aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Make money giving away your photos

One of Larry Lessig’s favorite Creative Commons articles, is from Mark Glaser in Media Shift. Here Glaser quotes Kris Krug, president of the online community management company Bryght:

“I think Creative Commons is a huge thing and I attribute a lot of my success to it,” Krug said. “Since the beginning I’ve given all my photos away on the Internet and they’ve been used by other bloggers and people all along the way and it’s gotten my name out there. So without going to photography school, and just networking with other photographers, and giving my stuff away with attribution, I’ve got my name out there, I’ve got a lot of incoming links to my website…I didn’t realize that I could make money on photography by giving away as much as I could, that I could build up a portfolio and reputation so I could get paid work.”

Krug says it’s sometimes difficult to explain the concept of Creative Commons to friends, who are used to holding onto their work and not giving it away. He admits it takes more than one conversation to convince someone to try it out. But Krug even tells musician friends to give away their music for a chance at better success in the long run.

“If [the music is] good, people will be turned on to it and go to the live shows and buy merchandise there,” Krug said. “The next thing you know, they’ll have 10,000 fans and they’ll be courted by record companies. You’re not going to make much money selling 100 MP3 singles on CD Baby…It’s a paradigm shift, man. There are a lot of people that don’t get it and they get upset at the suggestion that they give it away. But there’s a moment when they clue in.”