a sense, nothing. We had an idea and wanted to try it out. We did it on our own time, without spending much money. I'm proud that we were able to learn a few things without going broke. People have spent far more creating much less. And I'm happy that some people had fun as part of the site.
In another sense, of course, we made some mistakes. Here are my top three.
We launched too fast. I'm a big believer in launch fast, get feedback, make changes. We launched fast, got more feedback than we could handle, and failed to make changes. You can't expect people to wait for you to get it right.
We didn't describe what we wanted to do clearly enough. When I told people the idea in person, they always really liked it. But when they came to the site, they didn't get it.
We underestimated the "spec work" issue. People feel strongly about it, and as a professional designer for over a decade, I get it. In hindsight, we could have dealt with it better.
The startup experience can't be taught, only learned from experience. Here are a few things I learned from Pixish.
In community-generated media, trust is everything. When you ask for submissions, contributors go through an instant internal calculation: "Do I trust these people with my work?" When your site is brand new, you've got no record to rely on. And with more shady "user-generated content" schemes popping up every day, people have their defenses up (as well they should).
Our proposition was made even more complicated because we were trying to create a maketplace. When a magazine opens for submissions, you're submitting to that magazine. But Pixish was one step removed - anyone could make an assignment. So even if you trusted Pixish, you didn't necessarily trust the person who posted the assignment.
We should have done more to earn that trust, and help members trust each other.
There's a difference between building a community and a network. When musician Jonathan Coulton posted a t-shirt contest, people in his community were stoked to participate, but people outside of his community were like, who's this guy and why should I give him my work?
Pixish was designed as one community, but it really was a network of unaffiliated communities. The assignments that worked best happened because the publisher brought in their own people. The site was not optimized for that. We should have had more tools for assignment creators to tie their contests to their existing communities.
Money matters. I've now started companies with both with, and without, venture capital. When you've got money, you can take more time to do it right, but you've got higher expectations for returns, and a whole host of other complications. When you go it alone, you've got the freedom to do whatever you want, but it's hard to stay focused when the project is always competing for your attention with other, usually paying, work. There's no right answer here - it's just a matter of finding the approach that best matches the project.
It's all about the team. I will continue to sing the praises of the amazing team that built Pixish: Jason, Dan, and James. The decision to end the project has nothing to do with their awesomeness. The only thing I really regret is that we were never able to build some of the really cool stuff we had planned.
I know there's a place for a wisdom of crowds approach in the publishing world, but publishers and artists are still figuring it out. For now, it seems like a direct submission model is what people are most comfortable with.
If you're a Pixish member, thanks for giving the site a try, and I'm sorry our time together was so short. You've got until the end of the month to download anything you need, though I assume you've still got it all on your hard drive anyway. If you're looking for something similar, try Crowdspring or 99designs.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
Whew! One down, how many to go? Damn, these things are popping up like weeds in an untended yard! Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
Don't people learn? When we wrote "nOnRequest - This is Not Your Father's "Agency" (6/20/07), we quoted Daryl Lang over at PDN, who wrote in his article "Revolutions That Never Happened", "Sometimes bad ideas take care of themselves. OnRequest Images never backed down from custom stock, but the idea was hard to explain and held little appeal to art buyers... Another custom stock service, iStockPhoto.com's BuyRequest, also failed to capture much interest and was quietly discontinued last year.", yet, "genius" repeats itself, with StockShop On Demand, which suggests:
On Demand is StockShop's newest feature. Can't find exactly what you're looking for? Let one of our talented photographers capture it for you!
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Are you kidding me?
Wasn't it already tried by several companies who, no doubt, have smart people working for them? This idea is (and remains) just plain bad. However, I guess this is what happens when people have time on their hands, and decide they will fill it with "custom stock" projects. Projects that, quite frankly, are ASSIGNMENTS that should be commissioned by the clients, with all expenses paid, and so forth.
We wrote back in July of 2007 - OnRequest - Realizing the Obvious, "David Norris, the head of OnRequest, after building a business around the CustomStock Model...said of the CustomStock model:"
"that model was interesting, but didn't pan out."
And again, the refrain rises: WELL, OF COURSE IT DIDN'T!
Yet, again, we have a company that thinks they can do it better. Think again. Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
Photo editors often get a bad rap. They're often (incorrectly) blamed for the bad contracts they are required to foist upon us. Sometimes, it's their idea, but usually, it's not. It's usually the legal department making things harder for them to get talented work to sign things like work-for-hire, and so forth.
Thus, when a photo editor does the right thing, as is the case here, we feel it of value to hearld it from the treetops, so to speak. This is the case of a photo editor who licensed images through Digital Railroad for several books, with over fifty images. They'd downloaded them, and had recieved an invoice from DRR. Yet, when they were about to pay it (the books have not gone to press yet), they learned that DRR was in trouble, and likely closing their doors, so they waited before cutting the check. Imagine my pleasant surprise when they called me and shared this story, and said "we want to pay you directly, since we know that if we pay them, you'll never see the money." I was eager, of course, to help. They are also looking to finalize their contacting of other photographers whose images they had selected. We've offered to help them find anyone who they can't locate, and await any information from them on that front.
So, three cheers for Brad Epstein, of Michaelson Entertainment for his effort in doing the right thing. Thanks Brad.
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Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
Newscom, reportedly the company that submitted their letter of intent to acquire the assets of Digital Railroad (From Bad to Better - Likely Acquisition of DRR Assets By Newscom A Good Thing, 11/1/08), has taken themselves out of play as a party interested in the final disposition of those assets. "We looked at it long and hard", said Bill Creighton, Managing Director of Newscom. "We were the company that had expressed an interest, but after we looked at the numbers - the cost to operate the system, and the fact that many of the subscribers had left, it just wasn't workable", said Creighton.
Newscom was the one company who had expressed an interest in paying cash for the assets. Another rumored company was proposing an equity stake, but that has, to date, remained a rumor. "We're no longer interested in Digital Railroad. We wanted to be, but it just didn't make sense from a business standpoint, and that's what this is about - business."
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Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
So, how do you go about marketing yourself when you want a ready-made solution that you can implement in a brief period of time, with maximum impact? You outsource.
You are a specialist in your field - photography. So too, was your wet-lab technician in processing your film. So too, are you struggling with mastering photoshop/lightroom/etc in your post-production and workflow efforts. All of these things presumes you have work. However, what if you don't have any? Want more? Want to promote your new website?
We outlined how to use a bare-bones solution like Vertical Response (Marketing 101: Bare-Bones-ing It With Vertical Response, 10/5/08), and that works - when you actually have a list of people to market to. What if you don't? Then, how much will it cost you each month in time, or dollars out-laid to an assistant to update your lists? I submit that your monthly costs will exceed $60 or so, and if that's the case, then why not entrust it to an outsourcing solution like many other things we outsource? Why not let a professional handle the distribution of your marketing materials? Heck, you entrusted the postman when you were using snail mail!
To that end, I thought I'd walk you through my experience using the service AdBase. Step-by-step, so you can see how easy it is. Yes, AgencyAccess, and others, are out there, and yes, AdBase has a free trial here, so too, AgencyAccess here. But, often we as photographers fear the unknown, so this will de-mystify it for you. Show you what's possible. But, it's by no means exhaustive. This is one way, but there are, of course, many others.
So here we go - step-by-step, though setting up a mailing list campaign using AdBase, and then summary thoughts and pricing information at the end.
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The first thing you'll do on the home page, once you're signed in, is go create a list of people you want to make out reach to. You can, of course, use pre-made lists, but let's go through the process of creating our own. First click on the My ADBASE tab, as shown below.
Scroll down to the "List" section, and choose from the drop-down menu "Custom List".
Once you've done that, ADBASE has broken down the variety of categories into several super categories, separated by US, and Canadian.
Below, for this mailing, we've chosen US Print Advertising, and there are a total of 10,266 e-mail addresses at 1,953 companies that hire, within that category, across the country. We can further narrow down that field using one of the other 8 filters, from agency size, job title, type of business, and so forth.
With that in mind, let's make outreach to just the geographic region that is "Northeast", as chosen below. We could have specified one or more area codes, or even a specific zip code. Remember, we're building a list here, and more importantly, we can build multiple custom lists. So, if I wanted to build a list for the DC area, I would choose area codes 202, 703, and 301. If I then wanted to add in Baltimore and Richmond, I would build a list that included those area codes. And lastly, we can then select multiple lists to mail to as a part of the mailing. So, you can take the shotgun "pray and spray" approach, or you can take a snipers tact, with extreme precision - say, just award-winning firms in the 202 area code that have billings over $5m a year? Bingo, you can do that.
Below is the summary of our list, refined by region to just 3,901 e-mail addresses. While that may seem like a small number, it's still a huge number, and probably not one you can manage to market to, and to maintain an ongoing market outreach to. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint, so choose your recipients with the notion that you will be marketing to them over time, repetitively.
Below you will see the tab for your next destination - eMailer. Click that tab, and let's have a look.
Below is the "Summary" tab, and you'll want to start here. Choose a name that means something to you, and then begin to choose what type of e-mail you want to send. For my first attempt with them, I took the same html template that I used on Vertical Response, and sent that out. Here, we're going to use a very basic version of one of their templates, and talk about some of the variations you can apply to those.
Your next tab is the "Style" tab. Of course, as you become more familiar with the features and options, you can choose to customize them, but in this case, I'll be choosing the Simple Black style.
Up next is the layout. YOu can see that you can choose how any images, and the spacing between each. This is a very what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) approach. If you want to add text in, other image areas, and so forth, just selecting the boxes allows you to do that very easily. You can also specify the final width of the e-mail, and the default is 650 pixels.
If you choose, as I have selected below, to have 3 images in the layout, you are presented with six variations to choose from, which pretty much runs the gamut of options. After looking at this, I decided that I wanted to do just one image, as above.
Next up is the Content tab. Think long and hard about the subject line, to minimize the likelihood that it'll get deleted. What subject line would peak your interest? What would get an instant delete? Also of importance is the Plain Text box. This is the e-mail that people who don't get/want html e-mail will see, so be sure there's a link to click in there, as well as other insightful/informative text. As you can see, I've opted to personalize the salutation, which I did by clicking the small icon at the top of that box of the two heads, and chose the field - in this case - first name, whom I wanted to be identified in my salutation. I felt this was more personal than a "Hi there!" salutation.
Next up is the Featured Image entry. This is where you'll select or upload your image. Since I don't have one already uploaded, once I click "Select", I'll choose the "Upload New Image" tab and upload it. Of critical importance is the "Terms" checkbox. If you're a photographer, it's easy to certify that you own the copyright - unless that work was shot as a Work-Made-For-Hire assignment, then you have no right to use the photo. If you are in another field - retoucher, or another field, you are certifying that you have permission from the photographer to use their image.
Once I've selected my image, named the file, the "Upload Image" button appears, and clicking that uploads the file to the ADBASE server.
Now, we see a preview of everything, and on the left is a preview of the text inputs, and two images below is the preview of the what the e-mail will look like. You can click the "View Full-Size" button to see the e-mail, as well as all the other text at the bottom that is compliance information with SPAM laws. If I had opted to have text areas, I would see that information in this preview as well.
Below is a general preview of the e-mail.
If you're not careful, you'll miss the "Linked to" option. It's important that when someone mouse-over and then click on the images, they they get taken to your website, so clicking the "Add Link", and then entering in the destination information there is important, as shown below.
The next tab is the Tracked Links tab. These are the links that ADBASE will actually track for you to see if somone has clicked on the ad. This is especially valuable when you have multiple images, to see which images were the most popular in the e-mail you sent out.
Next tab is the Delivery Options tab. Here you'll fill out where the e-mail came from, and which list you've chosen. ADBASE will tell you how many e-mail credits you have left, and how many you'll be using up based upon the size of your list.
Down near the bottom is a "Preview Recipients List" link. Clicking that gives you a list of everyone that is on your list, and other details about them. (This is probably a screen grab you'll want to click to see larger, but all of them in this piece are click-to-see-larger enabled.)
Clicking the "Save and Review" tab above, you come to see everything specific to this e-mail campaign. When you're ready, click the "Schedule This Email to be Sent".
Here, you may choose to do it immediately, or at a specific date and time. I strongly encourage you to be thoughtful about this and do it at the right time, not just rightaway.
Then, you'll see that your e-mail is set and pending, ready to go, as below.
Once the campaign is underway, you can see it in progress. Below is the first one I did, in progress. You can see that almost 1,000 people viewed my e-mail with the image, (the number well exceeded 1,000 when the entire campaign was done). What you can also see is that I didn't get a great deal of clicks through to my website. Perhaps this was as a result of a bad image choice, or the shotgun approach to the mailing in terms of reaching the right audience.
When I asked ADBASE about my mistake, they responded:
I noticed that the open rate of your campaign is currently 17%. This is obviously lower than our system average. After taking a quick look at the lists that you sent your campaign to, it is clear that you didn’t spend a lot of time targeting your list (e.g. you mailed all magazines instead of picking magazines with specific subjects). In our experience, the more targeted the distribution, the higher the open rate. For comparison, the average email campaign sent using Emailer has a distribution of just over 1,000 contacts.
I would also point out that the open rate you achieved with your Vertical Response campaign is much more in line with that one would get by mailing a personal client list which I believe is what you did.
Ok, lesson learned, I won't do that again!
Take special note of this - 84% done. ADBASE doesn't blast out every e-mail all at once. They do it over time. They do this so as to not otherwelm the recipient's servers.
Here's an explanation of why they throttle:
I also asked about e-mails going to people outside of normal working hours, and what impact that had on view/open/click-through rates. Here's what they wrote, in response:
We do acknowledge that sending promos outside of business hours does reduce their open rate. Our average open rate is currently 21% overall. This goes up to 22% between the hours of 8am-6pm and drops to 18% after-hours. So the effect is not huge but it is still significant in our opinion. As a result, we are currently testing some changes to our back-end system that will prevent our mail throttling system from sending email outside of normal work hours. This will lead to campaigns taking a bit longer to send, but should have a positive impact on the overall open rate.
So what does using the service cost? ADBASE subscriptions range in price from $395 to $1,695, with pricing depending upon the desired functionality and coverage each client requires. Their most popular editions are the Editorial edition and the Standard North America edition. If you wanted to go whole-hog, the Premium North America edition has the same functionality as the Standard North America edition, but includes 1) Emailer, their custom-designed email tool that allows you to determine which individuals open their email and visit their websites, for ease of followup, and 2) Fine Art data which includes art galleries, museums, and corporate art curators.
Each Subscription Includes:
One-year license to access the edition of your choice
Unlimited usage and access during the subscription period
Constant updating of the database
ADBASE Accuracy Guarantee
ADBASE Insight (educational resources for Creatives)-practical articles, webcasts, whitepapers and podcasts-all content created specifically for artists by the ADBASE team and industry experts
Access to partners and their special offers for ADBASE clients including: sourcebooks, postcard printing and mailing services, and consultation services
Choice of output including mailing labels, email lists, and telephone call sheets, ASCII output, mail fulfillment
The typical photographer/client chooses a North American subscription with Emailer, along with an annual capacity of 24,000 Emails. Overall, when this is sold as a bundle, the cost of each email works out to about 3.5 cents. Obviously this is more expensive than others, but they have built a system that is so specific to the needs of artists that they believe it still delivers a lot of value as evidenced by over 50% of our clients having added Emailer onto their subscriptions.
ADBASE is the only provider that offers an online email solution where you yourself create and send your promotions, freeform, or with the templates, as shown above. They also are able to pinpoint more than 25 specific regions, if you're taking a regional approach to your campaign. Lastly, ADBASE is the list provider used by ASMP, APA, Alt Pick, theispot, Serbin Communications and many others.
Clearly, ADBASE is well defined as substantially different from options like Vertical Response, eROI, Constant Contact, and other bare-bones solutions, and making an investment in ADBASE is worthwhile to consider at approximately $0.035 per e-mail, up from $0.01 with Vertical Response.
Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
You no doubt saw that we just launched our new website two days ago, and we wanted to get the word out. How to do that? Send a silly e-mail with a few sentences? How could I know if that was effective?
I turned to one solution - Vertical Response, that I was familiar with, and yes, they have a free trial. I know there are others - eROI, Contant Contact, and so forth. What follows is a step-by-step through the process we undertook to launch the campaign, and just how easy it was - save for gathering the list of people to actually send it to, more on solutions for that later.
So, here we go - promoting the website launch.
(Continued after the Jump)
Below is the top of the webpage (note, every graphic below, when clicked, opens larger in a new window), showing that you're logged in, and giving you the control tabs to work on your campaign.
Click on the "Emails" tab, and on the right, you'll see "New E-Mail". Click that link, and the options below appear. The default is "e-mail wizard", but that option gives you a lot of really funky templates, that I don't think are consistent with a professional-level photographers' website. When I sent out my campaign, I recreated my website as HTML, using the "Freeform HTML" option. For this example, we're going to use the "Email Canvas" choice, so that you can insert a single image that is a screengrab of your website, or a single image of yours you want to showcase.
Then choose "Next Step".
Below you will see the "Email Creation" section. Choose the label that your e-mail will come from, and select a useful subject line. Then, click on the icon with a little tree on it, which is identifed by the bottom red arrow.
If you have an image that is currently on your website somewhere, you can paste the URL into the top entry line. If you've done a screen grab of your site, or have the image on your computers desktop, just choose the "upload image" icon, as noted by the other red arrow.
Below, there were three "Browse" buttons, and you will see that I have filled one up with the JPEG website_facade.jpg. That file will now reside on the Vertical Response server.
Below, you'll now see what my image looks like, within their "My Images" folder.
Double-click on that image and you will see the window below. There, you can change your ALT text from the default filename (as shown) to something like "John Harrington's New Website", or something else. You can tweak other details of the image, like spacing, and so forth, but it's not necessary. You can also take note of the URL for that image in the top line.
Up above you'll see the "Insert" button at the lower right. Click that, and you'll see the image inserted into your email page. At the bottom of the graphic below, you'll see that you need to put in your physical address, as well as other information to be compliant with SPAM laws. Be sure you do this completely.
Next, as shown below, right-mouse (or cntrl) click the image, and choose the "Insert/Edit link", so that if someone clicks on the photo, they will be taken to your website.
Below you'll see where you can type in your URL. Again, this is the URL that someone will be taken to if they click on the graphic. If you encounter any errors, just click on the "view source" tab to check the HTML, or confirm it works when you send yourself a test e-mail.
Next up is the "Text Content" tab. This is the e-mail that people will see if they don't get html e-mails, and there are very few of them - under 1%. However, you'll want to complete this text with something similar to what I've entered. Be sure there is a link to your website there!
Following that, click on the "2. Preview" tab, and confirm that your e-mail looks good.
Next is the "3. Send Test" tab. You can choose option 1, and elect to just have it sent to yourself, or you can include up to ten people to get the test. this is often helpful if you're working with a marketing consultant, or want feedback from a spouse/partner, trusted colleague, or whomever. They will get both the text version, and the graphic version. What you see will be exactly what your list gets.
Once you've clicked the "Send Test" button, you will get confirmation that your test was sent, and the links that were converted from standard links, to trackable links, as detailed below.
Next, it's time to select who you want e-mails to go to. Here's where your hard work begins, and where a list service like AdBase or AgencyAccess actually becomes significantly valuable, but more on them in another post. The challenge here is to collect a list of e-mails that you are targetting. Vertical Response charges about $13.00 per 1,000 e-mails they send out for you, and you buy them in blocks, but you have to populate the lists yourself.
Next, you'll want to schedule your e-mail to go out, and you have a wide window to do so. Vertical Response has a review schedule, because they want to make sure your e-mail complies with all laws, so you can choose to send it out at the earliest launch time available (Option 1) after their review, or set the time. I highly recommend you set the time yourself. No doubt many of you are working o n things like this at 8pm, or 2am, and if you contemplate your own nature, any e-mails you get at that time are not likely useful ones. Let people clear out their inboxes in the morning, and schedule it for a time after that, and remember time-zone variations too!
Next is the last tab "Launch". Here, they validate that you have everything completed, and once you click "Launch Campaign" and it's in the queue for approval, you can't change the content or mailing list, but you can unlaunch and then re-submit it.
So, that's it, bare-bones style. Vertical Response does not charge an annual fee, and the cost per e-mail is about $0.01. Yet, you have to do everything yourself, and the templates they offer are not photo-centric.
You may ask - why bother, especially if I am just mailing to 20 or 50 people? Can't I just send the e-mail from my own desktop?
It's detailed information like that below that is really helpful. It helps you see how effective the e-mail was. There's no "shot in the dark" approach. I see that over 37% of the people saw my image in the piece, and that a subset of that clicked through to my site. For a mailing of just over 1,100 people, that's a decent read/response rate. Would I have liked it to be higher? Sure. I also can see how fast people read/clicked it too.
In addition, to can click that "Domain Report" tab, and see just how many people from each company opened it, clicked it, and even unsubscribed from your mailing list. This is valuable information for you to have, and allows you to tailor your campaigns moving forward.
Ok, so then, what's with all the companies selling lists? Do you really need to use them? Are they worth it? In a word - YES!
Consider this - Adbase (information here) has multiple versions for artists, from Editorial, to Regional, to Standard, to Premium. And, if you click here, you can request a free trial to give them a spin. We are working on a review of their services, as comprehensive as this one. AgencyAccess has a free trial too, to check that offer out, click here.
One of the things that struck me in preparing lists from scratch, was how much labor was involved, and that was just collecting and concatenating the information, and that information is static, and does not include any of the time maintaining your list. Let's say an annual subscription to AdBase of AgencyAccess is $700. At first blush, that sounds like a large amount of money - in fact, it probably sounds like a deal-breaker, but it shouldn't be. Back when we wrote about Mastheads.org, (Getting Clients - a few options, 7/7/08) there was plenty of suggestions at the value of their $24 offering. Nelson Nunes, founder of AdBase wrote about them at the time:
Mastheads.org is good if you are only interested in getting a few names off of a select number of mastheads. If you need to create or update a mailing list for direct marketing purposes, you would still have a considerable amount of work to do. That is, you would still have to analyze the masthead to determine which contacts are of interest to you (i.e. involved in selecting a photographer), enter all the information into a database and double check every piece of information to make sure you didn't make any entry mistakes. The first time you do this, you would also have to check that the address provided in the masthead is the correct address for the contacts of interest to you as generally the contact information provided is for the advertising sales department.
This might make sense if you are a photographer that works in a very specific niche and only targets a handful of magazines. Even then, the value of Mastheads.org is not clear as you would likely want to subscribe to those magazines to keep on top of what photography is being used. For any photographer doing more general work, the amount of effort required to keep a mailing list up-to-date using mastheads, whether from Mastheads.org or directly out of magazines, will quickly add up to much more than the cost of a subscription with a service like ADBASE.
And that brings up a much more critical point - the cost of list maintenance. I spent hours and hours, and hours putting my own list together, and even then, how could I be sure that "Liz Smith" and ClientCompany is "liz.smith@clientcompany.com", or is she "elizabeth.smith@clientcompany.com"? and do I want to be the one doing all that work for just one list, not to mention all the work to check and re-check who is now at what company? Nope, I don't. Nunes points out, specific to pulling information from just editorial mastheads:
For example, say you can scan through a masthead every 5 minutes (which is aggressive if you include double checking and breaks -- it's pretty tedious work), that's 12 per hour on average. If you have a list of 600 magazines, that will take about 50 hours. Even if you have an assistant working for only $10 per hour, that's more than the cost of subscribing to a full-year Editorial Edition from ADBASE that also includes book publishers. Now that's for only one update. If you plan to send out additional mailings throughout the year, you will have to update the list again costing your more time and money.
But, this isn't about Mastheads (read the previous piece for more information on them), it's about proving the value in preparing and maintaining the list. If you consider a list is $700 a year, that's about $60 a month so that you always have a ready and up-to-date list of e-mails, and then there's a nominal charge per 1,000 e-mails as well. And, these are qualified e-mails too.
So, it seemed to me, after the extensive amount of time I spent preparing just 1,100 e-mails, that using a pay service with tens of thousands, where they've done all the hard work of validating e-mails, and organizing them, might just be a far far more effective and efficient (and time-saving) way to go. To that end, as I noted above, we're working on an extensive review of adBase, and hopefully AgencyAccess too. RELATED: ~ Marketing 201: AdBase - A Timesaving and Valuable Tool, 11/5/08
Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
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In light of the demise of Digital Railroad, a few readers have written expressing concern about the future of PhotoShelter, and what their
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