The Countdown Begins. We'll drive readers to your gallery.

Thanks for all the nice emails while we took a few weeks away from the blog. The "Secrets" book is now available for download. We'll talk more about that in the future.
With 11 days to go until Christmas many procrastinating readers will want to know just how long they can wait to order photo reprints. For current clients we'll keep the readers posted with timely emails asking them to visit your photo gallery and order prints right up until December 22. Here's the rundown for Christmas delivery:
Dec. 15 last day to order with regular handling and shipping.
Dec. 16 last day to order with Express handling and shipping.
Dec. 22 last day to order with Express handing and Next Day shipping.
The Buy One 8x10 and Get One Free offer is still running through December 31.
Its not too late to run a house ad from the house ad library in the next edition.

Making Your Fourth Quarter Numbers

We're 5 weeks in to the last quarter of the year. If you are watching the numbers for your newspaper you have a pretty good idea by now if you are going to meet your revenue goals for the year. If you feel those numbers need a boost or if you want to get off the starting gate fast in 2011, CONTACT US. If you are already a client and not getting the sales results you want, CONTACT US. We have lots of ways to help boost your sales.

Coming soon we make it easy to learn many of these techniques with the online publication of "Secrets to Photo Reprint Revenue for Newspapers"

Your Readers Want Bargains. Let's Deliver Them

What is the perfect product to sell?

• One that only you offer.
• One that is a value to the buyer while providing high margins.
• One that delights your buyer so it provides a win-win transaction.

I suggest that photo reprints from your paper combined with MyNewsPhotos' 8x10 Buy One Get One FREE offer between now and 2011 creates the perfect product.

How do we make it happen?

• If you are current client DOWNLOAD the house ad and run it in every edition between now and New Year's Day.
• Upload right photographing an event.
• If you have an email list of your readers send them this offer.

We'll write to all of your reraders who have already ordered photos in the past and tell them about the offer and we'll even pay all the costs of the extra print!

Oh Canada

If your paper isn't in Canada you are excused from reading this week's tip.
If you do have readers in Canada we have good news. All of the features of the only software created from the ground up for newspaper online photo reprint success are now available in Canadian dollars. If you are current client your MyNewsPhotos Region Manager will be contacting you and converting your account in the next few days. If you are not a current client but would like to start up a new revenue stream for your paper Contact Us.

How Often Should We Run a House Ad?

Every photo in every edition of your paper will have at least reader that wants to buy it. How much they want to buy it is another issue, but assuming they want to buy it badly enough to pull out the credit card then it is essential that they know to do when the urge to order a print hits. This means that house ads for photo reprints need to run in EVERY EDITION. And better yet every photo should have a line under it suggesting "To see more photos go to ThisPaper.com"

MyNewsPhotos offers an entire House Ad Library with ads from one column inch to a 1/2 page ready to download in minutes.

Photographers' Torment or How to Shoot Photos in a High School Gym.

Shooting good looking action photos in a gym without supplemental lighting is tough. Here's how to get the best possible exposure.

1. Set camera exposure mode to "A" for Aperture Priority. This means we are going to choose (in Step 3 below)  how wide open the aperture is and let the camera choose the shutter SPEED (how long the shutter is open.) See picture on left. Your knob may vary.
2. Set your ISO to the highest number on your camera. depending on the model this will be 1600, 3200 or 6400. This setting determines high sensitive to light the sensor in the camera is. We are cranking it up to max sensitivity. 
3. Set your aperture or f-stop to the lowest setting. (the lowest number is the most wide open setting)
4. Set your White Balance to Auto unless you know how to create a custom white balance for the light in the gym. The color temperature of sodium vapor and mercury vapor lights often found in gyms doesn't match up well to any of the usual white balance settings. 
5. Keep the flash turned off .
6. Take lots of pictures. Three good reasons:  Photography is a skill that takes practice to improve. Uploading them will drive sales and it improves the odds of getting a great shot.

The Gravy Train Rolls On

One month down. Three to go.
The September Buy-One-Get-One offer proved popular with readers but we wanted to make it even easier for readers to receive a FREE photo when they buy one. So in October 5x7's are AUTOMATICALLY buy-one-get-one.  No promo code, no muss, no fuss.
As always, we are paying to the extra print so all our newspaper clients need to do is upload photos and run the house ad.

The House Ad art for the October Reprint Special is available at this link to download. We will be reminding all of the readers who have ordered a photo in the past of this new offer every week to 10 days.

The WSJ Catches Up To MyNewsPhotos Clients

Below is a link to an article in the New York Times about the Wall Street Journal using information gathered from web visitors habits to make editorial decsions. Not to brag, but our newspaper clients have had a five year head start on the WSJ since every album and even every individual photo in the photo gallery has a counter. That means you are only a few clicks away from knowing how popular one topic is verus another. This is a much easier to use tool than counting letters to the editor and more reliable than licking a finger tip   sticking it in the air to gather reader info. Now you can know which local high school is the most popular with your readers. Which photographer's work attracts the most attention. Is there more interest in cars accidents or town council meetings? It's a powerful tool. Welcome aboard to the The Journal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/business/media/06track.html?_r=2&src=mv&ref=business

The House Ad art for the October Reprint Special is now available to download. Is again a Buy-One-Get-One offer but with a twist; no promo code to enter. We will make free 5x7 ofr every 5x7 readers order in the month of October. We will also be reminding all of the readers who have ordered a photo in the past of this new offer. And as always at no cost to our MNP newspapers.

Ohhh No! We Uploaded What News Photo???

It happens. A glitch in the work flow and a photo is uploaded that wasn't meant to see the light of day is in the paper's web gallery. Before the picture of the editor's spouse with a beer can has 1500 page views you want to take it down. With MyNewsPhotos its really easy. Just log in your account. click the album title, click the photo and click "delete". Poof, Done.

The SECOND Fall Sports Season?

Football season has begun and sales are soaring but there is a second football season for photo reprints. Beginning around April, moms all over the country will be wanting photos for their graduates scrapbook. Scrapbooking is huge and and this football season echo is easy money for the paper. To get your fair share be sure to renew the sports photo albums when your expiration notices arrive in the email box. Albums expire 120 days after uploading but can be renewed for 90 days up to three times all for free. Albums with photos ordered from them within the last 90 automatically renew indefinitely.

Remember to download and run the September Buy-One-Get-One House Ad all this month.

The Weakest Link and an Opportunity

High School football season is beginning and this is the paper's opportunity to shine. We have prepared a house and an offer to make you positively dazzling in the eyes of your readers.

All this month your readers can buy any 4x6, 5x7 or 8x10 photo reprint and get one free.


We announced this in Friday night's special edition of Allen's Tuesday Tips. That post contained a broken link to the house ad for the September Buy-One-Get-One FREE. Here is the correct link  Download it here. Just add your paper's URL and its ready to begin generating revenue. Keep in mind we cover all the cost of the extra prints. All you need to do is run this house ad in every edition this month.

Thanks to Dave Scholl the Publisher at Dixon's Independent Voice in California for being the first to write me back about the broken link.
Next month we'll have another powerful offer for your readers and every month through the end of the year.

It's Started. It's Started. Photo Reprint Christmas is Here!

This Special Edition of Allen's Tuesday Tips is on Friday night in honor of the opening of High School football season tonight. High School football photos are the undisputed heavyweight champion of newspaper photo reprints.
If you were out shooting tonight and got great results; well done. If you feel like there is room for improvement look over some earlier posts about how to stop action and cover sports.
If you are responsible for the financial success of the paper now is your time to shine.  Instead of running ANOTHER renew-your-subscription-ad in these next 4 months of issues, do what successful newspapers all over the country are doing and run items from the House Ad Library. Wednesday we will be writing to everyone that has placed an order from your your paper and remind them that they can Buy One and Get One FREE. We've created a matching house ad that can run all month. Download it here. Just add your paper's URL and its ready to begin generating revenue.
Next month we'll have another powerful offer for your readers and every month through the end of the year.
Thanks to all those who wrote in and noticed that there was no tip this past Tuesday.

In 2 Weeks Let's Start Creating Evangelists for Your Paper

How are evangelists created? By getting one person to share something positive about the paper with someone else. The biggest photo reprint season of the year coming soon so let's equip these new evangelists with something really positive to share.  Starting September 1 and continuing through December 31 your readers can benefit from the most powerful campaign of offers for free additional newspaper reprints ever. And best of all; there is no cost to you. We are covering the cost of all the additional prints. Clients just need to download and run the appropriate house ads from the MyNewsPhotos House Ad Library.
And if your paper is not a client yet, this is the time.

Your Readers are Calling. Don't Worry, We'll Answer It.

Ring...Ring... would somebody ELSE get that please?  We will.
Technical Phone Support, many online photo gallery companies simply ignore it. Readers have no way to contact the photo lab other than an email address. You love your readers. You know they deserve better. They deserve an 800 number right there under each photo. And not one that is outsourced to the low bidder. One that will represent your newspaper to your readers in a professional manner. Let us handle that. We see it not only as an opportunity to serve our newspaper clients and their readers but also as a gold mine of information about how readers our interacting with the newspaper's photo gallery. Information we use to improve the experience for your readers in new software tweaks and releases.

Revenue sick? Get a Physical, but No Rubber Gloves

We all need for a doctor or other expert to look us over once in a while especially if we are not preforming at our best. Your online photo gallery may be in the same situation. Not getting the sales you expect? Let us help. We can preform an examination, make a diagnosis and provide recommendations for getting your photo revenue strong and healthy. Although not all items on this list pertain to all papers, we will assess:
Image Quality
Image Size
Image Orientation
Uploading Quantity
Timeliness of Uploading
Link Quality
Link Location
House Ads
House Ad Schedule
Special Offers
Internet Promotions
Effectiveness of Promotions
Unlike any other health check up, this one is free. Even if you are not a current client.
What a deal, a renewned revenue stream and we didn't even make you cough once.

The Countdown to Photo Season is On

High school football season begins in a month. Prep football is the single most popular subject for photo reprints. Time to prepare for success. Here's what papers that sell a lot of reprints do:

• Train readers to visit the gallery by uploading right after photos are shot all this month (and all the time)
• Run house ads. Readers need to know that your gallery is full of photos waiting for purchase.
• Take lots of pictures. Not just the starting players scoring points but the bench, the coach, the cheerleaders, excited fans all make for compelling photos that sell.

More ideas to come.

News Flash: Marie Curie Was Wrong

"I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy."

Marie Curie

Announcing the Anywhere OneStep Uploader.

MyNewsPhotos has long been known for having the easiest method of uploading photos to on line photo galleries, the OneStep Uploader. Folders of full resolution photos were simply dropped on the OneStep Uploader icon on a computer desktop and we did the rest. The software reads the name of the folder, creates an album by the same name in the on line gallery and populates it automatically. But the uploader software had to be installed. Now the Anywhere OneStep Uploader just needs an internet connection. Nothing to install. 
See it here:
http://www.instantimagegallery.com/pubimages/upload/upload.html
Sorry Marie but it represents great progress and is swift and easy for every newspaper.

Cyan Is Not a Country. Getting the color right.

Digital photography is great but it suffers from many of the same color problems and its film based ancestor.
Light sources have different color temperatures and cause inaccurate color in our photos. What colors? How do fix them?

Cyan, seen as blue-green in photos. Add red to fix the the print. Underwater photos and some artificial light sources cause this.

Magenta, looks reddish, pink in photos,. Add green to correct the print.

Yellow, looks yellow, makes sky look dull. Add blue to fix it.

Red, looks orange in print. Add cyan to correct it. Incandescent light is the usual culprit.

Green, looks green in print. Add magenta to fix it. Fluorescent light is the usual source.

Blue, looks purplish in print. Wrong settings on the camera can cause this. Underexposure in shade and snow pictures have this tone often too. Add yellow to fix it.

At MyNewsPhotos we manually color correct every image we print in the lab so you can skip this with all the photos to be added to your gallery and know that readers will still get great pictures.

Your Newspaper's Name is Valuable. Treat it that way.

In any community, big or small, the local newspaper's name is recognized and trusted by many.
That is powerful.
That is valuable.
That is your brand.
For many papers their brand is their most valuable asset and yet often doesn't show on the balance sheet.

Treat your brand well. Put your brand on your offerings. You wouldn't buy a billboard and put someone else's name on it.  Why do it on the web?  Many papers across the country use online photo gallery services with the name of the hosting company plastered all over it. Who's brand is being built in that relationship?
At MyNewsPhotos the "white wrapper" approach that uses our technology and expertise in software and photo printing to build YOUR brand.  Your paper's name on the top of every page. Your name on the thank-you email. Your name on the sales order sent with the photo products.

Your brand is the one that is important to your readers. You've earned that.

Bring Out Your Inner Brick Mason

Build Something but Keep Your Hands Clean.
Masons have a job that offers a special satisfaction. Each day they turn a pile of brick, some sand, water and cement in to something that can be clearly seen at the end of the day and may stand for hundreds of years.
The fifth generation of newspaper photo reprint software is being built right now. This is the only software that has been built from the ground up for newspapers to display and sell photo reprints. We'd like for you to enjoy some of the mason's satisfaction and help build it by writing to us and making suggestions for improving MyNewsPhotos version 5.0. You can reach me at Allen@MyNewsPhotos.com or your MNP Region Manager. 100's of newspapers have helped make us what we are so far and we thank every one of them. Please join them and help us build something good and strong but without the calluses or heavy lifting.
Thank you for considering it.

Habits Aren't Just for Nuns

We humans are ruled by our habits. From the way we brush our teeth to the way we read the paper to the way we surf the web. The happy anticipation of opening the fresh newspaper or visiting the paper's home page. It's Pavlovian how we respond to certain stimuli, but that response must be learned. How does our brain learn it? Repetition. Why is this important? We all want our readers to form a web surfing habit of visiting our paper's web site and looking at our photos. To cultivate this habit in them the content must be fresh with every visit. That's why the MyNewsPhotos gallery software places the newest content first and that is why uploading with every new edition separates the successful, money-making papers from those that ...well... find uploading a chore to be delayed. Which side is your paper on? Fresh Content=Fresh Excitement=Results.

The Public's Preferred Pages Preserved for Posterity

Your newspaper's pages are valuable. Some are so valuable to certain readers they want them preserved for years as museum quality reproductions.
Let's help those readers out and open a new revenue stream. How? Contact your MyNewsPhoto Region Manager and ask them to turn on the Full Page Reprint wizard. Once they throw the switch a link will appear in your photo gallery that will allow readers to order their favorite pages of your paper reproduced on archival quality materials with bright white paper and rich colors not possible using newsprint and ink. Perhaps best of all IT REQUIRES NO WORK ON YOUR PART UNTIL AN ORDER IS PLACED. Once an order is placed an email is automatically generated and sent to whomever you have designated at your paper asking them to send the appropiate pfd file to us at the lab. To keep readers from ordering pages that are unavailable the wizard tells the reader just how far back pages are available.
So the next time you publish a story about a sports championship, a local business, a featured althlete or artist just know that someone will want to preserve it. Let's help them out.

Your Newspaper's business model makes Microsoft jealous?

ROI--Return on investment.
For any publication to be successful it must realize more money coming in than going out. How? Maximize the return on any investment. There may be no activity the newspaper engages in that provides a larger ROI than uploading news photos. Since a photographer would be sent to cover the story even with no uploading and the gallery cost nothing to setup; there are no real costs up to this point. So if a staff member that makes $20.00 per hour spends the 3.5 seconds needed to drag a folder of photographs onto the uploader and that results in one average sale of $34.00 the paper realizes approximately a 95,000% return.

That's an ROI even Microsoft would envy.

Images Aren't Just for Printing

The Readers Have Spoken With Their Wallets.

A fun fact; even though 2009 was a great year for amateur online photo companies like Snapfish and Shutterfly and they made record amounts of 4x6 inch photo prints they made even MORE money on photo gifts and photobooks and other products that are not traditional 4x6 prints. With photo mugs the leading photo gift. The lesson we should take away from this is that if you want to maximize the revenue from your newspaper's photo gallery you need to turn on products like photo mugs, mousepads, T-shirts and collages. Magnets and photobuttons sell well during little league too.

Let's reach out with both hands and pull in that money that we have been leaving on the table by offering too narrow of a product selection.

When Readers Pop the Question

How to Answer When Readers Pop the Question.

Every working photographer at an event as heard this question from readers 1,000 times: "How can I get a copy of that?" There may be many ways to answer but the way that makes the most financial sense and in the long run makes the readers the happiest is "at our newspaper's website" while handing a business card over to the reader that has photo ordering information on it. "We'll have these uploaded with in 24 hours." This increases traffic to the paper's website and makes it easy for the reader to make a purchase.

Photographers from MNP papers can get a custom design and a their first 100 cards for free. Just send the information for your cards to your MNP Region Manager and the cards are on the way.

With graduation season approaching this might be just the time to start this approach or stock up on cards.

When I'm 64...or more

What is your photo legacy? How will the photos we take today be remembered 25, 50 or 100 years from now? If they are not printed on archival materials they will be remembered every bit as well as the '93 vacation video shot on Betamax. I'm sure some people who sang for Edison thought they were making a permanent record of their voice, and the guy that bought 50 lasers disc movies thought it was a good buy because he could enjoy them for years. Backing up my tax records to 5.25 inch floppies was certain to last longer than making a Xerox copy.
The point is this: Newsphotos shot digitally and stored digitally will not be available to be seen after more than 8 or 9 years goes by if no one copies them to the next generation of storage. For those of us who are working photographers that means our life's work goes away, UNLESS they are printed on archival materials. Modern color RA-4 paper can be expected to last over 100 years without "noticable fading" under normal display conditions. Who knows how many 100's of years if kept away from the light in an archival quality photo album. So, print, print, print. Decorate your home, your office, the lobby at the paper. Give photos as gifts. Donate prints to the library, fire house, town hall, homeless shelter, old folks home, hospital. As a bonus you will spread the fame of your photography and the newspaper's brand as you go.

The next generation of your community will thank you for it.

A Marketing Lesson from Sea Lions

Years ago at the National Zoo in Washington DC my favorite thing to do was feed the Sea Lions. Back then you could by a big bag of peanuts in the shell and were encouraged to toss them into a pool just over a low rail to the sea lions' pool. What made this particularly fun was that the smartest sea lions would wave a flipper at anyone holding a bag of peanuts to catch the humans eye and attract more peanuts than their less animated pool mates. A staff member explained that this waving behavior was not taught to the animals but rather learned on their own because it brought results.
This simple lesson of motion catches the eye and brings rewards is also known to the smartest newspapers. Those papers catch the attention of humans by using one of the free MyNewsPhotos dynamic badges on their homepage to direct readers to the photo gallery. See examples.

May you wave your flipper and attact lots of peanuts.

A 5000% improvement?

Pictures don't lie but they can only tell a small bit of truth. How do we reveal more of the truth? More pictures. As journalists giving an accurate account of an event should be the top priority. It's time all newspapers understood the value of the a online photo gallery. It is like having an unlimited supply of ink and newsprint. Instead of sending out a photographer to a story and chosing one image of the 50 available we can now share all 50! By putting all 50 in the online gallery we are:
1. Telling a more complete story for our readers.
2. Increasing page views and visitors to our website
3. Multiplying the odds of selling a photo by 50.

Size Matters (Digitally speaking of course)

Digital image size makes a big difference in image quality. Why? Digital camera images are made of individual dots called pixels and a million of these pixels make one megapixel (MP). How many megapixels depends on the camera and and how it is set. How many pixels are enough? To make a true photo quality print a lab needs roughly 300 pixels for every inch of size of the final print. For example an 8x10 would require around a 2400x3000 pixel file for true photo quality. Since 8x10 is the most popular enlargement size and often images are cropped before printing or uploading we recommend setting your camera at 2400x3600 (about 8 megapixels)at the MINIMUM. Once we get past 15 MP we are nearing overkill for photojournalists. Even a photo half a page in size wouldn't benefit noticeably from shooting at anything higher than 15 MP and all that file size just takes up space on your card and hard drive and slows uploading.

Twist and Shout

Shoot vertical subjects vertically. It's a simple rule for great pictures but in the digital age it is even more important for two reasons. First if we keep the camera horizontal for a subject that is actually up and down we are wasting a lot of space in our image. To make a good print that space will need to be cropped and cropping is a waste of pixels. Those wasted pixels reduces image quality and limit the largest (most expensive) print that can be printed from that image.
Once we've shot the subject vertically we need to upload it rotated to the correct position. In a study of over 1000 online news photos. Not a single unrotated vertical image was purchased, but the likelihood of a rotated vertical image being purchased was more than double that of a horizontal image.

Why is my aunt orange?

Automated Printing Versus Manual Print Making
Even the best automatic image correction softwares are not all that great at accurately color and density correcting photos. Good color correction takes a trained human being to manually look at the image and adjust it for the best possible print. Thats why at our lab we individually correct every single image we print for color, density, contrast, saturation and sharpness. Its also why you can often upload an image where the exposure or color is marginal and know that print will be something that your reader will be happy to hang on the wall.

Britney Spears and Washed Out Photos

What do they have in common? They are both overexposed. Just like too much press is not good for Britney, too much light is not good for digital images. Overexposure (too much light) makes photos too light and lose highlight detail. This is a real problem for digital photos because it can't be fully corrected even with the magic of Photoshop. How do we prevent overexposure? Unlike Britney we take control of our lives...er cameras and stop the madness of too much. How? If our results are consistently too light we need to check the EV setting (the +/- button) and make sure it is not set on anything other than zero. If it is already on zero then we should set it one click to the negative. On most all cameras this will darken all expsoures by 1/3 of a stop.

Shining Like a Red Rubber Ball

Outdoor photos are making a comeback in these first warm days of Spring and to take the best ones we need to use a great light source; the sun. On sunny mornings and late afternoons we can help get better sports pictures by getting the sun on our back. That will light up the front of our subjects. Sure, it's not always possible but especially for sports like soccer moving around the pitch and getting the sun behind you will improve your photos. And for those shots closer than 20 feet after the game don't forget to use the flash to fill in the shaodws and brighten your news photos.

Sports Photos--Good to Great

What separates a good sports photo from a great sports photo? Often it is peak action. Capturing the moment at the top of a basketball player's jump is nearly always a better picture than halfway back down. A batter's swing the moment it contacts the ball, a soccer ball the instant a foot boots it; these peak action moments are compelling and take news photos from good to great. As a bonus when an athlete jumps straight up they stop for an instant right at the apex of the flight. That moment can be shot with chrystal clarity thanks to this law of physics.

A few other notes on great sports photos:

• Ball sports photos should include the ball.
• Use your press access to get shots that those in the stands can't get.
• Emotion, effort, concentration, action these are the components of a great photo.
• Shoot a lot of shots. Its not the age of Tri-X any longer.
• Time outs are for the players not for photographers. Great shots are often taken when emotions are running high during a stop in the on field action.

Photos are like Donuts--Freshness Counts

Photos are like Donuts--Freshness Counts

The emotional attachment to a photograph decreases quickly after a photo is taken. According to Infotrends, in only a few days after a photo is taken the emotional attachment the subject or another has to it will drop below a level it will not see again for 20 years or more. That means the opportunity for reprint sales dissipates quickly also.
The successful photographers and photo departments we deal with know this and make rapid uploading a priority. They see the photos posted in their gallery as an extension of their news coverage and not something relegated to the back burner and allowed to grow old and stale like...what's that cliche?-oh yes, "yesterday's news".

Get that "Sport Illustrated" action look in your sports photos.

Welcome to the first edition of Allen's Tuesday Tips.

Spring sports time is nearly here. To stop action and get the "Sports Illustrated" look of sharp action and a soft background follow these steps:

1. Set camera exposure mode to "A" for Aperture Priority (We'll talk about what that means in a future tip) See picture above. Your knob may vary.
   
2. Set your ISO to 800 (higher for night games, and another item we'll talk about later)
   
3. Set your aperture or f-stop to the lowest setting.
   
   These 3 steps will cause your camera to automatically choose the fastest available shutter speed and stop the action.