Paid-for photo competitions
Oh will you look at that. How very Web 2.0!
The blog you’re currently reading is relatively high profile. I have written about photography competitions in the past (including the inspiredly-named ‘How to win photography competitions‘, which, if you haven’t read it, is worth a peek, if I may say so myself, and I may, because, well, this is my website, and I happen to quite like promoting my own articles in ridiculously long run-on sentences in parantheses when I really ought to be writing about completely different things, like the actual topic of this article, and I hope that you might in time forgive me for wasting your time with this aside). Anyway, as a result, I frequently get approached to help people judge their photography competitions.
Recently, however, I’ve received a series of e-mails (about ten in the past few months!) asking if I would pretty please judge their paid-for-contests. The idea is that aspiring photographers pay an entry fee (anything from $10 per photo via a $500 site membership to a $100 per photo fee structure). They then get entered into a photography contest, and the best photo wins.
Personally, I think paid-for photography competitions are absolute shite. Why? Well, for one thing, there are plenty of free photography competitions out there – witness the site ran by my good friend Will (of Earthshots fame), and there’s no way that you should be paying silly money to enter a competition.
Goldmines for the organisers
Okay, so this photo has nothing to do with this article, but how do you illustrate something like this anyway? Click on it for my recent gallery of photos from Vietnam.
Look at the math – at some of these competitions, they charge $100 per photo entered (!) and offer prize values of about $10,000. I imagine the ‘values’ are retail values, which means that they can pick them up for cheaper, either as gray imports, or via discount retailers, for about $8,000 or so. That means to break even, they have to get only 80 entries into the competition. Of course, to get enough people entering, they need to get a lot of photographers to enter. And how do they do that? By approaching high-profile bloggers to be competition judges, in the hope that the judges will blog, tweet, and promote their competitions for free.
Where it gets really sinister, however, is that several of the people who have contacted me recently, have also offered me a commission for each person entering the competition – so in effect, they’re not even trying to be sneaky about it: They just want to make a crapton of money, and are willing to give the judges money (!) based on how many people they manage to get involved in the competitions. Most recently, they said they would “like to offer you $10-$20 per every person signing up through your link. $10 for the first 5 participants, and if you bring more than 5, we will pay you $20 per each participant including the first 5″
Only 50% spent on prizes
Next, they made the mistake of apologising for the low kick-back – and revealing how much money they are making off these competitions: “I know [$10-20] doesn’t sound much with the entry fee being a $100, though please bare [sic] in mind that 50% out of it will go to prizes.”.
So the business model is like this: Profit = Entrants * $100 * 40%. So 100 entries into the competition is a $4000 clean profit, $1000 paid back as commissions, and $5000 spent on prizes. With numbers like these, no wonder these paid-for competition sites are popping up all over the place.
Finally, many of these competitions will make you pay money to enter and try to grab your copyright off you at the same time (more about this in my Be Careful what you Sign article), making it doubly sinister.
So there we have it. The honourable, exciting activity of photography competitions reduced to a simple, affiliate-driven business model. Is it just me, or is that bloody appalling?
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Insights, suggestions and comments
Firstly, it’s a free market and photographers can pick and choose which competitions to enter – caveat emptor and all that. There’s nothing inherently wrong with anyone offering a competition on whatever terms they wish, as long is it’s legal and transparent, However, if a photographer chooses to enter a competition that doesn’t have a pedigree, decent prizes, a good sponsor, is poorly publicised and doesn’t end in some kind of exhibition or other quality exposure for the winning entries, then that’s their choice and their problem.
Secondly, you seem to be lumping all pay-to-enter photo competitions together, which seems to indicate a certain lack of knowledge. Many of the most prestigious competitions involve entry fees. And with good reason. A quality competition costs money to run. Costs are not limited to prizes, plus a small kickback to referrers. The most prestigious competitions involve legal costs, an infrastructure to handle entries, man-hours to run, a marketing budget to produce promotional materials and hire media real estate, prizes plus the cost of hiring a prestigious gallery space for the winning entries, along with the cost of printing, framing and hanging. Hopefully a sponsor will cover much of these costs – but even so, without both a sponsor and entry fees a competition wouldn’t be viable.
Thanks for a great article. I personally find such paid competitions to be scams.
For me it’s a bit like playing poker – a mix of luck and skill which requires a significant initial financial investment. Luck, because whether your shot is picked or not is totally subjective, based on the tastes of the judges. Skill because you need to at least get a good photo out of a camera (you would think) to give yourself the chance of a win…or maybe there’s more luck in there too?
Personally, I never play poker, and find gambling in general morally questionable, so I’m unlikely to either gamble or judge such contests (or at least that’s the way I see it right now). Besides which, I’m not sure I want to pay to win a competition, feels a bit like those dodgy council contracts that get awarded to the people who can afford to bid.
the only problem with this thinking is it helps make everyone poor. There is nothing sinister about making a profit…if no one wants to pay then they shouldn’t enter…50% awarded is pretty darn high…people shouldn’t be doing this for free…there are expenses with any event even contests; even dance comps pay instructors to bring students. Creative people need to be compensated and event organizers need to make money for time. We need to value more labor instead of thinking cheap. We will all soon be peasants at this rate of thought…the 40% is not what they make every day. Redo the math and see if you can live off it.
Sarah: I agree with what you’re saying, but I think you’re missing the point.
Agree: photographers beware. Why are you entering the contest? I would assume most photographers are either in it for the exposure or for the prizes. Personally, I enter them for more exposure and perhaps some worthy feedback on my photos. Always read the fine print. I never surrender my copyright to the photo completely. Understand that most contest sponsors request license to display or use the photo for their own marketing purposes but copyright still remain with the photographer.
I think most of us know why the organizers take entry fees, those are business minded. But some well reputed photo competitions also require us to pay. Like Nat Geo…
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