on Advertising in Photo Magazines
Dec. 10th, 2011 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyearA comment I left on a blog where the author was showing that a few web adds (on other photography blogger's sites) sold more of his product (an HDR video tutorial) than major print ads in 2 well-distributed magazines, and asking why the BIG names (Nikon, Canon, etc) still advertise on those magazines:
I think one reason the big name camera makers (and software makers) publish in the main magazines is simply to keep the magazines alive at all. As much as blogs are the best tools for helping the hobbyist move forward and learn, the magazine, sitting on the shelf, looking spectacular while carrying the headlines that effectively say “Yes, you can do this!” is what is really selling the cameras themselves. The magazine on the shelf *creates* the hobbyist, without which many of us would be taking crappy shots on an iphone and thinking we were creating “art”. So yeah, even if a particular add in a particular magazine doesn’t “sell” a camera in and of itself (the reviews might, but the ad won’t), the ad keeps the magazine alive, and that keeps the hobby alive (by creating NEW hobbyists) in ways that the blogs don’t.
Blogs like yours help build the talents and experience of the hobbyists (and aspiring professionals) but it doesn’t create them, and so it doesn’t sell cameras in the same way. If the camera makers were only fighting for the people who are hobbyists now but didn’t look to future growth, it would collapse much as many other industries and institutions already have (such as, say, the disappearing audience for classical music).
Stop Advertising in Photo Magazines – Head West to the Web
I think one reason the big name camera makers (and software makers) publish in the main magazines is simply to keep the magazines alive at all. As much as blogs are the best tools for helping the hobbyist move forward and learn, the magazine, sitting on the shelf, looking spectacular while carrying the headlines that effectively say “Yes, you can do this!” is what is really selling the cameras themselves. The magazine on the shelf *creates* the hobbyist, without which many of us would be taking crappy shots on an iphone and thinking we were creating “art”. So yeah, even if a particular add in a particular magazine doesn’t “sell” a camera in and of itself (the reviews might, but the ad won’t), the ad keeps the magazine alive, and that keeps the hobby alive (by creating NEW hobbyists) in ways that the blogs don’t.
Blogs like yours help build the talents and experience of the hobbyists (and aspiring professionals) but it doesn’t create them, and so it doesn’t sell cameras in the same way. If the camera makers were only fighting for the people who are hobbyists now but didn’t look to future growth, it would collapse much as many other industries and institutions already have (such as, say, the disappearing audience for classical music).
Stop Advertising in Photo Magazines – Head West to the Web
