10
If You Don’t Sell Yourself, Who Will?

PROMOTING YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY

The greatest hurdle in the area of self-promotion, it seems, is not how to advertise oneself (many clever and creative methods are open to you), but the reticence most of us have when it comes to self-advertising. We’re uncomfortable talking about ourselves in glowing terms, afraid of seeming pushy or immodest.

Many a talent has gone undiscovered because he failed to act on this salient reality: If we’re going to be discovered, it’s our job to orchestrate it. The number of talented photographers in this country alone must run in the hundreds of thousands. Picture the Bronx telephone directory. Then imagine that all those names are modest, talented photographers, and your name is among them. It seems preposterous to think that the world of its own accord is going to come along and pick you out from all those other fine talents, doesn’t it? Sometimes it’s actually immodest to be modest.

Society has ingrained in us the idea that unless we exhibit an acceptable degree of self-effacement, we won’t be thought well of (“He’s so conceited!” “She’s stuck on herself!” “What an ego!”).

However, the viewing public deserves to see and enjoy your pictures. You deserve to have your talent rewarded with that which allows us to survive in today’s world: money. You must overcome the conditioning our culture lays on us and accept the fact that if your stock photographs are going to be seen and enjoyed, you’re going to have to blow your own horn.

With good judgment you can accomplish this and come off looking not like an overbearing egomaniac, but like a talented businessperson who knows how to keep her product in the marketplace.

Talent Can Take You Just So Far

Here are four tips that should help you maintain your resolve to promote yourself—and to keep on promoting.

1. Many stock photographers, once they have achieved a name in their local area, lull themselves into supposing that the world is aware of their work. Not so. Think big. Don’t just toot that horn; blow it.
2. If you want your stock photos to continue selling, you have to continue selling yourself. Horn blowing is an ongoing task. Don’t think that photo buyers or potential clients are going to remember you next week because of your success with them last week or last month. Today’s successes are history tomorrow.
3. Once you begin to promote yourself, you will be pleasantly surprised to find that the people you thought would be highly critical of your promotional efforts will actually be the first to compliment you.
4. Because part of your motivation as a photographer is to share your insights and your vision of the world with others, you will find that the rewards of promoting yourself (and therefore your stock photography) will far outweigh the personal discomfort you sometimes feel when writing and distributing press releases about yourself, or when enclosing tear sheets of your triumphs in business correspondence. Without such promotion, you leave yourself at the mercy of chance. Sure, a few photographers are going to make it by sheer luck alone. Someone always wins the lottery or the $1,000,000 jackpot at Atlantic City. However, the majority of photographers who become successful have managed it by means of effective self-promotion.

Look Like a Pro Even If You Don’t Feel Like One . . . Yet

This applies to everything from your stationery to your flyers. The adage in this business is: Appearance communicates quality of performance.

Your new contacts in the photomarketing field, since they rarely meet you in person at first, will rely heavily on the appearance you project via your communication materials. Your photography speaks for itself. Your promotional material speaks for you. It tells photo buyers how serious you are about your work—whether you’re a good bet to be producing the same fine photography next month, or next year, at an address they can reach you at (your reliability factor). Photo buyers assume that your performance and dependability will match the quality of your presentation.

As publisher of the PhotoDaily market letter, Rohn had the opportunity to see numerous creative methods of self-promotion. I’ve included some examples in the following sections. They will give you an idea of the possibilities open to you: producing brochures of photo samplings, making catalogs, enhancing your stationery with examples of your work and designing a distinctive logo.

Your Personal Trademark or Logo

Your photography itself becomes your trademark once you get established. Before you reach that point though, a specific trademark or a logo may be an important element contributing to your success. A distinctive logo or design can help your correspondence to start looking familiar to buyers—and your name to start being remembered.

When you design your symbol or logo, be aware of a common error: the temptation to use the obvious—a camera, a computer disc, a tripod or a piece of 35mm film. You may, of course, want to choose from things photographic, but try for a combination or adaptation that’s all your own. Make it simple and easy to remember. Recruit a graphics student, or a friend who’s good at designing, drawing or critiquing your work, to help in the decision, based on the pointers mentioned earlier. Flip through the yellow pages or a business directory to see how others have tackled the question of logos. Don’t be too cute in your design—the novelty will soon wear off or even be offensive to some clients. Don’t be obscure either.

I consider the design of a stock photographer’s stationery so important that I have prepared a small kit for our newsletter subscribers to help them select a letterhead and logo for their stationery.

If your photographs are highly specialized in one area, be specific with your trademark or logo. If you’re a nature photographer, you can choose a design that reflects your work—a silhouette of a fern or a close-up of a toad. Children photographer? Choose a classic shot of yours that lends itself to a simplified sketch or drawing. As your photomarketing enterprise grows, you’ll be building equity in, and getting exposure and mileage from, your trademark or logo. Decide your specialty early, and produce a trademark that will cause editors to say, “Aha—he’s a transportation photographer,” or “She’s a tennis photographer.” However, don’t worry if you don’t have a strong specialty yet. You can start with a neutral logo, or no logo, and work gradually toward becoming strong in one or two defined areas on your Photographic Strength/Areas (PS/A) list. Then you can alter your logo from a more general design to one tied into your specialty.

Your personal trademark or logo doesn’t necessarily have to include a design or photograph. It can consist of the name you give to your stock photo business with or without an identifying design. The name can be your own name or a product of your imagination. Choosing your trademark is like naming a child: Once you make your final decision the result is here to stay, so do it carefully.

If you think you may register your trademark down the line, better check it out now to avoid disappointment in later years when you find that someone else or another company has already registered the exact same mark you desire.

It’s not absolutely necessary to formally register your trademark ($325 at this writing), but if you wish to explore the process to ensure that no one can legally copy your design, you can check information that’s available on the Web at www.uspto.gov or write to Trademarks, Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402. You also can register your mark of trade with your state officials.

YOUR LETTERHEAD

Your stationery often is your first contact with a photo buyer. Put special care in designing your letterhead. For the lettering you can experiment with the graphics or word-processing software that came with your computer. Often fifty or more fonts will be available to you. If you have a general mood running through your pictures, match it with a typeface that has the same feel to it. Consider incorporating a carefully chosen sample of your photographs in the design. Barter with a graphics student to conjure up some ideas for you to choose from. Outside help usually is more objective.

As I mention throughout this book, “You don’t get a second chance at a first impression.”

You are working long-distance with your buyers. The first impression they have of you is the piece of paper with which you contact them. When you initially write for photo guidelines, contact the photo buyer on deluxe stationery. If it costs a minimum of a dime a sheet, you’re on the right track. At a quick-print shop, get only one hundred printed at a time. It’s costly, but if you change your address or your mind, an investment in five thousand sheets isn’t lost. Once you eventually decide on your design and letterhead, then you can consider getting a larger order printed to your specifications.

ENVELOPES

Make your envelope a calling card. How do you decide which logo or photograph to use on your outside envelope? Use one that (1) commands attention and (2) reminds photo buyers and the public of your specialty. If your specialty is agriculture, and an extensive portion of your Market List includes publications in the area of farming, a strong agricultural photograph or logo will serve well. Keep in mind the purpose of your envelope promotion. You want your name to become synonymous with agriculture photography. When photo buyers in the farm-publications industry ask themselves, “Who has good agriculture pictures?” you want your name to come up.

What if you have two or three specialties? Print two or three different envelopes targeted to the different segments of your Market List.

BUSINESS CARDS

A distinctive business card will keep your name circulating. Business cards are inexpensive, and any printer can produce them. If you and your computer are up to the task, you also can create and print your own business cards on Avery business card stock www.avery.com. For a better, finished look, use scissors or a paper cutter to separate the cards rather than folding on the laser perforations. Don’t fall into the trap of acquiring a couple thousand business cards that are cheap looking and indistinguishable from your competition. Make your next business card something people will remember: a photograph (see Figure 10-1). Consult the yellow pages for printers. A good source for photographic business cards is Herff Jones Inc., www.herffjones.com and A to Z Printing at www.atozprint.com.

Build a Mailing List

The core of your operation is your Market List—the list of your photo buyers, past, present and future. Your promotional mailing list should start with your publication Market List. Begin to extend it to camera columnists, local galleries, photography schools, camera clubs, camera stores, radio and TV stations, and newspapers that will receive the press releases you’ll periodically circulate.

Preferably, these names and addresses should be on one major database that separates them by code. Keeping one central list helps you avoid duplication in mailings and time-consuming tracking when an address changes.

Faithfully keep your list up-to-date. Print on all of your envelopes. The cost you pay the postal service for the correction is currently a few cents, but it’s worth it. Whenever you make a mailing, code the mailing on your master list with a color, symbol or date so that you’ll have a means to measure how many mailing pieces certain markets or columnists are receiving. If your list is on a database, set up your program to anticipate categories that may be useful in the future, such as number of sales per individual market and type of sales (book, curriculum or magazine). Clean your list often (i.e., weed out addresses that have changed or are no longer useful).

MAILERS—THEY PAY FOR THEMSELVES

Probably the most cost-effective means of self-promotion is the mailer (also called sell sheet, flyer, insert or stuffer). These promotional pieces are similar to brochures (described later in this chapter), but are less elaborate (thus less costly), and you can make them yourself if you wish. They consist of a grouping of examples of your pictures in whatever size you wish to make them.

Dennis Cox, a stock, corporate and editorial photographer in Ann Arbor, Michigan, suggests a mailing every three to four months, minimum. His mailing list includes magazines, book publishers, design firms, corporate communications directors and ad agencies. “Naturally, not every direct-mail piece is going to fit everyone on my list, so I target mailings to only those I think will respond favorably to the particular mailing.” Though this is guesswork, Dennis advises keeping your guesses wide, not limiting. “Just when you think it may be time to remove a name because of lack of response, you’ll get a call from them. My rule is: If you want to work for them, keep mailing to them.”

In the fast lane of self-produced sell sheets is the digitally generated promo. Joe Farace, www.joefarace.com, a stock photographer out of Brighton, Colorado, tailors short-run sell sheets to specific themes and then sends them to photo buyers who are looking for pictures within that theme area. Because he produces the sheets using his own computer and printer, Farace can print from one to one hundred, depending on his target market.

His method is to work with images created with digital cameras or film scanned on a flatbed scanner with a transparency unit. He uses the Layers function of Photoshop to create composites of several color and black-and-white images along with supporting text, on a single sheet of paper. He prints the results on an Epson Stylus Photo 1280 ink-jet printer using photo paper. Each 8¹⁄₂" × 11" (22cm × 28cm) sheet costs him less than $2.

A word of caution: If you decide to make and print your own sell sheets, pay close attention to detail, layout and printing. It might take ten mailings of an exceptionally good sell sheet to win a client, but it will take one mailing of a poor-quality sell sheet to lose the client forever. If you have a professional printing company print your sell sheets, you will pay about $500 for five thousand deluxe quality sheets in black and white; you will pay a minimum of three times as much for color.

Other types of mailers are 3" × 5" (8cm × 13cm) or Rolodex-size cards (2¹⁄₄" × 4" [57mm ×102mm]), in various colors with promotional reminders on them. Dennis Cox sends Rolodex cards printed on durable plastic. He says, “They attract attention and should be a long-term asset. I’ve also sent out a series of postcards with good results.” Rolodex cards are available through and punch-out Rolodex cards are available through your local business printer or from specialized print shops in metropolitan areas.

POSTCARDS

Full-color postcards are an excellent marketing tool. There’s no envelope that the recipient has to open, and its cheaper to send a postcard than it is to mail a letter. Promotional postcards are available from Modern Postcard, 1675 Faraday Avenue, Carlsbad, California 92008, (800) 959-8365, www.modernpostcard.com; and Vistaprint at www.vistaprint.com.

BROCHURES

Design and produce a professional-looking four-page brochure—that is, one large (8¹⁄₂" × 9¹⁄₂" [22cm × 24cm]) sheet folded once. It will be a showcase for you, and it will pull in sales and assignments. Use as guides the brochures or pamphlets found in airline or travel offices. Such a brochure usually pays for itself, whether you invest $200 or $2,000. If you have the cash, courage and marketable pictures available, bend your budget and produce a full-color brochure aimed at a specific market that has both the need for your PS/A and a pay rate that will make it worthwhile. Look at other brochures to see which ones appeal to you. When you find one, adapt the design, using pictures that will appeal to your Market List.

Handsome, four-color brochures can cost as much as several dollars each depending on number of pages and size. A good place to find a wide selection of samples of these exquisite brochures is in the wastebasket of your local post office. Does this tell you something? Make sure your brochure reaches the right target.

How many brochures should you print and where? Take your mock-up to several four-color printers for quotes on one thousand, three thousand and five thousand copies. The quantity depends on the size of your market. It’s better to print more than you think you’ll need. It’s cheaper per unit; besides, you’ll discover new uses for your brochures once you have them. Such brochures need little copy. Put your photographs into the space. About the only words you’ll need are your name, address, phone number, e-mail address and website address. For assistance on self-promotion see The Photographer’s Guide to Marketing and Self-Promotion by Maria Piscopo.

CATALOGS

Have a catalog printed displaying a selection of your stock photos based on your PS/A. Assign identifying numbers (as used in your filing system, see chapter thirteen) to each picture. Three-hole-punch the left side of each page, and send it to current and prospective editors (see Figure 10-2).

The cost for three thousand copies of an eight-page, 8¹⁄₂" × 11" (22cm × 28cm) black-and-white catalog runs from $1,200 to $2,000 or more. Stock photographer Robert Maust of Keezletown, Virginia, sent out such a catalog and says, “My costs were paid off by sales I made directly related to the catalog in only a few months.”

Here’s how to put together such a catalog: Place sixteen verticals or fifteen horizontals on one page. Using 8" × 10" (20cm × 25cm) prints, make a huge pasteup of each half of the page. The printer shoots it in halftone, reduces it, shoots the other half, tapes the upper and lower halves together, and prints it.

You also can scan your images, make a digital catalog and have a printer print that for you. You’ll need to coordinate with the printer ahead of time to ensure your scans are of high enough quality, of the proper format, that the program you’ve used to create the catalog is compatible with his equipment, and upon which medium to record your files (such as CD-ROM or DVD). You should not print your own catalogs unless you have access to a professional-grade color laser printer.

CD CATALOGS

Should you produce one yourself? It’s not as difficult as you might think, and it’s not very costly. The question you should ask first is “Will the photo buyers I send this to look at my CD catalog?” The reality is that most photo buyers stand over a wastebasket when they read their mail. Unless you have produced a first-class carton and mailing label for your digital catalog, photo buyers probably won’t open it.

A good rule of thumb is to not send a CD catalog to a buyer you have never worked with before. Try to establish some sort of contact first, and then send the CD catalog once the photo buyer knows who you are.

There are a couple options for producing a CD catalog. You can farm it out to a company that specializes in it, or you can do it yourself with software such as Adobe^® Acrobat, any HTML editor or Adobe^® Dreamweaver. New software products appear on the market constantly, so check around before you decide which one to use. Consider the fact that you want your catalog to be able to run on a PC and a Mac, and you want the photo buyers to be able to easily view it without having to buy or download special software.

Credit Lines and Tear Sheets—Part of the Sale

Credit lines and tear sheets of your published stock photos are significant self-promotional tools. How do you get them? Request them when you’re notified that your picture has been accepted for publication. Even better, you can include a courteous statement in your original cover letter to an editor that the terms of sale include use of your credit line and provision of a tearsheet upon publication.

Major markets ordinarily print credit lines as a matter of course; however, they expect you to purchase the publication and get your own tear sheets. Textbook editors also will expect you to make your own photocopies of your published pictures. Photo editors of regional, local or specialized limited-circulation publications work with smaller budgets and will usually supplement the dollars with a credit-line guarantee and forward tear sheets to you. Some of your markets will have the provision of tear sheets built into their standard operating procedures. They automatically send them to all contributors to a given issue to confirm for their own records that the photographer (or writer) has been correctly credited and paid. (To help ensure a correct credit line for your photographs, use the identification system described in chapter thirteen.)

You can use tear sheets for self-promotion in a variety of ways. Make photocopies of them to tuck into your business correspondence. This will show prospective clients how other publishers are using your stock photographs and will remind past photo buyers of your existence. Inexpensive and immediate, such promotions often pay for themselves through orders of the actual stock photos pictured in the photocopy. You also can use groups of tear sheets (originals or photocopies) to send to a prospective photo buyer to illustrate the depth of work you have available on a given subject.

When you accumulate a number of tear sheets, file and cross-reference them to locate subject matter you’ve previously photographed.

Credit lines, besides the good advertising they provide for you, can be instruments for additional sales. Art directors and photo editors are always on the lookout for promising new stock photographers. When your credit line appears next to your photo illustration or in the credits section of a publication, it’s available for all to see and make note of. If you’re doing your self-promotion job correctly, your credit line will be popping up often, and photo buyers will become familiar with your name. In some cases photo buyers will want to reuse a published photo that catches their eye, and they will seek out the photographer to make arrangements. Without a credit line this would be a complex detective task that the buyer wouldn’t have time for.

What if a photo buyer doesn’t give you a credit line? Beyond an approach of courteous insistence, your hands are tied. The use of credit lines in the majority of cases is left up to the editor or art director of the publishing project. You’re fighting city hall when you vent righteous indignation at the lack of a credit line. However, have faith. As in city hall, administration changes occur in the publishing world, and the next art director you deal with at a particular publishing house may have the “right” attitude toward including credit lines. An examination of magazine and book layouts over the last decade shows that the trend is decidedly moving toward the use of credits. Meanwhile, it’s up to you to politely but firmly continue to press for the use of your credit line next to your published photograph.

Show Yourself Off

Your promotional tools are working to make sales of your pictures for you. Now you want to begin getting some promotional exposure for you as a photographer.

TRADE SHOWS

Publishing trade shows, book fairs and magazine workshops always attract publishers and photo buyers. Invest in trade shows with either an exhibit booth or a ticket to the event to personally meet publishers and photo buyers who represent potential markets and/or new members for your promotional mailing list.

To learn which trade shows would be most productive for you, ask buyers on your Market List which ones they personally attend. Since these people are your target markets, you can be sure the events they deem worthwhile will pay off for you in opportunities to become aware of new, similar market areas.

Carry your business cards and CDs with you to pass out, with each CD representing a separate area of your PS/A. I went to my first trade fair with a general portfolio. Photo buyers weren’t interested in seeing my generic, pretty pictures. The next year, I built three packets, each with twenty-five 8" × 10" (20cm × 25cm) black and whites and two vinyl pages of color slides (forty dupe 35mm) enclosed in a plastic folder. Each aimed at a specific market: education, gardening and teens. I talked only with photo buyers in each of those three specific interest areas and showed only the photographs they were interested in seeing. My visit more than paid for itself in subsequent sales.

WEBSITE

The web might be one of the easiest, most efficient and cheapest tools you can use to get photo buyers to see your photographs. At the same time it might also be the most difficult, inefficient, and expensive tools you have ever used. Sound strange? Allow me to elaborate.

Building a website doesn’t have to be all that difficult. You can build one yourself with basic knowledge of HTML or with off-the-shelf software, or you can hire a Web designer to design and build your site. Publish the address of your website on your business card, envelopes, stationery, sell sheets, even your business checks.

If you’re considering signing up with a Web photo gallery, check out their traffic numbers by looking them up on a ranking site such as Google.com. Alexa.com also is a free service owned by Amazon.com. The more traffic a photo gallery has, the more exposure for you. As an example, check out my photo galleries on my website at www.arrestingimages.com.

Avoid freebie sites that require you to allow advertising space along with your photos. Be cautious with companies that purport to allow you use of “your own domain name,” but which often bury your name after a long and hard-to-remember URL.

For further Internet tips, my book sellphotos.com covers the topic of websites more extensively than I have room for here.

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

Here’s a simple way to promote yourself, and it doesn’t cost you anything. If you communicate effectively with your camera, you may have the potential to communicate effectively as a speaker. Take to the platform!

In the trusty yellow pages you’ll find a listing of community and photographic organizations, clubs and associations. Most have a regular need for interesting program speakers. Let the program chairpersons of several groups know that you are available. In most cases they’ll be happy to book you.

How do you get started? What should you talk about? As a stock photographer, you have a wealth of subject material available to you—and since 90 percent of your listeners fancy themselves photographers, too, you’ll have a receptive audience. Build your talk around a how-to subject, for example, “How to Take Pictures of Your Family,” “How to Take Indoor Natural-Light Pictures,” “How a Digital Camera Works” or “How to Make a Photo Illustration.” You are welcome to use any of the ideas in this book.

Give your speech title this test: “Am I speaking about something that applies directly to my audience?” Your listeners don’t want a lecture, or they’d register at the local adult education center. Be entertaining. Include anecdotes, personal experiences and humor. Use charts, slides or blackboards. You’ll get audience response, and this will aid you in refining your speech. Eventually program chairpersons will seek you out.

At first, charge nothing, except perhaps a fee to cover your out-of-pocket expenses such as babysitting, gas and the meal. As you progress, start charging a modest fee. Increase the fee as demand for your services increases. As your good track record grows, so will your fee.

You’ll discover some surprising spin-offs from your public appearances. Local publishers will hear of your talents. Assignments will be directed your way. Photo buyers will contact you. Your name as a stock photographer will be catapulted ahead of equally talented but less visible photographers.

For good advice and direction on speaking engagements, there’s a newsletter that could be helpful to your speaking career: Sharing Ideas, Dottie Walters, Royal Publishing, 18825 E. Sierra Madre Ave., Glendora, California 91741. Walters also co-authored Speak and Grow Rich. If you branch out into seminars, you can list them for free in the Shaw Guides, www.shawguides.com, and in Photographer’s Market, 10151 Carver Road, Blue Ash, Ohio 45242.

RADIO AND TV INTERVIEWS

Make yourself available to community radio talk-show hosts. They usually are interested in interviewing people engaged in out-of-the-ordinary pursuits, and you qualify. Photography is an ever-popular subject as listeners are always eager to learn how they can improve their picture-taking. Add some local or farther-afield radio-show hosts to your promotional mailing list. Some radio hosts will phone across the nation for an on-the-air phone interview if they believe that their listeners would be interested in what you have to say.

A good source to locate radio stations and the addresses of hosts of talk shows is All-In-1 Directory, Gebbie Press, P.O. Box 1000, New Paltz, New York 12561. The same organization can give you the names and addresses of TV-show hosts. Television interviews are possible if you can present your story in a five- to nine-minute segment. Since photography can easily hold viewer attention, your chances are better than average for making a TV appearance, particularly in a nearby city. For a fee, you can get yourself listed in a talk show guest directory called the Directory of Experts, Authorities and Spokespersons, Broadcast Interview Source, 2233 Wisconsin Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20007, (202) 333-4904. A helpful book is DIY PR: The Small Business Guide to “Free” Publicity by Penny Haywood. For New York radio and TV contacts, refer to New York Publicity Outlets; for California, refer to Metro California Media.

Contact the producer of a local talk show by letter, by e-mail, by phone, in person—or all four. You could offer to serve as the resident critic for photography submitted by viewers. Build your format around a how-to theme. Tailor your critiques so that the average snapshooter will understand them and will be able to improve the family’s scrapbook photographs.

PRESS RELEASES

If you’ve been making speeches, giving talks, making appearances at vocational, technical, graphics or design classes, or giving interviews on radio or TV, someone’s going to be mentioning you in your community news media. However, whether or not you’ve been engaged in these activities, you can write your own press releases; they are an excellent form of promotion for your stock photo business. Newspapers and magazines are willing to accept news about you and your photography, so are the specialized newsletters and trade magazines that reach photo buyers and publishers. You must contact them, and send them your press release. About one-third of the media channels you contact will print your release.

When you consider that the average advertising rate is $50 per inch, when your press release is used you receive a sizable amount of advertising space free. What’s more, your release is read as editorial, human-interest material rather than as advertising.

When can you send a news release about your photography or yourself? Depending on whether the item would be of interest on a local, regional or national level and whether your target is a trade publication or a general-interest one, your press release can center on a recent trip, your photo exhibit at the local library, an award you received, your move from farm to city or city to farm, your donation of photo illustrations to a nonprofit publication or auction, your publication of a photo in a national magazine or book, or a recent speech or interview.

Press releases follow a basic format: double-spaced on a half page or a full page. Write your release as if the editor (or radio commentator) were writing it. Remember: It is not an ad. This is not the place to speak in glowing terms about yourself or your photography.

A good handbook on this subject is Bulletproof News Releases: Help at Last For the Publicity Deficient by Kay Borden. See also The Successful Promoter: 100 Surefire Ideas for Selling Yourself, Your Product, Your Organization by Ted Schwarz. A newsletter that broadcasts the current press needs of authors, columnists, and editors is PartyLine, 35 Sutton Place, New York, New York 10022, (212) 755-3487, fax: (212) 755-4859, www.partylinepublishing.com.

You don’t need to include a cover letter, but do enclose a black-and-white photograph (a 5" × 7" [13cm × 18cm] is acceptable) when appropriate and practical. (Don’t expect its return.)

Your best teachers for learning your way around press releases are news items you discover in the press. If you find yourself saying, “That could be me!” rewrite the item to reflect your own information, and send it to similar media channels.

Occasionally you will learn that an upcoming issue of a trade magazine in one of your fields of interest will be devoted to a certain subject. If you or your stock photographs can comment on that subject matter, volunteer to contribute (for free). The resulting exposure of your name and your stock photos in both the publication itself and the subsequent press release you write about it will more than compensate for your effort and expense.

Once a press release is used, capitalize on the published article by making copies and sending the news item along in all your business correspondence and/or in a mailing to your market and promotional list.

PROMOTIONAL NEWS FEATURES

Local, regional or trade publications often welcome articles or short features (250 to 500 words) on somebody who’s doing something interesting—you. Don’t wait until a publication contacts you. Write your own material.

Photographer Bill Owens of Livermore, California, gets more mileage out of free advertising by turning a news feature about himself into a productive promotion mailer.

FREE PROMOTION

It costs nothing but a little time to make sure you’re included in a number of directories that photo buyers use. Many of the market directories listed in chapter three include a section entitled “Freelance Photographers” or “Stock Photography.” Literary Market Place and Working Press of the Nation list individual photographers free of charge. Apply to be listed in the photographer sections of their next editions.

ADVERTISING

Straight advertising is a direct method of self-promotion, but here you’ll have to experiment—and it’s usually expensive. Ordinarily, ads will not be the most cost-effective route for you as an editorial stock photographer, unless you have strong depth in an unusual specialty with a known target market.

The following publications can be useful advertising vehicles, as some photo buyers cull photo contacts from them. (Most of the ads are run by stock photo agencies and commercial stock photographers who have extensive coverage of specific select subjects.) The Picture Professional, www.aspp.com; Photo District News, www.pdnonline.com; The Stock Workbook, www.workbook.com.

Although you may not wish to invest in a costly display ad in any of these publications, you could test for response with a classified ad. A typical example, which appeared in Folio magazine listed under “Photography, Stock,” reads: “Emphasis on the Southwest. 150,000 images. Color and black and white. Write for free catalog [name, address, phone, e-mail, Web address].”

Ask which trade publications the photo buyers on your Market List read. Assume that other publishers with a similar editorial thrust read the same publications, and start your ad experiments there. Following are some of the questions you should ask yourself when you’re thinking of buying an ad:

“Who are the readers of the publication?”

“Is it a desktop directory, e.g., Green Book?”

“Do they buy photography?”

“Will my ad get effective placement in the magazine or directory?”

“What do I expect to achieve from this ad?”

“What is the cost?”

Whenever you advertise, key your ad with its own code number (for example, add “Dept. 12” to your address). You’ll be able to tally the replies and check how well each ad or directory listing works for you.

To measure the response rate to your ad, divide the number of queries you receive by the circulation of the magazine. Expect a response of between 0.1 and 1 percent (.001 and .01). Compare the response from each ad with those from the rest of the ads in your advertising program to weed out ads that are ineffective or reaching the wrong audience.

Another type of advertising tool, which you can use year-round, is a handy calendar of a size that you can include in your correspondence. Obtain more information from companies like Vistaprint at www.vistaprint.com.

Or you can engineer this kind of arrangement: When Rohn was starting out in the business, he cooperated with a Midwest printing firm in a wall-calendar project. In return for the use of twelve of his photos, they paid him with a prominent credit line and five hundred calendars, which he distributed as promotional pieces.

The optimum ad is one in which a manufacturer, supplier or photography magazine highlights (promotes) you and your photography. Nikon, for example, featured different photographers and their work in a series of full-color, full-page ads that appeared in national photography magazines. In my own case, features and photographs of mine have appeared in Time, Money, Changing Times, USA Today, Penthouse, Response, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 9-1-1 Magazine, many newspaper photo columns, computer magazines, and with most of the editorial book publishers. Was this luck? No. I applied the principles outlined in this chapter.

Again, don’t wait for things like this to land in your lap. Do something interesting (or different), and then let the industry and the media know about it. Keep alert for openings, and go for them.

Reassess Your Promotional Effectiveness

Periodically monitor the effectiveness of your promotional efforts. Chart the percentage of your releases that are used, document the response to them and any ads you place by including a code, match numbers of mailings to specific markets with numbers of sales, and analyze feedback from your photo buyers. Continue to test new ideas, drop those that show no promise, and produce more of those that have been effective.

What about promotion tools such as the portfolio or the exhibition? For the everyday photographer, they appear to be good sales tools and exposure opportunities. For the stock photographer, however, these elements either don’t help at all or do little to increase sales. Let’s examine them.

PORTFOLIOS

A portfolio is an excellent tool for a commercial stock photographer because of the varied markets that he or she works for. A portfolio exhibits the breadth of a photographer’s talent, skill and experience to a potential client who may wish to contract for her services. Legwork and personal visits are part of establishing credibility when one is selling oneself.

On the other hand, a portfolio and personal visits are not necessary for the editorial stock photographer. You work primarily electronically and by postal mail, and your photo buyers are not interested in looking at portfolios—they want to see pictures geared to their current layout needs. Your pictures, if they’re content specific and on target, sell themselves.

A photo researcher or an editorial photo buyer isn’t interested in your versatility. In fact, he wishes you weren’t so versatile. He’d prefer you to concentrate more thoroughly on one subject—the one he needs, the subject of his magazine or book project. It stands to reason that a stock photographer who sends apple-orchard pictures in response to a photo request from the editor of an agriculture magazine is going to make a lot more points with that editor than a stock photographer who takes up time showing him a portfolio of underwater, aerial and architectural photography.

EXHIBITIONS

Exhibitions are monumental time-consumers and have limited influence on sales, but they don’t hurt and they’re good public relations, especially when you attain national prominence. Your exhibit area can range from your local library, bank, restaurant, insurance office or church to a city gallery or an art museum. For the latter, a theme exhibit, rather than a general across-the-board show, will get more response from a gallery director. Once you have pinpointed your PS/A, your thematic material should build rapidly. Later, these same photo illustrations can lend themselves to books—another advantage for you as you build your career with marketing precision. (See chapter seventeen for examination of the use of online photo galleries.) Capitalize on the exhibit through news releases and posters, plus radio, TV and speaking appearances. A helpful book is The Photographer’s Guide to Getting and Having a Successful Exhibition by Robert S. Persky.

SALONS

Salons, usually sponsored by local and national photography organizations such as camera clubs, offer you little promotional value. Salons, in fact, perpetuate many of the myths that stock photographers must unlearn in order to understand what is a marketable picture and what is not. Salon photographs usually are the standard excellent pictures—exquisite clichés.

CONTESTS

Contests are somewhat different from salons in that they can offer national publicity plus cash awards to the winners. Contest sponsors tend to judge pictures on their photo-illustrative merit rather than outmoded classical-composition rules that limit a photographer’s creativity and expressiveness. If you win a prestigious photo contest, let the photo buyers on your Market List know about it through a press release or photocopy of the news announcement. A book on the subject is Winning Photo Contests by Jeanne Stallman.

However, enter photo contests with caution. Read the rules carefully. Many times it’s the sponsor of the contest who is the real winner. Sponsors sometimes require the photographer to give up all rights to the picture. In other words, you transfer your copyright, including electronic rights, over to the sponsors—who can then use your picture in whatever way they wish, forever.

If you come across any contests that require you to give up the rights to your photo, remind the sponsors that you, the stock photographer, own your own creation. Write them postcards that say, “If my picture is good enough to win a national contest, it is good enough to earn me many dollars over its lifetime. This is how I earn my living and provide for my family. I choose not to relinquish my copyright.”

DECOR PHOTOGRAPHY

Producing artful Track A prints for decor use in commercial buildings or residences can result in excellent showcases for your talents. As you’ll read in chapter twelve, decor photography will take special administrative (as well as photographic) talent on your part. One approach is to become associated with an existing decor-photography business that has already solved the administrative problems. Place your Track A pictures with them, much as you would with a stock agency, and receive a percentage.

GREETING CARDS, CALENDARS AND POSTERS

Greeting card, calendar and poster companies offer you other showcase opportunities but have drawbacks of their own.

From time to time you may decide it’s worth your while to barter for the printing of greeting cards, calendars or posters in return for licensing (“renting”) some of your pictures at no charge. Depending on where you stand on the ladder of your business development, such an arrangement may be of self-promotional value to you.

Some Final Self-Promotion Suggestions

1. Keep several current photographs of yourself on file for promotional use. Often stock photographers have to make a quick digital photo or Polaroid of themselves to meet a deadline. Have a press kit handy,—one that includes a couple of color or black-and-white prints of you plus a photographic biography of you that includes your accomplishments.
2. Don’t do it all yourself. Get help. Promotion is always more effective if you can get someone else to write it for you or at least read it and suggest corrections.
3. You can’t measure promotion such as news releases, interviews and exhibitions as effectively as you can direct-response advertising, such as with a coupon or a return postcard. However, if your business grows, you can assume that your promotional efforts are on the right track and are having an effect.
4. Be helpful. If a writer requests information or an interviewer wants answers, cooperate. Any kind of publicity is good. As Governor Huey Long once said, “Say what you want about me, just spell my name right.”
5. Share the news with others. If an article about you appears in a magazine or newspaper, share it with the photo buyers on your Market List. Place it on the Internet, on a Web page, along with photos if they are available. Buyers will be interested in it for the confirmation that they chose correctly in adding you to their available-photographers list.
6. Here today, gone tomorrow. Promotion—like fitness—is short-lived and can’t be stored. Your smashing success today will be history tomorrow. Photo buyers forget. Oh, do they forget! Keep reminders flowing their way every three to four months.
7. Your promotional tools—stationery, brochures, catalogs, labels, business cards, envelopes—can speak as eloquently as your photographs.
8. Don’t expect overnight results. Expect to move mountains, yes, but only stone by stone. Promotion works slowly, but it works.