It’s a Jungle out there, or rather, a Sea out there

Photo: School of fish. Courtesy of Vancity Allie cc/attribution license via Flickr.

I’ve had a lot of down time lately as I’ve previously expressed. I’ve used some of that time reading over a variety of photo forums. One thing I’ve noticed is a lot of discussions about “How do I…?”, generally referring to something about a photographer starting their ‘new’ business (often due to a layoff), or about increasing sales. One recent post caught (pun; upcoming) my attention, and I thought I’d share my reply here.

His basic question was how to increase sales of his travel and landscape photos through his web site. It was obvious that despite his best efforts to date, his photography just wasn’t selling as well as he’d like. I did have some comments about his web design not helping, but at the real heart of it was the nature of the economy. To which, I replied:

(The) painful truth is that this is a horrible time to try and make any serious money selling – no offense, but – real generic travel & landscapes. The first budget item to get slashed to the bone, or cut out altogether is always the art budget. Things right now are tough all over for everyone, and as companies fold or stop spending to cut costs, everyones sales are affected.

You need to realize, in a sick and twisted Discovery Channel metaphor, that you’re just one small tiny insignificant little baitfish swimming in a huge school of similar looking baitfish. Now up swims a large hungry fish – who in this metaphor is the client with the money. But in this tale, you want the Big Fish to eat you, and not eat any of the other baitfish. (i.e. Give you the job or sale, and not give it to a competitor.) You want to look attractive to the Big Fish, so he’ll swim towards you, and ignore all the other fish. That means you need to be flashy, bright, fresh, and be able to offer something that none of the other thousands of baitfish can offer.

To convert sales you have to step up your game, and present yourself as best as you possibly can, all the time. Stock clients want to know that you’re the “go to” person for your specialty. Print buyers want to buy a memory of their experience, so you need to offer them something that is able to create some kind of an emotional connection. Without that, there’s no reason for them to buy, period.

I know it’s brutal, and again, times are tough. But if your goal is to start selling your work on a consistent basis, you’ll first need to know how to value your work. To do that, you’ll need to understand your cost of doing business. One of those costs may be a new website. But if that’s what you need to attract the buyers attention, then that’s what you (read: we; all of us) need to do.

We all need to work extra hard to earn our keep these days, and this should be a reminder to keep doing our best.