Reprints are less than half the story

The biggest online photo companies make more money on photo gift items than on photos prints and so can you. If your paper is offering photo reprints online (if not, what's keeping you?) you should also offer photo gift items. The Big Three of this catagory are mugs, mousepads and t-shirts, but photo buttons, magnets and keychains are also popular during fall sports season. If ypour paper isn't offering these products you are leaving money on the table.
Adding these products to your lineup is an easy way to increase sales and increase reader enthusiasm for your photo gallery.



More on group photos

One more post on how to take great photos of big groups. Group photos are an opportunity to bring lots of attenion to just one image in the print edition and then lots of page views and sales to the online edition and the photo gallery.
Posing dozens or even hundreds of people is not intuitive but any photographer can do it well with the techniques in this ebook. To a FREE copy of our ebook "Efficient Large Group Photography--Getting the Big Shot" just write us. It's 35 years of group photography experience distilled down to a five minutes read.

Be a resource for your community

Your paper is already taking photos around the community every day or at least every week. And if you are smart you are already uploading those that have instant appeal from recent events. But beyond those photos is another opportunity. Photos of schools, firehouses, town halls (shown on left) churches, businesses, construction sites and landmarks of all kinds are opportunities to build a library of images of your area. Not only are these photos popular among internet browsers, a big library generates income all year round and since active albums automatically renew with every sale it takes zero maintenance to keep them online. So turn the next slow news day into a great picture day by building your community's photo archive.

Eating an Elephant

A few weeks ago we shared an idea for generating thousands of dollars in sales from a news photo by shooting a group photo at local small college and high school graduations. The response was bigger than any post we've made. But what if the group is really big? How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Or in this case, one smaller group at a time. Break the group in to manageable subsets; photograph each of those and then combine the photos with photo editing software into a single product.
To help in posing even these smaller groups we're repeating our offer of a FREE copy of our ebook "Efficient Large Group Photography--Getting the Big Shot" just write us.

Relationship with readers

There may be nothing more valuable to a newspaper than the relationship with its readers. Their loyalty is at the very heart of any newspaper's success. One of the best ways to instill loyalty in readers is to give them more than their money's worth. With photo reprints we're are doing that for you for free these days by giving your readers an extra 8x10 for free when they buy one. For our current clients our House Ad Library has ads ready for downloading.
Like so many relationships; the more you give the more you get.

Photojournalist Named In Top Ten Most Stressful Jobs

CareerCast.com has named photojournalist number four on its list of Most Stessful jobs:
http://www.careercast.com/content/10-most-stressful-jobs-2011-4-photojournalist
(Nevermind that the photo in the story is of a man using a video camera)
It's nice that someone sees that getting the shot, getting it right, getting it in before deadline and getting it uploaded day after day can be stressful.

Readers Want This

$3000 for a single news photo even in a small town? Yes. Graduation class group photos like this one are cherished by grads and their parents. They only take a few minutes to set up and shoot and upload. Now is the time to make this happen in your community. Talk to the senior sponsors in charge of the graduation ceremony at your local high schools or small colleges and ask for a few minutes with the grads just before the processional begins. If the gym isn't available write to us for a free copy of the ebook "Efficient Large Group Photography". We'll share how to pose hundreds of people in minutes.