Rohn Engh, one of the pioneers of the stock-photography industry, has announced the release of a 21-unit CD e-course, “How To Market Your Photos.” The course is designed to help photographers take advantage of the Internet, with a primary focus on search engines.
A former editorial photographer, Engh is best known as the founder and director of PhotoSource International, which he runs with his wife from their 100-acre Wisconsin farm. Established in 1976, PhotoSource is an information company that caters to photographers and image buyers by publishing a series of newsletters, guides and Web sites; hosting seminars across the U.S.; and offering other stock-related services, such as image research.
Engh wrote and Writers Digest published Sell & ReSell Your Photos in 1981. This guide to getting started in the stock-photo business has since been updated and republished five times. Now, Engh picks up where the book leaves off: using the Internet.
The new CD course is a compilation of strategies used by successful photographers to market their images online. The material includes interviews with industry veterans, such as Joe Farace, Dennis Light, Liz Banfield and Gary Crabbe.
The course stresses avoiding common pitfalls, mainly working with online portals and galleries that sell images for a percentage of the revenue they generate. According to Engh, “the photographer’s cut is not much at all, the actual asking price per photo is abominably low, and the traffic to the site is light. The photographer ends up with a monthly charge for the service that is higher than any revenue coming in.”
Instead, says Engh, independent photographers need to learn to match their individual photographic strengths with the appropriate buyer pool—via the Internet. Notably, Engh is not alone in the assertion that direct online marketing is the future of stock for solo producers. Companies such as the Sausalito-based ImageSpan and New York's PhotoShelter have based their business models on precisely that premise.
Engh feels that, despite industry-wide changes, there are still more than 3,500 subject-matter areas of continuing demand, ranging from gardening to childhood education. However, he cautions that most buyers have learned to circumvent the stock agency and seek to purchase such content directly from producers, via photographers’ own Web sites. “The secret to getting this photo buyer traffic is in knowing how to position yourself,” Engh explains, promising that the new course shows exactly how to accomplish this.