What if you gave your photographs away?

Just chucked them out there on the web… any images that were not client based, or had any sort of copyright or model release issues. Just a big ol’ damn giveaway?

What would happen?

Well, one thing that could happen is that nobody wants them. No one comes and takes a moment to download them.

That would suck- but it could happen.

Second thing is that you would most likely see your images pop up somewhere with someone making some money off of what you did.

If that hurts you, it may not be a good idea for you to do that.

if you don’t give a shit and hope they do well, then read on.

What if we could get more people and possible buyers to our website by giving stuff away that was already made?

Well, it worked for www.Unsplash.com

They were down to the last little pile of nickels and had no traffic. They hired a professional photographer to do a new header for their site and then - on a total whim - created a Tumblr site and gave away 10 of the outtakes to anyone to use in any way they want.

They posted it to a website: Hacker News - and the rest is, well, history.

“People visiting Unsplash came pouring in.
20,000 visitors.
10 minutes later, it was 50,000 visitors.”

The blogging community was so grateful for some good decent images that didn’t cost them anything (since 99,99% of the bloggers don’t make any money) that they flooded in.

So did interest in the photographer's work.

“Dude, happy you enjoyed the photos! I don’t know what you did with them but there’s a ton of people on my portfolio site right now!”

LINK to article here: [ Ссылка ]

Yeah. I bet that worked out pretty well for him too.

CREW, the agency was saved. The photographer got more clients, and the site Unsplash is now the number one referral to CREW for new business.

Death to the Stock Photo is another company that did similar things. They started giving away a ‘pack’ of photographs every month or so. Then they got the ‘premium’ thing going and because they had so many people loving the free work, a ton of them signed up for premium at $10 a month.

Not gonna get rich unless you look at it with maths… 1000 users is $10,000 a month. For photographs they are going to take anyway to give away on their non-premium site.

Now before anyone wants to drag me out and hang me from a post somewhere (which happens quite a lot to me actually) let me say I am not TELLING you to give your photographs away.

I don’t give a damn what you do with your work.

I am just suggesting there may be some ways to leverage what you have to the needs of the marketplace that are not along traditional channels. Break a mold, innovate the shit out it.

Ideas can turn into other ideas which can morph into something awesome for you if you just think about it.

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