Scoopshot has launched a new initiative that every professional photographer interested in working on assignment ought to consider. Their “
Everyone’s Private Photographer” initiative makes it easy for customers to input a location, anywhere in the world, where they need a photographer and immediately see a 9-image portfolio of each photographer operating in that area who might be able to perform a photo assignment.
The best part about it is that there is no cost to the photographer for this service. All you have to do is go to (
https://pro.scoopshot.com/register), fill out the form providing a little information about your background and experience, in addition to contact information, upload 9 images for the portfolio and agree to the terms of service. Worst case, you never get a job. But this marketing has cost you nothing, but a little time.
How It Works.
1 - An editor or art director looking for a photographer to cover an event, or one that has a particular specialty goes to the site. The editor may enter the name of a specific photographer, but more likely the customer will enter country and location where the job is to be done. The location can specific like Bethesda, Maryland and by using a simple slider the customer can specify a radius like “anyone within a radius of 30 miles of the location.” The customer can also indicate certain expertise that the photographer must have. The 9 image portfolios of all photographers in the area requested with the right expertise are shown.
2 – The customer can review the portfolios and select one or more photographers to receive a task brief on the job.
3 – The customer writes a brief for the task being as precise as possible. The brief is e-mailed to each of the selected photographers.
4 – Each photographer may provide a quote, or ask for more information in order to provide an accurate quote. This may take place by e-mail, or a phone conversation. The customer may ask to review a more complete or targeted portfolio to determine if the photographer is the right person for the job.
5 – The photographer provides an accurate quote through the Scoopshot system.
6 – If more than one photographer has been asked to quote on the job the customer reviews the various quotes and accepts one specific photographer to do the job. If the customer has requested a quote from several photographers on a time-sensitive project he may simply accept the first quote that comes in.
7 – The customer makes a deposit to Scoopshot to cover the quote.
8 – The photographer does the job and submits the work through the Scoopshot system. The client then has the right to review the submitted images and reject them all if they are not satisfactory.
The client may ask for corrections to the submitted images and the photographer gets prompted accordingly. The photographer resubmits the images for client approval. All this happens through the Scoopshot system.
9 - After the approval, the client will have full access to the photographs submitted. The payment is deducted from the deposit made at the time of an assignment.
10 – Scoopshot takes 25% of the fee and remits the remainder to the photographer’s account immediately. The photographer can cash out based on the payment methods specified by each country. For example, in the U.S. PayPal is used.
(One thing to be aware of is that currently Scoopshot takes 25% of the entire quote. In some cases, a job can entail significant expenses. Expenses will be part of the overall quote. In such cases there may need to be a separate agreement between all parties prior to taking on the job or the photographer could end up with a net loss for his time spent taking the pictures.)
According to Scoopshot CEO Petri Rahja they currently “have pros doing assignments for fees of between $200 and $3,000 of even more.”
For more information on what the customer sees take a look at
https://www.scoopshot.com/marketing/content-buyers/.