So my friends and I are kicking around a side business. Since the readers of this forum would be the most likely users, I’d love some feedback. It has to do with tri races. Don’t worry about things like pricing or the actual mechanics of how it would work. Just a gut reaction to whether or not you would use the service. Here’s the idea in 25 words or less:
A website where triathlon (really any race or event) spectators could upload their digital camera photos and athletes could come to buy them.
Benefits - photos from all over the course (of varying quality); gives our family members something to do for the other 99% of the time we are on course, easily searchable photo repository
Things I don’t know - whether or not race directors give exclusive license to pro photographers.
That’s it…pretty simple idea really, but wondering if people thing their loved one’s would go through the trouble - I would imagine we would all encourage our loved ones to do this because we would all want to have more photos from events, right?
There have been some other threads about photographers and licensing from race directors. I can’t remember how it works though. But there have been some folks around here that have sold pictures that they have just taken. I don’t think they can stop you, just make it hard.
Your idea is interesting. If I understand, would it be sort of like the idea at weddings where there is a protable camera at every table during the reception? I like the idea because, like you say, it would allow for pictures to be taken from all over the course. You would need some way of weeding through the ones that aren’t so good I think.
I’m just not personally a picture guy. I’ve purchased 2 photo’s in 22 years of tris, one cause it was a good shot of me and a good friend running side by side, and one finish line photo/plaque combo race commemorative from the first long race I did. Hopefully others will chime in with more positive encouragement for you.
Definitely would have the ability to do any race - would start with tris because that’s what I race.
We would also have the ability to tag the photos, by race, clothing, and race number, which we would allow the photo owner to do, or we could do it for them (easy to farm that work out).
Filling or creating need? Great question. I know I have had numerous friends/competitors remark how all the photos from a race are all from the same spot, and they generally aren’t that great. Not sure that “amateur” shots will look better, but certainly, should this work, there will be more variety.
I guess the real question is, how many people are buying photos from races? And the follow on, for those who aren’t buying photos, why not?
i know i never buy pics because I don’t feel that a single picture of me printed with a fancy boarder is worth $20.
I did do a race that allowed you to buy a CD of all the pictures taken for like $5 or $10. I think if you offered to make prints (in various sizes) as well as digital media, you would have something. Also, as mentioned earlier, a tagging system would be critical. Set it up to attach tags indicating bib number, name, location, ect… People who upload choose to add as much detail as they want, all of which would be searchable.
I’m not sure how happy people would be about giving you their pictures so you can sell them though. You might want to make a website that allows all the images to be viewed and downloaded without a copyright watermark, just at a lower resolution. Then allow people to buy individual hi res digital images, and entire CD of images, printed glossy prints, ect… Hell, the number of hits you’d get from people browsing and downloading the free low-res versions of the images would probably generate enough advertising revenu to fund the whole thing.
I wonder if you’d need to build a “critical mass” before this thing worked. Since RD is not going to be involved (which allows direct email to all customers), this thing has to be big enough to be known brand. For any given event, to what percentage of participants do you think would you be able to offer photos? If the percentage is small, will this thing take off? Who’s going to regularly check for photos if there is only 5-10% chance of finding your photo.
What’s your marketing plan? Ad on ST, saying, “Checkout Maybe Photo, your picture might be there and you can buy it?”
I don’t see you getting enough photos, and then enough purchasers, to cover your advertising costs.
I thought you needed a naysayer to whom you can say, “I told you so,” when you sell out to google.
Hmm, this idea has some pretty good merit. Everyone always rushes to see their pictures after a race but rarely buys them (inlcuding me). I personally don’t because I’ve never had a race photo worth keeping. If I had some good ones, I’d probably pony up a few bucks from time to time. I could see a huge problem though if too many people started uploading low quality photos - it would kill the service very quickly (same idea as the record companies flooding the net with bogus music files). If you wanted a lot of manual work, you could even go through the pics and price them according to quality (or leave that up to the photographer, with limits and guidelines of course). I’d say to encourage the contributors (photographers) they should keep the bulk of the sale and you take a small cut from every transaction (can you say eBay? Or ePhoto?).
Be sure to let us know if you move forward with this! Would be an inexpensive business to get going. Your biggest expense would probably be marketing, depending on how wide you want to go. Maybe talk to Herbert about some Guerilla tactics.
I think it would be virtually impossible to actually find pictures of yourself. An awful lot of professional race photos end up unclassified due to obscured, illegible or no number. Half the races I do don’t use helmet or bike numbers and most people don’t put on their bib numbers until the run (no rule enforcement). I don’t think people will want to browse through millions of pics on the offchance that they’ll find one of themselves. If you reached critical mass people might be more careful about having visible numbers but I can’t see how you’d get there over the initial hump.
Also, why would you go to the site unless you thought that there were pictures of you there? I guess if someone snuck a camera into the womens’ changing tent at an IM and posted the pics that could drive some traffic your way.
My race photos are always horrible. Odd really…when I’m so beautiful
I like the idea. If the site existed, I would use it. A few thoughts, many things others have mentioned but they bear repeating:
Searching by bib number is critical, so give uploaders the opportunity to tag the photo with bib numbers. This is very similar to uploading photos to Flickr, or videos to YouTube.
You’d probably need some sort of editorial screen to check accuracy of bib number tags, appropriateness of photos, etc. Outsource this or use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service.
This strikes me as something similar to iStockPhoto - leveraging the market penetration of digital SLR’s to drastically reduce the cost of photos. Tri/marathon/etc. is a great niche.
You could very easily outsource development to India, publicize on forums/blogs/etc, and see what kind of traction you get without spending a lot of money. If it takes hold, then invest is scalable development.
Social media and consumer generated content are very fundable right now, especially where there is a defined demographic that can be marketed to. Several institutional investors come to mind who would be interested in this if it got traction, PM me if you are considering raising money for this.
Referring again to iStockPhoto, I would bet that you end up with a small percentage of users who are fanatic - posting hundreds or thousands of photos, treating this as a freelance job - and then a steep dropoff forming a long tail of users who post just a few photos. Check out Chris Anderson’s ‘The Long Tail’ for more info on the economics of a long tail business. Short version is it’s a great business model
Overall I think this is idea is disruptive to the entrenched race photography industry. I love a good underdog. Internet history, if you can even call it that yet, would show that you have quite a bit going for you.
Searching by bib number is critical, so give uploaders the opportunity to tag the photo with bib numbers.
This could be done so much smarter than any site I have seen so far. Taking into account any known splits and final times, and positions of any known bib numbers, the possible time segment that a given competitor is in at a given point, is typically going to be quite limited. Add in clothing and bike attributes and instead of having to wade through 100 photos, you might only have to look at a handful to find the one you want even if the bib number is obscured.
Personally, I might buy some photos, but I’d only want to buy digital copies using paypal or something. Everything online.
Finish line shots are probably the most valuable from a sales standpoint, but you may run afoul of the RD and “official” photographer there. But maybe not, if it is just “civilians” uploading pictures.
I try to have at least one picture from each race I do, but I really hate buying professional photos for big $$, and having to wait weeks to get them. Yes, they are much better quality than the ones my family takes, but I’m not that concerned about quality, more about documenting that I raced, and just how bad I looked doing it. I would much prefer to download a digital picture or two for a couple bucks.
A few thoughts: Make it easy to find pictures (not just by bib number, but cronologically, too). Make it easy to browse pictures, so the site becomes a ‘destination,’ not just a store. I see it becoming kind of a visual race report, that people visit just to see who all was there and what kind of bike they rode, how they looked at the finish, etc. If you can drive a lot of traffic to the site this way, it seems like you could generate a lot of revenue from advertising. Make it easy to purchase and download pictures. Do a little screening to keep really poor quality pictures out.
Good luck!
Clearly, the person posting the photos would keep most of the revenue. The site would keep a small portion.
The tagging would be critical, but having this job outsourced would ensure more attributes to search on. The way they did it at IM CDA was pretty cool. Hat/No hat. White hat/black hat. Color of bike, etc. That made it “easier” to search the unclassified shots. But there were still a lot of photos to wade through.
The hard part for me, and this is where I would look for more feedback, is whether or not people buy the prints. The more I thought about this last night, I came to the realization that people would probably pay $.50 to $1.00 or more if they could buy the digital print.
Insofar as getting the word out, handing out cards advertising the service to the husbands and wives of the competitors at check in seems like a good start. Those are the people with the cameras we would want to leverage. Furthermore, paying someone to walk the course and hand out cards to people with cameras is another way to jump start the service. That’s all site specific, and we’d have to find a more viral way to grow, but there’s plenty of good ideas here so far.
I’m not a lawyer but their might be some legal issues here. When you sign up for a race, I’m pretty sure it automatically gives the official photograph the right to take, use and sell pictures of you. I think I read this in the terms & conditions. If you are not the official photographer, I’m not sure you’re allowed to take pictures without the consent of the athlete, let alone put them on a web site and sell them.
Check out Smugmug.com It’s a photo site that pretty much has all the features you’re suggesting. You might have to make modifications to make everything work as you suggest, but it would be easy enough to get photos submitted to and sell them from the site.
any RDs out there who can answer that Q - does the contract you sign as an event participant grant the right and license to photograph and subsequently sell those photos to a specific photographer or outfit?
I’m not in the business anymore but many years ago (20+ now!!) you couldn’t sell/exhibit a persons image (except in a “news” context) without them signing a consent form.
