

A Million Pageviews, Thousands of Dollars Poorer, and Still Countlessly Richer - danso
http://danwin.com/2012/01/a-million-pageviews-thousands-of-dollars-poorer-and-still-countlessly-richer/

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rhplus
_"I made a $1,000 (mostly to cover expenses) to shoot a friend’s wedding...
but weddings are so much work that I’ve decided to avoid shooting them if I
can help it."_

OK, I admit that I don't know the business, but isn't the "so much work" part
of wedding photography kind of the bread-and-butter for a lot of
photographers? I'm guessing that the market rate for that wedding would have
been closer to $3,000, which after a day or two of ground work and a couple of
days of editing, really isn't to be sniffed at. Am I missing something? I'm
not being snarky, I'm just wondering why photographers would pass up what
seems to be relatively easy money.

~~~
jon2512chua
I would say that there are 2 kinds of "work" involved in wedding photography:

1\. The physical stuff like scouting out the locations way before the day of
the actual wedding, attending wedding rehearsals to understand how the actual
ceremony would go like on the day itself, the actual shooting for the wedding
ceremony as well as the reception, and the days after spent sorting through
the shots and editing them. This is definitely a lot more physically taxing
compared what a recreational photographer (which I'm assuming the author is)
is normally used to. I still remember how my legs just gave up after I came
home from spending the whole day running around trying to get all the shots
while lugging around a couple of kgs of gears.

2\. The mental stuff like how stressful it is to know that you only have one
chance to get things right on your client's special day, and if let's say you
screw up the bride-walking-down-the-aisle shot, you can't just get the couple
to rewind the whole ceremony just so you can get the shot right. On top of
that, sometimes if you're unlucky enough you may even face lawsuits from
dissatisfied couple asking for a refund AND for you to compensate for their
wedding costs and pay for a new ceremony so that they can have those
"memories" be immortalised in photos. Don't forget that like in all creative
professions, you have to deal with clients who insist that you charge too much
cause their 16 year old nephew with a DSLR can do the job for free.

So yeah, wedding photography may be for some people but personally I wouldn't
want to make a living out of it, probably because I don't think it suits my
more laid back personality.

------
wisty
tl;dr - hobbyist spends $50 on a flickr pro account, makes $100, and has spent
$8000 on camera gear. He's had a great time.

The camera gear is a sunk cost - he's not buying it to make money. He's buying
it because he loves taking photos, and wants good gear.

He's a good photographer. But photographers don't make money, unless they are
being paid to be there (i.e. for a wedding, or by a news outlet). OK, you can
try to sell photos after you took them, but the world is saturated in good
photographs.

To make money, you need to create value then find a way to extract some of it.
Or you need to con someone. There's few ways for a photographer to make money
_after_ creating the value, because there's likely to be so many alternatives
to their photo.

~~~
danso
Thanks for the adroit summary...Since I've only done photography in the
digital age, the idea that a photo alone is worth something seems strange to
me. However, a photo produced during an assignment in which a photographer has
to schlep a half-day to get is most definitely worth hundreds or thousands.

Someone who cares about preserving the memory of their wedding will recognize
the value of paying someone $3,000-$10,000 to capture it, over some uncle who
just bought a massive DSLR system to toy with. Same with publications and
important news events. In the latter case, the problem is that there are just
far fewer wealthy publications that still exist.

~~~
wisty
adroit - I like it. I usually get told "terse".

Also, I should have told people that they really should click on the link, and
scroll down to the sample pictures - they really are good.

------
djloche
"Creative Commons Non-commercial license (but I’ve let anyone who asks use
them for free)"

This is his primary fault. If he gives his photos away for free to anyone that
asks, it's hard to listen to his argument that he can't make any money from
his photos. He can - but he chooses not to.

~~~
danso
Yep, and I didn't really argue otherwise.

However, the dilemma facing photogs who _do_ want to make a living is that to
"be with it" is to be on some kind of service that allows for easy sharing of
their work. But this sometimes (which, in most photogs' eyes, is too often)
leads to photos being reused without proper payment.

And then you get into the discussion of, "Well they wouldn't have paid any
money for your photo even if you did have it under lock-and-key"

In other words, even if I didn't have CC on my photos, I would still make a
negligible amount of money. They aren't good/specific-to-a-buyer's-needs to
make money in their digital existence. I could conceivably make money by
selling prints and really marketing myself, but I foresee that ultimately
making me less money than if I spent that time focused on my actual job.

------
parka
I struggle to find what the post was trying to say.

I've 10 million pageviews for my photos, averaging 430 pageviews per photo.

I derived a lot of revenue from the photos. Not from selling but from using
photos to drive traffic to my blog where people will buy stuff.

Mine is more of product photography, targeted at people looking to see how a
product looks.

There are may ways to make money off photos. E.g. Some are

1\. By selling the photos. 2\. By selling your service as a photographer 3\.
By affiliate marketing - driving traffic

------
cek
I read this and wondered "how significant is a million pageviews on Flickr"?

I've got 637k pageviews (<http://flickr.com/photos/ckindel/stats>).

Does anyone know if there is a way to list Flickr users by the # of pageviews?

~~~
lusr
Now I'm also curious. At first I thought 1,000,000 is a huge number of views,
but at 3,100 photos that's just 322/photo. I can't access Flickr from work but
I think I have about 45 photos and 18,500 views, averaging 411/photo, and
that's just from a couple of up votes on reddit/itookapicture (seldom more
than 5-10). Obviously the actual distribution of views will vary quite a bit,
but it's a useful starting point.

That being said, this guy seems to have quite an ability to take interesting
photos of ordinary situations whereas I tend to save the camera for special
moments so I doubt I'll ever hit 3,100 photos. Unfortunately it looks like the
Flickr Stats API is per-user, and private, with no global statistics available
(nor in a Flickr blog post), so we can't know what's "normal" and what's not.

------
leak
Why doesn't Flickr have a revenue model similar to YouTube based on views to
share with users? Or even let you overlay links to other sites (advertising)
on your photo?

~~~
rhplus
A photograph doesn't grab 3 minutes of attention like a video. Or, more
specifically, you can't ask someone to watch a 15 second ad just to see a
picture.

~~~
leak
What? Ok, I take back the "like YouTube." How about like Google search? Users
don't spend 3 mins on google results page. Also, a text ad can be targeted to
whatever tags the pic has (ie: New York hotels).

~~~
rhplus
Users click on ads in Google search because they're looking for answers. For
one in every couple of thousand search results, a Google ad will provide the
answer that someone is looking for. They'll click it. Revenue is generated.

Over at YouTube, users are willing to sit through 15 seconds of pre-roll ads
so they can watch 3 minutes of whatever. Revenue is generated.

If a user arrives at Flickr, they've probably already found what they're
looking for. Someone searching who arrives at a Flickr page of dolphins will
see pictures of dolphins and have succeeded in their task. There's not much
chance they'll notice any ads Flickr shows and click because they want NFL
tickets.

~~~
corin_
Ignoring comparisons with YouTube or Google, the fact of the matter is that
content sites can indeed make money from advertisements.

I'm not saying Flickr _should_ go down this road, but you're wrong in
suggesting that sites can't make money from adverts unless they are pre-rolls
or on search engines.

------
matt4711
and I'm assuming $0 for the adobe photoshop version he pirated or didn't
bother including in his calculations.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
He didn't mention the costs of his computer either, so he must've stolen that
too?

But srsly, I think we can be sure that he has a legal copy of Photoshop. From
the bio on his employer's website [1]:

 _"Dan Nguyen is a news application developer at ProPublica. [...] Previously,
Dan worked as a reporter, Web developer and multimedia producer for the
Sacramento Bee and sacbee.com. His work on multimedia projects won awards from
Editor and Publisher and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency."_

[1] <http://www.propublica.org/site/author/dan_nguyen>

~~~
matt4711
I know I'm getting downvoted for making a "douchebaggy" statement but not
including the cost of a general purpose computer and not including the cost
for a professional photo editing tool is something totally different.

I was just kind of upset about reading the "cost" of his photography
experiment/hobby and not even thinking about including the cost of the photo
editing software. Especially when it comes to photoshop which is probably one
of the most pirated pieces of software due to its price.

I unfortunately know too many hobby photographers who would not even think of
paying for this essential tool they probably have been using for many years.

~~~
danso
No you're right, as is the previous commenter who speculated that I have a
copy from work (no one considered GIMP? :) )...funny enough, I noticed someone
in one of the discussion threads about the "This photograph is not free" who
was in agreeance with the author but also seemed to imply that it's OK for
non-rich photogs to pirate Photoshop.

The two things are apples-to-apples in that people who copy photos or
Photoshop w/o permission justify it in that the original work is still
available for the owner to sell/use. But it's funny how it's hard to see that
perspective unless you are actually in the aggrieved group (i.e. photographers
and software developers)

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_"you're right, as is the previous commenter who speculated that I have a copy
from work (no one considered GIMP? :) )"_

I did consider it, but I saw screenshots of the Photoshop toolbox in one of
the chapters of your publication _The Bastards Book of Ruby_ [1].

I could never get used to the GIMP, though. I've worked with Photoshop since
1993, I'm stuck in my ways. I have often wished for a leaner program that
would let me do simple tasks that I usually do in PS – GraphicConverter
satisfied some of those needs for years. Then, Pixelmator 2 [2] came out, and
nowdays I find myself using it about as often as Photoshop. It's lean, has a
gorgeous UI, and it works almost the same as Photoshop. For web graphics, it
has all I need. For print, I still (have to) use PS.

[1] <http://ruby.bastardsbook.com/chapters/image-manipulation/>

[2] <http://www.pixelmator.com/>

