Post by Phil on Apr 30, 2012 17:36:31 GMT -5
I'm going to be blunt about this one because honestly theres no easy way to talk about it in any other way.
Running the travelling camera club is expensive and the cost of doing it only goes up as more people take part.
It costs the people taking part money but I've always had the brunt, in the past I've hired graphic designers, paid for hosting, domain name but the biggest cost of all?
Developing the photos, It costs about £7 per roll to get the film developed. That was manageable when there was only a few routes but the more routes we have the more money its going to cost.
When I was living at home with my parents I could afford it but I've moved to London, I'm on an extremely tight budget and taking on the responsibility of uploading all the photos myself is something I simply cant afford.
Why was I the only one uploading the photos? honestly it came down to a case of reliability. One of the most frustrating things in the entire world was knowing that everyone had done their job on the camera, that it had traveled the world, made it to its final destination and then...
Nothing.
This actually happened on our first outing, we were so incredibly close to having a sucessful route and then nothing.
The photos not only got developed but they took a photo to prove it and that was the closest they ever got to going online.
Thats why I decided to take on the job myself. like I said I could afford it and at the time it really wasnt that many cameras, I was maybe spending £7 a month and it was a small price to pay to get the photos up there.
But things are different now.
so now we need to talk about our options.
One we encourage people to donate money (most likely to a paypal account), the money would only ever be used for travelling camera club related activities, mostly uploading cameras.
Or we try earn money from our efforts.
Right now were running ads on the site but we only get money if people click on them, were not allowed to tell people to click doing so would get us kicked off of the program.
We also have to earn £100 in ad revenue before they pay out.
we can also sell stuff, in theory I like this option but I tried this in the past and it didnt work. That was partly because I tried to get people to vote on their favourite photos which over complicated it but it was also because it was too early to actually do it.
There wasn't really a demand for the photos even though they were going to be large and on amazingly high quality prints (seriously I was talking to screen printers and picking out paper).
If we did sell stuff I want to do it right but more importantly I want to do it at the right time.
------
All of this talk is based on the assumption that we are keeping the routes the same length (five people) but there is one other thing to consider.
We cut the routes to two people.
Doing so would dramatically increase the number of cameras active (10 people would equal five cameras) but it would also change the dynamics.
By that I mean, if theres only two people one person is buying the camera and covering the cost of postage the other just has to receive it. If we scrap the idea that they pass it on to an uploader and make them take on the job that takes the expense away from the admins and spreads it evenly across everyone taking part.
All they'd have to do is pay for development and maybe a cd with the scans.
The down side of this is were dependent on the last person in the route being reliable enough to upload the photos but it also means that we dont have access to the original negatives.
Why is that a downside? well if we decide we want to make prints we'll need to get enlargements and its easier to do it if we have the negatives instead of working from a small scan.
We could email people and ask them to send us the photos but theres no way of knowing if they'll get back in touch a year later, or if they'll still have them.
So I guess thats kind of where I'm at in regards to money.
It depends on what we do with the routes in terms of their lengths but it also depends on how much control we want over the project.
thanks
Phil
Running the travelling camera club is expensive and the cost of doing it only goes up as more people take part.
It costs the people taking part money but I've always had the brunt, in the past I've hired graphic designers, paid for hosting, domain name but the biggest cost of all?
Developing the photos, It costs about £7 per roll to get the film developed. That was manageable when there was only a few routes but the more routes we have the more money its going to cost.
When I was living at home with my parents I could afford it but I've moved to London, I'm on an extremely tight budget and taking on the responsibility of uploading all the photos myself is something I simply cant afford.
Why was I the only one uploading the photos? honestly it came down to a case of reliability. One of the most frustrating things in the entire world was knowing that everyone had done their job on the camera, that it had traveled the world, made it to its final destination and then...
Nothing.
This actually happened on our first outing, we were so incredibly close to having a sucessful route and then nothing.
The photos not only got developed but they took a photo to prove it and that was the closest they ever got to going online.
Thats why I decided to take on the job myself. like I said I could afford it and at the time it really wasnt that many cameras, I was maybe spending £7 a month and it was a small price to pay to get the photos up there.
But things are different now.
so now we need to talk about our options.
One we encourage people to donate money (most likely to a paypal account), the money would only ever be used for travelling camera club related activities, mostly uploading cameras.
Or we try earn money from our efforts.
Right now were running ads on the site but we only get money if people click on them, were not allowed to tell people to click doing so would get us kicked off of the program.
We also have to earn £100 in ad revenue before they pay out.
we can also sell stuff, in theory I like this option but I tried this in the past and it didnt work. That was partly because I tried to get people to vote on their favourite photos which over complicated it but it was also because it was too early to actually do it.
There wasn't really a demand for the photos even though they were going to be large and on amazingly high quality prints (seriously I was talking to screen printers and picking out paper).
If we did sell stuff I want to do it right but more importantly I want to do it at the right time.
------
All of this talk is based on the assumption that we are keeping the routes the same length (five people) but there is one other thing to consider.
We cut the routes to two people.
Doing so would dramatically increase the number of cameras active (10 people would equal five cameras) but it would also change the dynamics.
By that I mean, if theres only two people one person is buying the camera and covering the cost of postage the other just has to receive it. If we scrap the idea that they pass it on to an uploader and make them take on the job that takes the expense away from the admins and spreads it evenly across everyone taking part.
All they'd have to do is pay for development and maybe a cd with the scans.
The down side of this is were dependent on the last person in the route being reliable enough to upload the photos but it also means that we dont have access to the original negatives.
Why is that a downside? well if we decide we want to make prints we'll need to get enlargements and its easier to do it if we have the negatives instead of working from a small scan.
We could email people and ask them to send us the photos but theres no way of knowing if they'll get back in touch a year later, or if they'll still have them.
So I guess thats kind of where I'm at in regards to money.
It depends on what we do with the routes in terms of their lengths but it also depends on how much control we want over the project.
thanks
Phil
