-- and provides some insight on how the agency world operates in the Digital Age.
A Web Free-For-All?t
by Bahar Gidwani, CEO, Photos To Go
Free Internet service, free software, even free PCs? Some people are starting to think that everything on the Internet, including photos, will eventually be free. They cite the low cost to distribute information and intangible
But is it free? Someone has to pay. Internet advertising is getting increasingly intrusive. Visiting the average Web site these days is not unlike driving down a highway filled with billboards.
Free? Business Economics 101 tells us that the price of a product should be tied to its value, not its cost. The most obvious examples are items like artworks (no buyer at an auction figures in how much the artist spent on canvas and oils when he is bidding on a Picasso), and rarities (how much would you pay for that McGwire home run ball?). Anything that is not a commodity (e.g., oil, gold, government bonds) is usually priced more on value than cost.
What kind of value should stock photography content have?
I am the CEO of one of the largest sources of images on the Internet (our e-commerce site, www.photostogo.com, provides more than 250,000 images to small businesses and consumers). Here are some examples that relate directly to my area of expertise-licensing photographic content on the Internet.
Is it OK to pay more, if you get exactly what you want? All the major search engines will help you find images. But, it's not easy to find specific images. Try looking for "photos of toes" on image search sites such as Ditto.com, ScourNet, Altavista or Excite. Then, search for the keyword "toe" on our Photos To Go site. The search engines will give you a jumbled mess. Photos To Go gives you selected images of toes. Speed and efficiency is worth paying for.
Quality matters. Need a light? You can get free matches in any restaurant. Why do people pay for fancy lighters? Would you spend $15 to get a nice image to put on the cover of a presentation that might win you $10,000 worth of business? You would be making a sound economic decision if the image you selected for your project raised your chance of winning the deal by 0.05%.
It feels better to be legal. Most people are honest either because they were raised that way (95%) or they are afraid to cheat (5%). Is it worth something to be "safe" from infringing someone else's copyright?
We pay for brand recognition. Is water in a glass bottle worth several dollars per gallon? Why, when we can get water through our tap, "free?" Because the company's name on the label gives us reassurance that the brand is accountable, more pure, and good to serve to friends. Our Photos To Go logo on images gives the images the same kind of value benefit.
People enjoy things that are easy to use. We pay more for TV dinners than we would for the food components separately. How about those popcorn packages that cost four times as much as bulk popcorn in a can? Here at Photos To Go, we package our images with helpful tips and ideas on how to use them. For example, as screensaver software, greeting cards, or a quick way of making framed posters. Our customers know we stand ready to be helpful.
Honesty Pays. We know that most visitors to our site are honest. Nevertheless, unauthorized (i.e. stolen) use of one of our photos could jeopardize the good name of our service. To protect against this we limit access. Anyone can come to see "free" thumbnails. If a visitor wants to see more, we ask the visitor to provide an Email address to be able to get a somewhat larger image. For serious clients, we invite them to purchase a license. As the man said, "to keep photographic content from being free, you have to keep it from being freely available."
We provide a professional-looking Web site. This deters thievery.
The cover of the book is important. When visitors arrive at a site that looks "professional," they can guess that they will have to pay for the valuable content it contains. You're inviting disaster (theft) if your Web site leans toward an amateur "look." Beware the temptation to throw something together quickly and try to "join the fun."
Don't be afraid to talk legal. None of us like to see legal fine print and most of us don't really read it carefully. However, when we see it, we know the people behind it mean business. One of the most frequent questions from users at our Web site is just how our licenses work. Here's a tip: A clear, user-friendly statement about the legal status of your photographic content, will probably make people more comfortable about using it.
Associate with other vendors that have value. If a visitor sees that our content is affiliated with a brand name
And now the question. "How do we here at Photos To Go maximize what people pay for our photographic content?" It's a case of analyzing the numbers. We watch our conversion numbers. That means balancing two numbers-the average dollars we earn per visitor and the average dollars we receive from repeat buyers. If we lower our price, our conversion rate (the percent of our visitors who decide to buy something) will go up, but our average price-per-image will go down. We could end up making less.
After we have found the right range (the "sweet spot"), we continue to fine-tune by examining our repeat business numbers. If our buyers think we give them a good deal, they will come back regularly. As you know, in most business ventures, it costs six times more to get a new customer than it does to retain a current customer.
In my way of thinking, there is no practical reason that Internet content should be free. Instead, it is up to those who create the content to make it valuable and to convince Web citizens that they should pay a fair amount for it. When they do this, Internet photo content providers will in turn be able to provide their artists the income they need and deserve.
Bahar Gidwani, INDEX STOCK IMAGERY, 23 West 18th St. 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10011. Phone: 1 212 929 4644; Fax: 1 212 633 1914; Email: baharg@indexstock.com.)
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