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		OPINION MENU - POST OPINION - PREVIOUS - NEXT Wednesday, April 26, 2006 Portfolio Networking Site Flaws. This opinion editorial will be a bit shorter than most, since we are busy updating the rest of this site and are preparing an article about exploiting the flaws of what I am going to touch on. I’m talking about Portfolio Networking Sites and some of their flaws. Want to know a secret? Most professional models and photographers don’t like portfolio networking sites and, while they may have a free profile up on several, they never seem to use them that much. I don’t blame them. I don’t take them all that seriously, and to be honest, I am one of the few models who do not have a portfolio networking profile at all. Most professionals take the time to learn and invest in their careers. We pay for the portfolios that we need (did you know that most professional photographers pay four to six times what a model would, on average, to develop their portfolios? I was surprised to learn this, too!). We have professional web sites made that are effective and are easy to update. We buy domain names for our web sites. We basically distance ourselves from the amateurs, too, and present a professional presence. By default, this means that portfolio networking sites are not that important to us, and there are good reasons behind this. Here are a few brief points on the flaws and why most professionals don’t take them seriously. Before I touch on them, please ask yourself what the definition of a career is. Is it working for free? Is it learning bad habits by working with amateurs? Is it putting yourself at risk by not checking out those that you work with before you work with them? No, a career is making a living doing what you are good at while gaining skill and experience. Pay could be anything from monetary compensation (making money) to obtaining better tools for the promotion of your career. On to some of the flaws of portfolio networking sites. Market demographics. As a professional, who exactly are you marketing to in order to book jobs? What is the point of networking with those who either are competing with you or who think that they are competing with you? There are too many amateur photographers on these sites shooting for free, which makes me really question their motivation, and clueless people who think that they are models on these sites and who have no clue how to discern value and quality. How hard is it to market yourself on a site that is cluttered with people who aren’t what they claim to be? A professional knows who their customers are and knows how to market their services to them without being lost in a crowd of people who are confusing the market. They also don’t waste their time marketing to people who aren’t in the market for what they have to offer. Portfolio networking sites have lots of profiles on them and built-in competition that limits what you can do as a professional. Too much information. As a professional, you have to protect yourself. You need to keep certain information from those who are looking to compete with you. One big problem with portfolio networking sites is that your clients list, which should be one of our most valuable and protected trade secrets, are there for your competition to shop. Show me someone who gives away their client list and suggests that their clients join a portfolio networking site, and I will show you an unprofessional idiot who has no business sense. I know of a few photographers who run around shooting pretty girls for free and get them to join such sites so they can work with other “photographers”, too. Do I respect them? No. Will I ever work with them? Hell no, and that’s even if their work wasn’t crap to begin with. Mark my words: Some of these so-called professionals are in for a rude awakening. I know of several real professionals who are planning to show the clients of these morons the bigger and better deal, and it won’t be hard to take away their clients, especially when it is so easy to figure out who they are to begin with. When you have more experienced photographers out there who have more experience, do better work, know the business better than you, and have the respect and loyalty of models who they work with, the last thing that you want to do is show them who your clients are. Some of those clients only work with amateur photographers because they do not know any better and are not aware that there is anything better out there. When you make it easy for the professionals to get in touch with your clients when they have you beat in every way, you only have yourself to blame when your clients leave you. Many photographers who rely on portfolio networking sites are amateurs who do TFP work, and they make it too easy for experienced professionals to come along and stomp them into the dirt. We are going to be going into this a lot more in the future, because many of these self-proclaimed professionals are demonstrating that they are unprofessionals with no clue about what they think they are doing by giving away what little business that they have. Lack of professional standards. Most portfolio networking sites have no way of making their members accountable, are either free or offered at little charge, and have no way of qualifying their members. ANYONE can join this sites, regardless of actual professional qualifications, and MOST do, increasing perceived competition on the site and making it very difficult to find the real professionals who may have a profile. Think you know who you are dealing with? Do you like their work? How do you know for sure? Conflicting information. With all of these people on the site, you are going to get lots of conflicting information that will only serve to confuse anyone who is new to the industry. The blind will lead the blind. Most of the information comes from the site message boards, and most of the people posting on those boards have lots of opinions with no real education to back them up. If they have all of this time to post on the boards and give mixed advice, how do they have time to work their career? When I see photographers posting all sorts of B.S. on message boards, I always wonder when they have the time to book and do shoots. Most can’t, and don’t. There are ways to take advantage of these sites, but I will not go into it here. Wait for the article, and learn how to exploit the flaws of portfolio networking sites. ~ Danielle Cooper, Editor Tampa Bay Modeling Clearwater Beach, Florida
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