Author: Leslie Burns

Don’t forget that I’m going to be speaking to ASMP-Minneapolis-St. Paul on October 23rd (details here). The next day I will be available for individual consultations. Sign up today! This is your chance to get one-on-one help for your marketing and business!
Also, get of your butt and send in a question for Creative Lube. I know many of you have questions, but not many are offering them up to the benefit of all. As a dear friend says, there’s no such thing as a stupid question, only stupid people! Of course, that’s a joke–I think I can honestly say that I have never been asked a really stupid photo biz question. Ever. So why not ask a question for Creative Lube and help out your fellow photographers?

Yesterday I got a lovely call from a photographer I’ll call Mark. I won’t give his last name so that his assistant doesn’t get embarrassed, you’ll see why. So anyway, Mark tells me he just read the pdf version of my book which he received via email from his assistant. He goes on to say that he used the emailed pdf as a chance to teach his assistant a little about the business. See, when the assistant forwarded his pdf copy of the book to Mark, he violated my copyright. Mark, being a smart photographer who knows about copyright, recognized this and explained it to the assistant. And, being an obviously really decent guy, he went on to ask me how he could pay for the pdf.

Now I bet at least some of you are saying “Wait a minute–if I give my copy of your book, the printed version, to a friend, that’s not a violation of copyright so why can’t I share the pdf version?” Here’s the technical “why”–when you send an attachment like a pdf you are not sending the actual item but rather making a copy of the item. Making a copy, without permission (especially for distribution) is a copyright violation. If you made a copy of the printed book and gave that to your friend, you’d know that was illegal, right? Same thing with the pdf.

Mark took this opportunity to teach his assistant that as creatives who make their livings via the management of intellectual property, it is hypocritical for a creative to “share” (read: pirate) others’ works. A great lesson.

I meant my book to be a tool in teaching the basics of the business, including copyright, to photographers who might not have learned these things in school. The fact that the book itself has become an object lesson is pretty ironic.

Thanks Mark, for not only paying for the book but also for being such a great mentor to your assistant.

On the PDN forum there is an older thread that has been recently resurrected. It’s on lowballing and in it, as you might expect, I stated my opinion on lowballing and encouraged people not to do it. Rather than working from the negative, working from the positive (including valuing your work) is a much better way to go about your business, and I expressed that. Unfortunately, there are those who not only disagree, they get nasty about it (personal and nasty–ick). I don’t feel like responding to them directly (they aren’t open to thinking any way other than as they do, I believe, so it would be a waste) but it did get me to thinking again about the subject.

To be fair, I have tried to think about what the pros are to lowballing, but I can’t seem to come up with very much. Here’s my list:
*get a project now–so some money now versus potentially no money if you hold out for better terms (fees, etc.);
*possibly get repeat business (at the low prices)
*potentially work more often (at the low prices) and thus stay busy.

Now, the cons to the same point:
*if you make any money from a lowballed project, it will be a very low profit;
*clients will come to expect that photography is only worth that low price;
*clients who buy on price are usually difficult clients to work with who don’t care about quality so much as just getting it done;
*if your low price is based on time, then the client will try to get as much shot as humanly possible in the shortest amount of time (again sacrificing quality);
*you’ll have to work 5, 10, or more times as much to make the same money as you would if you priced appropriately (forget about having a life away from work!);
*lowballers rarely guard the rights to their work so if your client becomes the next Nike, you get nothing more for your work even though your client gets rich;
*once you work for a client for $X, getting that client to pay $X+$1 (or more) is nearly impossible (they’ll usually just replace you with another cheap-o);
*the chance that the work you will do for clients who want a lowball photographer will be something creative and/or inspiring to your creative nature are about .0000000000000000001 (and didn’t you become a photographer to be creative?);
*you might be able to pay the rent or feed your family today, but tomorrow there will be someone cheaper who will steal this client from you.

I’m sure there are more, but this is getting to be a long post. I only want to mention one other point: who ever got rich lowballing? Not even WalMart did. In the case of WalMart what they do is lose money in the short term when they set up in a new town. They lowball to undercut the competition and force them out of business. Then, when there are no more competitive businesses, they raise their prices to make a profit.

This system only works if you can force your competitors out of the market (and if you really don’t care about your customers). That is never going to happen in photography–not in our professional lifetimes at least. So lowballing is only a short-term desperate act, not a wise and well thought-out business plan.

More importantly, deliberate lowballing (which is very different from being un(der)educated about the business and mispricing!) requires that someone be so selfish and unethical as to utterly not care about anyone or anything other than him/herself.

I don’t think any of you are such people. I don’t think true creatives CAN be.

It sounds so simple–record a bit, upload, and link and, voilà, a podcast is born. Only it’s not quite that simple. The first episode was poorly mixed so the music was too loud for some folks. The second episode caused some sort of odd bug that made it not appear in iTunes and, for extra measure, made the first episode disappear from there as well, even though both appeared on the server, etc. Hours later, it’s been fixed.

So what? Well, the point for you folks is that sometimes we think that something is going to be really fast and/or easy and it turns out not to be either or both. This happens in marketing all the time. There is no such thing as the quick fix when it comes to marketing–everything takes time to work even if the time to make is minimal. What we need to remember is to have patience.

That workbook.com mini-portfolio may not bring you in a job for many, many months. Those mailers may not make the phone ring. You may get nothing but voicemail when you make calls. Etc. However, not doing these things pretty much guarantees that you won’t get work. On the other hand, maybe an art buyer sees your workbook.com listing and loves your work, but doesn’t have a project right for you now; but in 10 months, she does. You wouldn’t have the project if you never put your mini-portfolio there in the first place.

Patience. And persistence. In my case, I believe each podcast will get better. This one is better than the first and now I even know what to do when the feed gets hosed.

Deep breath. You marketing is paying off already, even if you don’t see it happening today.

I’ve been a regular on several forums for quite some time. Recently, however, I’ve had to pull back from my activities on one forum (PDN) because of the politcal ugliness. I haven’t left it, yet, but I am no where near as active as I used to be, because a few political bullies have, essentially, taken over things.

That’s too bad–that a few guys (they are all, ostensibly, men) get so nasty that it ruins the environment for the rest of us, but that happens. The thing is, what they are doing isn’t good for them–in fact, it’s not good for business.

Being politically active is, in my opinion, a good thing. However, it belongs in its own place, and that place is not the front burner of your business. You are more likely to alienate people than to bring them in to your way of thinking, and that is bad for business.

For example, some of the aforementioned posters advocate what is, in my opinion, an extremist right-wing ideology. In the creative industries, the majority of people are centrist to leftist. It is entirely possible for a potential client to choose not to work with you if you post statements contrary to his/her worldview in a place where s/he is likely to see them. PDN is such a place. Clients go there.
So, believe what you believe and fight for what you believe in, but do it in appropriate places–political forums, for example. Leave the creative professional forums to issues facing creative professionals more directly.

If you take a couple of days off, when you come back you’ll feel recharged and you’ll probably find you have work to do. Both are good things. I’m in that situation now so, in an effort to play a bit of catch-up, here are a few items….

Orphan Works legislation:
The government is still trying to change the copyright laws in ways that, while on the surface sound good to the average person, will actually significantly negatively impact a creative’s livlihood. Stay abreast of the news on this topic (the Illustrators’ Partnership is great for this) and stay active! Write letters and make calls to your legislators. We are making a difference!

I’ve spoken and written about doing what you love and working past fear–these are important ideas for your career. I think this article by Rick Landesberg (geared to designers, but it mostly holds true for almost all creatives) speaks very well on these issues, especially the passion part.

And lastly, I’ve just had a fabulous tour of the new Livebooks version 5. Somehow they have managed to make a great suite of products even better.

You won’t be hearing from me for a few days. My husband is hitting one of those milestone birthdays so we’re off on a trip to celebrate it.

Milestone birthdays (21, 30, 40, etc.) are often surprisingly difficult for creatives. Often, one will feel like s/he hasn’t achieved “enough” by that birthday–like there is some sort of scale and if you don’t have $X or a house (or the RIGHT house) or X awards or whatever, you’ve somehow failed. Of course, there is no such scale. It’s only in our heads, if we have one (a scale, not a head), and we can choose not to hold ourrselves up against that imaginary scale if we want.

That’s not to say that having goals is bad–it’s not. In fact, having concrete goals is a great thing. It only goes bad when you beat yourself up for not achieving a goal. So, instead of using a milestone to hit yourself with, why not choose to look back on all you HAVE accomplished instead? Then you can set more goals, and move forward knowing that you can do it.
My goal for the next few days is to help my husband have a great birthday and to enjoy a couple of days R&R. Of course, a couple of days off for me will mean I’ll probablly have plenty to say when I get back into the office–on Tuesday.

I’ve made and posted my first podcast. Yes, it’s got some technical issues, but for a first try, I think it’s safe to say it doesn’t entirely suck. You can subscribe to it here. It’s called Creative Lube.

The thinking behind the name is simply that I want it to be something that functions as grease for your creative business wheels. Some editions will be me talking about an issue I think is important, but often it will be me answering questions…your questions. So send in those questions! This is your chance to have me answer your question and for you to help others by sharing it.

ASMP Minneapolis/St. Paul is kindly bringing me to their fair neck of the woods to give my New Treatments for PMS (Panic Marketing Syndrome) talk. PMS is that “disease” that creatives often have, where they do little to no marketing when busy, then the phone stops ringing, then they frantically market, then stop again when they get a project…rinse, repeat. The result is feast/famine cashflow and a bad set of nerves, usually. But there are things you can do to get your marketing under control. In this talk, I’ll tell you some of them. And, of course, there will be plenty of time for Q&A too.
That event will be on Monday, October 23rd. On the following day (10/24) I will be available for one-on-one consultations–both in one-hour (ish) and two-hour (ish) blocks. Discounts are available to ASMP members. Call (619.961.5882) or email for details.

I’m excited about the trip and look forward to meeting lots of you there! Book now to be sure of space! And thanks to Steve Niedorf of ASMP-MSP and all the companies who are helping sponsor my trip.

I hear photographers and other creatives complain about the usage model often. Some say that their clients don’t get it so it’s easier to price based on time, but today there is more proof that not only do they get it, they want it for themselves.

In this article on AdAge.com, very important agency heads talk about how the “pitch system” is broken. Even the one guy who says he likes pitches says that the compensation system is messed up:
I understand how costs have to be driven down but the fee-base that we’re on now, it’s like being an hourly worker — like the person who does the drywall, and I believe we should be paid by the idea. If we spend four hours and the idea is worth $50 million, it doesn’t seem right to just be paid for four hours.

So, the next time you have an agency client say “we don’t do usage” be understanding that they may not for themselves, but show them how it is more fair and encourage them to demand the same from their clients.