KEYS TO SUCCESS / PHOTOGRAPHY ENTREPRENEURSHIP 101 BY ERIC KIM
Ok, we already know the middle class is dying. We are heading to a dystopia society: hyper rich, and the poor.
Jaron Lanier’a book: “Who owns the future?” is a good look into the future: the poor will have free internet and internet devices. We will essentially have a dystopia future, where the poor are mindlessly passive (kind of how so many people play fucking stupid clicking smartphone games, that are “free” in the app store).
Then you got the rich, who are accumulating more wealth. If you’re already rich, you have a huge snowball. And the snowball works to get bigger and bigger with gravity going downhill. If you’re rich, wealth is not an issue. You just invest in real estate, and you have enough “residual income” to keep you in your high castle.
Then you got the entrepreneurs out there (like you and me) who refuse to become slaves to the system. We fight hard to make money and use money as a tool to buy our freedom.
Troubling trends:
Amazon offers a discounted Prime subscription only to the poor. Instead of $10 a month, with a governmental ID (proving your poverty) you can get Amazon Prime only for $5 a month.
This means: The poor will become slaves to Amazon prime. Unlimited free entertainment, movies, games, apps, etc.
As for the rich, of course they will keep buying expensive shit.
The passage from the poor to the rich
True story: I grew up poor, yet have become rich within just one generation. I can afford to buy a digital medium format camera ($7,000 USD). I will probably buy one used, but I’ve learned,
When you got money you wanna spend it.
So in terms of a consumer base, you got all these “new rich.” We are the new rich who buy Porsche Panamera / Macan cars, Gucci handbags, Bang and Olfusen speakers and headphones, and digital Leica cameras.
Practical Advice
If you want to be a photography entrepreneur my suggestion:
Cater to the rich, or the poor.
Catering to the rich: offer exclusive, limited edition, bespoke (custom, one of a kind) products and experiences.
Catering to the poor: offer “free” content (YouTube, blog, etc) and make money via advertisements.
For myself, I hate advertising. So I choose to cater to individuals with high net worth.
Ignore me.
Of course, this is all just ERIC KIM ECONOMIC THEORY. I’m probably wrong. But still, all the evidence and facts and trends I see tend to confirm my thoughts.
Death of the middle class
If I’m middle class, my wages are stagnant. More automation is happening, which means my job as a financial accountant is gonna be lost to some financial computer algorithm program.
Consultants will probably be a thing of the past. Why need a consultant when you can have IBM “Watson” super computer to analyze your “big data” to give you “data driven” advice for your company?
As for the poor, McDonald’s is replacing their workers with kiosks. Amazon bought Whole Foods, and will probably automate their checkout with self-checkout kiosks.
Even robots are staring to package products. All Amazon warehouses will probably be automated by robots.
Walmart will probably die. Why go to a store to buy something, when I can have it delivered to my house in 2 hours?
More young men are living in their parents basements, playing video games and watching Netflix. They have no motivation to “get a job”, certainly not building their own business.
Conclusion
Apologies for this disjointed essay.
To sum up:
- Middle class is dying.
- Don’t price your photographic services as a “middle price.” For example, either charge $5,000 USD for a wedding, or do it for free (to build up your portfolio).
- If you want to monetize your photography website or blog, either make money by advertising, or charging a LOT of money for your products.
- Good future market for limited edition art (A Basquiat painting sold for $100 million dollars recently).
- Blog for free, but advertise your own curated photography experiences, as I do.
BE STRONG,
ERIC
KEYS TO SUCCESS / PHOTOGRAPHY ENTREPRENEURSHIP 101 BY ERIC KIM