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.
Indeed, this has been a known problem for a while. Groupon typically recommends that businesses set some sort of a limit on the number of coupons available, at least during the first try to see what the response is and to verify that you can handle the extra business. While I do have sympathy for business owners that fail to heed the recommendation, it's hardly Groupon's fault if you don't set any sort of limit on the number of coupons being sold.
Now, had this been a glitch on Groupon's side, that would be completely different.
From my point of view, the photographer knew what he was getting into. It seems the groupon terms are straight forward, they take half, etc. He should have set his maximum coupons to maybe 20 or 30, not 301. He should have been more aware of his costs including time to setup and drive all over. At this point, I'd offer to refund the money to all customer, and cut your losses. Then take an intro to business class at your local community college. Refunding would cost him £4365 if he couldn't get Groupon to chip in any.
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
Groupon is a good idea, but you have to make a profit for each sale including the coupon. If you don't do that then you shouldn't be doing the promotion. Lost leaders help no one.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
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.
I don't believe the author of this article knows what he's talking about in regards to the photography business.
According to his byline, Andrews Smith is a newspaper photographer. You somehow forgot to tell us about your experience in the photography business.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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.
Ok, if you think using Groupon is unprofitable, don't use it! Also, I'd like to point out that the author of the blog is in the same industry in the same area, so to me this seems like someone seeing the success of one of his competitors and trying to dissuade other competitors from achieving success in the same way by offering "friendly advice."
I can't tell who's fail it is. Was it Groupon for not allowing a finite amount of offers to be sold (or notifying the photographer to set a finite amount), or was it the photographer for not gauging his limits as to how many at-cost shoots he can feasibly, and thus setting his "sales limit" too high. TFA shows he sold 301, but was that His limit, or Theirs? I figure it was set by the photographer, and therefore he screwed up by pre-agreeing to do more than he was able.
So is Peter Parker. If Groupon were so evil, why wouldn't Spider-Man be fighting them?
Am I supposed to feel sorry for, or even relate to, the guy who didn't sit down for 30 minutes at the most, assuming he's not a business person, and do a break even analysis?
Here, this is a layman's break even in this case: minimum # sales = (desired total revenue)/(groupon take home amount) -(total cost of a package)
Simplistic. You need not know fixed cost or contribution margin definitions, just how much the typical shoot costs you and how much Groupon is going to fork over to you. While this isn't technically breaking even (target income, actually), it's a great way to come up with ways to play with your numbers BEFORE committing to ANYTHING. Last time I checked, Groupon had an all or nothing deal where if one didn't attain X number of sales, then the discount didn't happen.
Lastly, Groupon's sales staff should have made this man aware of the dangers if not performing a break even analysis. If they're hiring competent people then it would have taken them 10 minutes to help the client out in this way.
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.
I would venture to guess that he will do fine
I have a service based business, every time I consider a promotion or sale i take the minimum amount of money I want then ADD my over head to that including promotion cost. So what, another person that wants to own their own business can't do math? What a shocking story.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
So an idiot offered a deal where he lost money. It's not like Groupon set up the deal, decided on the services offered or set the price and number of packages. That was all the photographer's choice, it's not Groupon's job to decide any of that or do an analysis of the deal. Their job is to sell the coupons.
Stores didn't tell Gillette to charge for the razor, they just sold the blades. It's not the store's job to determine if the manufacturer makes money. Groupon is no different.
This sentence no verb.
I've seen nearly-identical "deals" for photography packages on Groupon before. To be a successful commercial photographer, you need 1) equipment 2) a measure of skill and talent and 3) enough business smarts to make enough money for your time.
The move to digital has significantly lowered requirement #1, equipment. Until an photographer starts building a portfolio and eliciting feedback from others (preferably experienced photographers), they won't have a clue as to requirement #2, their skill level. That lack of understanding hurts requirement #3, knowing what to charge.
So here's how the scenario above will play out. 300 Groupon users will call and make bookings in the near future. The photographer will accept a handful of them at first, and quickly realize what he/she's gotten him/herself into. The photographer will then try to weasel out of the rest of the coupons; pushing available dates into the distant future, cancellations, attempting to disqualify the coupon, attempting to change the terms, stalling, and finally flat our ignoring them. Groupon users will then complain the Groupon, who will eventually get the money back, and everyone will walk away unhappy.
People will be quick to blame Groupon in this case. But its wholly the photographers fault. If you, as a business owner, overcommit your product, your resources, your services, or yourself, you only have yourself to blame.
Disclosure: I've done some work as a commercial photographer, mostly because I enjoy the occasional change from the usual 9-5 IT work. Feel free to hit up the link in my sig.
The way to look at Groupon, or any other kind of coupon/discount deal, is as a form of promotion/advertising.
If you take out a magazine or billboard ad, you're paying up-front for something that may or may not generate new business.
If you set up a Groupon promo, the only cost is to provide your service or product at next-to-no-profit. This is a very small price to pay and you're only paying it for actual clients. If a client winds up not using it within the allowed time frame, you end up pocketing your half of the Groupon sale price.
For many small businesses this winds up being a better deal than traditional advertising.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Did he consider that many people may never actually use the coupon?
(just like people impulse buy games on Steam @ 90%off, but never play them)
It happens often enough.. A company offers groupons then goes out of business. Customers complain to groupon and get refunds, no questions asked. I think everyone, including Groupon, is really fine with it and no one ends up going to court or doing slave labor.
In fact, if you look at the small print of the offer it does say "subject to availability", so at any point if the photographer felt that take-up was too high he could have called a halt and said "no more available". He doesn't have to set a limit with Groupon; according to a recent consumer affairs program on UK TV it's not unusual for people to buy Groupon vouchers and have them declined by the business because of oversubscription.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
He is, but you're probably getting all your news from the Daily Bugle, which never prints anything good about Spider-Man.
.sig withheld by request
It could also be that "Captured Light" is a group of contracted photographers... their website doesn't list any photographers by name. 10 of them doing 1 month of work each over the course of a year isn't unheard of for promotion purposes. Also, they're probably sending out their juniors who are going underused. Photographers everywhere have been hurting as of late. They could batch up the retouching and printing (or ship that overseas), and reduce the overall cost of the promotion.
It really depends on how big Captured Light is.
The ______ Agenda
I'm afraid my humble blog has again yielded to the footfall of a thousand stampeding slashdotters. One of these days I really should move to a dedicated server, but for now here is the text of the article...
Beware of the Groupon piranhas eating you alive!
This is a cautionary tale for anyone who may think of offering a deal through Groupon, the group-buying site that promises great deals for customers and great exposure for businesses.
The idea is that, as a business, you offer a special deal on the Groupon web site. For example a restaurant may offer a meal-for-two worth £200 for the bargain price of £80. Groupon takes a 50% cut so the restaurant gets £40 which should be enough to cover the actual cost of the food, plus they've had some good exposure and, hopefully, the few hundred people who bought the deal will go back another day and pay full price. Maybe they'll even become regular customers.
But look at what happened to one independent photographer in Somerset:
He offered a £200 portrait package for £29, which was bought by 301 people.
Let's break that down...
Firstly the photographer will only get £14.50 because Groupon takes half. And if the client pays by credit card, which they probably will, then the photographer has to pay the credit card fee, so he's only getting around £12.
Each shoot lasts one hour, but it can be anywhere the client chooses within 15 miles of Bristol city centre. So let's suppose the total time for travel is half an hour each way, plus 20 minutes to set-up lighting and background and 10 minutes to tear it all down at the end. Already he's up to 2.5 hours so he's charging £4.80 per hour, not taking fuel costs in to account.
"Every photo taken will be put on CD or DVD in high resolution" -- this is fairly trivial, let's say 15 minutes work and £1 for the disc and case. He's now getting the equivalent of £4 per hour.
But the deal gets better! "20 of the images will be professionally edited and air brushed" -- now I assume this is nothing more than a bit of spot removal and some minor tweaks, because there's no way you can do a full retouching job as part of a £29 package, and there's certainly no way you can do 20 of them. So we'll estimate a super-speedy 5 minutes per picture and imagine that he somehow gets the whole lot done in 2 hours. He's now on £2.32 per hour.
Anything else included? Yes! You get "one 12x10 framed print, two 10x8 prints, two 8x6 prints, two 5x4 prints, two 4x3 prints, and two 3x2 prints" -- a total of 11 prints, with the largest one framed. I'd estimate the absolute rock-bottom price for producing those prints will be £8 plus another £5 for the frame if he's buying in bulk. That's £13. That's more than he's getting from each client, and he's got 301 clients to make his way through.
Even if this photographer is doing each job to a bare minimum standard, he has committed himself to nearly a year's work for no money. If that doesn't sound like good business sense to you then be very careful if you decide to offer a deal through Groupon or any similar site. What may at first seem like success could very easily put you out of business.
While I thank you for the link, it is so full of bad statistics, I don't know where to start.
1. They surveyed 360 businesses but only 150 responded. Obviously the unsatisfied ones would be biased towards responding. This could cut the "real" would -not-repeat-rate by as much as half.
2. The article rips Groupon for the fact that only 15% of customers came back for repeat purchases. Again the bias above applies, and secondly, if those 15% come back and pay a lot of margin, this is still a good deal for merchants. In other words, who cares about the figure 15%; I care about lifetime dollars spent by those 15% who wouldn't have come to me otherwise.
3. Finally, who cares about "would you run another Groupon"? The right question is "If you had it to do over again, would you run your first Groupon?". Since the objective is advertising to the Groupon base, once is enough. Even a merchant who profited on a first Groupon might not want to run another.
Besides, this guy or we know nothing at all about his business idea. Why does everyone just suddenly think he's some kind of a retard? Oh right, this is the internet..
What if he has calculated that he can make a nice profit by selling them additional services? What if he has some students working for free and he is "outsourcing" the job to them, so that the students get experience and pass the class in school? What if..? You get the idea.
Be it any way, if he has a good enterpreunish idea that the day-job-working newspaper-photographer just couldn't think he might be making good money on this. If he really didn't see it thru fully, he can cancel it and everyone just lost a few minutes. But people should stop thinking that everyone else is an idiot.
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.
This looks like a loss-leader, and death-by-coupon isn't anything new. In a big city it's pretty easy to spot the restaurants in deep trouble; they start with coupon specials, which turn into permanent coupons. Then they start closing on Mondays and Tuesdays. Similarly, it's easy to spot a professional photographer that can't get steady work. Groupon isn't doing anything that hasn't been done a thousand times before, and there will be no shortage of photographers and restauranteurs with extremely poor business acumen. The summary and article portray (lol) the photographer as a victim in the inhuman Groupon grinder, and it's interesting how a poor business decision becomes a front page, slashdot sob story. photographers looking for work is nothing new; we just gave a lot of free advertising away, and that alone makes the Groupon deal the bargain of the week.
It's possible that it's a group, though with copyright assignment only going to Tim Jones I tend to doubt it.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
"It's possible that it's a group, though with copyright assignment only going to Tim Jones I tend to doubt it."
That is not uncommon. It makes it much easier than assigning copyrights to each photographer@group if you ever have to go to court. Court isn't only for people who try to reprint / copy / claim the work as their own, it is actually more common to have to take someone to court over non-payment for services rendered. I should know, I have a photography business I do as a side job. 9/10 clients are great, they pay on time, don't bitch about every tiny thing and don't try do weasel out of paying for services in any way they can. The last 1/10 is what the courts are for, at least as a last resort.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
I just don't think it'll get very large.
This kind of business model has existed in only slightly different forms for quite a while. In the 70s, there were large coupon books that were heavily advertised and contained one coupon from each of many businesses.
They gave huge discounts, but you only got one coupon for the company per book. The book was sold for a fee that wasn't so small that you could afford to buy the book and throw away all the coupons but the one you wanted. But if you used many of the coupons you would come out ahead.
Anyway, this was the same thing. It brought profits for the coupon sellers and mostly introduced customers for the businesses who had coupons in there.
These stuck around for a long time, and Groupon is just a newer version. So I don't think this will go away, but I don't see why companies are falling over each other to get into this business space.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I can't tell who's fail it is.
TFA doesn't provide any evidence of a failure - read TFA carefully - its someone who has seen the ad on Groupon presenting their own calculations as to its viability (which may be exaggerated e.g. - £5 each for photo frames in quantities of 300+? Has the guy never heard of China? Even retail, one-off at IKEA you can get them for under £3.)
As several other posters point out, he doesn't include the value of unredeemed coupons.
Nor does he take into account how much extra money the photographer could make by doing a hard sell on extra prints, nicer frames, albums, posters, coffee mugs, mouse mats, or by selling makeover and costume hire services.
Plenty of photo studios offer free or very cheap "glamour photography" sessions where they make their money selling prints and extras (there have been a few whinges on consumer shows from punters who "win" sessions and then discover that they have to pay for prints and that the "makeover" is theatrical slap that has to be washed off before they go out in daylight least they frighten small children).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Groupon typically recommends that businesses set some sort of a limit on the number of coupons available
The screenshot in the article says "Sold Out" "301 bought"
Now is 300 1-hour photo shoots really a year's work?
Even if 4 hours of work are required for a 1-hour photo shoot that's 1200 / 8 = 150 8-hour days. Last I checked there were 261 work days in a year.. So I would put this deal at approximately 60% of a year.
Now all this might be free, but the outcome may not be that bad. The question is if the £29 deal will be all that the client buys. If they buy more, then it could be well worth it.
Also, there are bound to be conditions or aspects of the deal, product, or service offered for that price that are not spelled out in the Groupon offer. There's bound to be some place for the photographer to insert additional conditions that would make the deal at least break-even For example, schedule, delivery time frame, additional fees, such as shipping.
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.
I can't help but think that what he really needs is some good business advice, though as he may possibly now end up having to go into hiding from creditors, it could be a bit late.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
by the author of the article. Who knows what the business model of the photographer is or what they actually had to do/pay for these photo shoots? For all we know, all the speculation in this article is completely inaccurate. Why is this story even on /. ...
Here's the problem with Groupon and coupon people in general, you don't want them as clients. One generally they are a pain in the ass to deal with. These are the type of people that want something for nothing and push the bounds of the offer. They also tend to be very nit-picky. The best clients I've ever had paid top dollar, and let me do their job. In return I have often gone above and beyond and offer them services or products for no charge because you want to keep these people as clients. Consequently I generally keep clients for a long time and get great referrals. There is no loyalty among coupon people. As soon as you have fulfilled your end of the deal they are off to the next deal. Many coupon people are obsessively looking for the best deal, and will never use your products or services again. Here is another problem with coupons, since you are operating at a loss it's very difficult to give someone the type of customer service they need to become a long term client. Coupons also work better for commodity items. It's a lot easier to sell a $10 sandwich and receive $2.50 for it when the overhead of the business and employees are already accounted for. The only thing you have to pay for additionally is the extra inputs of bread, meat, cheese and lettuce. Something that is more labor intensive (particularly if it's your own labor) is going to cost you a lot more in comparison.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
Yes it amazes me sometimes to see how shitty people can get the moment you ask them to honor what they agreed to, or in a retail environment the moment they think you're a captive audience who has to accept their abuse. It's usually the same small minority of asshats causing the majority of problems.
Maybe local business owners in your area can start maintaining a shared database or exchanged registry of problem customers especially the deadbeats who don't pay their bills. One business puts a customer on that list, you all refuse to do business with that person. What you would find is that the same individuals cause problems wherever they go. I'm tired of the way asshats never have any consequences. Aren't you? The shittier you treat people who are trying to help you, serve you, perform work for you, etc., the more and more you find that no one wants to do business with you. That would be a step towards a better world. It would be just like the way local businesses maintain a list of bad-check writers, just distributed.
I always did feel like corporations make society worse by bending over backwards to get someone's money no matter how rude and unreasonable and irresponsible they are. It sends the message that you can be rude and unreasonable and stupid and still get everything you want. A tiny percentage of a percent on your P&L just isn't worth making it a widespread practice.
Who says he's going to be run out of business?
The guy who wrote the article doesn't know what he's talking about.
I've talked to a good 40 business owners who have used Groupon. Some things that the author of the article totally ignored:
1) Only about half of the Groupons get redeemed
2) If redeemed after the expiration date, they are only good for the face value paid. I.e., if you buy a £200 Groupon for £29, and you don't redeem it before expiration, then you just get £29 off the price of whatever you buy.
3) Upselling is key. For restaurants, when they sell a $40 Groupon for $20, they're betting you're going to come in with some friends and spend $60 to $100 on dinner. I do a lot of work in the recreational activity sector, and there they often do groupons for 50% off a basic package, then once you are there upsell you to a bigger package at full price. In the case of our photographer, if he does it right he'll be getting people to buy £400 or £600 photography packages - "You already are getting all this for £29, look what I can add to it for only £100 more!"
Now, maybe this groupon won't work out great for this one business, but Groupon can work very well if you set it up right and treat it as what it is supposed to be - an advertising/sales lead channel.
paintball
This guy isn't entirely out of luck there are surely 20-30% of people that won't use the offer. So he will get basically free money which will help cover the costs.
"Consumer Reports is also releasing its latest survey, which finds that 27 percent of gift card recipients have not used one or more of these cards, up from 19 percent at the same time last year. And among consumers with unredeemed cards from last season, 51 percent have 2 or more."
And opposed to a gift cards (well at least in California), coupons expire. Depending on the expiration date of the offer, it might not be that bad for him. I'm sure that a lot of people have the intention of using this coupon but because of scheduling they can't do it and the further it gets away from the date the less they will remember.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
Groupon pays you 50% of all groupons SOLD, whether they are ever redeemed or not. (at least in the US.) And they pay you about half of what you sell the day after they are sold.
paintball
Its not really a gift certificate. You aren't buying something at $1 in == $1 out. You're pre-buying a meal, product or package at x% less than the marked price, pre-paying for it, and getting the discounted rate according to a set of listed terms.
If you get a hotel room at the internet pre-pay non-refundable rate and decide not to stay there, you don't get a refund either.
You're missing a lot of factors here.
One, about half of groupons don't get redeemed. So you're really only losing 50%, not 75%.
Two, you're only losing 50% on whatever the coupon gets the customer. The key is, you don't want the customer to only buy what the groupon gets them.
For example, if you are a restaurant and you sell $40 groupons for $20, you want to make sure your customers are spending $60 or more to eat at your restaurant.
If you are, say, an amusement park, selling a $35 admission for $10 is still getting you more money than the admissions you're giving away for free because you really just want people in your place to spend $4 on a soda and $5 on a hot dog.
If you are, say, a ski slope, same theory applies - you're already giving significant cost reductions to season pass holders and other outlets to get people on the hill, so still a good deal.
If you are, say, a paintball field (and paintball field owners LOVE groupon), you might have a $20 admission, $20 rental, and $20 for 500 paintballs. But you probably also have a package price for $35. With Groupon, you offer the package at 50% off the non-package price, so with half the groupons being redeemed, you're still getting $30 instead of your usual $35, and you're probably going to upsell the customer on a better rental or more paintballs or concessions.
Yes, if you have set your business up so that you have no margins on your list/retail prices, groupon isn't going to work for you. But if you have set up your business so that you don't have high margins on your list/retail prices, your real problem is you have not let yourself enough room to promote your business no matter what.
paintball
Yes it may be true however businesses don't understand how to use Groupon. It is supposed to be used for marketing/lead generation. In the past, businesses might have had to use newspaper, flyers, to distribute coupons to generate interest. Most of the time these coupons will lead to lower revenue but higher traffic. Groupon takes this a step further by generating revenue upfront. If the coupon is used, then this is no different than the previous method just more high tech. The main difference is that if the coupon is never used (which is expected), both Groupon and the business pocket revenue for very little cost. Even if the coupon is never used, the primary goal of generating interest might succeed as some customers may still patronize the business out of curiosity.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"Cupcake Gallary" (a small Chicago bakery) got stung because Groupon essentially gave them an ultimatum. They declined and Groupon cancelled all the previous Groupons.
http://www.uptownupdate.com/2011/05/groupon-cancellation-cupcake-gallery.html
I think Groupon is a great idea, but this type of bullying douchbaggery to their "partners" is making me rethink ever using them.
My father is a blogger.
Fine print says he retains copyright so he can resell your pictures to stock photo sites and such over and over. Work once get paid forever, not a bad deal whatever the initial amount is.
what first looked like a good deal in promiting his own blog might well put his site out of...
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
He doesn't know what he's talking about. He thinks a CD and case will cost a pound (more like 20p in bulk I would think), and a photo frame £5 (again, I would guess about 1/10 to 1/5 of that in bulk). He also appears to be totally ignorant of the concept of the loss leader. All photography studios run apparently very cheap offers in the hope that customers will order very expensive prints, recommend them to their friends, book them for their wedding reception, commercial shoot, bah mitzvah etc. How much do you think a Groupon voucher sale will cost compared to a nationwide advertising campaign? Even if the company makes a loss, it's probably better value than a newspaper ad.
Yeah my guess is he's got to be hoping for upsells of some sort. Doing this much work for "free" is basically just getting his foot in the door, which may be more than he had before. Perhaps it will work out or perhaps it won't. Time will tell I suppose.
How can this be groupon's fault?
I don't understand. They didn't force the photographer to create that ad. As well, perhaps the photographer has more business sense that the poster, and has figured out a way to do this at a profit.
Either way. This is an undeserved dig at groupon. It is simply a business arrangement! If you don't like it, you should be able to tell that before using them.
Of course, the other option is the photographer is an idiot, like a lot of people out to make money quick, and did not think about the consequences of this particular play.
Regards.
Maybe local business owners in your area can start maintaining a shared database or exchanged registry of problem customers especially the deadbeats who don't pay their bills. One business puts a customer on that list, you all refuse to do business with that person. What you would find is that the same individuals cause problems wherever they go. I'm tired of the way asshats never have any consequences. Aren't you?
Hmm, boycotting individual customers. I shall be glad to see how you hope to avoid having to sell everything you own to make a futile attempt to fight off the inevitable enormous compensation payment. Seriously, maintaining a sh*tlist (especially one which you distribute to someone else) is never a good idea, no matter how smart an idea it seems when you start.
FGD 135
Brought to you by Slashdot... The site for free advertisement disguised as 'news'.. pretty thin disguise... and remember, there's no such thing as bad publicity, as long as they spell the name right
They don't even need to do that as long as the link works.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
If TFA is correct in its analysis, this photog is either abysmally stupid and shouldn't be in business or has another hidden agenda. You cannot offer discounts that will destroy your business in a rational frame of mind. You know the ancient warning: Caveat Emptor.
Honestly Whoring yourself at gutter prices? the man deserves it. what he promised he was completely insane to offer at that rate.
Oh and those thinking that he will make money on stock photo sites... No he wont. you can't sell them to a stock photo site without a full model release from the person in the photo, Owning copyright does not mean crap if you dont have a release from the model that says " you can do anything you want with these images, yes even using my image to advertise massive herpes outbreaks. and sexual fetish stores." You will not get ANYONE signing a model release for their portraits.. Plus stock photo websites pay horribly bad for that kind of photography.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That pretty much sums up why Its been useless to me. I have seen a few restaurant coupons there. But they're places I have no desire to eat at anyway.
I've been getting them for more than 6 months, and never used it.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Some dummy bit off more than he could chew at a low price, and I’m supposed to have sympathy for him? This isn’t Groupon’s fault, nor the customers he sold his services too. He’s simply an idiot, apparently.
it's more advertisement for the blog/photographer than any kind of story. this article is viral marketing.
I have connections to the professional photography industry, in the form of a now-closed family business.
A comparable print package from a professional lab costs a few dollars. The blogger's estimates are on the high side in that regard alone. The basic airbrushing and editing is a somewhat common freebie from a lab, partly as a way of hiding processing defects (painting over dust spots on the paper). It gets even more disgustingly inaccurate when you factor in the cost of a minilab print. If the photographer owns their own minilab, they can do all their own prints for far less than the blogger's estimating. I'd be surprised if the photographer were actually losing money on this. Maybe not making very much, but certainly not losing.
Then there's the business side. The photo industry is based entirely around the photographer's skill, rather than the actual product. It's the little things that make the difference between a picture that says "Wow, that's a nice portrait!" and "Gee, that guy looks creepy". Things like shadows around the eyes, light balance, a lit background, and even the position of the subject's feet all affect a simple head shot. Full-body photos are more complicated. With today's supply of decent digital cameras and Wal-Mart printers, convincing people to actually pay a professional is constantly getting harder. A ridiculously-cheap deal like this means there's 301 more customers on the area who know of the photographer's service and quality. If even a handful of those come back for a second round, it's a net profit.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Even if the guy only gets ~12 pounds out of the deal, as the article suggests, he can easily make that up by buying materials in bulk and following the letter of the deal. 12 pounds equates to ~$20 usd.
1) You can bet the framed photo in the deal is for a cardboard photo frame...a box of 350 of these cardboard frames can be bought for $250, or the equivalent of $0.71 per frame. These are 8x10 (I couldn't find 12x10 frames), so lets add some more to that and make it $1 each for the cardboard frames.
2) Even the 8x10 photo paper can be bought for $0.20 per sheet. Assuming that all of the paper stock can be bought for about the same price (the larger sizes might cost more, but the smaller ones will definitely be less), He's at ~$3 for the paper stock.
3) Add another $2 or $3 for the cost of printing...which is probably a huge overestimate for bulk ink/toner/etc for only 11 prints.
4) The DVD+Rs can be bought in bulk for about $0.50 each (the guy never said he would include a case, so I would assume he will simply put it in a paper or cardboard sleeve, which will cost less than $0.50.
I'll even throw in $2.00 for extras. That still leaves us at $10 for the work put into the photo shoot and photoshop. The guy is keeping the copyright to the photos, and even if he has to drive to the site and setup lighting, there's the whole "subject to availability" thing. Which means this guy isn't going out of his way for someone that's only paying $50 for his services.
Other things to think about. He doesn't mention what resolution he is using in his coupon, only "high resolution". He could provide the photos on the disk at 2MP under the deal. A quick photoshop job on 20 photos shouldn't take an hour to do...if you have to remove someone's hairy mole from 20 photos, that's 20 "air-brushed" photos. If he's smart, he can offer to do a better job on 1 or 2 photos instead of the quick job he would do for the full 20 photos. He also doesn't mention that the 20 "air-brushed" photos will be included on the CD/DVD which could mean that he will offer to sell these along with an extra photo-retouching service.
I can only conclude that this guy is not losing money (if he's smart) or at the very least is building his portfolio and making a little money to boot...even $10 for 2 hours of work and a potential referral is better than $0 for no work when you are self-employed.
...that 301 times £ 200 is £ 60.200, which is a year's wage.
Ok, it should be 301 times £ 185,50 (because he's getting £ 14,50 from each customer), but that still is £ 55.835,50 he's losing out on, and it takes him about a year to do it. If he can't do that math, then maybe taking pictures was a good career choice for him. I sure don't want him in accounting.
Seriously, if the photographer does a better than mediocre job at best, he'll still manage to sell 100 quid worth of additional product once he returns to show off what's he's done. What's best is, he doesn't even need to have his own studio to do this and by using a proper photo printer (dye submersion for example), he can even do the prints at a good profit to himself.
This guy lists that he managed to get into 301 houses... let's say that's over a year. Even if he only averages 100 quid a house, he'd managed to cover the basic travel cost involved with the job with the 30 quid price, so the 100 quid minus the cost of materials required is probably 90 quid. That's 27000 pounds in a year.
Now, if he offers so form of credit to the people who responded to this add, there's a huge chance he'll make the hard sells for 1000 pounds packages or more on a regular basis. Let's say he can make 1-2 of those sales in a week. That's 50k to 100k more income in the year... minus 10-15% for materials.
On top of that, for all the cash deals he/she is pulling off, he's probably keeping most of the small stuff off the books. Which means he's got a bunch of stuff "Tax free". Then nearly everything in his life is tax deductable, as he uses his home as a studio, his metro cards are work related, his food is expenses during travel, his clothing is related to presentation of the business, hell he can even claim his dates with the girls he meets is sales related to help sell them portfolio portraits. So, he/she probably pays almost no tax at all.
This guy who is "working for free" is probably raking in a crap load more than I am and I'm a system level programmer with 18 years experience.
Anyone thought of calling the photographer and asking what he thinks? So much speculation, name calling, and opinions in the comments about an article that never even talked to the guy it was about! Seriously. Gossip much?
The article's author has no idea what this guy's finances are, what sort of company he operates behind his name etc.
For all we know he has several staff who handle post processing and a deal with a print house for cheap prints.
The author literally doesn't know what he's talking about because he didn't actually bother contacting James Corrin to find out why he did the deal, what he's getting out of it etc.
Yeah my guess is he's got to be hoping for upsells of some sort. Doing this much work for "free" is basically just getting his foot in the door, which may be more than he had before. Perhaps it will work out or perhaps it won't. Time will tell I suppose.
I think the time and cost is overestimated - if he uses location pack lighting and a backdrop, then very little editing or retouching will be needed. Most shots will simply look good using a common recipe out of camera using a tool like CaptureOne Pro or Lightroom. With professional lighting there's no need to spend any time at all in post; he would if he were an agency, but for what people pay for they'll get perfectly professional quality results. The author is a photojournalist, and as such probably isn't used to work with location lighting, but with available light which is more a matter of luck if you get something decent out of camera. As for printing, either he has a volume deal with a lab or he does his own. Any professional RIP makes it close to zero cost in time, and materials are low to make such small prints. If he wasn't set up before he will be after this. :p
So while I don't think he's making enough to meet payroll on this, the costs are overstated and no way would it take a year.
Finally, if he has an established studio business with commercial clients and wants to branch out, what's the cost of running magazine ads and other promotions? What's the purpose of those ads... to build brand recognition and to get people to try it. Here he gets a guaranteed response ("click through to buy"), lots of exposure, and payroll can be met with the advertising budget.
It's not all THAT crazy.
For the last point, consider if he has say a UKP 6000 marketing budget. If he figures the net loss on each groupon response is UKP 20, then he can afford to make 300 of those within his budget. However, if there's no response it hasn't cost him anything - and he still got some exposure. Groupon is attractive because it's like running a campaign where you only have to pay when people show up at your door.
I am fairly certain Meejahor is a professional photographer - so he knows what he's talking about. If I recall correctly he has frequently sold photos to various UK newspapers.
(He's fairly active on the Strobist flickr groups. I've seen the guy's name before.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Now is 300 1-hour photo shoots really a year's work?
Even if 4 hours of work are required for a 1-hour photo shoot that's 1200 / 8 = 150 8-hour days.
Besides the shoot itself (1 hour), he also has to set up and take down equipment (the customer isn't going to want to spend too long waiting around for backdrops and lights when they paid for an hour-long shoot), developing the pictures (not using a computer that develops an entire roll at the same exposure setting like Walgreens, I assume), printing the pictures, sorting the pictures, reviewing the pictures with the customer, and taking the orders for reprints and having them made... I highly doubt that a 1-hour shoot takes any less than a solid day's work.
Seems to me like the article referring to "Groupon Piranhas" was just looking for a reason to pick on Groupon. Even if Groupon didn't take a penny of the proceeds, the photography still wouldn't get enough to make it worth his/her time based on all of the assumptions made by the author. Even so, there are still plenty of logical explanations as to why a photography would agree to such a deal, even knowing what they're getting in to.
Having been a hobbyist photographer (never working for anyone) for the past 15 or so years I have seen plenty of people attempting to break into the professional photography business grossly under price their services just to get experience. Most of them are not good at all, none of them are great, but they all generally truly enjoy photography and would pay a pretty penny themselves to have 300 people pose for them in 300 different locations.
Besides the shoot itself (1 hour), he also has to set up and take down equipment
20 minutes. Approximately 1 hours setup+travel time + 1 hour shoot time = 2 hours
developing the pictures (not using a computer that develops an entire roll at the same exposure setting like Walgreens, I assume)
Digital imaging. Printing and Sorting, DVD making, Outsourced to company that deals in bulk; or ran-off in-house color laser printer, if sufficient volume. Possible opportunity to upsell to customer on type of paper and printing process. Automatic exposure controls; except for the "20 pro edited ones"; for those 2 minutes per picture -- again, chance to upsell on more exhaustive touch-up work.
reviewing the pictures with the customer, and taking the orders for reprints and having them made...
Reprints not included in the £29. Reprints = additional welcome business; well worth the hour spent to review prints with customer.
4 hours does not make a full day's work, when most professionals work 10 hours or more a day
One factor that people keep forgetting is that there are a small amount of buyers who for some dumb reason forget to redeem the purchased coupon. So perhaps 10 of the 300, possibly more if the voucher was purchased as a present for someone else.