If you’re a manager or a photo editor struggling to get a photo staff (especially a collegiate staff) to maintain a consistent approach to the metadata and upload tasks for your Fotobroker site, we have some advice for you.

• Make it Official – As consistent usage of your Fotobroker site yields both an excellent online archive and a revenue stream, we can say with confidence that it’s worth the time to do it. We’ve seen some papers get better compliance simply by writing the upload and archive process into the job description as a mandatory part of the responsibility. For college papers struggling with this, it’s worth noting that your photographers will likely be expected to archive (and probably upload for resale as well) once they get to a “real-world” newspaper staff.
• Set an example – Visible administration support for the site can go a long way… If you’re running a vigorous and consistent program of promoting your site, it’s harder for your staffers to “forget” about uploading and archiving tasks. A strong presence for the site internally (framed sample prints in your front office, for example, or coffee mugs for the receptionists) can make a big difference – for both “staffer awareness” and your sales.
• Share – Consider a “revenue share” with your photo department – as a fund for new equipment, for example – your staffers might be more willing to cooperate if sales from the site go toward a new camera or workstation for the department. We even know of a couple of papers that share revenue directly with the photographers.
• Taking Care of Business – Is the right person getting the ADMIN email from the site? Are they looking at the import reports to make sure all is well with your uploaded images? When was the last time you hung up some new prints or beautiful, glossy front page posters in the front office hallways? Or ran a new web ad? Tech support is free. Ask for help if you need it, because everything will be better if it works better. The papers that sell $10k in photos annually are the papers that have smoothly running reprint mechanisms.
• Recognize – These days, it’s a cause for some happiness if the paper sells a new classified ad, but a single 8×10” sale could easily generate twice that much revenue, so don’t forget to thank those shooters that are now helping to fund the department. It may feel a little contrary to longstanding editorial tradition at first, but the truth is that reprint sales are a service to the community, too. Besides, the fact that it’s now a widely-adopted revenue stream means that expectations from your business office aren’t going to go away, either, so maybe you can make it work to your advantage from a morale perspective.