STOCK PHOTO
NEWS no. 6
The first Modern eZine combining Stock Photography and Marketing
June 2001
=====================================================
CONTENT
* From the Editor
* Tips for using conceptual pictures # 1
* Guest article: The 3 Secrets of High Traffic Sites
- by Mark Joyner
* AltaVista, good and bad news again
* Take better Travel Pictures, Tip # 1
* More tips
* How to build a web site for selling
* New
book: Get into the Photobuyers´ mind
* Timely Time Management Tips ezine
To visit the latest earlier edition of the Stock Photo News
go HERE http://www.azfotos.com/STOCKPHOTONEWS/stockphotonewsmar01.html
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FROM THE EDITOR
Since the last issue of Stock Photo News I have taken pictures
in India, mainly at the Andaman Islands. These are beautiful
and true oceanic islands lying between Thailand and the Indian
subcontinent. Beautiful beaches, unspoiled rainforests and
seascapes, many endemic animals and plant species, and very
kind and colorful people.
Very few western tourists visit the islands for the moment,
but from 2003 an international airport is expected to bring
loads of wealthy tourists to these low income communities.
During the next month some of my Indian photos will be displayed
at www.azfotos.com - just type India in the search box to find
them.
This triggers me to express some thoughts of the opportunities
in India in general. As we all know India has a vast population,
more than one billion. The millions of poor people is still
a reality, but many millions live on a level similar to the
markets we normally deal with.
Life style magazines and less specific commercial magazines
will increase the use of stock photography and creative professionals,
and the whole market will come closer and closer to what many
of us are used to from the western world.
This creates many opportunities for the right initiatives
at the right moment. As India is an official English speaking
country it is easy to establish an internet presence and investigate
the potential without big investments.
You can for example get an impression by going to the Indian
version of AltaVista at http://in.altavista.com/ and make some
searches for relevant key words.
In this issue of Stock Photo News we will start two new series:
one about ideas of using conceptual pictures, and the other
with tips for taking better travel photos. The last series
is mainly for the general traveller.
Again, I would like to thank all of you who have been helpful
and recommended Stock Photo News to friends and colleagues.
Please continue your nice support! You can win 10.000 dollars
by using Recommend-it!
Enjoy your reading!
Soren Breiting
A-Z FOTOS
" Find Stock Photos from most of the World"
www.azfotos.com
Comments, tips and relevant articles are appreciated, please
email me personally sb@ azfotos.com
*** Please
note: We will not sell or rent the email addresses belonging
to our subscribers - we respect your privacy. This ezine uses
opt in addresses, only. ***
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TIPS FOR CONCEPTUAL PICTURES # 1
Use conceptual
pictures which can function as symbols, icons or analogies
in advertisements, for book covers, illustrating articles
and features etc. This list can hopefully further your own
ideas.
Strength
(force, having power, potency)
... Eagle,
... Grizzley bear
... Elephant,
... Male lion,
... Pillar(s)
... Muscles
... Body builder
... Weight lifter
... Viking
... Heavy rope or wire
... Big tires on heavy truck
Solid
(rock solid, trustworthy, stable, firm, sound/good)
... Rock
... Stone pillar
... Giant Sequoia
Hide
problems
(not facing problems, avoid problems, avoid conflicts, conceal,
suppress, cheat)
... Ostrich with the head in the bush
... Sweeping the dirt under the carpet
Send me additional ideas for these concepts, and I will publish
them with your name/website in the next issues mailto:sb@azfotos.com
.
New concepts will also be listed in the next issue.
All will later be put together and displayed at www.azfotos.com/STOCKPHOTONEWS/concepts.html
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THE 3 SECRETS OF HIGH TRAFFIC SITES
by Mark Joyner, CEO, Aesop.com
It seems
to be in vogue these days to downplay the
importance of web traffic. It's popular (and perfectly valid)
to say things like:
"Traffic
is worthless if you don't turn it into money."
Excellent
point, but this assumes that you actually have
some traffic to begin with. Each step of the Internet Marketing
Process is not just important - it's required for success.
So, let's focus today on getting traffic to your site,
and remember:
A. Getting
traffic to your site is like putting gas in
your car. You can have a great engine, but it won't go anywhere
without the gas. Likewise, you can have a perfect sales letter
-
but without traffic, it's just pretty to look at.
B. The
highest traffic sites of the world do not just get a
little more traffic than the next guy - they get exponentially
more traffic than the next guy. For example, according to
Media Metrix, AOL's network weighed in at #1, getting more
traffic than any other site in the world in April of 2001.
Amazon was ranked #10. Both are top ten sites... And the difference?
AOL had 89,000,000 visitors that month and Amazon had 19,000,000.
That's a whopping difference of 70,000,000 visitors
between the #1 site and the #10 site.
Interestingly,
the higher up the ranks you go, the greater
the gap between each site.
So, what's
the difference? Why is it that the better a
site gets, the further behind it leaves its closest competitor?
Here are their secrets:
1. They
Set Up "Multiple Streams of Traffic"
Back
in 1995 I observed an interesting phenomenon. I found
that the likelihood of someone responding to your website
was highly dependent on the path they took to get there.
People
may ask you "what is the conversion rate of your
website, but that is really an irrelevant question.
Conversion rates are meaningless unless they take into
consideration how someone gets to your website.
(Test this yourself and you'll find it to be true.)
So, I
coined the phrase "All Clicks are Not Created Equal."
For example, traffic from a site recommending your product
is more likely to generate a sale than traffic from a site
criticizing your product. That's an extreme example,
but you get the point, right?
When
people discover this, their natural tendency is to
start getting picky about how they get their traffic.
Why waste your time on traffic that won't generate a sale,
right?
If you're
paying for advertising, this makes perfect sense.
However, many people mistakenly throw away traffic from free
sources as a result.
High
traffic sites never throw away traffic and constantly
endeavor to set up new traffic streams.
Let's
take the worst possible traffic source imaginable:
FFA pages. Traffic from FFA ads is extremely sparse.
To make matters worse, this traffic is rarely the source
of an immediate sale. Very little amounts of the lowest
quality traffic in the world - yep, I think that qualifies
it as the worst possible traffic source.
If, however,
you have an automated FFA promotion going
that doesn't take you any time to maintain and still brings
in traffic, should you throw it away?
Maybe
not...
I still
have in place free automatic traffic building
sources that I set up years ago. Much of the traffic that
comes from these free sources is of low quality, but hey,
I don't lift a finger to get it any more.
Most
super-high-traffic sites are constantly working on
new ways to bring in traffic - many of which are not very
sophisticated at all. Even Yahoo, for example, uses a low-budget
" tell a friend" script on their site to encourage
people to
forward articles to their friends. Does Yahoo care that anyone
can do this with a free CGI script? Of course not. It's just
one of thousands of traffic sources they've established.
When
you read #3 below, you'll realize why "low-quality"
traffic may not be so bad after all...
Remember,
though, if you're paying for "cheeseburger"
traffic, don't pay a steak-and-lobster price.
Better: get your cheeseburger traffic for free from as
many automated sources as you can.
2. They
Use Viral Marketing
"Viral
Marketing" was the vogue buzz-phrase of 1999.
Several books have been written on the subject in hopes
of cracking the code, but still very few sites are taking
advantage of this incredible concept.
Viral
Marketing is any type of marketing that encourages
people to spread your marketing message around for you.
Think
about this - it sure would be great if people
advertised your product for you, wouldn't it? It beats
the heck out of paying for advertising.
Here's
a viral marketing story for you:
When
I started the e-book marketing craze back in 1995 with
the release of "Search Engine Tactics," I promoted
the book
with a very simple viral marketing scheme.
Here's
what I did:
I put
a note in the book itself that everyone was granted
permission to give away or even sell the book on their sites.
They would benefit by giving something of value to their visitors
-
I would benefit by advertising products in the book. The people
that they gave it to saw the note in the book, and they gave
it
away on their sites -and so on...
So, did
this work? You be the judge:
a. The
e-book was downloaded over 1,000,000 times when we
last counted in 1998.
b. The
e-book was noted by ZDNet as one of the top downloads
of 1999,and is the only e-book ever to be given 5 Stars by
ZDNet.
c. Experts
have since written entire books about my little
ploy showing people how, they too, can unleash the viral power
of free e-books as traffic builders.
The point?
Well, one simple viral marketing tactic put my name
on the map. Granted, it was an unusually successful virus,
but
this was just one simple tactic...
People
are still giving this book away on their sites today,
and I haven't done anything to promote it in years.
High
traffic sites are always looking for new ways to spread
their message virally.
3. They
Turn Traffic into More Traffic
This
is where most people blow it. Allow me to explain...
Whenever
I consult for businesses I always teach my
" Internet Marketing Battle Plan" concept and use
that as
the basis for everything we do. This lays the groundwork
for the best marketing possible. (Side Note: I very rarely
do any consulting anymore - and usually only as a favor to
close friends. I just don't have time for it - I love it,
but my own Internet business is too lucrative to spend time
doing anything else.)
The Internet
Marketing Battle Plan is a cohesive system
consisting of 5 unique tactics that represent each step of
the Internet Marketing Process. All successful Internet Marketing
I have encountered follows one form or another of this plan.
Step
4 is: "A Tactic for Getting People to Come Back to Your
Site."
If you're
selling a product on your site, remember that most
sales are not closed the first time someone hears about a
product.
Obviously, getting people to come back will greatly increase
your chances of closing a sale.
If you're
selling advertising on your site, clearly getting
initial traffic to come back over and over again will snowball
your traffic.
There
are thousands of ways to do this, but you always need
to have:
a. An
incentive for getting them to come back.
For example,
at the killertacticsjournal.com site, we entice
you to come back by offering free marketing advice each week
from world-leading experts. This incentive needs to be truly
valuable or it won't work.
If we
offered misguided advice from self-proclaimed experts,
it would not be nearly the same incentive. Instead, we offer
battle tested advice from undisputed world-leading experts
like
Jay Conrad Levinson, Brian Tracy, Joe Sugarman, Ted Nicholas...
If we didn't offer you value each time, you just wouldn't
come
back, and you wouldn't be reading this article right now!
b. A
method of informing them of the incentive.
For example,
you sign up for our newsletter and we inform you
whenever this new information is available. You come back
and
this starts the cycle again.
Can you
think of other ways to inform people about your incentives?
Use your imagination.
High
traffic websites always keep people coming back for more.
You now
have the plan - it's up to you to put it into action.
Work on all three of these secrets every single day and I
assure
you that your traffic will increase dramatically.
Mark
Joyner is the CEO of Aesop.com, editor of the
Killer Tactics Journal, and author of several books including
1001 Killer Internet Marketing Tactics. For just a few days
this
month he has made himself available for private consultations
to
a select few. Serious, qualified inquiries only, please.
http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R201_MJConsult 1
Note
from the editor
I am sure Mark Joyner with his background and reputation
is expensive for personal consultation.
At A-Z
Fotos and All eMarketingTips we use some of
Mark´s inventions and products.
We use RoiBot every day to track online ads, and RoiBot is
useful
for a lot of other functions, too:
see http://www.roibot.com/r.cgi?IM9009_campaign
His Promo-Ivator
is a smart invention, which just costs
a few dollars and it is of great help, see
http://www.roibot.com/pro.cgi?IM9009_campaign
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ALTAVISTA,
BAD AND GOOD NEWS
The former
big search engine AltaVista has lost its position as one of
the biggest search engines globally. As mentioned in the last
issue you now have to do it all by hand. In that way you can
read the code shown in graphics and enter it to permit your
submission. Immediately you can submit 5 sites or urls with
the same code. The good thing is, that you can submit an unlimited
number of urls the same day. You will not be penalized for
that. But avoid to submit pages with very similar content
or doorway pages. At A-Z Fotos we have for the moment lost
the registration of all our pages in AltaVista! Earlier we
had more than 300 pages registered, and in long periods we
could hold number 1-5 positions of so difficult competitive
keywords as stock photos, photos and fotos.
Even if AltaVista will not give you the traffic it could provide
earlier you should make efforts to be registered there.
Submit
your site to AltaVista here: http://add-url.altavista.com/cgi-bin/newurl?
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TAKE BETTER TRAVEL PHOTOS, TIP # 1
Use the
light in mornings and late afternoon
You probably
know the yellow "Geographical Magazine". If you
browse through its colorful pages you can see that many of
the pictures are taken in the low, warm light of mornings
and late afternoons or evenings. The photographers of Geographical
Magazine are among the best we have. You can easily mimic
this practice and create much more interesting pictures than
most people bring home from travels.
The low
light will model the landscape you see for your eyes, so for
example the plough furrows or differences in topography and
texture are highlighted. As a travelling photographer myself
I know, that even on a photographic mission time is limited
and your circumstances are often less that optimal. I can
recommend you to take the pictures you must take during the
day. And then take a walk around your hotel or campground
before breakfast and shoot additional pictures in this special
light - and try to do the same during the last two hrs. before
sunset. In that way you will combine the best possibilities.
Low light
also gives long shadows, so be careful with these. Normally
you should not expect parts of a picture to show up properly
in both shadows and in full sunlight. If you use colorslide
films these might cover the full spectrum, but if you want
to have paper prints this medium will not be able to show
the details of both the sunlit and the shadows. So in the
printing process we have to choose which part of the picture
to give priority. In practice you should avoid the heavy shadows.
When you shoot your photos in cities the big buildings are
among the difficult objects. So take them from an angle without
the big shadows.
If you
follow these instructions I am sure that the appeal of your
pictures will increase. Please give me feed back on your success
and your eventual problems using these techniques.
Have
good travels and enjoy your travel photography.
Soren
Breiting
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MORE TIPS
HOW TO BUILD A SITE FOR SELLING
In general
it can be recommended to develop your website with strong
and focused content for the whole website and page for page.
Remember, that only text can be read (together with metatags
and ALT tags). This seems to be the only safe way for being
prepared for the changing algorithms and practice used by
the main search engines and directories. The work with your
important key words is still very important (see below), keep
an eye on that aspect every time you write your copy for the
web pages.
Many
have taken advantage of the web site building facility mentioned
in earlier issues. Ken Evoy´s easy solution to how to
create web sites optimized for getting a lot of traffic through
the search engines related to specific key words seems to
work very well. The system is called Build It and you will
find thought provoking information about the whole idea HERE
http://contact.sitesell.com/buildit/
FIND FREE GRAPHICS
This
site offers entry to a huge number of sites with free graphics
for your website production and off line publications. Take
a look at http://www.abcgiant.com
KEY WORDING TOOL
A very
useful tool has been developed to give you a much better background
for your decisions about which keywords to give priority.
The free version offers excellent help. Go to http://our.affiliatetracking.net/wordtracker/af.cgi?1529
and make a test drive. I am sure you will be surprised.
GET INTO THE PHOTOBUYERS´ mind
Under
this headline I have received information from Photosource
International about a new book described below. I have ordered
it today, but not received it - so I cannot recommend it from
own review. I just wanted to share this new information with
my readers. The book is written for stock photographers, but
might be interesting for people working with pictures in general
too, I guess. This published survey should give us a better
understanding of where we are now concerning the use and delivery
of digital pictures.
In addition
to the announced price you will have to pay 4 dollars extra
for the delivery. If one of my readers would like to make
a review I will be happy to bring it in one of the coming
issues of Stock Photo News. Just email me at sb@azfotos.com
"Staying
ahead in the stock photo industry takes a lot. A
lot of talent and understanding of how the industry
works. You already have the talent.
Let PhotoSource International give you a hand with
understanding further how you can work successfully in
the industry. PhotoSource International has been
assisting stock photographers with stock photo business
insights for more than 25 years.
Now you can also benefit from the PhotoSource
International 2001 Photobuyer Survey. In the Survey, you
will find out what photobuyers have to say about things
like digital submissions, want lists, unsolicited
submissions, Royalty Free, and much more.
Stay ahead of your competition. If you order by June
15th, the cost is only $14.95. Order your copy ($14.95)
of the 2001 Photobuyer Survey today!
http://www.photosource.com/101/survey.html
........................................................
Timely
Time Management Tips ezine
Get your
free Timely Time Management Tips ezine now
to help you get more time every day and reduce your stress.
To subscribe, click: http://www.topica.com/lists/timemanagement
or email: mailto:timemanagement-subscribe@topica.com
........................................................
Please
remember !
If you
have any idea of friends or colleagues you think would find
this newsletter useful, PLEASE send them a personal email
or send an email by a click on Recommend-It . - You could
win 10.000 dollars!
THANK YOU for reading and recommending Stock Photo News.
See you
in next Stock Photo Newsletter!
Soren
Breiting
........................................................
Copyright
2001 by Soren Breiting, A-Z FOTOS.
http://www.azfotos.com/
" Find Stock Photos from most of the World"
Email me personally: sb@ azfotos.com
You are
welcome to forward this newsletter to a friend or to post
it on your own website as long as you keep all content, including
the copyright notion and contact information, intact and keep
all links.
Stock
Photo News is a monthly newsletter edited by Soren Breiting.
Due to many travels abroad it is impossible for me to keep
the schedule of the issues strictly fitting to each month.
My intention is to bring quality information which is not
outdated a month or two later.
To sign
up for or to cancel your subscription go to
http://www.azfotos.com/AZFOHOME/stockphotonews.html
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