Marketing: Flickr or Picassa?

[Frank Petronio]

In terms of "getting your work out there" which do you think is a better choice? Flickr or Picassa?

I like the Picassa interface a little better I think. But I think Flickr has a much larger audience.

Which is easier for stock photo buyers to find using Google? (I would think Picassa but Flickr is such a big brand....)

I'm mainly looking for ad agency-designer type photo buyers who might troll for interesting pictures. I keep reading on Photo Editor and PDN and such about people buying/selling higher-end photo usage from these so-called amateur sites.

Also, while I know they only take jpgs, as a worst case scenario for cheap back-up, having a couple hundred of your best images in yet another place makes sense to me, even if they are only smaller jpgs. What is the "maximum" size you can post on either site?

And finally, of the two sites, which do you think does a better job protecting images from misuse and theft? I know it is impossible to prevent but which one goes further?

[Wallace_Billingham]

flickr has a much larger user base, they do frown on you however using the service to sell anything or yourself. My guess is that your odds are better to be struck by lightning or win the lottery than to have someone stumble on your stuff on flickr or picassa who would actually buy something unsolicited. It could happen but don't count on it. If you want to sell stock you best bet is to use a stock site.

If you buy the pro membership on flickr which costs like $25 a year you can upload and store an unlimited number of jpegs of a maximum 10mb in size.

Both are pretty equal as far as detering image theft but then again anything online is going to be equal as if it is online it can be used.

I buy two pro memberships a year on flickr. One that I use as a regular member and the other that I keep private and use as an online backup. I export all my keeper images as JPEGs using the highest quality possible while keeping them under 10mb and upload them all to flickr on my backup account. The nice thing about doing that is that you can get to them from any computer anywhere in the world that has an internet connection, and since I use Lightroom to add meta data to all my files I can use flickr to search for what I am looking for.

On my personal account that I use I only upload images that are no bigger than 600px on a side.

The good or bad thing about flickr is that the whole system is very search engine friendly. I have some images that have hundreds of thousands of hits because of online searches. This is good in that buyers might find them, it is bad in that people might steal them

[brian mcweeney]

I'm waiting for one of those ad agency art buyers to find my stuff on Flickr and pay me lots of usage money, but alas that hasn't happened. Not even beer money! As far as stealing goes, I plaster my copyright over the images and keep them smallish.

[William McEwen]

Frank, a portrait photographer friend of mine went to the park and shot a bunch of pictures yesterday because we've had a wonderful snowfall.

She posted a few on Facebook, and now she's inundated with "how much for a print/send me your prices" requests on Facebook. You just never know.

[Dirk Rösler]

And finally, of the two sites, which do you think does a better job protecting images from misuse and theft? I know it is impossible to prevent but which one goes further?

Errr Frank, you did know that Flickr lets you blog any Flickr photo on any weblog? Is that theft/misuse, mmmh? Well, these sites enable and encourage "sharing", that's the whole point.

I use Flickr quite a bit for marketing, it works quite well and I get some traffic and sales. Also we have recently started using Tumblr and that is working well too. I'd say do a combination of all these including FB and Twitter etc. and then see. It's like fishing with many rods :)

[Matus Kalisky]

Picassa must be the better choice. I have some stuff over on Flickr and got no sale proposals yet ... :cool: :D

[LaurenJade]

Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. As of October 2009, it claims to host more than 4 billion images.

Picasa is a software application for organizing and editing digital photos, originally created by Idealab and owned by Google since 2004. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa for "my house" and "pic" for pictures (personalized art). In July 2004, Google acquired Picasa and began offering it as a free download. At the time of the acquisition, the company's management team consisted of Lars Perkins as CEO, Mike Herf as CTO, and Dan Engel as VP Market Development.

[bobwysiwyg]

Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. As of October 2009, it claims to host more than 4 billion images.

Picasa is a software application for organizing and editing digital photos, originally created by Idealab and owned by Google since 2004. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa for "my house" and "pic" for pictures (personalized art). In July 2004, Google acquired Picasa and began offering it as a free download. At the time of the acquisition, the company's management team consisted of Lars Perkins as CEO, Mike Herf as CTO, and Dan Engel as VP Market Development.

Picasa also provides an on-line album capability, similar to others, if you choose to use it.

[BradS]

I cannot imagine a real photographer, somebody whose trying to make a living at it, being well served by posting his work on flickr (and I think what I say here applies as well to Picasa, et al.).

it seems like 90 percent or more of the images on flickr are fuzzy, camera-phone, arm's length self "portraits" of narcissistic teens and twenty-somethings.

Flickr is at best a place to facilitate theft of your images. The stuff that does get legitimately published from there is largely produced by rank amateurs who are elated with such compensation as may to feed their ego but not feed the family...if I'm not being too subtle.

I think a real photographer would be much better served by a legitimate stock agency and a well done professional website.

[Jack Dahlgren]

I'm not as negative as BradS, but flickr is more about sharing your photos than presenting them. The user interface is cluttered and not very attractive and often does not present your work very well. I use it to store and share images, but if I were going to sell something, I'd want to present it in a cleaner view.

Here is an example of a simple blog to display photos:
http://zo-d.com/photography/

Compared to how the same things show up on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jack-d/4382320855/

My site is nothing compared to many of the nice sites people have set up to showcase their photographs.

But if you want to have your work "found" by people maybe a hybrid approach would work? A small photo on Flickr (tagged with good keywords and description) with a link to your real site...

[Darren Kruger]

I think a real photographer would be much better served by a legitimate stock agency and a well done professional website.

real photographers make their own cameras. ;)

-fake photographer Darren

[ethics_gradient]

I was contacted by an intern at Wall Street Journal Magazine to use a photo of mine on Flickr for their May issue last year, was paid $250 for it.

You are a lot better off going with a stock site though, if your primary aim is to sell pictures.

[Dirk Rösler]

But if you want to have your work "found" by people maybe a hybrid approach would work? A small photo on Flickr (tagged with good keywords and description) with a link to your real site...

That's what I referred to in my earlier post. Just note that "selling" may not be allowed on those sites, so best to keep it toned down.

Yes, perhaps these sites aren't where "real photographers" would be, but if "real photo buyers" have "real interns" search for images to buy on the web, of course this is where they will start.

Keep it REAL :cool:

[BradS]

I apologize for my overly negative tone earlier. Thanks for humoring me. It was another shitty Monday at the programmers' sweatshop.

I'm better now. I've had some wine....

I think flickr is a fine place to share your stuff with friends and family. I don't think it is the proper place for a professional to market his work. It is very cool that some people get some sales sometimes. I just don't think it projects a very professional image...maybe that is why some buyers "shop" there. They're looking for a bargain. Is that the market you want to be in?

[jp]

Much like facebook is the defacto place for social communications, I think flickr is just a step behind for becoming the defacto place for communicating with photos. There are so many things in common. Just as businesses are learning to communicate and market with facebook, the same things will be happening on flickr when it comes to imagery.

I'm not a pro and I don't put pix of flickr. I do use flickr though to investigate how other people use equipment. If you're wondering how a particular lens (on a dslr) works at dusk at various apertures, under flare conditions, you can find photos representing that on flickr. Many analog users also post their camera, film and developer on their, if you want to evaluate how those things are capable of working.

I have my own website for photos, arranged the way I want it. It's sort of an island away from the flickr, sort of like how a blog is it's own creative entity away from facebook.

[Preston]

If you don't have web site of your own, and don't want to pay fees at a stock photo site such as AGpix, a Wordpress blog is a good alternative.

--P

[Dirk Rösler]

If you don't have web site of your own, and don't want to pay fees at a stock photo site such as AGpix, a Wordpress blog is a good alternative.

--P

That's not the point. Creating a web site is easy, getting people to visit you is the hard part. And there plenty people on Flickr, FB etc., that's the idea to leverage that.

Also check out one of Brooks Jensen's latest podcasts, LW0620: Website as Content Delivery

[Mike Anderson]

One thing not mentioned yet here is google images. I don't know if google images gets one more exposure (assuming that's the object) than Flickr or Picassa, but if I were assigned to look for a nameless image I'd go first to google images.

An advantage of leveraging google images is that when someone clicks on an image found in google images it takes them to the page where the image resides (the page is within a frame), so you wouldn't have to insert references back to your website as you would in Flickr.

Of course there's no reason you can't put images on Flickr and leverage google images.

...Mike

[ethics_gradient]

One thing not mentioned yet here is google images. I don't know if google images gets one more exposure (assuming that's the object) than Flickr or Picassa, but if I were assigned to look for a nameless image I'd go first to google images.

An advantage of leveraging google images is that when someone clicks on an image found in google images it takes them to the page where the image resides (the page is within a frame), so you wouldn't have to insert references back to your website as you would in Flickr.

Of course there's no reason you can't put images on Flickr and leverage google images.

...Mike

I get some image hits from google and yahoo's image search on my Flickr, but getting high enough in the search results for people to actually find your images... there's the rub. It works best if you've got some specific keywords, my two most common referring searches are "usf cheerleaders" and "laos army".

[Mike Anderson]

I get some image hits from google and yahoo's image search on my Flickr, but getting high enough in the search results for people to actually find your images... there's the rub. It works best if you've got some specific keywords, my two most common referring searches are "usf cheerleaders" and "laos army".

Yes, if want this kind of exposure you'd want to optimize your website or Flickr pages and images for google image search, something I hadn't thought about until this thread. A google search for "optimizing for google image search" is a place to start.

...Mike

[Wallace_Billingham]

One thing not mentioned yet here is google images. I don't know if google images gets one more exposure (assuming that's the object) than Flickr or Picassa, but if I were assigned to look for a nameless image I'd go first to google images.

An advantage of leveraging google images is that when someone clicks on an image found in google images it takes them to the page where the image resides (the page is within a frame), so you wouldn't have to insert references back to your website as you would in Flickr.

Of course there's no reason you can't put images on Flickr and leverage google images.

...Mike

On my flickr page I have a simple snapshot taken with a DSLR of a Maryland Blue Crab sitting on a pier after I caught it. I never intended to market that shot in anyway it was just a snap shot on a crabbing trip with my son.

Anyway that picture gets around 100 hits a day from people uaing Yahoo and Google Images looking for blue crab pictures, and I have sold quite a few copies from it everything from a text book, to a travel website from another state.

I have another photographer friend who likes to take flower and/or insect macros with her DSLR gear. She uploads everything to flickr and tags each shot with the latin and common names of the flowers. These tags get picked up by google images and she gets lots of traffic and a few sales from doing so