Market Size

[Ken_Tanaka]

Originally Posted by David_Buzzard

BTW - PDN is a great magazine, but stupidly expensive for Canadians to subscribe to. I've resigned myself to getting copies when I'm in the States, and to checking their web page.

See Mike? There's a way for you to get PDN for free. Subscribe and instead of tossing last month's issue send it up to David at a small profit, and a nice discount to what he would otherwise pay to subscribe in Whistler! That's business!

[Mike_Guilbault]

The only problem is that I'm in Canada too!! I don't think David would be willing to allow me a profit on top of the CDN price!

[Norm_Cabana]

<I'm curious to see what the smallest market size is to sustain a professional photographer.>

Mike,

For a commodity product, i.e. a product that everyone needs like milk, it makes sense to think in market size. For photographers, I don't think that applies as there really isn't a general photographer category any longer. I live in an area where there are at least 2-3 million people within a 100 mile radius but only an extremely small percentage of those people participate in the activity that I photograph. In my case the size of the overall market means nothing. I am currently covering an event where the people traveled 12 hours to get here. The key question for me would be "How many tracks would need to be within a reasonable traveling distance for me to make a living?"

For you a better question would be what portion of the population in the area I want to live in would want a product like mine? If there are too few people in your area, will you be able to sell to people outside yoour area?

[Mike_Guilbault]

That makes sense Norm. But in a smaller population, you usually need to diversify to make a living. Even where I am, I do everything from commercial to industrial, portraits and weddings. It would be difficult to become a specialist in a smaller market.

Quite a few years ago, I read a marketing/business report that gave estimated market sizes for different industries. For example, a flower shop, an accountant, a photographer, among other things. I can't remember where I saw this or what it said now, but those statistics are somewhere.

I realize that there are many variables, such as income level, disposable income, nearby markets and such, but was curious to see how many 'small town' photographers are around and what size of town they're making a living in.

[Mike_Guilbault]

I'd like to hear from the photographers that are in the smaller market areas. We've got two in the poll that are in the less than 15,000 market. What are you doing in the less than 75K markets? Are you specializing or generalizing? How far out are you marketing yourselves? Is it one town, or several?

[Gary_Evans]

I live in a town with approx 35k inhabitants. If you put that town in the centre of a 50 mile diameter circle the population is about 90k, and approx 40% of the circle is the sea. There are 3 other full time photographers with high street studios in this area plus one other who like me works from home. There are 9 other "semi-pros" who use another job to subsidise their photographic work.

Locally I now photograph only weddings, taking commisions for Saturdays only in the spring and autumn (not in the summer) and still earn enough to have a comfortable lifestyle. I turn away more enquiries than I accept.

On a more national basis I photograph university events - there are 304 universities in the UK, and I have contracts with 102 of them. To cover these events I employ 5 others directly, plus use a pool of approx a dozen freelance staff, yet my total marketing costs in the past 12 months were less than £200 ($350). This is simply because every university knows who we are and that we specialise in student photography.

IMO, it is far better to be skilled in one discipline than to try and do several different ones to an average standard. By specialising, it makes little difference what size your catchment area is, as clients will come to you.

[Mike_Guilbault]

If you have the market to specialize, it's always the way to go. But what about a market that doesn't have the 'population' for any one specialty?