I guess it's about time...

[Terry Zorich]

Originally Posted by Phyllis_Blume

After checking on gallery hits and finding one racer who has viewed his pictures more than 100 times without an order, Norm's "now or never" approach gets more appealing.

I disagree; I don't see very much appeal of taking away the opportunity for additional sales. Yes, of COURSE you lose some onsite sales when people know they can order online - and it WOULD save the time and expense of dealing with the uploads and filling online orders. But I've had many events where the online sales were much greater than I think we would have generated if people knew the pics would be available on event day only. Some customers so prefer to buy online that they're willing to pay the higher prices that we place on online items. I'd have a hard time believing our gross sales wouldn't decrease if I eliminated the online sales.

In my estimation, that racer who has looked at his pics a hundred times without ordering anything - he's not a paying customer anyway.

[EricC]

Phyllis,

How long do you leave your events posted ? Maybe the answer isn't so much now or never but rather to have a clear date as to when the images are coming down. I post the 'deletion date' for each event when it goes up. For the most part 30days. I agree with Norm that I'm not running a library either, I just want people to have a chance to pick photos that mean something to them. I don't want to have 100gb's of server space billed to me either. There has to be a balance between giving people the chance to buy, and becoming a library where there is no incentive to buy.


To put it in perspective.... Our 'babies & brides' studio did a mitzvah in June, keep in mind the the customer gets a full proof book, to date she has gone on-line 22 times for a total of 2258 page views! I can't wait for the 60 days to be up so I can save some bandwidth and that's from ONE ip

Eric

[Norm_Cabana]

I'm confused. Why are you trying to get an exclusive from the track? The people you want the exclusive with is the event organizer. The track owner is NOT going to tell the people who rent his track that they can't have as many photographers as they want. You want the organizer telling other shooters that they already have someone...you!

[Phyllis_Blume]

EricC and Terry: I leave events online for 60 days and currently sell only online. I will have onsite sales next season. Droping the online altogether would loose me sales for sure. There are those who don't stick around once they're done racing due to travel distance.

Norm: In my case the track owner is the event organizer the majority of the time. I'm finding that they haven't had this many photographers untill the past couple of years. One didn't have anyone photographing races until I came along. This issue is very new to them.

[Terry Zorich]

Originally Posted by Norm_Cabana

I'm confused. Why are you trying to get an exclusive from the track? The people you want the exclusive with is the event organizer. The track owner is NOT going to tell the people who rent his track that they can't have as many photographers as they want. You want the organizer telling other shooters that they already have someone...you!

Hmmm. It seems we've uncovered one detractor to "doing just one thing", eh? :P In seems in YOUR experiece, the event organizers manage the vendor arrangements...but if you covered other kinds of events, you might see that's not always the case.

In my experience, it requires dealing with both the track and club representatives. It depends on the event. Autocross is one exception I can think of, where we always deal with the club and not the venue people. On the other hand, for motocross races, I never have to speak with the club representatives, because it doesn't matter; I'm always referred to the people who own/manage the track. NONE of the MX tracks I go to leave vendor arrangements up to the event organizer; I always have to deal with the venue owner or rep, and it's the track owner that collects and keeps any vendor fees, not the club that's renting the facility. And at most MX tracks, the owners are not willing to play "vendor policeman" - they just don't care because they believe they're doing us a favor.

Most other types of event require us to deal with both the venue owner/rep AND the club people. I've covered club roadracing at Pocono and Summit and VIR, and although the club reps let me know if they're interested (or already have another photo service) I am always referred to the track to make vendor arrangements. I've also covered some skating events that require us to deal with both.

The bottom line is that it depends on the circumstance.

[Ken_Shelton]

Terry,

Welcome Back! Its been a little quiet without you & Hammy, but Norm keeps us all thinking about the business and how to scale it.

Ken

[Gary_Evans]

Hi Terry, Good to see you back!

An interesting thread developing here, maybe I can bore you with my take on it.

Firstly I'm like you in that I shoot weddings at a weekend, and events at the weekend. Most of my brides know that I do other things, but I have two websites to keep things totally seperate. Hosting is soooo cheap now that I literally only have to sell ten prints a year from three sites, and all my web costs are covered.

Ian raises a very good point about contracts. Like him, I dont know how mine would stand up to a lawyer but their main importance is should the club secretary or whoever change, the moment they go through the clubs paperwork they will find it and they know who previous dealings have been with.

However, the number now willing to put pen to paper seems to be falling as more and more people are buying a cheap DSLR from Ebay and pestering the clubs, many of whom are saying "Yeah, turn up" just for the quiet life.

Personally whilst I only leave sports pix online for a limited period of time, my social events and weddings stay up for several months as I find that (a) potential clients are reassured simply by the quantity of events, and (b) re-orders still come in. Thinking about it, hopefully they are also reassured by the quality too!!