A good friend of mine, and a terrific shooter, used to have a gig with a BIG magazine. At least one story per month, sometimes two. Editorial rates that weren't screaming, but they didn't suck either. Now BIG magazine isn't passing out any more assignments to photogs... they are out of money. So David has lost a steady, and very nice gig for at least a year or more. And that does suck.
What if David continued to shoot stories, then posted them on a well designed site? Not the whole story, just 4-6 images and a solid 5 paragraphs... for the rest of the story, and a downloadable screensaver maybe, make a payment of $4 or 5 to his Paypal. And if you are a magazine editor needing a story, what better way to get an idea of the great work that David does than to see this initial entry. An editor could login to David's Private area and see the entire shoot in gallery form and if interested, call David and buy the story. Of course the editor would have to create a login, and agree to let David send him his e-mail newsletter... get it?
David could, after having a significant amount of work there, start to license the stories to online travel magazines, get sponsors from Travel Agencies, provide stock images for travel writers, and even sell prints as wall art. With digital printing at an all time low cost, and no signs of going up, there could be tremendous profit there. He could even create his own book at some of the PrintOnDemand houses.
Add David's Travel Blog where he lets you know where he is and what he is shooting, he could have editors internationally calling him to "make sure you get these images" for a story they are working on, and designers seeing the images before they even get to the gallery area of his site. And sponsors paying to be featured in the BlogAds and AdSense programs.
Soon David could have his own travel magazine online, with an Amazon Affiliate program, Google AdSense, BlogAds on his Blog, sponsored stories and shoots, stock, print sales and, of course, assignments.
David is small... but thinking like this makes him big. Low overhead means larger profit margins. The web lets him grow to whatever size his ambition and skills can take him. Stay small, think big. I like it...
David, call me... we gotta talk.
Seth's Blog: "Big used to matter. Big meant economies of scale. (You never hear about “economies of tiny” do you?) People, usually guys, often ex-Marines, wanted to be CEO of a big company. The Fortune 500 is where people went to make… a fortune."
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