Archive for the ‘About fotoLibra’ Category
New Arrivals
July 4th, 2008
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
A big fotoLibra welcome to Richard and Francesca Sadd, who have joined us on the fotoLibra sales team. Richard is targeting advertising agencies, while Chessy is gunning for the magazine sector. So if you work in those areas, watch out! You’ll be hearing from them.
Last Chance Saloon
March 28th, 2008
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
At midnight next Monday, March 31st, the last black hole in the World Wide Web will be plugged.
From April 1st, anyone who upgrades to or joins as a Platinum fotoLibra member will get a staggering 100 — count them, ONE HUNDRED — 100 gigabytes of storage and selling space.
It’s enough to satisfy the space-hungriest photographer.
But what this doesn’t tell you is the little slip we made when we created Platinum membership. We promised UNLIMITED storage.
And of course that still holds true. All existing Platinum members will continue to have unlimited storage on fotoLibra for all time, or as long as they remain members, whichever comes sooner.
But we couldn’t maintain the offer for ever. So we’ve put a time limit on it, and that expires at midnight (GMT) on Monday.
That means that any individual who upgrades to Platinum between now and Monday night will still be getting UNLIMITED storage for as long as they remain members.
It’s too generous an offer to last. Sorry about that.
But it’s still open!
How to get fast Support from fotoLibra
March 11th, 2008
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Simple — PLEASE STATE YOUR MEMBER ID FOR ALL SUPPORT QUERIES.
You’ll find it under the “My Details” tab in your Control Centre.
Subjects Needed
March 7th, 2008
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
A new Platinum fotoLibra member very sensibly asked the following:
Having just taken advantage of the Platinum upgrade pre-deadline, I now have to really justify the added membership cost. Could you let me know what images or types of images that are more likely to sell, so that I can upload images that ought to have a greater chance of selling. Also, are there any particular gaps in your library that I could feasibly fill? One I have noticed seems to be parascenders, but will it be likely to sell? I don’t want to keep uploading purely speculative stuff that is photographically OK but is not likely to find a market. Any help or advice will be gratefully received!
Excellent question. So we looked at the categories in our famous Taxonomy Matrix, and listed them according to the number of images uploaded on each subject. That seemed the quickest way to spot the gaps in our armory.
These are the subjects we have fewest images of:
- Anthropology
- Genetics
- Topography
- Anatomy
- State
- Maps
- Gay & Lesbian
- Hotels
- DIY
- Typography
- Old Age
- Health
- Entomology
- Disability
- Botany
- Hospitals
- Science
- Gyms
- TV
- Manuscripts
- Olympics
and these are the subjects we have most of:
- Mammals
- Religious
- Countryside
- Sea
- Wildlife
- History
- Flowers
- Holidays
- Motor
- Landscapes
- Buildings
- Birds
So Ornithology is our most popular and Anthropology our least popular subject among our members. No real surprise there: I generally prefer the company of birds to people.
But I hadn’t really realised the lacuna we have in social images. That doesn’t mean we don’t carry pickchers of Slebs (I’m glad we don’t); I mean we are particularly low on Health, Hospitals, Old Age, Disability and Gym images. Obviously when we are asked for a particular subject we don’t already have huge stocks of, Jacqui will send out a Picture Call, but these are images all self-respecting picture libraries should hold as a matter of course.
If you get a chance, please upload some of these images. They may not sell immediately, but they indicate to professional picture buyers they are dealing with a fully rounded agency, not a one trick pony.
And as for the Olympics …
More on our highest audience
March 7th, 2008
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
I didn’t give the actual audience figures in the last blogpost because (frankly) I didn’t know if they could be considered good or bad.
Then on Monday afternoon I received a promotional mailshot from Digital Photo, Practical Photography and Photo Answers, the biggest camera magazines in the UK and part of the mighty Bauer Publishing Group.
They were excited to announce that their photo website had 88,445 UU in the past three months. I had to go away and look up what UU meant, and it stands for Unique Users. Our stats reports give us Unique Visitors, which I guess is the same thing.
So I’m even more excited to announce that fotoLibra had 100,426 UV in the past three months.
Nevertheless — it’s not enough!
Highest ever fotoLibra audience
March 7th, 2008
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
I suggested on my personal fotoLibrarian blog that this would be the first entry on the fotoLibra Pro blog. And so it proved to be. Welcome everyone.
Evaluating our AWStats analytics, I see that last month, February 2008, we had the highest ever number of visitors to the fotoLibra site.
As a start-up, we didn’t have a track record, so advertising seemed to me to be the obvious way to tell people fotoLibra had arrived. Advertising was the only way to go, but it was expensive.
We knew we had a great product. When we launched, we spent a great deal on money advertising to buyers and photographers to kick start us, so our viewing figures bounced up the charts. Now we haven’t got wads of spare cash for marketing, so we have to rely more on word of mouth, recommendations, trade fairs, personal contact — and we’re easily topping the audience figures we got when we were spending £10,000 a month on advertising.
Is there a lesson to be learned here?
One lesson is that this should be posted in the new fotoLibra Pro blog, not in my personal blog which does touch on fotoLibra stuff but which is intended as a soapbox for me to rant and rave about the things I deem worthy of ranting and raving about. Like Wales topping the 6 Nations table. So here it is. If you really want to see what occupies the mind of the world’s greatest living picture librarian, typographic historian and folly maven (there can’t be another?) then click on the “fotoLibrarian’s Blog” link under “Blogroll” in the RH column.