Using slideshow to promote photos during event job

CMAldridge

I have been thinking about an event I did last year. it was a non profit company doing a conference out of town.

I'm considering if I do it again how I can make it more worth my while (in a marketing sense). I think one of the major problems was getting the word out. I was too dependent on the organizers to promote my business and I don't think that happened.

I also don't think it's right to request their email list to directly contact participants.

They offer vendor tables. Prior to the event, I would create a category on Smug so I could have a direct link to the conference, and advertise and promote that for easy navigation directly (i can include a flyer in their grab bag). On the table I could have some promotional items about my photography, pamphlets, cards, an email sign up sheet (I think I could manage that with the event feature in Smug?) I would also like to have a computer playing a slide show from Smug with the pictures from THAT conference, as I'm uploading them.

I think it would be a real hook for them to see a picture they like! I would use minimal PP, and probably set a print delay (does this work for downloads too?)

My main question is regarding the slideshow. How is it best to accomplish this? Ideally I want to have a Smug slideshow playing that will update as I add pictures to the gallery. Will this work?

One other thought, I would want to break up the event into smaller galleries. could I use a smart gallery to collect all the photos from the different sub galleries to display all of them in a slideshow?

Sam

OK, here is my 2 cents worth.

If this is a non profit organization that is involved with a cause near and dear to your heart, certainly peruse it, but if it's just a job why in the world would you do it for free? This is a business forum.

The non profit pays for the rooms, food, entertainment, employees, etc, etc. As many many others have said just because it's a non profit doesn't mean they have no profit or money.

Also as you found out, typically you won't have much time to play when your working out of town.

What did you give to the organization last year? If you gave them all the images last year you shouldn't expect any sales. These images have value your time has value. Now I'm not saying you have to charge list + 20% but you should get something for your time and expertise. Also don't forget the cost of equipment. For a multi day event I would have somewhere between 10K and 15K in equipment. I can not afford to use this equipment for free.

Now as to the slide show and the flyer in the swag bag, this sounds like a plan. However if your giving the images to the non profit they are probably giving the images away to their attendees for free.
If your going to shoot on spec I would look at an agreement that at lease provides for a chance at making some sales. IE: They get X number of images for their website at no additional charge, all other images can be purchased online, by both the attendees and the non profit. Or another thought is to charge a fee to show up and ether keep the image prices down or charge a fee that makes you happy and provide all the images to the non profit.

If you going to run a slide show and your photographing all day I would absolutely want an assistant to upload images, do minor editing and provide sales and customer support during the vent.

Sam

CMAldridge

Sam, I hear ya on all the non-profit points. This association's arrangement is a little complicated with other vendors, speakers, and instructors. I didn't really want to get too into it here. I've been on non-profit boards before so I know how they work.

Bottom line is, I get time to practice and shoot however i want and experiment. Not so much on spec. They're happy with whatever i get them. Agreement last year was to give association images for their internal use, and sell and market to the attendee's. My marketing really sucked.

And by "more worth it", I don't necessarily mean $$$. I need to build my confidence interacting with "strangers" in a dynamic situation and be able to slow down and get good images. Not spray and pray (which I'm not really bad at anyway, but I'm still taking a lot of frames). My pricing was very reasonable last year, so the satisfaction of someone "purchasing" was more of an ego boost than a revenue stream.

As far as the assistant, ideally that would be nice. It may happen, but last year I had some time throughout the weekend to upload. That's what i was hoping the slideshow could be kind of automatic, upload back at my room and the screen on the vendor table would update and attendees would see it as they moved between classes.

(edit: i'm still a little foggy where these business, but also smugmug operation type questions should go)

CMAldridge

Glort wrote: »

IF your SERIOUS about making some money out of this, Read on......

Awesome reply! I was actually looking into one of those smart phone credit card things yesterday for this very idea! I'm all ears!

Set up a background of some type....

This is probably something like your talking about.

Don't give the participants a choice of being photographed, shoot them all in groups and individually.

This was the hard part tho, I only got a few to do it. I'm talking to the organizer soon and will have this on my list to bring up.

Next print a copy of all the shots preferably in 5x...

I haven't actually printed anything in a long time. I remember it being quite a pain to get the pictures lined up sometimes. I have win7 with LR3 (use mostly) and CS4 (i don't know it well at all), any recommendations on making prints quickly?

You could also put a Border on the prints with the name of the event and date.

I think I can do this in lightroom really easily.

do you want to sit on your butt

Honestly, I didn't have much butt sitting time last year.

Forget about snubmug again and go with Proshow.

Do you know if proshow will automatically update as I add to it? I was really hoping smug mug would work out so I could do it "remotely". I could see a lot of benefits to this in general, in this situation I won't have to be on the floor monkeying with uploads.