So, whenever I post a photo of Montana, I always know it will make Gail happy. So I like to see not only her comments, but all the other regulars… I also like how you all are getting to know one another. If you are on Google+ or Facebook, feel free to share your info so people can friend you in these other mediums as well!
Today’s photo has a bit of a German theme, so I know someone will be extra-happy… .or maybe William Beem because it’s from Disneyworld!
Daily Photo – Late Night in Germanville
This area of Epcot is one of the best for night photography. There was a little bit of light in the sky, so I had to make this shot as quickly as possible. I didn’t really have time to do a proper scouting, but this was such a nice situation, I made it happen as quickly as I could. I think my full-tripod-setup is under 25 seconds in these emergency situations.
Normally, I like to zen out and take my time. Others, like this, are the result of sheer, bloody panic.
Have you ever been on a PhotoWalk or PhotoWalk curious? I find that MOST people that come to these have never been on one before. So, it’s still a new thing to everyone. It’s generally my plan to come to YOUR city (or area!) to do one of these some day.
Daily Photo – The Cheerful Austin Christmas Dragon
It was a great PhotoWalk in Austin last night! Remember to tag your photos with #gplusaustin — and click around to see some stuff. We had over 100 sign up on plancast, and it got pretty crazy because a lot of people brought friends and family. It was a lot of fun to meet people.
We had one guy come in from South Africa, a gal Karen Hutton come in from California, and many more from all around the Texas area. Everyone we very nice and fun as usual.
I had an autographed 2012 calendar to give away, but I forgot! Sorry that was lame of me… I had it on the floorboard of my car and everything, but with getting the kids out and everything, I forgot – you know how it is.
How I took the shot
Paul Terry Walhus was taking a video the whole time. You can see a bit more about the PhotoWalk and how I took this shot in the video below! Thanks Paul!
Post a link below to one of your most challenging shots… and feel free to talk about it too if you wish!
Daily Photo: Peter Hudson Charon
This was one of my most difficult photos of 2011.
This amazing sculpture from Burning Man is the brilliant work of Peter Hudson. You may remember this scene from your mythology, where Charon rows the dead across the river Styx.
The sculpture requires at least six spectators to pull a series of ropes in a certain manner. Once the wheel starts spinning fast enough, strobes start flashing, animating the skeletons. Each of them was animated by a Pixar artist and there was a magical effect. Capturing the motion and the strobe all at once was extremely difficult. I thought about it for four days before finally taking the shot. I’m sure my Burning-Man-Buds Tom Anderson and Cliff Baise tired of me speculating about the shot!
My personal Facebook Profile (you can subscribe) has been using the new Timeline feature for a while, but you probably could not see it unless you were an FB developer that also had it turned on. But maybe everyone has it activated now? I was wondering… and are you enjoying your own timeline if you have it?
Reminder for TWIT Photo with Leo Laporte Tomorrow
Tune in Live at 1:30 PM PT at Live.Twit.TV. See you there! We’ll be talking about Photography and more!
Daily Photo – Farmhouse and Roosting Birds at Dusk
I only got to stay in this magical place for one night.
If you’re really into birds, then you may notice a thing or two about this photo. Iceland is known for many species of birds, and you can see a bunch of them roosting back in the cliff there.
Tuesday at 1:30 PM PT I’ll be on live at Live.Twit.TV with Leo. The guest that day will be Dave Cross, so it should be a fun conversation!
Daily Photo – The Digital Aurora Borealis
There’s not many places where you can get a colorful sky in the middle of the night. China seems to be one of the best places to have these strange digital phenomenon.
This place is called “The Place.” It ranks right up there with some of the other awful names of Chinese locations. They should hire a poet or two so these places can sound more exotic. I’d be happier if it was called “Tomorrow Sky” or “The Sea of Matrix.”
Let's all look at a pretty picture and zen out before we go down this path of no return...
A Great and Embarrassing Experiment
I did a scientific, controlled experiment in 2011 and here are the results.
This is a sad story and embarrassing in many ways, but it turns out there is both a happy ending (thanks to Scott Kelby) and an overall moral to the story. It’s also quite exciting for all the bloggers out there.
Video of the situation
Here’s a video where I talk about my findings and add many additional thoughts.
Any Bias?
First, you might be interested in any kind of bias in this report, so let me alleviate any suspicions. I am completely independent of the mainstream photography world. This blog is not owned by any bigger media company, and I have no kind of incestuous relationship with any advertiser whatsoever. I am completely independent.
For example, when I mention Nikon, it’s because I like and use Nikon equipment. Nikon doesn’t pay me or advertise on the site. I am always suspicious when anyone mentions any brand, unless they are clear about the relationship. You should be too.
I know full well that most traditional photography magazines will hate me after this, but that’s okay. I expect that my findings in this will help to take millions in advertising dollars that are wasted on traditional magazines and funnel some of that to the online world in the future.
What is this little blog anyway
Daily photos fluctuate but the numbers increase year after year as friends and families tell one person at a time. Thanks everyone!
And let me deflect a few spears right away from the naysayers. They’ll probably begin character attacks or say this blog is insignificant. It’s not. As you can see from the chart on the left, it shows that, on average, we get over 150,000 photo views per day. Per Day. I might have a slight touch of sensitivity here, since magazines often make such a big deal out of how important they are, claiming over 100,000 subscriptions per month. As you’ll see from the results below, I don’t know how many of their readers actively open the magazines every month. And, of those that are opened, I doubt many ads are given substantive consideration by the reader. In other words, the vast majority of people just flip through the ads to get to the meat.
So, perhaps you can keep this sensitivity in mind too as you read the results below. Of course, we all know that the web and Internet content is the future and that traditional magazines are dying. But, strangely, the magazines are still able to attract the biggest advertisers with very high rates. Now, even though I am sensitive to this issue, I’d like to think I am still objective about the whole situation. I hope you’ll agree.
The Experiment
This year, in 2011, I decided to try an experiment. We have a great product we sell here called the HDR Video Tutorial and I decided to experiment on “traditional” media. We know it is a great product because it already sells like hotcakes, HDR is popular and we have less than a 0.5% return rate.
I allocated about $30,000 to buy ads in magazines.
As for the advertising specs, I did the following to keep things consistent:
Full Page Ad
First third of the magazine
3 months (1 full page for each month, for 3 months in a row)
I chose these three magazines with the following total advertising spend over the three months:
Popular Photography – $12,000 – April, May, June
Shutterbug – $6,000 – April, May, June
Photoshop User (NAPP – Kelby Media) – $8,000 – May, June, July
How I Tested
This is the add that went into Kelby's magazine with the special code "THANKSNAPP" to track sales.
We built a custom full-page advertisement for every magazine. Each one had a special discount code on the bottom for 10% off so we could measure response. For example, the Scott Kelby’s magazine got “THANKSNAPP”, and Popular Photography magazine got “POPPHOTO”. Note that it is possible that some people bought the product without using the code. However, we did not see an increase above our normal baseline sales for those months, with the exception of people using the code. By looking at the stats, it appears that 95% of people that could have used the code did use the code. Therefore, I believe this is a fair way to measure the results.
The Results
Here are the results. Note the asterisk on the last result because it is important.
Popular Photography: 10 Units sold = $870
Shutterbug: 11 Units sold = $957
Kelby Media*: 206 Units sold = $17,125.75
As you can see, Popular Photography and Shutterbug were a disaster. This was actually embarrassing to me. I have a business here, and it is embarrassing for those two magazine deals to lose a combined $16,000+ on a failed advertising campaign.
Now, I know I should not take things personally in a scientific test, but I did. You know, as a small business guy, I have to choose whether or not to save money for my kids’ education or to risk it with a giant magazine with an ad campaign. Just like Walter Donovan, I chose poorly.
But, thanks to Kelby Media, I ended up almost back in the black overall.
*Why did Kelby Media do so well?
There are many reasons, but the overall reason is they seem to really care about getting results for their advertisers. Their head of advertising was in constant contact with me, making sure things were going well. They also have ad rotation on their website, which is part of the package. I’m convinced that this is the reason that they did so well. Scott Kelby and his team are smart – they know that online is the future and they’ve always been fully diversified.
Other possible problems with the ad
Now, maybe people just don’t WANT to buy the video tutorial and that is why sales were so low. Well, of course this is a possibility, but very unlikely for these two reasons:
1) Objectively, HDR is a popular technique, and there are many people that want to learn it.
2) If you compare Popular Photography and Shutterbug to Kelby Media, you’ll see that the product was indeed in-demand. If no one wanted the product, then the campaign with Kelby Media would have also failed.
Ron Martinsen’s Blog – Who???
Okay, how many of you big advertisers have ever heard of Ron Martinsen’s blog?
Ron is an example of the thousands of bloggers out there generating real traffic and real sales, but advertisers largely ignore this and instead continue to put much of their money into paper magazines.
I bet not many of you. However, would you be surprised to know he has sent us $8,920.51 in sales this year through our Affiliate Program? He doesn’t have a big blog, but look how many sales he generates! He’s just an example, and there are hundreds of blogs out there with amazing content.
Now, I’ve never talked to Ron about this, but I bet he has trouble selling advertising on his blog. Or, if and when he does sell, I bet he gets very low rates compared to these big magazines.
So, Ron is one of our thousands of affiliates. I don’t pay him to advertise there, but he gets a percentage of every sale. It doesn’t cost the buyer any more money, and, to me, it is the most fair way to do it. In a true meritocracy, people get paid on performance, not on guestimates that appear scientific.
So, Nikon, Canon, Epson, Sony, and the rest of you – what are you doing?
Why are you big advertisers wasting money on these big magazines? Is it just “branding,” or are you actually trying to drive sales? Or, perhaps it is more a function of, “Well, that’s how we’ve always done things.”
I know that there are smart advertising people out there in these companies that are trying to put together campaigns. There is something to be said for “Brand Awareness,” but I think this is losing the value it once had when Ogilvy wrote his masterpiece. Brand awareness was more important in the days when there was a big gap of time between when the viewer sees an advertisement and then makes the purchase. For example, in the 50’s a family might see ads in their newspaper talking about Whirlpool washing machines with no call to action. That brand would get into their heads, and the next time they went to Sears, they will remember that brand and logo. It was the same way with Coke and Chrysler and Braniff. But nowadays, the time between seeing an ad and making a purchase is very very quick. In many cases on the Internet, it’s instantaneous.
Look at what Ford has done in the online marketing world. They now advertise on Leo Laporte’s forward-thinking network; they advertise on many blogs and with social media stars; they sponsor fun reality-shows on the Internet. While other big companies might have a small “play fund” for Internet experiments, Ford has jumped in head first. They get it.
Another vector is that big product/service companies have bloated advertising departments with established relationships with magazines. Magazine editors give them all kinds of statistics so they can prepare nice monthly reports for their superiors that makes it look like their true reach is significant. But it’s all built on old, predictive guesses on the nature of the behavior of the audience.
Believing the readership numbers of these magazines makes about as much sense as believing Nielsen ratings. You don’t have to live in that old world of biased “guesses” any more. Now we live in a world where we can see website stats, YouTube views, and Google+ ripples. Also, the vast majority of people with disposable income spend more time on the Internet. They are more likely to make that purchase off the Internet after seeing an ad or reading a review from some place like CameraLabs.com.
Summary
If I was consulting for one of these product companies that puts significant funds into magazine advertising, I would challenge them to try something new for six months: Try taking 50% of that money and put it into several hundred blogs, podcasts and review sites and measure the results. Cut the worst performers and find new ones.
Remember, I’m not doing this for the benefit of THIS particular blog; I’m doing this for the thousands of other bloggers out there that produce amazing content and have built up niche audiences that would be interested in your products. Advertise everywhere from Victor Cajiao’s blog to Scott Kelby’s blog to Ron Martinsen’s blog to Frederick Van’s blog to Catherine Hall’s blog to Thomas Hawk’s blog to Jim Goldstein’s blog to Olaf Bathke’s blog to Alex Koloskov’s blog to Kyle Marquardt’s blog to Scott Jarvie’s blog to Scott Bourne’s blog to Darren Rowse’s DPS blog and so on and so on… The future of marketing is not with paper magazines with biased outdated measurement techniques; the future of marketing is tied to trusted individual voices with measurable web properties that are experts and care deeply about their audiences.
Google Currents is a fun way to read the latest, be stimulated, and see new things. You can get it now on your iPad or Android device — it’s free! I am on there in two places — I’m in the “Curators” and in the “Lifestyle” category. It’s kind of an alternative to Flipboard… and quite a good one! If you get it, tell me what you think.
Daily Photo – The Cathedral Under the Cathedral
What an awesome place this is… This is the cathedral that is on the bottom level of Sainte-Chapelle. I did my best to capture the feeling of this place, and I hope I did an adequate job.
This is a handheld HDR taken with 5 exposures. It was really quite difficult to hold the camera still. I felt a bit like a sniper in Call of Duty.
Limited Quantity! 2012 Calendar Now on Sale!
When they’re gone, they’re gone.
We’ve decided to do something new this year and put together a monthly calendar! This is an 11 x 8 1/2″ saddle-stitched calendar featuring 12 of my favorite images from the U.S. and around the world. We’re very excited to offer this … it’s very different for us to offer something in a physical medium. I mean, we do sell prints of the photos (just click through any photo on the blog to go to the SmugMug gallery and click “Buy” ) but we’re mostly into the digital goods. Nothing beats a nice wall calendar though, yes?
It’s a great gift for you, for your family, and for your friends. Oh heck, get a few! 🙂
We sent off a new newsletter this morning… did you miss it? Come sign up here for free!
Daily Photo – Alcatraz in the Dusk
Today’s photo was taken recently in San Francisco. That tower you see there in the mid-distance is Coit Tower. Just beyond that, in the middle of the bay, you can see Alcatraz.
I’ve never made it out to Alcatraz to take photos, but it is on my list. I wonder how much freedom (!) I would have out there to roam around with my tripod. Have any of you gotten out there?
Time: Thursday 7 PM PT (Your World Time) Where to watch:www.Vidcastnetwork.com Topic: Gear Talk! The new Nikon Mirrorless and more… Note, I usually don’t talk about gear… I’m more into the art, but this next generation of cameras is interesting to me. And, I’ll have one of the great experts joining me, +Gordon Laing and some others too. We always open it up to the public too towards the end for Q&A and general hangout fun-nonsense and stuff… 🙂
People with personal agendas
This doesn’t happen here on the blog… all you guys are cool and don’t really do this sort of thing, but it happens a lot on Google+. See this thread about this topic.
Daily Photo – The Runner of Blades
More and more cities are giving me that feel of Blade Runner. It’s such a great movie… well, the first half is great. It drags a little after that. Okay okay I know that is blasphemy… just my opinion and everything. I know I should not say such a thing…
Anyway, this is a very trendy place in Beijing. There are many trendy places, all futuristic, all full of cool shopping and restaurants, all great for photography!
We have a great new eBook – it’s beautiful, educational, and fun. I think you’ll get a lot out of it. Pop over to Flatbooks.com now to get a copy and download immediately!
Here’s what’s inside:
– Learn the history of the square format
– Learn to capture for square and edit with square in mind
– Tutorials for Cropping, Making Vertoramas, and adding borders to your images
– Read an interview case study with Matt Toynbee
– Learn about Holga lenses
– 50+ Pages
Other New Flatbooks Authors
There are so many things happening with Flatbooks.com that I can barely keep up! We have Ben Wilmore writing a new book which should be done pretty soon. Besides Ben, we have all kinds of people writing them now, like Lisa Bettany, Jessica Ambats, Jaime Ibarra, and several others.
I normally don’t re-process photos. Most of you may know this about me. But, I went over to have a little session with Jaime Ibarra (at the same time I talked him into writing an eBook for us!), and I took a few photos with me to work on. This is one of them. He has a very interesting technique, and I thought this would be a good candidate.
I found this girl sitting outside of a restaurant. There’s a dead time around 3 to 4 PM… to late for lunch and too early for dinner. I suppose she worked in the restaurant and was just taking a break…
We have a great new eBook – it’s beautiful, educational, and fun. I think you’ll get a lot out of it. Pop over to 
