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BY ROHN ENGH

Convenience Shopping

Retailers know that consumers usually choose price, brand, and quality when it comes to shopping. The Internet has shown that another factor is important to customers: convenience.

If regional and specialized stock agencies survive, it means that you, as a freelance stock photographer, will have four ways to market your photos:

1. You’ll send your commercially-oriented generic stock off to an automated, digitized giant (Getty, Corbis, Alamy, Jupiter, etc.).
    
2. Send your targeted stock to specialized agencies.
    
3. Place your pictures with a Royalty-Free service such as Istock.
    
4. Market your highly specific editorial stock photos yourself, to special-interest buyers whose needs match your personal coverage areas.

Four-Tier Marketing

Here’s the advantage of this four-tier selling strategy.

Number 1 and Number 4 will pay the bills. The photos for Number 1 will go stale after five or six years, but you’ll continue to keep on top of the fads and pump photos out that will fit Number 1.

Number 2 will enable you to anchor yourself to something other than an email address. You’ll give personalized service and receive first-name attention from the specialized agencies.

Number 3 and Number 4 will allow you to photograph in the areas of editorial stock closest to your heart (environmental issues, developments in education, Native American issues, the homeless, rodeos, gardening, and so on). These latter photos will eventually become of historical significance, and you can pass them on to your heirs.

The Digital Age, with its electronic communications, and marketing tools, now allows you more flexibility and freedom in marketing your stock imagery than ever before.

Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International, the stock photography online meeting place, and publisher of PhotoStockNotes. He is also the author of Sell & Resell Your Photos: Learn How to Sell Your Pictures Worldwide.