Comments on: 10 Signs That You’re Ready To Graduate from Flickr

By: Paul Williams - Funkystock

Paul Williams - Funkystock — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 07:54:56 +0000

Its a sad world when you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about Flickr but that’s one of the strange side effects of marketing photography nowadays. I find Flickr and Photobucket and the other social photography sites very disturbing. We have taken a very good look at all to evaluate their marketing value. I agree with all of what Grover has written and would like to add a few more thoughts I had in the middle of the night. Photography social networking is a very very dubious pastime for serious photographers. It is not a substitute for joining REAL organisations, unions and societies that promote photography. Flickr in particular highlights the cynical marketing that pervades all of social networking. Flickr’s rules do not allow any form of self promotion and they will remove anyone they decide is self promoting with no warning or reimbursement of any money paid to them. There is no mediator and in Yahoos usual high handed and out of touch manner that is that. And yet Flickr is happy to sell you a “Pro” account. Now as far as I know “Pro” is short for professional and if you are a professional why are you putting photos on Flickr if not to promote yourself, in which case you are breaking Flickr’s rules. It is obvious the the word “Pro” therefore is actually being used by Flickr as a marketing tool to massage amateur photographers egos and is not intended to be used by serious photographers to promote themselves and their work. Flickr have also added an even more cynical tie up with Getty where Flickr members photos can be sold by Getty. In return for which the member will receive a 20% commission which Getty say is normal stock industry rates. No its not stock industry commission rate, its Getty’s normal stock commission rates. Check out Alamy, Age, Photo library commission rates to see real industry rates. Who benefits from this? Not the owner of the photo but Getty and Flickr. The whole of photography social networking is about ego massaging. Members leaving banal “nice” comments about photos hoping the recipient will return the favour. These sites are about people playing at being photographers and because they have a Flickr “Pro” account and Getty will sell their photos for them then they have made it!! If one of my clients has an issue with a photo he does not pass “nice comments” so why is this the norm on Flickr etc. Constructive criticism is a way to help real photographers put that cutting edge into their photos. The fact that photography social networking sites are full of “nice comments” about rubbish photos is not beneficial to photography but only to Flickr who know they will not get upset members leaving and therefore loose revenue. From our analysis photography social networking has very little to do about promoting good photography and therefore its obvious good photographers should not have their work on them. Flickr is a playground for the kids and is definitely not for the big boys and girls. Now lets leave Flickr photo fairy land and get back to the real world. For a start buyers have not got the time to wade through billions of peoples personal photos unless they are looking for photos with an amateur feel to illustrate a specific article. The editor of Time Magazine famously announced that he had saved hundreds of dollars by buying a front cover photo from a microstock library. Great publicity stunt for Time but I notice he only did it once and we all know why!! Serious buyers are looking for exciting, interesting and creative photos to illustrate their magazines, web sites and promotional literature. At the moment they may not be able to afford top dollar and are punting around Flickr and microstock agencies in the hope of picking up a bargain but ultimately they will be exhausted by fruitless hour after fruitless hour ploughing through dull photography. Because Photoshelter is not a free service the photographers that use it have to be more serious about their intent and consider what photos they put onto their Photoshelter sites which makes it far more attractive to serious buyers. We have found the SEO on Photoshelter absolutely works and generates sales if used properly and we get good Google positioning on a lot of our key search words. It is very annoying to find Flickr on some of these Google front page searches and I think Photoshelter could do itself some good and help its members as follows. Fotosearch have done a great job and come top or near top on lots of a high percentage of Google photo searches. I think Photoshelter should and could compete with this. Photoshelter has Virtual Agencies which are a very useful but they are invite only and do not really promote Photoshelter as a community. Photoshelter could develop a list of common photo search categories that photographers could subscribe their photos to. i.e “photos of art deco” , “Photos of pots”. “Photos of puppies” “Photos of Italy” or “Photos of polar bears” ( I only choose these because they are the top 5 searches on Alamy in the last month). Photographers could then subscribe their photos to relevant search terms via an alphabetical check box list and Photoshelter could add these search terms pages to their sitemap.xml. If it works as it should Photoshelter would start to compete with Fotosearch and these pages would appear where real buyers are looking. Of course I’m sure the very clever programmers at Photoshelter can look at Fotoserach and find a much more eloquent way of doing this, but I really think it would be good to promote the Photoshelter photographers in this way and create some real world social networking that I understand. I’m sorry I know that’s far too much rambling from me but that’s what happens when you wake up in the middle of the night!! Don’t worry though I’m taking sleeping tablet from now on. Happy shooting. Paul Williams

By: John Smith

John Smith — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 06:27:42 +0000

Flickr is not an evil place. I like Flickr, I think it’s fun, and there are a tremendous amount of inspirational images there. So…it’s not just about sharing and comments. People do find your stuff and contact you about the photos. If anything, it’s just putting your work out in another place for people to see.

By: Charleston Photographer

Charleston Photographer — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 21:34:03 +0000

Getting away from Flickr is something I would love to get away from. I don’t think that totally getting away from Flickr is a great idea. I do like having an alternative with some additional features .

By: Cloke

Cloke — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 11:56:31 +0000

While I agree with the points in the article, Flickr shouldn’t be completely dismissed as it is still looked at by editors. I have been contacted by editors from Rolling Stone, Spin, and Esquire regarding licensing images of mine found on Flickr.

By: steph

steph — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:59:00 +0000

Great points. I agree that if you really want to monetize your professional photography, a real website as an adjunct to Flickr is the only way to go. [Link to the website from your Flickr pages too, as long as it's not linking directly to a "buy this" page, which is against Flickr rules, of course...] But speaking of professionalism, I spotted a big typo/error: “Beyond the security concerns, it just don’t look very professional.” That should be: “doesn’t look professional.” ;)

By: Ian Murray

Ian Murray — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 04:06:42 +0000

Easy to send low re watermarked pics from Photoshelter to Flickr, with Picscout icon that should divert potential buyers back to Photoshelter. That’s the theory anyway – though I’m not actually making any money from this and I think Photoshelter are being slightly disingenuous to constantly hint that much money is being made from stock photos sales to ‘walk in ‘ clients as a result of SEO on Google.

By: Taylor Davidson

Taylor Davidson — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 18:44:25 +0000

Exactly, it’s not a question of using either/or, but in using each in the appropriate manner. I get clients from both Flickr and my Photoshelter site, but for delivering images and showing my professional work, Photoshelter is the way to go. Glad I switched.

By: Grover Sanschagrin

Grover Sanschagrin — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:09:41 +0000

I agree it’s a useful component – just like Facebook and Twitter – to marketing yourself and your work. My point is that it shouldn’t be your only website – to the point where you’re putting your Flickr URL on a business cards.

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:06:31 +0000

Of course it’s not a matter of having flickr OR another website, most people have both. Flickr ranks very high in google images, so it definitely is a professional tool from a SEO standpoint. People have found my photos through flickr and bought licenses from me, so that pro account has paid for itself easily.

By: Ultraclay

Ultraclay — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:50:04 +0000

I don’t really see why it needs to be either/or. My photoshelter site is great as a portfolio site and the e-commerce functions are very useful, but even with all the lessons of SEO, it’s not going to bring me the solid following, community or broad-based audience that Flickr is. That’s not a flaw, it’s just a function of the two different tools. And given that the price of Flickr for a year is less than my monthly fee for Photoshelter, the price to keep my Flickr account up is negligible.