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spidge

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Riders I need your opinions please. As a busy equestrian photographer based in the south,I see thousands of my equine images on Facebook pages that have been shoplifted from my website without permission, with my logo across the image. This happens, despite albeit fairly discreet notices on my web site, saying please do not do so. Some of Facebook pages belong to riders/customers who buy images from me, some regularly, some never at all.

Everything has a price point in life. My suspicion is that more and more photographers will give up equestrian as simply not profitable any longer. I do not wish to be one of them, but I do need to understand the market forces at work here.

So my question is how cheap do the images need to be to persuade the riders who currently shoplift the copyright marked images to pay for a clean image that does not include my company web site address and company name? I am suggesting a low resolution image suitable for display in a digital photo frame, Facebook page, on a computer or Blackberry/iPhone etc.

£10, £5,£4,£2,£1 ????

I'd love to hear your thoughts.
 
I bought some facebook images from a photographer that was at Summerhouse a couple of months ago. I'd looked at the pictures online but couldn't really afford to buy any. But the I saw that she was doing facebook images for £3 so I bought three. I haven't printed them but they are nice clear images with a copyright stamp across one corner - not across the main picture.

£3 seemed an ok price to me. But then you'd probably sell even more if they were cheaper...

Just to give you an idea anyway.
 
I would def pay a couple of quid to have them on my facebook, and as suggested. maybe put your copyright in the corner of the pic so its still on there.
great idea though and I would def buy, as I always seem to buy 1 or 2 big pics and wish i could have them all, i suppose in this way I really could have most of them on my facebook.
 
I would be happy to pay say £4 each or 3 for £10, as if cheap far more likely to buy several rather than just one!

You will always get those that won't pay though however cheap they are! Just look at music it can be under £1 a track but still people will acquire it for free!

Also agree put a small copyright somewhere on the edge of the pic as then its also free advertising ;)
 
You own the rights to those photos, so you can demand that they are taken down. Might make more enemies than friends though!

Could you not get a right-click block on your website so they can't save them to their computer?
 
I think you need to go down the 3 for £10 kinda route, that way, people will stretch to a third photo...

I'm really put off by photographers that only sell prints and don't sell jpegs...I nearly always buy email photos these days unless i'm buying at an event where they print them on site.

One of the Scottish Photogs doesn't sell jpegs on their website at all...totally puts me off
 
Peter_Pan said:
You own the rights to those photos, so you can demand that they are taken down. Might make more enemies than friends though!

Could you not get a right-click block on your website so they can't save them to their computer?
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That only works with PC's.....not Macs....or iphones ;)
 
I generally have a memory stick with me, so if for a fiver I could have a low res image uploaded on to it I'd pay that. Ditto if you emailed them to me. If you had to provide a CD, then £7. £10-£12 round here will buy you a printed copy and £25 a high resolution image with no copyright so you can use it on adverts.

It's £10 round here to get a low-res image emailed to you for the use you describe, but I personally think that's too high - presumably when deciding what to charge for an image you factor in payment of photographer, kit and the cost of the paper and printing, so theoretically a low res image should be cheaper than a paper one I think....

High res ones which you can print from etc, I can completely understand why they are more money.

Interestingly our wedding photographer does a package (which was the one we chose) which was a set price for a DVD slideshow of the pictures and a CDROM of all the pics in digital format, of print quality with no copyright on them. For under £900 we got 375 images which we could do what we wanted with. It felt like a really good deal to us, and I do think that event photographers need to start thinking about providing digital images at a lower cost than they do currently. Realistically, people will print one or maybe two copies from a digital image.

I have always thought that a good marketing angle would be to charge (lets say) £20 for the first high res digital image, which you provide on a Spidge branded keyring memory stick. In the future subsequent images bought and downloaded at the showground onto that stick cost say £5-£7. It's the same principle as a restaurant I get take away from pretty regularly - the first one costs £20 but comes in a metal reusable 'tiffin' - all future refills are £6.50, and as a conseqence I use that particular restaurant far more often than any other, and will buy take away from them on a complete whim because £6.50 is so cheap I can just buy it because I fancy it. The same would hold true for event pics for me - if I could buy a high res digital one for a fiver if I had a Spidge stick which I'd forked out for, then I would probably buy a shot each time I saw one I liked....at current prices in my area, a shot has to be really, really good for me to buy one.

ETA: Completely agree with those who say 3 for a tenner/cheaper pics will make me buy more - if one was a fiver as I suggested, I'd buy one. If they were £3 each, and I liked 3 or 4, I'd buy them all....
 
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I charge £6 for images suitable for facebook/msn etc... not suitable for printing in brillian quality. its £12 for suitable printing pics.
 
To be honest i would buy a lot more printed photos if they were cheaper!! But downloadable photos maybe 3 for £10?
 
Thanks for all the comments so far, so £5 is perceived to be a fair price, maybe dropping to £3 per image for larger volumes.

Good to get some reassurance that I'm thinking along the right lines.
 
bogpony said:
Don't think I'd pay £5 just for a pic to put on my facebook....but hey...im Scottish!
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He/she also said that it would be suitable for dusplay in photo frames which don't need such a high resolution as most are 6x4 in which case I think it's a great idea. Would personally rather that than a 9x6 print. Maybe £5? I would certainly be willing to buy more if they cost less.
 
I just paid £15 per jpeg image for event photpgraphs. OUCH indeedy. I think £1 - £2 per photo for use on facebook etc is enough, and I would suggest a subtle watermark on them, so if people tried to enlarge for printing they would distort the image (so set them at a size that is viewable but too small for printing purposes). If I had had this option I would have still bought 2 high res images but prob would have bought the other 20 too for FB and email. You will have to make it clear that these images will NOT be permitted to be used for adverts tho, that they are for personal use only.

I would NOT be tempted to buy a picture for FB for anymore than £2.
 
I agree i wouldn't pay £5 for a facebook type size/quality photo.

For a low res facebook/photbucket type one i'd buy lots at £1 or £2 and maybe up to 3 at £3 or £4 each. I'd pay up to £5 for a high res one i think, i doubt i would ever actually print it so it would only be to show people on my computer.

I would pay up to £14 for a nice printed version in a cardboard frame.

If i had a choice i would buy digital over printed unless there was a particularly special one and then i'd like it printed.
 
I think your forgetting the editing time and taking the picture time to demand such low prces off togs!!

I would howeveer sell mine at £2 per copy BUT with a small watermark in the corner. (so it dosent ruin the picture yet is noticable).....

What annoys me the most is people using togs pictures with the watermark right accross the middle as their profile pic. Buy it.
 
I would be happy to pay £5 for a digital photo if it was big enough to be used as a screensaver or wallpaper image on my computer.
 
jack9 said:
I think your forgetting the editing time and taking the picture time to demand such low prces off togs!!

QUOTE]

i totally see where you are coming from with this i really do...but what you have to think is that people are going to 'steal' the pictures if you don't offer them cheaply. for £2 i would definitely buy lots of photos but for £5 i would be much more choosy and maybe select one pic only if it was VERY good. there is one photographer who i ALWAYS try to buy a pic off because he's so friendly and helpful when i've dealt with him...and his pics are great quality...so you are definitely better going down the carrot rather than stick route :)
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see you say the taking photo time well that is happening whatever whether an image is sold or not.

As for editing time. Good old photoshop can do the shrinking and applying discreet watermark for you automatically. all you have to do is have all the appropriate photos in the right folder click a few buttons and leave it to do its job! As for actually editing to improve the photos, if they need any/much alteration I would be worrying about the standard of the photos being taken ;)
 
I'd be more than happy to sell every image for £1. At the ODE on Sunday last we took 3552 images between 3 cameras. Heck you could even have the high res images if I made that every Sunday.

If only...
 
spidge said:
I'd be more than happy to sell every image for £1. At the ODE on Sunday last we took 3552 images between 3 cameras. Heck you could even have the high res images if I made that every Sunday.

If only...
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Now there's a thought......sell your images a lot cheaper, and sell much more of them. I certainly would be buying all mine at £1 each!
 
Why don't you try it but making sure there is a LOT of publicity of the fact you are selling them that cheap. ie constantly over tannoy and posters only saying TODAY ONLY etc

Say no prints on day, buy a load of cheap data sticks and sell those at cost (should only be a £ or 2 at most) and offer photos at say £2 each high res (then no editing required ;) ) there and then on those memory sticks. I think you could be potentially very surprised at how many sell.
 
I do like the memory stick idea a LOT, it means you have your images instantly, which is always welcome :) I don't know when I will get the images I have purchased, have been told a day or two (so could be 4 days after purchase), which I think is a bit pants as it only involves attaching them to an email!
 
Weezy said:
You can buy them like that already, but they cost more than £5, I just paid £15 each for mine.
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I know - which is why, at present, I rarely buy them! However, on the other thread on this subject in NL, Spidge says his current low-res size is 1600x1063 and I would happily pay £5 for that. However, I wouldn't want to pay £5 for a .jpeg which was say, 400x300, for example.
 
Maybe there might not be any profit in this, i'm not a professional photographer so I don't know, but I was at a show at the beginning of May and there was a low-key photographer there (he has a smaller business than yours and covers less events). I was pleasantly suprised on looking at his website (he wasn't there at the event which probably helped reduce his costs but then again I'm often too busy looking after my horse at events and getting him home and comfortable to look at the photos on the day!)
He only charged £3 :shocked: per image. This included P+P as well!!!
Ok so the image wasn't humungous but it was big enough to fit nicely into a standard sized frame. After all it's all well and good having a nice big photograph but I have rather a few now and to be honest I'm running out of room to display them!! I'd much rather have lots of nice small photographs (I can buy more when they are cheaper! ;) ) that I can display lots of than a few large ones that I can't fit many of on the mantlepiece! Surely being a larger business and covering more events this could be an option? I mean I can't afford £10 or £15 a show for a photograph bearing in mind the economic climate and the rather expensive entry fees nowadays! :(
If I really liked the image and I thought it was really good then I would be tempted to buy it larger anyway but if it's just a nice image I would like to have but isn't amazing then I wouldn't buy it large but would like to have a small copy of it if that makes sense.
Sorry that's probably completely going off the point but something I have been meaning to suggest for a while though I have only been "lurking" as I asked my mum to change my password so I wasn't distracted on here in between exams! ;) :D
 
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Saratoga said:
To be honest i would buy a lot more printed photos if they were cheaper!! But downloadable photos maybe 3 for £10?
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I'd pay that. I only buy ones which I think are really good though, and because I get quite a few taken at events - that's not very many as I cant afford them at the moment! I think there's more competition now between photographers and they need to lower their prices.
 
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