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Showing posts with label Advanced Business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advanced Business. Show all posts

The Power of One

One of the most hotly discussed issue among professional photographers, is "to combine, or to not combine? Whether 'tis smarter to join together fees for creative and use, or to separate them out." Here, I shall endeavor to address this issue with several concrete examples, and some insights into the issue.

Warren Buffett once said "price is what you pay, value is what you receive." This is true across every spectrum of business transaction. Is the price too high? Well, it may be for some, but no so much for another. While some may scoff at the cost of a smartphone, saying the extra data plan and phone features are just not worth it, almost every day the price of the phone and connectivity charges are a drop in the bucket compared to how having that phone keeps me connected to clients and booking jobs. Recently, I was on assignment, and booked for a shoot to photograph an auto accident that was staged and set up, because the client said they couldn't find good images of cars having an accident. To the client, it cost them tens of thousands of dollars to stage the accident, from stuntmen to actors to totaling a car. Could they have searched among the 70,000+ images on flickr (here) that turn up for the search term "car accident?" Sure, and they could have possibly gotten the image for next to nothing. However, to this client, the value of what we delivered was worth the investment of all that went into it. (And they did search Flickr,Getty, etc and did not find what they wanted - I asked.)
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Magazines value photography because it entices readers to subscribe of buy single-copies, which ensures that there are eyeballs looking at ads, which pay the bills. Advertisers buy ads and use images because almost always a well used photograph tells a story and sells a product better than any written words can. These advertisers make their investments in ads and images to sell products or services, increase their bottom line, and make a profit for the company owners, whether a private company, or one traded on the stock market. It's all business all the time, make no mistake about it.

While it used to be that breaking apart the costs to produce an image (creative fee) from the costs to use an image (usage/licensing fee) was common, more and more these fees are being put together, and not separated. Consider that the combined fee is not full compensation for the image's coming into existence, but rather, the least that the photographer will accept for the initial work and effort. On more than one occasion, I have done a stellar job or delivering far above a client's expectations, and the client (especially when they are on set) begin to see things far and away beyond what the original intent of the shoot was. Usually, I overhear a client saying to their colleague "oh my god, we could do a whole campaign around these images, instead of just the one we were planning - these visuals are great." Usually, the negotiations for the additional licensing fees for extended or expanded uses of the photography are handled after the fact, but not always.

Yesterday, we went into great depth about a license as a "window of opportunity." If the client wishes to expand their window of opportunity, then additional fees should be paid. However, if the photographer delivered as required, and then, say, the client does a focus group on the commissioned visuals, and decides to kill or scale back the project, they are not entitled to a refund. This is the client's right - to control the exploitation, or lack thereof, in the work you created. This does not mean that you can't give back money, or bill for less. If you determine that it is in your own best interests to do so, then, by all means, do so.

Here's a case where keeping the fees together made a huge difference. This is a real example, but I'll change the industry/client for the sake of the example.
The problem is taxes. The government is trying to impose taxes on a variety of snacks - chips, cakes, and cookies. Enter the American Snack Foods Association. I get hired to photograph all the snacks (which means that while my client is the ASFA, the end client is Frito Lay, Enteman's, Hostess, General Mills, Altria, and so on. You get the picture - a lot of people who usually compete, having to work together on an issue) together. We do, and we get sign off from ASFA. The bill - $10k for the creative and usage, combined. I do this job on a Friday. Sunday, I get a call - one of the Frito-Lay bags is the old branding, and we need to re-shoot on Monday. No problem. We send another contract for $10k. We get on set, ready to go, crew at the ready, computers and lighting ready. The client doesn't even turn up to the shoot, and scrubs the shot. No problem. Send a bill for $10k. We are told Monday afternoon we are to finally shoot Tuesday. Send another contract for $10k. We do the shot, and the client again signs off on the job, and this time, they mean it. Total bill? $30k. Paid in a week. This client is an ongoing and repeat client for me. If I had separated out creative and usage fees, it may have been more challenging to argue that they still needed to pay those fees.
When putting together estimates, keeping fees together, wherever possible, ensures a greater amount of revenue for your business, and thus, has a significant impact on your bottom line.
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.

Licensing - A 'Window of Opportunity'

Consider the license to a photograph a window of opportunity. For example, an image shot at a political rally this past weekend has, first, a window of a day as a news photograph for the daily newspapers. After that, the window of opportunity to generate revenue from this consumer of images closes significantly. For a news-weekly, the window is a week or so. For a monthly magazine, it's about 30 days. Following that, the window of opportunity for the use of most images from that rally have a window that closes significantly on election day - November 3rd. Then, it becomes a historical image, as fresh images will be needed for the political needs 2 years from now. As you license an image you close windows, and others cannot open. For example - if a photograph is licensed by the democrats for ads critical of the political rally, then that image is almost assuredly not going to be licensed by the republicans for ads in support of the issue. Other windows of opportunity abound.

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The broadest example of a window of opportunity is the term under which you control copyright. The term is life of the author plus 75 years (see here) . So, in the US, life expectancy is 78 years (source here), and assuming you start shooting professionally at 23, right out of college, your first images have a protected duration of 55 years + 75 years, or 130 years. The images you shoot at age 65 have a protected duration of 13 years + 75 years, or 88 years. So, you have a window of opportunity to exploit the value of your images for between 88 and 130 years, provided you live to the average age of 78. So, if you grant to a client a 10 year exclusive use of your photography, the window of opportunity for others to have exclusive use of the image (and you to generate revenue) is narrower after the first use expires.

A more narrow example of a window of opportunity applies when it comes to fashions and technology. For example, (cell phones - Game Changing Cell Phones Of The Last 30 Years) if you had shot a "generic" image of a business man using a Motorola flip phone back in 2003, as the Palm, iPhone, and others came out, that image looked dated, and has very few uses to illustrate a business man on a phone. So too, images that show CRT televisions and computer monitors - everything is flatscreens these days. So, for that flip-phone photo, your window of opportunity was about 4 years, before it "aged" out of the market.

When I license a window of opportunity to a client, I have no way of controlling the exercising of the rights I granted, beyond defining the maximum extent of the use. If I license an image to a client to produce 100,000 printed brochures for the next 6 months, I cannot force them to actually print them, for example.

When, for example, I rent a car, I am renting a window of opportunity to exploit my exclusive use of that car. I may opt to rent it and sleep in it overnight because it's cheaper than a hotel room, or I may decide to drive it for 24 hours straight, stopping only for gas. Just because I didn't exploit it the entire time as a car in the first scenario, I am not entitled to any pro-rated refund. Nor would I be if I just drove it for 4 hours and returned it. While it used to be that U-Haul treated their moving vans this way in the "24 hour period" approach, they found that they could narrow their windows to overnights, and even shorter periods of time, and still make money. If, however, you did rent a moving van for 24 hours, you would not have to pay more to the moving company if you moved yourself and two friends than if you just moved yourself. It was your prerogative to exploit your rental and the extent to which you did that is up to you.

So too software. Everyone pays, say, $200 for a Photoshop upgrade. However, some people use that software three times a week, others 8 hours a day 7 days a week. You are entitled to use it 24 hours a day 7 days a week on one desktop and one laptop (see here) provided you are only using one machine at a time. Are you entitled to a discount if you're only using it a few days a week for a few hours a day? Nope. Adobe does not control your exploiting of the window of opportunity, only you do.

Same goes for music. If you download a song from iTunes, you have a personal use license. You can listen to the song 24 hours a day, forever, or you can listen to it once a week, in your normal music rotation. The cost to do so is the same, regardless of the extent of your exploiting of the license. However, if you want to use it beyond your personal use license (i.e. selling your services as a DJ, as background music in your restaurant, in a commercial selling your products, etc), the costs increase because your use increases and your benefit increases, so, too, does the creative talent behind the music need to benefit.

When it comes to photography, your ability to leverage the narrow window of opportunity during which your images have value will be a cornerstone of the extent of your income as a photographer.
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.

Deliberate Practice With the Intent To Fail

Today on an assignment, I had a chance to hear David Shenk talk about practicing your craft to succeed. Shenk, author of the new book, The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong, talked about cellist Yo Yo Ma, and his path to success. The importance of the 10,000 hour rule should not be under-estimated, but Shenk had more to say.
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Shenk talked about the notion of practicing with an intent to push yourself to the point of failure so that you can embrace and learn from failure, and what it feels like. Further, you can press on, and perhaps not fail at the same point, the next day, or the next day after that. Eventually, much like the pre-concieved notion that no human could run a mile in under four minutes (here) you can break through and past failures, to succeed like no one else has before.

So, just when you think that you have practiced you craft (whether lighting, negotiating, framing an image, and so on) hard enough, press on. Know that there are other photographers out there, pressing on, again, and again, and again. When you're practicing push, push, push. That said, when it's show time (on an assignment for example) is not the time to push to the point where you fail in your deliverable. However, once you've got the deliverables you promised in the bag, there's nothing that says you can't take some additional time to do something even more fabulous than you had previously produced, and maybe blow the client out of the water.



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.

10 Questions for: Richard Kelly

Over the years, there have been good elected leaders at the helm of ASMP, and less-than-stellar elected leaders. One of the great leaders is photographer Richard Kelly, and he most certainly should be re-elected, and also serve a second term as ASMP President. I first met Kelly when I travelled to the Pittsburgh ASMP chapter to give a presentation over 5 years ago, and then we started working together on the ASMP Strictly Business 2 series. All along, Richard has demonstrated a street-tested savvy as an ASMP leader because he is a full time photographer as well. He knows all to well the reality of being in business, because he IS in business, first as a photographer, and then, brings his skills to the fore to lead ASMP in the right direction.

While Richard has submitted a ballot statement, he also answered a series of questions and answers that were posed from the membership. His ballot statement is here, and the ASMP Q&A is here. However, we thought it of value to continue our "10 Questions for..." series, and call upon Richard for his answers. Below are his answers to our questions, and while yesterday marked the first day you could cast your ballot online here, I encourage you to first read his answers, and then, yes, go vote for him You'll need the password that ASMP e-mailed you with the subject line "Your ASMP election information".

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1. You're running for re-election to the ASMP board, and I presume, you'd like to return for a second term as President. Why?
For the last 3 years in my board role, I've had an opportunity to move the needle on important initiatives for photographers across the country. My role as President allows me to directly impact the profession we all pursue so passionately--so yes, I'd like to return as President to continue working for our members.
2. What achievements are you most proud of during your tenure on the ASMP board?
Education has been a big part of my agenda, so as a board member Strictly Business 2 and the continuous growth of the ASMP seminars series are both important achievements for me.

In the big picture, its been the opportunity to take a critical look at the short and long term challenges and opportunities both for publication photographers as well as ASMP, and then applying that research to writing the new Strategic Plan. That plan is the map that ASMP will navigate over the next five years and it was important for us to have a master plan with clear outcomes that will positively impact the industry.
3. Aside from the achievements in #2, what achievements or projects during your term as President are you most proud of?
I spoke to a number of members when I started this role, and what I heard most often was that they wanted more information from the organization. I think we've made great strides in improving the ways and frequency of how we communicate with chapter leaders and members. We want members to be informed about the industry at large--as well as about what ASMP is doing in response.

Under my leadership, ASMP has embraced social media not only as a means of communicating with members but encouraging our members to learn and use these new tools. ASMP was the only photography organization to have a professional analysis of social media companies terms of service agreements, arming the larger community of photographers with information they could use when utilizing these web services.

I also initiated both the multimedia and motion video educational programming and went the next step by creating the motion video study group, which delivered an industry resource for photographers now creating motion video for clients. http://asmp.org/tutorials/video-tutorial.html

Looking out beyond today, I challenge the board to think differently, I encourage our members to think about what it means to be a professional, in an age when everyone with a camera is a photographer, I emphasize the need to renew our focus on copyright and register our work with the copyright office and give people the knowledge to do this by hosting hands-on workshops.

This focus on copyright goes beyond the actions of our members--its also working with software companies, independent developers and the copyright office to create registration access during the photographers regular workflow, and being part of the conversation with the big thinkers of copyright in New York City at the Registration Counts Symposium April 21, 2010. http://asmp.org/content/registration-counts
4. If you are re-elected to the board and in turn, for a second term as ASMP President, what one or two projects are you most excited about?
Continuing what I started, pushing ASMP and publication photographers to expand business strategies and models to adjust to our new economy and business demands. ASMP is the thought leader of our industry and I want to take that up a notch. But what photographers really need today is advocacy and education to help them move their businesses in a new direction.
5. How do you see the creative landscape for photographers (i.e. ASMP members) in the coming next few years?
This is a great time to be a photographer, the opportunities for telling your story your way is unprecedented. It is very exciting when I see photographers using these new platforms.
6. How do you see the business/economic landscape for photographers (i.e. ASMP members) in the coming next few years?
It is going to be challenging--not just for ASMP members and photographers but for small businesses in general. We'll survive only if we venture forward and leave behind some of the 'way it used to be done' thinking, in favor of, 'how can we do it better?'
7. How do you think that ASMP will serve its members as it regards the landscape of dealing the the realities of business in the near term?
We continue to focus efforts on opportunities for photographers to expand their markets and creativity. There is not one solution that will work for every photographer, but we want to provide them with educational and support resources to rethink their businesses.
8. ASMP, I believe, benefits from full-time working photographers serving on the board, because they know in a way no one else can, the realities of being in business. Can you share a few of your recent assignments with us (with or without naming clients, as you are comfortable)?
In my market I do primarily editorial and corporate assignments. In Pittsburgh, that translates into annual reports and features about business and innovation. I am currently working on an annual report for a non-profit that has me traveling throughout the state and I just completed two editorial projects featuring people who are making a difference in the community.
9. It seems that ASMP has grown in the past few years. How do you envision the growth of ASMP will be in the near term?
I believe ASMP is offering photographers very targeted and relevant information and resources and I do not see any other photographer group offering what we offer. In the past year, many new professionals are entering the freelance world especially from newspapers and these photographers want the same resources that the longstanding members want and need. This is the growth ASMP is seeing and will continue to see short term.
10. How has what you have learned as an ASMP member benefited your bottom line?
That my peer network is unparalleled in helping me resolve challenges, that I can't ever ignore marketing and that I can't stop moving at the speed of the rest of the industry.
If you don't vote, then you have no right to complain.

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.

Surviving the Downsizing in Photography

With thanks to PDN (here) and MediaPost (here) for bringing this to my attention. I wrote about this in my book - essentially, if you're a staff photographer you must be prepared to become freelance unexpectedly. 3500 people (and counting) are being forced into the freelance world (from all areas of the media newsroom) without notice. Back in April, I wrote Staff Photographers - An Endangered Species, which is worth a re-read.

What does this mean, exactly? And more importantly, what should current members of the freelance community do as those that are the talented photographers that are a part of these layoffs enter the freelance world?
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For staffers, your first thing to do will be to have a website. I know of several current staffers who have their own websites. that means having your own business cards to hand out where appropriate. This means knowing how to send a contract and figure out rates and rights.

Oh, and if you're one of those staffers who used to look at a $200 freelance job as gravy to complement your meat-and-potatoes staff job revenue, and now you're out of a job - those clients you have expecting you at $200 you can no longer afford to work for. This alone should be an argument for why you - as a staffer - shouldn't be doing these jobs at side-job rates, not to mention how doing this affects your freelance brethren's ability to charge a living rate in your community.

What must be done by the freelance community these photographers are joining? I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but you need to get them work. Really. The question is - how?

If your normal rate for a wedding is $3,500, or a press conference coverage is $750, or your family/pet/child portrait sitting rate is $350 and an enlargement is $950, then rather than trying to convince your newfound friend to charge those rates - book the job on their behalf - at those rates. By doing so, your friend will soon realize that that is what they're worth, and will apply that same rate structure to people calling them directly. Everyone, from time to time, gets a call for a period that they are double-booked. Don't forward on the job, and hope your friend does things right - do it right for them by taking the job and then you hiring your colleague to do the assignment, and you passing through the assignment fee to them. What chance to do it right do they have if they've never negotiated an assignment rate, or a rights package, before?

By embracing, and helping these talented people out, not only are you doing a nice thing, but you're also ensuring that your community will remain robust and survivable amidst the constant downward pressure on rates.

Here's a partial list of where they might need some assistance:

Contracts - If a photographer has been a staffer for awhile, it's likely their last agreement to provide photography was done on a handshake. If a photographer has only been on staff for year or so and came straight from school, they too don't understand the importance of a contract - signed by them and the client. Offer to give them a copy (prefably in a Word document so they can edit it) of yours to get themselves started.

Equipment - They likely need help getting their equipment setup. They may have been given their old equipment from their place of work, but in most cases the gear is on it's last legs. Redundant camera bodies, and lenses ranging from ultra-wide - 14-24mm Nikon, or 16-35mm Canon, all the way to 200mm lenses for each, plus two strobes, and a Jackrabbit/Quantum battery pack will be sufficient. In the rare case that they are going to do sports, or major news events, a 300mm with a 1.4x or 2x teleconverter is useful, but freelancers headed that direction with a need to sustain themselves are not going to find a lot of success chasing sports.

Software - They may have their own laptop, but are unclear about the importance of backing up their images, and acquiring legal copies of the software they'll need. Don't start them off on the wrong foot by giving them copies of your software. We recommend they get full versions that are registered in their own name of Photoshop, Photo Mechanic, FotoQuote, Microsoft Office 2008, QuickBooks Pro. They should also read: © Infringements - Don't be a Hypocrite.

Dealing With Clients - Send them this link - Lies, Lies, and More Lies , Traitors Among Us?, and this link - Top Ten Lies Told to Naive Photographers, and encourage them to read the posts - the first two are mine. Then, be sure to tell them that when the client says "oh, you're the first photographer I've talked with that has a problem with __________....", where the blank is either "work-for-hire", "wanting to be paid", "charges for post production", or "wanting a contract signed"; they they're being dishonest at best, and more than likely, lying.

Marketing - This one's tricky, because if you're not careful, you'll teach your newfound freelancer to compete for your own work - and will be doing so without the understanding of the true costs of being in their new shoes as a self-employed person, and so may well undervalue themselves (they did just get laid off, remember? Their self-worth wounds likely need a bit of time to heal before they remember that they're worth a lot.) About two weeks ago, I wrote a piece titled Getting Clients - A Few Options, that could be helpful. Most important is to get a website that you can get online fast, and is easy for you to make changes to - Effective SEO - Please Welcome liveBooks, talks about the solution we recommend highly (and yes, they're an advertiser here too). Once they get a website, they can begin their marketing campaign. The notion of having a printed portfolio these days applies maybe to 10% or less of the assignment work out there (much of which is in the advertising field) so the online version of that is the best route to go.

Pricing and Rates - The FIRST thing you should do is send them to the NPPA's pricing calculator. This calculator works for the vast majority of photographic fields, and gets your colleagues thinking about the true costs of being in business - which in turn, will assist them in calculating what they should charge. Reading Good, Fast, and Cheap - Pick Two, that I wrote in May is probably a good place to send them, also Selling Something You Don't Own is a cautionary tale. Cautionary to the person doing the helping is that neither of you say "we'll agree to charge $X for this..." because that could get you in a bit of hot water with the anti-trust folks. Discussing what an assignment could cost is one thing, agreeing what you both would charge is another. The biggest problem with photographers rates is not that they've been artificially inflated to a price that's too high, it's that photographers fail to contemplate the total costs of being in business, and thus price jobs too low.

Longevity - I sat at dinner three nights ago with a colleague who had thought he'd gotten his golden ticket - a staff job at a community newspaper. Just under three months later, he was laid off. Guess what? He wasn't eligible under the rules that applied to him, to even collect unemployment. Everyone is replaceable. No one is safe.

Then there's Where Does All Your Time Go?, that's all about time management and why $100/hr does not multiply by 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and 52 weeks in a year to become a photographer that's paid $208,000 a year, and how $100 an hour isn't enough.

Lastly, I'd suggest they read: The Conundrum of Doing Nothing, that I wrote about how to get things going, and getting a few of the books that are at the right of this page - they are the tools that I used as I was growing my business.
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.

UPDIG - Why It Is Important

My literal interpretation of "up" and "dig."
This industry continues to overflow with acronyms. It started with ASA, then we graduated to ISO, then there was APO, then DAM, not to mention all of the associations - NPPA / ASMP / APA / EP / WHNPA / BAPLA / ASPP, and so on and so forth. Why do we need another?

Well, to put it simply - we do - and essentially all the anagrams that represent photographic organizations are on board with UPDIG - UPDIG is short for Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines.

Before you think you know how to handle your images, stop and think that you might learn a little (but more than likely, a lot) by reading through the information they've put together.
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Late in the Fall of 2004, David Riecks was tasked by Susan Carr to see about forming a group consensus on digital standards, and the auspicious project was formally started in early 2005 amid a vacuum of information on best practices guidelines for digital imaging. David Riecks, stepped up to created UPDIG's first website, and in the Spring of 2005 Richard Anderson, who is on the national board of ASMP came on-board to organize and write The Guidelines, along with Greg Smith, who is the Business Practices Committee chairman for the NPPA. The consortium continued to grow (see all the organizations that are a part of UPDIG here), as noted on the ASMP website here - "when leaders and representatives of nearly a dozen photographers groups from around the world gathered for a "Digital Summit." They agreed that Guidelines and Best Practices were needed, should be easy to understand, and should offer options for different workflows aimed at different outputs...". APA heralded the effort here "...15 clear and understandable guidelines as well as a best practices document prepared by the the UPDIG working group of photographic international trade organizations...APA is proud to play an active role on the UPDIG working group." Even John Nack of Adobe wrote here "UPDIG describes itself as "A working group of digital imaging professionals and allied trade groups and manufacturers, dedicated to promoting worldwide standards in the commercial application of digital imaging....If that describes your trade, the site is well worth a look."

So, well, what are the 12 guidelines? (Note - there were 15 to start, they were boiled down to 12.) I think you'd be best served to read them directly on the UPDIG site, (here's the executive summary - Quick Guide) and here are the 12 guidelines:
  1. Color Management
    • The best ways to use and embed ICC color profiles (and what they are if you don't know)
  2. Monitor Calibration
    • The importance of hardware calibration and profiling; as well as information on monitor soft-proofing
  3. Color Spaces
    • Understanding the various camera settings for color spaces as well as the color spaces for image editing; offset printing; CMYK conversions; and photo lab prints
  4. File Formats
    • Why should you shoot in your camera's RAW mode; the value of DNG, and the various formats for the web and for printed output
  5. Naming Files
    • Best practices for cross-platform file naming; and avoiding duplicate file names
  6. Resolution
    • How to describe; optimizing for the screen; for inkjet prints; for continuous-tone printing; for offset printing
  7. Sharpening
    • Capture sharpening; process sharpening; sharpening tools; dealing with noise; output sharpening
  8. Metadata
    • IPTC Creator and Copyright; keywords; the importance of metadata

  9. File Delivery
    • Media; methods; file info; ReadMe files

  10. Guide Prints and Proofs
    • Print and proof viewing

  11. Archiving
    • Who; what; where

  12. Workflow
    • Matching to needs; what it should do; choosing the right tools

If you're looking for answers about how to best handle your workflow - This is THE place to start. And since technology evolves, so too will the efforts of the working group to change with the times.
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.

Getting Clients - A Few Options

Probably the number one comment I get about people who are looking to find reasons to avoid all the business issues of photography - that is - improving their bad practices for good ones - is that their current clients have come to accept things like buyouts/all-rights/work-for-hire; no shipping charges; no post-production charges, and so forth.

"How do I start charging my clients for these things now?" I get asked.

You don't.

"Then how do I get clients that will pay for these things?"
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Get new clients.

But it's supposedly not that simple.

But it is easier.

First though, let me backup. If you've been in business for awhile, and not been doing things right, you have clients that expect too much for free, or too much for way too cheap. It would be problematic for you to simply alter your business practices overnight for these clients. You'd likely loose them - before you're ready.

Instead, make the decision that as of today every client you take on will be handled differently. Appropriate fees, licenses, contracts, and so forth. Eventually, you will be so busy working for these clients that you won't have time to work for your previous clients, and you will transition away from them. Or, you may be able to sustain your business with your new clients, and grow your business by migrating your old clients to your new way of doing business.

How to find new clients?

Tuscon photographer Will Seberger forwarded me a post from his blog - WHEN THE GOING GETS WEIRD, THE WEIRD TURN PRO, which has a number of great insights, and is well worth a read. Will brought to my attention Mastheads.org, so I thought I'd take a look:
And it looks interesting. For $24 a year, you get to see the mastheads of just over 600 publications. Yet, that's less than 25% of the magazines that are available in ADBASE's North American database alone.

Is this the "craiglist" version of ADBASE and AgencyAccess? Quite possibly. It also appears that as other members submit mastheads, their list grows, so it is, to one degree or another, reliant upon other members to submit the masthead information.

To get alternative perspectives on this, I turned to the folks at ADBASE and AgencyAccess for their take. Nelson Nunes, President & Co-Founder of ADBASE, which has been around for over a decade, wrote "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."

Ok, so what do the folks at AgencyAccess think?

Keith Gentile, CEO and Co-Founder of AgencyAccess commented "Mastheads.org is a great secondary source for photographers for research. AgencyAccess takes their data a step further by allowing photographers to customized these lists by specialties, titles, locations, hire frequency and much more...With AgencyAccess you are also paying for these added features which you will not get at Mastheads.org. I do however recommend getting the service as an extra as it can be helpful."

Ok, on the surface, it seems like spending the $24 isn't a bad idea, but as a complement to either of the above services. but there are risks to just relying on Mastheads.org.

Nelson Nunes at ADBASE wrote "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." And that's a good point. Doing so takes a great deal of time, and the amount of time involved adds up fast.

Nunes continued and he noted what I had already concluded, but his math and explaination is succinct, I'll note it here:"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."

And I can't stress enough the value of accuracy. When I get correspondence with my name spelled "Jon", or "Herrington", it's a dead ringer that the sender isn't starting off on the right foot. In fact, I have been known to purposefully misspell my name on some forms I have to fill out just to see how they use/re-use/sell my name. When the person's name on the masthead says "Kathryn Taylor", and you start your e-mail off to them "Dear Kathryn", and anyone who knows her knows she goes by "Kate", to her, that's a dead ringer that you're someone to ignore. So too with "Dear Patricia" for Pat, "Dear Clifford" for Cliff, and so forth.

Keith Gentile over at AgencyAccess noted "Agency Access also allows the client to download the list as labels, telemarketing reports and text files making it easy for the client to send out emails and mailings. The advanced tools of AgencyAccess allows the photographer to efficiently promote their services in a timely fashion." Time. I can't stress it enough. So many people just don't start (or maintain) a marketing program because the way they are doing it takes time and effort. The tools that both of these provide makes it so fast and easy to maintain, it's of value just for those tools, not to mention the list of e-mail addresses at your fingertips. The ability to go into a service, track who got what, when, and to be able to further refine your search is critical. I wrote about this (Kenny Rogers Had A Point, 4/21/08), and how it works.

What is missing, however, is that Mastheads.org is all about MASTHEADS. EDITORIAL MASTHEADS. The resources of ADBASE and AgencyAccess includes Art Directors, Design Firms, Creative Directors, Art Buyers, and so forth, and so on.

Nelson summed it up well when he wrote "Mastheads.org is not a replacement for a fully researched comprehensive database like ADBASE that guarantees accuracy. Furthermore, if you need to create or maintain a mailing list for direct marketing purposes, so much work is involved in extracting a proper mailing list from Mastheads.org that the cost of an ADBASE subscription more than pays for itself."

I couldn't agree more.
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