You Are Missing Out
On Sales?
On Sales?
Advance Notes: Direct selling to photobuyers is fine, but there's an additional way to make photo sales:
Make your buyers come to you….
The photobuyers says, "Why start at the bottom and work up, - start at the top, instead, and work down."
Meaning: use a long tail search term first, - if you don't find any hits, shorten the term until you do get a hit. Always use the plus sign and the word photosource.
The Internet has been a heaven sent bank account for freelance photographers.
Why? In the past, photographers had to deliver samples of their work to prospective buyers. The delivery was either in person, FedEx, or the postman. Prospective buyers would take a look at your work, usually on Thursdays. Ugh! Mortifying if not humiliating for most of us.
Then along came the Internet and you built a private website where you felt you were in charge. Or, you could join a portal. Or join a stock photo agency or two.
But what I want to talk about today is how the Internet really works well for the individual freelance stock photographer.
You see, photobuyers are like the rest of us. They want to do a good job, but as quickly and easy as possible. In reality, the photo editors that we deal with here at Photosource International, trying to find the exact picture they need for their article, book, or specialized task they're working on, find it tedious, to pore over hundreds or thousands of images, trying to find a particular photo that might match the article or content of their publishing project.
Search capability on the Internet has improved so well to date that it's no longer necessary to employ an Internet image search to find a difficult-to-locate picture. It's quite remarkable how a photobuyer can type some words into the Google, Yahoo, or MSN search bar and locate the source of obscure photo such as:
140 Mile Sahara Desert Run Morocco
This is not a typical everyday search term, naturally, but for the photo researcher looking to save time to find a photo on that particular subject, it's not going to be easy. Unless that photo researcher knows how to use text searches.
Incidentally, you wouldn't find 140 Mile Sahara Desert Run Morocco on the Corbis, Google, Alamy, or Jupiter portal sites. And for good reason. Those companies prefer to feature photos that they know will appeal to the big spenders: ad agancies, PR firms, corporate graphic departments, etc.
Well, you say, "How does the photobuyer find this picture? I just typed it into Google, Yahoo, and MsM, and I didn't find any photographers listed to contact"
Here's what photobuyers have learned. Rather than starting with single or double keywords such as "desert", "Sahara" or Morrocco", they thry to nail it right away with what's called the "long tail search phrase." Yes, they type in the phrase: 140 Mile Sahara Desert Run Morocco … but they also add the word photosource to find a photographer who has been there and is ready to sell photos of the race.
It comes out like this:
140 Mile Sahara Desert Run Morocco+photosource
Let's type this phrase into the Google standard search bar.
Up comes a photographer's site in the PhotoSourceBANK.
We click on his page. Then we scroll down to look for the subject highlighted in red.
Photobuyers know they have found a photographer who has been there, and probably has several other pictures of the race.
The contact information is at the top of the page. They can also contact the photographer through email at the bottom of the page.
So the secret for photo researchers is to start with the 'long tail search' and narrow the field upwards, as if it were a pyramid. You start at the base and go upwards. Most photobuyers make the mistake of starting with a single
Example: bison taking mud bath
Don't search for bison
Don't search for mud bath
Go for broke: Search for bison taking mud bath
But, - add photosource: bison taking mud bath+photosource
Try it in Alamy, Corbis or Getty - you won't find it.
This gives you a clue doesn't it? When you enter keywords in your database of photos, use single words.
Before learning the technique, most photobuyers would look at a search engine as it if it were a dictionary, that is, they seek out and search for a single word. The researcher says, "Why start at the top and work down, - start at the bottom instead with a long tail search and work upwards. Chop off words in your search phrase until you get a hit that fits the bill. Work up. Don't work down. Top, instead, and work down."
Meaning: use a long tail search term first, - if you don't find any hits, shorten the term until you do get a hit.
What could be accomplished in the search capability of search engines is amazing. So get ready and prepare. . So get ready and prepare.
Yet when Google competitors come along in the future, it's going to get staggering.
Rohn Engh, veteran stock photographer and best-selling author of "Sell & ReSell Your Photos" and "sellphotos.com," has helped scores of photographers launch their careers. For access to great information on making money from pictures you like to take, and to receive this free report: "8 Steps to Becoming a Published Photographer," visit http://www.sellphotos.com
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