Leave paper and start paywall site?

What makes you confident you can steal a few contracts away from Big Jostens? Not being sarcastic just curious

 

Durrr, maybe read the thread?

 

I don’t skulk this site all day shit for brains

 

Hey, this thread is for shitting on life-long dreams, not each other!

 

Shut up!

 

Oh, yes, that's a big issue re: photography.

I've already got a plan to try to combat that. A limited number of photos will be on the paywall site itself -- 1-2 per feature story and 5-6 per game. All will have small watermarks. Galleries will be posted to the photo sales platform we're using for the photography website, with big, fat watermarks across the center of each photo. That sales platform doesn't allow for right-click, save as (yes, savvy people like myself will know a workaround, but most in the general population don't). That won't stop screenshoting, but it won't be that good of quality.

And the main revenue source for photography won't come from spec action sales, anyway. That market dried up years ago due to that stuff. We'll be targeting youth league and school booster groups and offering them packages to do team/individual photos and banners, plus offering action photos throughout the year to interested parents through them, with the league/school obviously getting a nice cut. A big item for one of the local photographers who beat Lifetouch is including a end-of-season poster in packages, which is made of a cutout of the kid and a couple of action shots through the season.

 

Big watermarks. Use big watermarks

 

Thanks for all those thoughts.

I came to the 1K number based on the paper's page views and my experience with the people in the area. High school sports is the only game going around here, with a much more loyal, passionate following than in areas closer to the major metropolitan REGION.

It's still very valid question if that many are willing to pay. I'm not going to charge much, but it's more than the "free" they're used to. But again, I'll also be targeting the undercovered sports just as much as the football team. Soccer and cross country will get far more coverage than they ever have. For my experience and from talking to the school's ADs, those are the loudest groups re: being "left out," and the ones with the most money.

 

By offering what the big, national companies can't. The local photographers who've beaten them here include shooting events and athletics in with their normal photo-day services and provide the school with photos to use on social media and for yearbooks. They also contract with the district to make its booster groups use them for banners and similar products that are normally contracted independently by each booster organization. The school therefore gets a cut of sales stuff they otherwise don't.

And, of course, a FOIA to see exactly what the big national companies are offering, and offering a better kickback to the districts.

 

We’ve seen a few school districts around here signing on with one local PR shop, which specializes in a la carte municipal contracts. Stuff that was covered 15, 20 years ago by the local paper isn’t anymore, and giving the paper a press release/photo on a silver platter is low-hanging fruit.

Why I mention that is that I could see photography working the same way, as you alluded to above. Maybe you don’t even sell photos online, you just tease what you have and set up a booth at select events along with a list of various framing options.

I’ve heard NFTs referred to as digital sports cards. I know nothing about them, other than what I hear elsewhere. Could something like that be utilized for high school sports coverage?

 

Don't forget to budget for the expense of keeping SJ.com on retainer as advisors.

 

There are sites like MyCapture that can handle the merchandising side for you. Meaning, "Hey, I want this photo in a frame, or on a mug." One shop I was at, the sales price was split between MyCapture, the paper and the individual photographer, in order to incentivize us to upload big photo galleries. After about six months, I was getting $20 to $50 a month from it - Not great, but decent enough considering my cut was something like 5 or 10 percent, can't remember which, and I wasn't really taking photos close to full-time. I've always thought that this was low hanging fruit for a lot of newspaper companies that they didn't even explore, since it was usually hellish to buy photo copies at most places I worked at.