From geek to online guru
By Tim Bradshaw
Published: January 1 2009 22:15 | Last updated: January 1 2009 22:15
A dyslexic web designer turns professional photographer and author. A call-centre operative becomes a fashion designer. A single mother goes from selling make-up on Ebay to launching her own beauty range and newspapercolumn.
All owe their change in fortunes to their popularity on social networks such as MySpace, YouTube and Flickr. People who in previous generations would have been no more than enthusiastic amateurs are turning professional by using self-publishing tools to achieve guru status within their fields.
Lauren Luke’s video tutorials about applying make-up to mimic stars such as Leona Lewis, Kylie Minogue and Britney Spears have been viewed millions of times on YouTube. As a result she was offered a beauty column in the Guardian newspaper and flew to New York before Christmas to begin designing a make-up range for Barry M, a cosmetics company, branded in her own name.
“It’s all been because of the YouTube exposure,” says Ms Luke, 27, who lives with her mother and young son in Newcastle.
“I could never have done this on my own – not where I’m from or what I look like, I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on,” she adds.
Ms Luke is yet to receive any cheques from the Guardian or Barry M, but earns money by sharing advertising revenues with YouTube.
Others are making substantial amounts from their presence on social networks. Kevin Meredith – better known to members of the Flickr photo-sharing site as Lomokev – estimates that a quarter of his annual income comes from photography, with almost £9,000 generated through Flickr, where he has more than 8,700 “followers”. And in September 2008 his first book, Hot Shots, was published by Rotovision, a Brighton-based publisher.
A freelance web-developer, he used his Flickr profile to attract work. But as his photos became popular in their own right, he began selling pictures and teaching photography courses. “A lot of my work comes from personal contacts and a lot comes through Flickr,” says Mr Meredith. “But agencies can show my work to [potential] clients very easily with Flickr.”
For instance, when pitching photography to Doctor Martin’s, the bootmakers, Mr Meredith was able to search the photos tagged with the keywords “shoes” and “feet” and e-mailed links to the pages rather than manually putting together a traditional “look-book”.
He takes photographs mainly using a Lomo LC-A, a cult point-and-shoot film camera known for its vivid colours and unpredictable results – a decision that meant he found a much more receptive audience on Flickr. “Lomokev is itself kind of a brand,” he says of his nickname.
Other entrepreneurs have fully embraced the new opportunities for self-promotion. Paul Griffiths already had 10,000 MySpace friends when he designed and printed his first 25 T-shirts to sell online. While working as a call-centre operator for an electricity company, he was in fact spending much of his time on MySpace. Less than two years later, the 21-year-old founder of Babycakes has gone on to sell more than £500,000-worth of T-shirts, hooded tops and badges. He now has 87,000 friends online.
“It really was social networking,” he says, “talking to people [online] and growing it naturally person-to-person.”
That personal touch has built a dedicated teenage following and also creates promoters who photograph themselves in Babycakes gear and post the images to their profiles. Babycakes now employs 10 people, has a shop in Manchester and runs club nights round Britain.
While many have claimed social networks profit unfairly from their members’ efforts, it seems the accusation could now be reversed.
The downturn has forced many to question the social networking business model. Brand owners have expressed discomfort at their ads appearing alongside user-generated content, while ad spending is down more generally. Emarketer, a research group, last month cut its 2009 forecasts for advertising spending on social networks from $1.8bn to $1.3bn.
As Babycakes, Lomokev and Ms Luke have shown, social networks can be powerful word-of-mouth marketing machines. But as social networking’s rapid growth continues, will the sheer volume of people online make it harder to stand out?
“If you were to come to Flickr now not knowing anybody, it’s hard to know how to get attention,” says Mr Meredith. “You’ve got to be patient.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
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