Guest blog by Greg Dillon, marketing strategist and founder of Phopus.
In part 2 of this series, Greg shares how he went from showcasing his work at a exhibition in London to starting an online community for photographers.
Following my solo exhibition in trendy East London, I set up a website showcasing my work. I began branching out into more niche photography effects to craft a unique proposition, but I was still trying to operate in a crowded market with professionals who had established clients. My competition also had higher page rank in Google, despite an intensive SEO campaign.
I had a weekly stall at one of London’s premier markets and was getting a few sales each week, but it attracted a lot more window shoppers than buyers, so I decided to work out another route to market.
It was then that I decided to resurrect an idea that I had had and loosely sketched out eighteen months ago – building an online community for amateur photographers. The community members would challenge one another to branch out through collaborative projects and sharing insight.
I pitched the concept to a few friends who were interested in photography and some who were not in order to get their opinions and feedback. The reception was mostly positive so I decided to start pulling together some firmer ideas around the mechanics of the site, the payback and a rough estimate on how to take my idea from Post-it notes to reality.
There were complications along the way – although well-versed in HTML and a student of design, I outsourced a lot of the web design work. I trusted that someone else away from the day to day business would be able to create my vision without getting bogged down in the details.
Sadly, the first web developer I hired was awful. I stupidly chose to save costs and run with someone who said everything was possible without really understanding the concept or what I was looking to achieve. It was a rookie error, but I was flattered by him and kept getting excited by the amount of times that he said “of course that is possible, it is going to make the site even more amazing.” The truth was, he had no idea how to build what I wanted.
After six long months, I ended up firing him. It was tough decision, but one I had to make. I had spent so much getting to this point, but without a developer I shelved the idea.
I went about recruiting a new web designer, one that not only read the brief but challenged me and worked with a staff of developers to start getting the idea – Phopus (Photographic Opus) to become a full on member site.
The reasoning behind building a membership site was based on the principle that people love to get something for free, but are oftentimes willing to pay for a premium version of something if they can get involved and become an integral member of a community in which they have a vested interest or passion.
It was time to become a dot-com founder!
Next time I will discuss the highs and lows of the development stage of an online photography community business as we prepare to go into beta.
Greg is the founder of http://www.phopus.com/ – a photography community launching soon that will give amateur photographers a platform to get their work seen by the wider photography community and to get their name known. Away from startup life he is a Twitter addict @Greg_Dillon and works as a strategist for some of the biggest brands on the planet, helping them to identify their consumers and how to leverage their competencies to best target the people who matter.
