Slashdot Mirror
Groupon Deal Costs Photographer a Year's Free Work
Andy Smith writes "One professional photographer in Somerset, UK, thought he was drumming up lots of extra business with a special deal on the Groupon group-buying site. Sadly he has ended up committing himself to nearly a year of unpaid work, plus he has to give out over 3,300 free prints." This analysis seems to be based only on the author's observations (rather than the photographer's experience), but the numbers are interesting. It can't work against everyone, though, or I bet there'd be fewer repeat advertisers on the daily-coupon sites.
TFA doesn't take into account the chance to up sell his products once in the house. These people could be paying £30 to let a salesman into his house to try and fleece them for all he can. It woulnd't be the first time I've heard of this.
We have offered deals through Groupon and generally a lot of them are given as gifts, and promptly forgotten/binned by their recipients.
This is in fact Groupon's business model. You pay for nothing, they keep the money. The business offering the deal only gets paid when they have provided the service.
Deleted
This just seems like basic business sense: don't enter into unprofitable agreements. The photographer put a limit on the number of these offers. It seems like a reasonable guess that he was better able to do the arithmetic than the article author, who is purely speculating that this came out to a net loss.
It does't say a professional photographer does it? It just says photoshoot. They could be keeping the interns busy. But a decent chunk of these things never go claimed, and I am sure there are things that they can upsell the groupon buyers on.
According to this survey, 42% of Groupon SMBs would not repeat. That's quite a lot, and it's from this and cases like this story that I suspect that the Groupon-like business model will not last too long, once the fad has died.
I'd give you mod points if I had any. The article mentions one of the benefits is "getting good exposure". But it works both ways. If you have to rush to get all 300 done and do a bad job, you've just delivered a product for a lower profit margin and provided yourself with bad publicity - worst of all worlds.
I don't understand why anybody would offer such a labor-intensive service via Groupon. Groupon is great for coupons at restaurants and stores and getting exposure for your little hole-in-the-wall store that has cool things but nobody seems to have heard of. It also seems to be great for dentists given the number of ads I get by email every week for dental services. But photography? First of all, that's not really something that's usually based upon a set price. That's something that should be a negotiated price on a per-contract basis. A Groupon would be just fine for, say, $25 for $100 Off Services From Hasselhoff Photography, but $29 for a $200-value remote photoshoot in the location of your choice? That's just ridiculous.
He made a really stupid decision and now he has to eat it. That's all part of running a business. It's not Groupon's fault. But I also don't see anywhere that the photographer himself is complaining... The article doesn't mention any statement by the photographer or have any links to his website. This just seems to be some retarded commentary from the sidelines by somebody who thinks he knows what he's talking about when he says "look what happened to this guy because of Groupon omfg". This whole thing is leaking stupid out of every pore.
He's making a big assumption that the people buying these will buy nothing else from the photographer. It's highly likely that he will stiff them for extra prints/copies on DVD, and/or get a load of extra contracts out of it. I can see the photographer making good money out of this.
He underpriced his offer, but it doesn't have to be a disaster. It's a workflow problem. The photographer gets to schedule the shoots, so he has to get them organized into blocks in the same area. Many people won't have a location in mind, and he can get them to go either to his studio or to one of several pre-selected scenic locations. Once set up in a location, customers can be run through in an hour each. Customers who insist on a specific location have to wait longer for a time slot to open up.
The post-processing work is also a workflow problem. For most shots, a minute or two in Photoshop is enough. Those can be farmed out to an intern, or even some site like GetAFreelancer. The paper printing, DVD making, and framing gets done in bulk, with bids from various companies.
If half the people who bought the coupon actually use the service, and the photographer is organized about it, it's probably about six weeks of work.
The photographer can up-sell. Want hair, makeup,or costuming? Available for an extra charge. Some of the business will be wedding-related, and that's an opportunity to sell a whole wedding package.