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Groupon Deal Costs Photographer a Year's Free Work

Posted by timothy on from the just-sign-this-dotted-line dept.

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.

3 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Good chance to up sell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. A lot of these are gifts by Colin+Smith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
     

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  3. Re:Clueless author by beelsebob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.