Tampa Bay Modeling will be overhauled in the Spring of 2012, with new, advanced tools, resources, and content added which have been in development for the past four years. This overhaul, of course, will be in the wake of the reboot of Independent Modeling, which will take the lead. Advanced Model, when it launches, also this Spring, will support all of the sites, and Florida Modeling Career will also be fully operational in 2012. All of these sites will utilize Independent Modeling as the primary resource core site.
2012 will be the year of the modeling job, of being independent from modeling agencies, and of independent models booking the modeling jobs that models used to have to depend upon the agencies to find and book. Far from an idle boast, all of this will be easy to confirm, too, as we do not wish to allow agencies to muddy the waters and convince models that they have to go through them to get the good jobs. It will be obvious that they do not have to go through the agencies anymore (although it has already been this way for quite a while), and that models will no longer have to be dependent upon agencies. After all, we have a much louder voice than any agency, or even all of the agencies combined. We are the first, the middle, and the final word on modeling in Tampa Bay, and the agencies and all of the others answer to us and independent models. It’s as it should be, especially with all of the lies that agencies have been caught in lately. Why trust anyone who has to lie and cheat in a futile attempt to remain relevant, and to try to control models and the industry? Modeling and talent agencies, in our opinion, are backwards and limited, and they should only be used as one of many sources of modeling jobs, and nothing more. They work for models, and that is the way that it needs to remain. Models are going to put them in their proper place.
One of the main features of Independent Modeling will be an advanced modeling job board with embedded tools designed to help models, photographers, and the businesses which book them all connect and allow them to book professionals without going through a modeling and talent agency. All of the modeling resource sites will tie into the Independent Modeling modeling job board, too. The new modeling job board will also feature enhanced countermeasures designed to defend against modeling job scams and those who will try to use our board to steal job leads (it will backfire if anyone tries to use the boards in unauthorized ways, so be warned! We are ready for anything, and have spent a lot of time developing technology to counter scams and unethical conduct).
While Tampa Bay Modeling will be overhauled with new content and tools, all organized in a new directory structure for ease of use, there will also be new features added. We have a new modeling scam analysis database (which is one of many things that will have a contextual scenario-based front-end and a term definition database back-end), interactive tutorials, free modeling pay vouchers for models to use when they book work without going through an agency (our projections indicate that Tampa modeling and talent agencies will lose a large amount of work because of our efforts by 2013, when many of their clients not only post on our job boards and book models independently, but independent models find and book many of the best modeling jobs on their own. This is a very bad time for anyone to start, or invest, in an agency. It’s as it should be, and balance will be introduced into the industry. Models who are foolish enough to depend entirely upon an agency to get work will also find work hard to get, as they will not be able to compete against independent models. They will be forced to adapt to the new conditions in the market, or go out of business; being dependent upon anything is never a good idea in any career. An open market is always superior to a closed market, and anyone who knows anything about business, which should be smart models, would know this), and tools for modeling jobs to use to evaluate and book models without having to go through an agency, such as our revolutionary Risk Analysis System, or RAS.
Of course, our other talent resource sites will be overhauled, too. Tampa Bay Talent, Tampa Bay Acting, Tampa Bay Film (which needs a lot of work after the site was expanded into a meta network, content was cannibalized, and the remaining content imploded with a lack of new content and too much content on the film blog; the Tampa Bay Film sites are out of balance right now, and it will take at least a year to get them where they need to be), Independent Acting, and an independent talent site (brand undecided) will be heavily supported. The new Independent Acting acting resource site is something that we are really excited about, and actors and talent will finally receive the same revolutionary support that models in the Tampa Bay area have received since 2001 (when Independent Modeling launched) and 2004 (when Tampa Bay Modeling launched). That revolutionary support will come without the trial and error of developing the career tools and tactics which are needed, as Independent Modeling has already done that over the years; most of the hard work is already done.
This will all have to wait until Spring 2012, however, as 95% of our web development resources are needed for a huge web project larger than anything ever done in the United States (we are so busy, in fact, that we barely have time to write this. We just want to let our readers know what is going on). That web project is for Aurora PhotoArts, which is affiliated with us, which will continue to specialize in model testing, modeling portfolio photography, modeling composite cards, new modeling career tools, and talent headshots. 80% of all Aurora PhotoArts services in the next five years, in fact, will be providing services for independent freelance models. This means that the Tampa Bay area will have a lot of independent models working in it, as those numbers will be in the thousands; the source of the thousands of independent models in the Tampa Bay market, many of which will be competing with the agencies themselves for modeling jobs, will be Aurora PhotoArts.
In 2008, aspiring competitors of Aurora PhotoArts began trying to compete with Aurora PhotoArts in search engine results, many of them using black hat tactics such as spamming. This, of course, did hit Aurora PhotoArts hard in some search results, although Tampa Bay Modeling and its other resource sites still ruled unopposed. The SEO problem at that time was termed the SEO 2008 issue. Because the economy crashed in late 2008, the solution for the SEO 2008 issue was delayed by Aurora PhotoArts, which could have resolved it in mere months, because it would not have done much good (what good is being at the top of search results when no one is looking and buying?), and it would have given aspiring competitors (we don’t even consider some of these people to be competitors, because they are not good enough to earn that distinction, in our opinion) time to study the SEO 2008 solution and adapt to the new market conditions.
As a stop-gap maneuver, and a temporary solution, Tampa Bay Modeling was used as a marketing platform for Aurora PhotoArts. This solved the problem, although it was never intended as a permanent solution. Using dominant resource sites which had no SEO issues also served as a control group, of course, giving Aurora PhotoArts hard data to use when determining when it would be an appropriate time to finally move ahead and solve the SEO 2008 issue.
That’s not to say that work has not been proceeding. Since 2008, Aurora PhotoArts has been quietly acquiring domain names for a network of new web sites, and deploying placeholder content to serve as a foundation for what is to come.
That foundation is not only done, but the SEO 2008 issue was resolved, by default, in 2011. Aurora PhotoArts is now preparing to increase its lead.
This is what our web team is working on now. Aurora PhotoArts will finally support us, and our endeavors, as we have supported it in dark economic times. A revolution is poised to begin in 2012, and after the new Aurora PhotoArts Mosaic Class marketing and support sites are built and deployed, 60% of all web team work will focus on the modeling and resource web sites. It is as it should have been all along.
Now, there are some new web sites in the works for the resource sites, too. Independent Modeling and Independent Acting will be using new Athena Class sites, which were originally developed back in the fall of 2010, and are just now being finalized. The new Athena Class sites, just like the Pioneer Class sites used by Frontier Pop and (soon) Advanced Model, and the new Mosiac Class sites used by Aurora PhotoArts, are all late 3rd Generation web sites by Eos MediaArts/ Aurora PhotoArts. Presently, Tampa Bay Modeling and the other Tampa Bay Talent sites use the advanced Raptor 3 variant of the Raptor Class site design, which is optimized for resource support and scam fighting. Raptor 3 Raptor Class sites are older, early 3rd Generation web sites dating back to 2006, but are still relevant, and have been highly successful and effective. The Raptor Class sites are scheduled to be replaced, eventually, with cutting-edge Dreadnought Class sites, which have been in development for some time. The Dreadnought Class sites will be the most advanced web site ever designed by Aurora PhotoArts (which also does web design for all of our companies, as well as for Tampa Bay advertising agency and sister company Eos MediaArts), and will be the first of the 4th Generation web sites, featuring flash graphics, enhanced SEO technologies, and PHP databasing engines (late 3rd Generations sites are designed, engineered, and built to be upgradeable to full 4th Generation sites in the future, which is forward-thinking. We are like that). Tampa Bay Modeling and the Tampa Bay Talent sites will continue to use Raptor 3 Raptor Class sites for the foreseeable future, however, and the overhauls will be done using the current Raptor Class sites.

PUBLISHED 01/20/12

UPDATED 02/18/12

 

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