“As a photographer, I find that Flickr is a valuable viral marketing resource for low-resolution samples of my pictures. (There is no point in making high-resolution electronic images freely available over the internet if your business is all about selling pictures.)”

“I am not interested in selling my pictures directly to publishers as this takes up too much of my time, especially when they are inevitably late paying my invoices. I would much rather leave this to a specialist third-party such as Scoopt, therefore freeing up my time to take more pictures. I am however willing to spend time on marketing myself and my stock pictures as this generates sales and further work.”

“If the picture editor can’t see my pictures, they won’t know that they exist and therefore won’t use them. Viral marketing techniques enable my pictures to be seen. Photo-sharing sites such as Flickr allow me to market my pictures to the world’s media instantly and automatically.”

“The use of integrated RSS (Really Simple Syndication) websites allows low resolution samples of my pictures to be automatically distributed, not just on the Flickr web site, but by any website in the world that has RSS & API integration. My web site http://www.dougblane.com is also RSS enabled, therefore allowing seamless integration to any other RSS module worldwide as well as seamless integration from my Flickr account to my web site. This allows me to host & manage my pictures centrally on one web server.”

“By keywording/tagging my pictures with the word ‘Scoopt’ and joining all relevant Flickr groups, I am able to market my work worldwide and direct any sales to the professional team at Scoopt.”

Doug Blane is planning to write a book on ‘Viral marketing for photographers’ where he explains methods of using the internet to help improve picture sales.

Doug Blane
http://www.DougBlane.com