Where Photo Businesses Should Spend Their Advertising Dollars

As newspapers and magazines struggle to keep eyeballs from turning to the free world of the Web, more and more blogs are rising up to fill the niches once dominated by print. Despite the changing landscape, magazines are still able to command high advertising rates that blogs can’t match (yet).

Wanting to find out whether magazines or blogs provided the best bang of each advertising buck, photographer Trey Ratcliff recently spent $26,000 placing ads in three major photography magazines, comparing the results to his online affiliate ad returns. His conclusion?

If I was consulting for one of these product companies that puts significant funds into magazine advertising, I would challenge them to try something new for six months: Try taking 50% of that money and put it into several hundred blogs, podcasts and review sites and measure the results. Cut the worst performers and find new ones.

Only one of the three magazines actually made Ratcliff money (the other two lost over ten thousand dollars) — the one that included an online ad rotation as part of the package.

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