Facebook,twitter,etc...

Is it get better with these...!?

I think it's one of those things that if you worked hard at it you'd see some results, whether the time spent doing it would outweigh the return you get is the reason I don't bother personally. 

It may not help my sales but i can find models within 20mins of posting a "i would like to do this kind of shoot...." So yes it really helps me out but no i wouldn't say it helps me with sales.

I don't belong to MySpace or Facebook.  If I spent time on those sites I don't know how I would ever have time to shoot and upload! 

Haha!

Same to me!

Too much staring at the monitor,but a little through the eyepiece...

Of course!

We get less than 50 % from agencies...

Other part of our earnings must be enough for agencies especially for marketing..
Marketing is not mainly part of our job...

 Hi All,

 I think it is something that needs to be looked at. It might not bring you more buyers directly but it can influence the worlds knowledge that you exist. Advertising in a sense for tomorrow. It has already worked well for finding models. It also connects other photographers together and let's you get to know their work.
 If you were going to release a new collection it would be a great place to go hunt for specific styles and qualities from different shooters to ask the to contribute, much easier that in the past. I have found some great shooters out there for a couple of collections they weren't aware of.
 You could kind of say the same thing about this site with the exception that many people here hide under aliases so no one will ever find their work here. Do you get buyers from posting here. Probably not but it is still fun and educational to swap stories and build a community of people that you share interests with.

 Just my 2 cents.

Best,
Jonathan

It looks like a small step in the right direction, and it is shrewd move for DT, 12 of your friends can see your DT images, follow the images to DT and they could make a purchase, but they have to sign up first, then DT now have another customer you get rewarded by your affiliate link, other artist may benefit from downloads made by your network.

It is easy to see why it is only 12 friends and I would think it is down to limited bandwith useage for now as this costs, but as the internet gets faster and users get more and more content streamed direct to different devices rather than visiting web portals, the companies that adopt will survive, it looks like sites like DT are playing with other possible revenue streams and asset delivery methods.  

To the OP:
You may not sell better now with social networks, but stick with them, I.M.H.O. they have the potential to be the biggest new market for image sales, look at all the music services now that stream the music direct to your PC you choose what to listen to free of charge, then when you want to pop a tune onto your Ipod you pay for the download.
Can you imagine a service like that for images one that streams different random images to places like Myspace, if a customer see an image they like and they want a copy, one click, buy and download.  

"Now you are talking new business"!

David (just gotta find 12 facebook friends now)            

Twitter, Facebook, they all just waste my productivity time.  

I agree with many of the views already expressed above, particularly Jonathan.  I don't think social media and general branding / promotion works very well for anyone outside of the upper tiers of the market. Yuri says he estimates branding accounts for 10% of his sales, and it's not difficult to believe that.

The mistake, or 'interesting strategic choice', that I see a lot of photographers doing is marketing and branding themselves to other photographers. Granted we're an easy target. We already have access to 'us' and tend to gather better than photo buyers. Some are entrepreneurial and have a blog, course, cruise or keywording tool to promote. Those who don't have these things are the ones who make me scratch my head and wonder.

That being said, I see social media as a great tool for everything else. It connects you to peers who can provide value in ways other than purchasing licenses. I use Twitter quite a bit and it's generally among the top five referral sources for my blog.  Facebook is much lower around 15th. The great thing about social media traffic is that there's a high portion of first time visitors and they tend to hang around longer and view more pages than other sources. That is, it's high quality traffic.

I also find it helpful to network with people. I've been doing some conference programming lately and I used LinkedIn and Twitter extensively for researching people and then making contact if I wanted to invite them. At the same time, many people have used the same tools to get in touch with me to express an interest in participating in the conferences.

So for me social media is extremely useful, but not for increasing sales. If I ever resume shooting, I'll aim to reach a high level of quality and consistency with my portfolio before doing any branding or promotion.

You could kind of say the same thing about this site with the exception that many people here hide under aliases so no one will ever find their work here. Do you get buyers from posting here.

The mistake, or 'interesting strategic choice', that I see a lot of photographers doing is marketing and branding themselves to other photographers.

Jonathan - I don't think (and certainly haven't noticed) any buyers that visit this forum with the exception of those that are contributors themselves, and if that's the case Lee's comment is very apt in my opinion, why market ourselves to ourselves, plus as I've mentioned before having a measure of anonymity on this forum enables a certain level of free speech.

I see a possible venture for someone that knows what they're doing, I think someone who is internet savvy (rules me out) could create a site whereby we as photographers could have an account enabling us to make weekly posts of what we've been shooting with links to relevant portfolios and thumbnail examples, and then the site posts that info on twitter, facebook or any of the other networking places.  From a buyers perspective they could then visit one site and get lots of stock related news and info, maybe even have the option for a buyer to only select the news from their favourite photographers so that they're not wading through tonnes of stuff that doesn't interest them.
Restrict the entires to once a week and then it's fair for all and the site won't get clogged up with too much stuff from the same source.
And most importantly keep the site looking professional, not covered in ads or referral badges from the site creator.

Just a thought.

I see a possible venture for someone that knows what they're doing, I think someone who is internet savvy (rules me out) could create a site whereby we as photographers could have an account enabling us to make weekly posts of what we've been shooting with links to relevant portfolios and thumbnail examples, and then the site posts that info on twitter, facebook or any of the other networking places.
<...
>...
Just a thought.

RT goood idea,
I keep seeing the word 'designers are buyers', and stocksites tend to survey these regular buyers, but a big proportion of sales are not made to designers but to 'Joe Public' downloading a few specific images, so any image sets need to be targeted to the buyers interests, a general image set would not generate many sales, so we could start by target marketing to the normal buyers.

Artists already have the tools to do this now, join Twitter and Facebook, on most stocksites you can create lightboxes of images, these you can create on a specialist subjects.

Lets say you have a few lifestyle, nature or wildlife images in lightboxes, join and target Facebook groups that fit the specific lightbox content, create a topic and post links to your lightboxes, 'if you love Big Cats I have a few photo's over here <<Link to lightbox>>', anyone in the group that is writing an article, blog or presentation might just make a purchase.

On twitter keep posting tweets 'if you love Big Cats I have a few photo's over here <<Link to lightbox>>' and you will pick up followers that will know when you make a new tweet.

nothing will happen overnight and it will need some work, but it could bring a photographer with niche images traffic, using stocksite lightboxes to protect the image copyright and limit download abuse.

David    

The question is
"Do you sell better because of connections with social networks!?",
Lets not look at this with blinkers, direct image sales may or may not  come from social networks, but lots of information you may have read today may have come this way, if you use this information to target where to upload your assets, keep in touch with what is going on in the industry, or learn new post processing skills, then you do sell better because of connections with social networks, as these services evolve there may be an opportunity to sell direct, Facebook and Twitter are new services and we do not know how they may change, so yes it is worth keeping them in mind.  

I agree.  There are some who clearly believe we are blind.  ..."you may be interested in this"...   ..."I just posted"...   ..."check out my"...

Here the choice is with the reader to view the post or follow the link, I open the forum and based on the title and user who posted the last reply I will decide which topic to read first, same on twitter some I will read others ignore, one persons service or perspective that is dismissed by one reader may be of interest to another, this form of network marketing has been about in different forms for years, and is being used more and more, Yuri Arcrurs, Photo Jack, Jonathan Ross and many others are now networking via posting ..."you may be interested in this"... articles, blogs and video clips, via twitter and allowing organic viral networking rather that posting in lots of forums.
        
Some of the forum posts, tweets, articles, plug-in's, applications, blogs etc: are often interesting depending on the content, I see a difference to Yuri and Jonathan�s posts, Jonathan I read because he has an interest in the future direction of the 'Business', where Yuri I read more for the focus on the methods of 'Production', someone else may post an article on post production, I just choose what to read and it does not make any post better value than another.

We should not stick to a narrow information field of just microstock information, or we could be left behind like many of the traditional photographers were, microstock was launched as a free service and changed to a paid service, this caught many photographers out, with the current ease and information overload any new asset services will be seeded by networking through the likes of twitter and facebook, I read a comment from Lee that the content for his blog is often as a result of something he read on one of these ..."you may be interested in this"... posts, and we will find out about them in forums like this and blogs like Lee's.

Many Artists here are adding more diverse assets like Illustrations, Movies, Sound, Midstock and Macrostock assets to their portfolios, so the term Microstock should be taken loosely as the Microstock services are also merging into a one stop asset shopping experience for buyers.            

David