Carl Auer
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Upload & Sell: Off
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MaxPreps is not an answer for everyone. For me, I run my own site. I booster shoot for one high school and I cover football, Boys Basketball, Girls Basketball, all levels. Freshman, JV, and Varsity, and post them to my site. But, I usually end up with a lot of shots of the other teams too, but as a booster shooter I do not want to post them on "my schools" site. I had been contacted a few times by MaxPreps, but never really was interested, but then they wanted me to shoot the kick off of high school football (Alaska starts a couple weeks before the rest of the US) and were going to pay me for that game. So, I shot it, got a front page shot for a couple weeks with a link to my web page, and I start posting shots from the varsity games and parents from the other schools started buying. Not a lot, but for each game, if I got two orders from MaxPreps, it was two orders I would not have had if I did not post those shots. But, besides that, MaxPreps has really pushed me to watch my shots, and improve my shooting. Their workflow for size requirements, and mandatory strobing of indoor events, noise reduction and overall quality of shots really make me concentrate more, and honestly, it is no more work than I was doing before joining them, other than setting up a gallery and uploading the photos.
I have two stories that have come from MaxPreps. This last season, a parent walked up to me and handed me a letter her son got from a Division 1 school, not a top 25 school, not even a top 50 school, but still a D1 school. It stated that they were very interested in having her son come down for a visit to their campus, etc etc, and that they had become aware of her son and other Alaska players after going through the photo galleries on MaxPreps, and the shot of her son blocking a field goal attempt was amazing and the wanted that type of energy on their team. As of yesterday he signed a letter of intent and has a 2 year scholarship to the school. Before that he was planning on staying in state because no schools, even DII schools were really interested in looking at Alaska players. Turns out 5 other seniors were also contacted by this and two other schools after seeing photos and stats on MaxPreps.
Second story is shorter, but our main football field (most schools use this for their home field) hosts 2 to 4 games a day. 2 on Fridays, up to 4 on Saturdays. Our school was playing the second of 4 games on a Saturday and I showed up in the 4th quarter of the 1st game, and I had parents coming up to me asking me why I was not shooting that game, that they bought photos from last weeks game, and were really disappointed that I was not at this game. They all but begged me to start shooting their games on a regular basis too. As I left, I had parents coming in from the 3 game asking me where I was going, that their game is just about to start. So, MaxPreps has given me exposure to more potential clients than if I was just posting to my personal site for my school. It also helps that Eagle River and Anchorage are "military towns" and when new families move up, I hear, "Oh, MaxPreps is here too? They are huge in California...." Which helps traffic on my galleries.
Would I shoot only for MaxPreps? Sure, if they gave me $100 a game plus 80% of all sales. I could easily pull in $600 for a weekend before sales, and over a 8 to 10 hour shooting time, that would be up to $75 per hour, plus 80% of all sales. Not bad. But they don't pay that. I get one, maybe two games a season that they pay me to shoot, the rest I rely on sales, and a majority of my sales, over 95%, comes from my website, but I will not turn down that other 5% at all.
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Everyone's gotta do what they believe is in their best interest. But lemme toss out a couple of other things to consider that might fit with the direction this discussion is taking.
