Recently, I've been experimenting with "viral networking" for my photography work. Even though it sounds dangerous, it can be a lot of fun. With so many people producing excellent images, it's easy to get lost in the crowd.
Fortunately, we have some new tools that allow any of us to create a nice looking Facebook fansite and display an image or two, or even stream a gallery, at little or no cost. I use Photoshelter as the backend to my gallery here on my Facebook landing page.
I really like the Photoshelter website tools for photographers who want to self market their images. I use them to drive my Facebook fansite and my personal website YoungImaging.com. If you are web savvy, you can accomplish a lot, with much less effort than ever before.
If you can provide a link to your images from a webserver somewhere, that's all you'll need to create your own Facebook fansite and attract friends or even buyers to your best images. If you know a little HTML you'll enjoy using the "static FBML application" that's available to you on Facebook. With this tool you can create your own business Facebook site, and stream your gallery. Photoshelter has published a document (webpage) that will help you get started.
I'm having a great time learning about all these new technologies. If you want to market your lovely images, you may find it more profitable to do it yourself. Stock agency prices are falling rapidly. Marketing unique images not available anywhere else can still be quite profitable. Make your camera pay for itself!
Keep on capturing time...
Darrell Young
Darrell,
ReplyDeleteI just discovered your blog by following a few of the links you posted to the D300s group on Facebook. First of all, thanks for doing this. It's quite a compendium of well-written, detailed, helpful information. I can't wait to see how it "develops" (as you "expose" us to more facts and tips, I doubt anyone could come away with a "negative" review).
One issue you ought to mention about Facebook is that of intellectual property. According to FB's terms of service, whenever you upload anything to their site, "you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook."
In other words, as you mentioned, upload the photos TO YOUR OWN SITE, and then LINK them to your facebook page. Budding photographers should NOT upload their photos directly to facebook.