samuel zeller

medium.com Giving my images for free I’m a professional full-time photographer and I choose to let people download and use 95% of my images (even commercially), here’s why.

This article came across our radar a little while back, and it's repeatedly come up in discussions we've been having amongst ourselves and with others.

There’s no point in being talented if
nobody can see what you do.

– Zeller

Even though we don't really do any work with photographers (yet!), we find this article to epitomise what has been happening in all creative industries everywhere.

We live in an economy of 'give before you get', also known as 'the superstar economy'. This is not just happening for "traditional creatives" like photographers and musicians but also for designers and even programmers and other newer fields.

Even though Zeller has clients that pay for his work, musicians need to build an audience. And the only way to build an audience is to allow access to what you've made.

Banner photo by Zeller.

This is the idea that once you're a brand, you can charge a premium for your services or you can put a product in front of your audience that they want to buy.

But you only become a brand by putting yourself out there, your work out there, even if it starts off with little or no financial reward.

We've linked to two of our articles that talk about these ideas in more detail.

gogo.promogogo.com Marketing Methods Our first post (linked above) about the message explains the why of the marketing campaign. Why is the campaign needed? The answer should always be one of three:

gogo.promogogo.com It's Not The Platform, It's The Message The point of this post is to show that the message is more important than the platform. Being aware of what message the customers receive trumps where they receive it.