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.

Comments

Good chance to up sell

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

A lot of these are gifts

[Colin Smith]

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.
 

42% would not repeat

[Hermanas]

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.

Re:Clueless author

[Anonymous Coward]

So is Peter Parker. If Groupon were so evil, why wouldn't Spider-Man be fighting them?

Re:Clueless author

[beelsebob]

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.

Re:Clueless author

[chmod a x mojo]

"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.