Cameras

Log into Amazon at the moment, and on the front page, you won?t just find the usual list of recommended products that you probably don?t want. You?ll also see a homely-style photograph of a cake in the shape of a Kindle.

We don?t know if Amazon paid for that photograph (although we suspect it didn?t). We are sure though that the site that supplied it is now seeing its server costs fly through the roof as a portion of the gazillions of people who see Amazon?s home page every day click the link above Jeff Bezos? signature.

In terms of exposure, getting your image and a link on Amazon?s home page is like being chosen as Book of the Month by Oprah. It?s a guaranteed winner.

But you can?t wait for that to happen to you if you want to use Amazon as a way of earning income through photography. Nor do you have to sign up to the company?s affiliate system and plaster Amazon?s ads all over your Web pages (although there?s nothing wrong with that.)

There are plenty of other ways to pick up cash as a photographer with the help of the world?s largest online retailer.

Sell your Photography Book on Amazon
Probably the easiest way to make money with Amazon is create your own photography book and place it on the site that millions of people turn to first when they?re looking for a printed volume. Amazon?s Advantage program lets anyone sell their books, music or DVDs and even offers a print-on-demand service through CreateSpace so that you don?t have to splash out on inventory that just fills up your garage.

We like the way Blurb lets photographers create and sell books, but it?s worth comparing Blurb to CreateSpace to see which lets you build the better product and offer it in the best way. You might even find that it pays to use two different self-publishing systems depending on your marketing stream.

You could even take this further and create a DVD that teaches how to shoot photographs in your particular niche and sell it in the same way. If other photography enthusiasts often ask how they can shoot photos like yours, that should be a good sign that you?ll have a market.

Of course, it?s not enough to create your product and place it on Amazon. If you?re going to sell it, you?ll need to promote it too?

Use the Reviews
One very easy way to do that is to become one of Amazon?s reviewers.

Anyone can contribute their opinion of any product sold on Amazon. That means that you can leave messages under sales pages for any cameras, lenses and lighting equipment you use. You can let people know what you think about various photography books and photographers. You can even offer tips and advice about the sort of items the buyer is thinking of purchasing.

And if you also include a link to your website each time you do that, you?ll be creating a road to a sales page that lots of targeted buyers are going to travel down.

You could certainly just link to your home page and let the site do its job but you could also create a special landing page for Amazon?s shoppers to promote particular services or products ? even photography items that you?re selling on Amazon.

When a site the size of Amazon hands out free space on its Web pages, it?s just a waste for any entrepreneur ? and especially a photopreneur ? not to use it.

Update your Amazon Blog
Another tool that Amazon offers its sellers is a blog on the sales page. That might sound a little strange. Few people are going to log in to an Amazon sales page to read your latest thoughts. They might do it to read Dan Patterson?s latest thoughts but they?re less likely to do it to read the postings of a photographer they hadn?t heard of until just a few minutes before.

You can still use the blog though by adding a few brief articles that reinforce your image as a skilled photographer with good images and information to offer a buyer.

If you already have helpful posts you can take from your website, you won?t even have to do any extra work.

Steer Clear of Prints
One strategy you?d probably want to avoid though is trying to sell your prints through Amazon. Search for photographic prints on the site and you should find that you?re faced with a pretty meager choice, most of them placed there by large retailers.

Whether that?s because people just don?t want to buy art on Amazon or because photographers just aren?t doing it is hard to say. It?s possible that eBay simply does better. But it does look likely that you?d have a hard sell.

If you?re looking to shift your images on Amazon then, your best bet is to use one of the many methods of putting them on the pages of a book? then market it like mad.

Digital cameras have introduced us to a world of possibilities that were previously not available with shooting film. The ability to instantly see what we’ve captured, and to edit, share and print the images has changed how we take pictures. It has also changed how many photographs we take, where they get stored and what we do with them. We were limited to 36 images per roll of film, now an average digital camera can store hundreds if not thousands of photographs on memory cards, encouraging (even taunting) us to shoot more.

Shooting more photos means capturing more memories, always a great thing. The downside is what to do with all of them, how to manage them, keep them backed up and share with friends and family. Utilizing local, network and online storage for backing up is a great, easy idea, and allows sharing the memories without the need or pain of attaching large files to email.

Local and Online Solution

This is an amazing solution in that you get the best of both worlds. Local storage, which is easily accessible, to an entire home or office, and online storage, accessible from any location with high-speed internet access. This solution is called a network attached storage (NAS) device, an example of which is the WD My Book World Edition. This device also takes the guesswork out of backup procedures with automatic and continuous backup software.

Utilizing the included MioNet software, you can also access your NAS from anywhere that has an Internet connection. This is a big advantage over external hard drives directly attached to your computer and the reason that we advocate using a NAS. As a photographer taking pictures anytime, anyplace, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to upload all the day’s shots to the NAS device in your home or office? You can rest assured all is safe, and if you have a staff, they can begin working with photos while you are on to the next shoot.

Being cross platform and supported by both Windows and Mac means you can painlessly share and access all the photos and data you have on your home network, or anywhere in the world.

Online Web Based Solutions

Ideally, utilizing both an online backup storage and sharing solution with a local NAS would give the best possible scenario for recovery of data should something happen to the local NAS.

Here’s a roundup of some of the top web sites that offer sharing for your photos. An important thing to note is that only one of these sites, Flickr, allows for unlimited photo storage. The other sites are mainly for sharing your photos and are not viable backup options.

Flickr has become somewhat of the standard for online web albums and sharing photos.  They’ve made it so easy a grandmother can upload photos, yet still utilize advanced features such as commenting and tagging, along with the ability to create custom photo streams to appeal to everyone. Groups created inside Flickr share photos, critiques and ideas and this is all offered free. A paid account with Flickr opens up the upload and storage limits to be unlimited and gives access to advanced statistics. There is no built in photo editor on Flickr, though.

MyPhotoAlbum has one of the most attractive web interfaces for sharing photos of the bunch. They offer 1,000’s of different templates and designs to create a very personalized, fun web album of images. They don’t limit the number of photos or albums you can host and offer privacy settings that enable you to control who can and can’t see your images. MyPhotoAlbum also stores the full, high-resolution images on their server with no editing needed. Another interesting feature they offer is a personalized domain, http://you.myphotoalbum.com, allowing you to create an easy-to-remember address to email your friends and family.

Pbase has been one of the largest photographer image sharing communities online for the last few years. With forums for chatting and albums galore, it’s become one of the premier places to show off your photography skills. Advanced amateurs and professionals alike use this service to showcase their best photos, learn from others and get inspired. Pbase is a paid service, unlike most of the others listed, but for that you are also getting advice from other photographers. It’s probably not a site you’d want to use to just upload photos from your last vacation to share with the parents.

All of these sites offer basically one thing: online storage of your images. The advantages to this are plenty:

• Easily share with friends and family by simply emailing a link. No need to attach files to emails one at a time.
• Commenting and tagging in albums allows you to quickly and easily identify and find photos.
• Some offer automatic backup solutions, great in the case of a hard drive failure, corrupt operating system or home invasion / flood / fire.

Backing up online should be done in addition to localized storage, not instead of, just to have a fail-safe.

Got any backup, management or sharing tips of your own? Leave a comment below…

Win a HP StorageWorks RDX Removable Disk Backup System worth £235!

Photography: apes_abroad

Photography is usually a pretty lonely craft. It?s often just you, your camera and the setting sun? or a wedding reception full of half-drunk guests.Crowdsourcing might be important if you run a microstock agency or sell paparazzi photos, but for most photographers, who plan and shoot their images alone, it can?t offer much.

Or can it?

More Eyes in the Market
One of the biggest benefits of crowds is that they can spot business opportunities for you. Put a photographic series on your website or Flickr page showing rainforest life in Sarawak, for example, and you can expect not just views and compliments but also suggestions on where to publish it.

That?s more likely to happen if you ask.

Every time you upload an image that you?d like to sell and put it in front of lots of people, ask your viewers if they know an outlet that might buy it. The more views you get, the more likely you are to land realistic suggestions from people with the right contacts and specific market knowledge.

And other members of the crowd will then be able to weigh in and tell you if it?s a good suggestion.

More Objective Eyes than Yours
When it comes to judging the quality ? and marketability ? of those photos though, your opinion isn?t always the best. You?ll often be too busy remembering how you shot them and what they mean to you to understand the effect the images have on someone seeing them for the first time.

Your viewers are more objective. If you ask them which they think are the most sellable images on your site, you might well be surprised? and save time trying to sell a favorite shot that would have few takers.

Improve your Photos
Crowds aren?t just capable of giving your photos a quick thumbs up or thumbs down. They can also tell you what it would take to make your shots better.

You have to be careful here. Ask someone how to improve anything and you?ll always get an answer ? whether the advice is good or not. That?s where crowdsourcing really comes into its own. If one person tells you that you should have upped the f-stop, for example, you don?t have to listen.

If twenty people tell you that, they might be onto something, and you could be on your way to a better photo.

Find Subjects, Scenes and More?
So the masses can help you to track down markets and make improvements. But they can also help you to identify people and places to shoot. If you want to know where to photograph surfers, sandcastles or sailboats, the best places to look aren?t maps and guidebooks. They?re forums where people who take these sorts of photos like to hang out.

Again, you won?t just be getting advice from one person. You?ll be getting tips and reactions from lots of people, helping you to filter out the worst and focus on the best.

Know the Law
So far, we?ve discussed how crowds can help photographers find markets, understand and improve their images, and track down subjects. They can also solve problems.

Photography today can be a complicated process. Forums are full of photographers describing how they were hassled by security guards who didn?t want them shooting their buildings or by policemen who told them they were breaking the law for carrying a camera. It?s hard to find one photographer with experience in every aspect of photography law. But photographers? combined knowledge can give them a pretty powerful weapon against people who want to put their hands over the lens.

It might not have been around for long, but crowdsourcing has already had a massive effect on photography. The stock photo market has been changed by it and sites like Flickr have become knowledge-sharing sites as much as photo-sharing sites.

Photography might be a lonely art, but with the clever use of crowds, a lot of knowledge can go a very long way.

Got a photography business idea? Test it on crowds at Cambrian House or Spigit and tell us how you get on.