Featured Start-Up: Adography.com
Mar 11th, 2009 by admin
Ever snap a picture and think, “Wow. That’s good. I could make money doing this…?!!?” Well now you can with a new service called Adography. This featured start-up fills the void between amateur photo snapper and those looking to purchase creative, original photography to use in advertisements, marketing materials and so on. Here’s more on Adography.com:
What is Adography?
Adography.com provides an online tool for casual, amateur or professional photographers to sell their photos to companies, and conversely, for advertisers to request photos (”want-ads”) specific to their needs. We do not sell stock photography, and we would like to avoid the promotion of it on our site. We bridge the gap between photographers and advertisers targeting photos for a specific company or purpose. An advertiser may be an agency that does ad work for multiple companies, or an individual company owner/employee, who wants to purchase advertising photos to promote their company.
How does it differ from sites such as Flickr, iStockphoto and Photobucket?
We differ from other photo sites in that we allow advertisers to specifically request photos to fill their needs and then provide a marketplace to purchase exclusive rights to the photos they request. While others focus largely on stock photography, we reverse the theory and allow the advertisers to ask for the exact image that they would like to use in their campaigns. We fill the void that exists between staging an expensive photo shoot and settling for cheap stock photography. When stock photography just doesn’t cut it, we can fulfill the need for far less than a staged photo. We use crowd sourcing to provide choices to advertisers and fulfill their exact advertising desires.
Also, since we are growing, we are always working to fulfill want-ads posted by companies/advertisers. By doing this, we are providing free PR about each business. For example, when Gail, the owner of TravelWows.com, requested a specific photo on our site, we actively sought photographers interested in her business industry to snap her photos. To reach them, we contacted numerous bloggers in the travel industry. By explaining why she needed the photo to photographers, and what TravelWows.com is all about, we were publicizing Gail’s business, creating more awareness, and helping to spread their brand as well as our own.
Who are the company’s founders? Are they first-time entrepreneurs?
The company is founded by Ben and Kelly LeDonni (a married couple living in suburban PA). Ben owns and operates a Web development company, which was his first entrepreneurial endeavor and Kelly has a full-time job and works on Adography on the side. Development and marketing consultants help make up the team of motivated supporters and promoters of the site.
Who are Adography’s target markets?
Adography’s target market is small business owners who do their own advertising or advertising agencies who work with many small businesses. We feel that both of these clients would benefit from becoming “Advertiser” users of the site, so they can request and purchase specific photos to fill their advertising needs. We respect professional photography, but hope that amateur photographers can realize/hone their skills while making money selling their photos to advertisers.
What is the business model behind Adography?
We are a marketplace for photos to be purchased by Advertisers and sold by Photographers. Membership and photo posting is completely free for photographers, as they are motivated by the money they will earn for each photo they post. However, we charge the advertiser 10% of the purchase price of each photo they purchase. When an advertiser purchases a $100 photo from a photographer, the advertiser will be charged $100 by the photographer and $10 by us through Amazon Payments. As we are self-funded, this money will be used for promoting and building the business behind the website.
Being a start-up, how is the company funded?
The company owners funded the business on their own, using personal money to pay for the site development and consultant support. They hope to remain independently funded, unless the site requires more finances to market or develop the website. Ben and Kelly believe enough in the business to fund it themselves, and with support from friends and family, will work to make sure the business is a success.
What are the long-term plans for Adography?
We plan to fill the gap between advertisers and photographers, helping photographers to earn money for their photos. Advertisers deserve better than to have to dig through stock photography, and we feel that good amateur photographers will nicely fulfill the needs of photo advertising. Over the next couple of months, we hope to:
- Build a great community of amateur photographers.
- Get advertisers/companies to join and submit want-ads for specific photos. We’ll use these want-ads to promote the opportunity to photographers.
- Enhance the feature set and user experience. We will aim to bring the marketplace for photos to photo communities that already exist, hoping to provide more value to our advertisers.
