wwp@yahoogroups.com:
thinking like a publisher
Don Bain 2010-Jan-28 21:38:00
I posted this as a discussion-starter on the PanoToolsNG list. Pat
suggested it might be of interest here also.
I know many of you do panoramas for the creative and technical
challenge and educational value, as I do. But wouldn't we all like to
make some money from it also? Please share your thoughts.
Sorry for cross-posting.
Don
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Many of us have tried making money with a traditional website
featuring VR panoramas. Years ago I made hundreds dollars a month from
ads (such as Google AdSense), and franchise selling of books and
posters. But that has dwindled as commissions have gone down and
competition has gone up. Now it would take a huge amount of traffic to
cover my development costs (travel, cameras, computers, production and
hosting) and maybe even make a profit. Others have had the same
experience. It is better than having nothing coming in, but not a good
business model for most of us.
Other ways of presenting panoramas on the web, such as 360Cities,
reduce your costs for hosting, but you still have the other
development costs and do not get the ad revenue or franchise sales. (I
recognize that 360Cities offers a number of indirect revenue
possibilities also.) Other sites and proposals use this model of
donated content - you do the work, they get the revenue - Google has
made billions this way.
For many of us the publicity and gratification of having our work
displayed on the web is enough. But again, it is not a good business
model for an individual panographer. Both the ad-revenue-but-
unprofitable personal site, and the donated-content sites are in
essence giving our work away.
So how to make a living producing panoramas?
I think the most common way is to get someone to pay you to take
panoramas. Then it is up to the customer to make money from it - you
get paid up front and maybe royalties. But a lot of this business is
at the lower end, what I think of as the IPIX syndrome, so it is a
constant struggle to convince customers that it is worth paying you a
reasonable price for quality work. It is similar to the "regular"
photography business, but with a product less well appreciated and
understood.
Another way is to sell your work directly, either in digital or
printed form. Some leaders in the field do very well at this (and will
be talking about it at the Tucson 2010 Conference). Selling through
your own website doesn't seem to work very well until you get well
known, so it involves selling through stock agencies, galleries, or
art fairs.
There are other ways to make money with panoramic photography (such as
DVD virtual tours), but I think these are the main categories. In
summary, publishing your own website but not covering costs with ad
revenue, and donated-content sites amount to giving your work away.
Shooting on assignment or freelance is being a "camera for hire" (not
a bad thing, but not what all of us want). Shooting for stock or
galleries is a straightforward business (not giving away it away or
being hired) but tough to break into.
So what do I mean by thinking like publishers? I think we should,
probably as groups and companies not individuals, try to find ways
that we can get paid directly for showing our work on the web or
otherwise delivering it to end users.
The web is a wonderful innovation in public education - which is why I
got into it in the first place. Never before has so much information
(and entertainment) been available so easily, and most of it for free.
But it has a downside. Every newspaper and magazine in the world has
suffered from the competition and they are grasping for new business
models. We are in the same boat - everyone expects content on the web
to be free! Micro-payments for high quality imagery have been tried
and failed, paid subscription websites only seem to work for the Wall
Street Journal and porn.
I do not have a ready answer, I am just posing a question. How do we
publish our work in a reasonably rewarding way?
Many of the traditional publishing houses (books and magazines) are
looking to e-book readers (Amazon Kindle and now Apple iPad) as a way
to sell their content. I think the iTunes App store and Google's
Android Market hold promise for selling to the hand-held device market.
It is an interesting paradox. Many people are unwilling to pay for the
New York Times on a website, but other people are happy to pay $13.99
a month for a subscription on their Kindle. Similarly, despite
widespread illegal downloading, millions of people are willing to pay
for music by the song on iTunes. The same trend is apparent in movies
and television shows.
I am convinced that we have "compelling content", maybe not on a par
with Hollywood movies and porn, but we know that people like our
products. The challenge is to find the right delivery method and the
right price point so we get paid for it.
I hope we can explore these topics further at the conference in Tucson
in April.