The Internet Audience

Staying in front of an internet audience is a difficult task. 

Even if you were the only one on the only 24/7 channel which could not be turned off, you’d have to attract attention to that channel from all the other audio and visual stimulation being pushed at the audience. 

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The major plot arc of the TV series, Max Headroom (1988-89), was competing media networks which blasted their content to screens all over the city. Each network needed to keep one-upping the others in ratings to keep the advertisers happy and rolling in revenues. 

Nobody could ever relax and reap benefits of accumulated standing. The audience was notoriously fickle. Even in the middle of a police chase or 5 alarm structure fire the competition could siphon viewership with a more sensational story. 

The story was the essential element, one which was supported by the “footage”. Live cameras would catch raw reality and broadcast it as is. 

That near future scenario is now the past but the fundamentals remain unchanged. 

Today we have hundreds of highly capitalized channels and millions of amateur content feeds all vying for attention. It is easy to never be seen except by someone who know you and connected out of curiosity or pity. 

Trying to stay in front of an audience is a matter of being part of a media stream which is always on. TikTok, Instagram, X and Facebook, et al are those places but they are also the ones on which every hopeful marketer aspires to become viral. They don’t have to be good and have high quality content. They just need to be flashy and repetitive. 

Many are merely copycats of something which worked for one original originator. Look at the proliferation of Side hustle videos. Everyone is trying to get viewed. 

We went from zero AI applications to hundreds in a matter of a few months. The influencers are even more prolific than the apps. The people behind the vids make their money by getting the audience to click their content and not by doing what they claim you can get rich doing. 

If they could make the $145,765 in a month doing the scheme they present, they would not be bothering to post rosy sounding videos. They all use the same format to try to make click sales. None of them stand out from the pack. All of them together are marginal earners.

Just follow the WGA writers’ strike facts to see how little actual talented people get paid and how much work they have to do to earn a living.  If they could use multiple AI apps to sell anything they would do it. They might even use their well honed talents to do it. 

Marketing photographs is a formable task. The internet has facilitated the millions of individual artists to post billions of images. Back in the early days of television 3 networks fed programming to hundreds of individual station transmitters. Programming necessarily narrow because of the limitations of stations and home TV receivers. 

Today nearly every household has at least one receiving device and in some homes every family member has his~her device screen. Few if any are viewing the same content at the same time. That level of variation is a huge market and requires a huge effort to capture.  

So keeping your specific content in front of human eyes requires a strategy. Even if a photographer had a million followers on TikTok or Instagram they would only be getting that following because those platforms were able to monetize it for their bottom line. They are not pushing marginal content for no return. They aren’t going to be nice guys. One way or another they must be paid. 

Developing your style and subjects is important for staying power. Any one reasonably familiar with photography should recognize the works of Ansel Adams and Anne Geddes. They each have distinctive photographs. One would still have to decide they wanted a photo by one of them before searching out where to buy. Neither would have to reach out with marketing. 

Only someone who already owned a print would have a need to try to sell it and require extensive market presence. 

I dare say if you are reading this article you, like me, are not in that upper echelon of professional photographers. We continue to seek ways of having our work seen and desired. 

Our efforts can only be to be as prolific with showing our work as we are with obtaining it. Every opportunity needs to be taken while guarding against being too pushy and appearing spammy. 

Pushing our marketing out into public spaces: x, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, is perfectly legitimate. Doing the same in Facebook groups my get you blocked or sanctioned. If it is your own group of page, you can you whatever you want. Your only downside is the possible loss of followers/members.