About a year ago I deleted my Instagram; and it has been the best thing for my focus, my creative power, and happiness!
Let me try to give you some #realtalk
First of all, the truth is that Instagram is the most powerful platform right now for photographers, visual artists, creatives, etc. Facebook is essentially dead. Snapchat isn’t an effective place to share artwork. YouTube is still very good– but not the ‘ideal’ place to share photos. Flickr is essentially dead (recently got bought out by Smugmug). Tumblr is essentially dead. Twitter is kind of dead, and has never really been used by photographers.
So the sad reality:
If you’re a photographer, your only real ‘option’ to get followers, likes, comments, etc — is to use Instagram.
Trust me, after deleting my Instagram about a year ago, I have been SO MUCH HAPPIER, productive, and I’ve been so much more inspired in my photography! I realized that the algorithms behind Facebook/Instagram (Instagram is owned by Facebook, and oh yeah, Facebook also owns What’s app btw) was controlling too much of my thoughts, behaviors, and emotions.
I started to get suckered by the algorithm: I knew that if I wanted to maximize my own likes/follower count — I needed to post optimally only once a day, exactly at noon pacific time.
And even though when I deleted my Instagram I had around 50,000+ followers — I averaged between 1,000 to 2,000 likes per photo. But this was the funny thing:
When my baseline of a photo was 2,000 likes per photo, whenever I got anything less than 2,000 likes — I felt depressed!
Anchoring effects with social media/like/follower numbers
Why did this happen? Well, the psychological problem of ‘anchoring’. The idea is that once we get ‘anchored’ to a certain number (whether monetary, whether follower or like numbers, salary number, etc) — whenever we see that number go down, we get sad/anxious/depressed!
For example, as a thought experiment, let’s ask ourselves– who is ‘happier’?
Photographer Adam who starts off with 50 followers, and gets 1,000 followers in a month.
or
Photographer Betty who starts off with 100,000 followers, then a month later drops to 80,000 followers.
I would argue that photographer A (Adam) would be happier! Even though he has fewer followers than Betty! Why? The increase is what psychologically makes us happy — not the maximum sum of followers we have!
Anchoring in money/salary
Now this is super funny, because the same happens in money.
For example let’s use the same analogy — who is happier?
Adam who started off making $30,000 a year after graduating college, then gets a raise after one year and now earns $40,000 a year.
or
Betty who started off making $100,000 a year and doesn’t get a raise for 2 years straight.
Of course Adam would be happier! Why? He sees progress in his salary going up! Whereas Betty feels depressed, because she feels stuck (even though she makes way more money than Adam!!!)
Now taking it back to photography and social media/Instagram — we are happiest when we are getting more likes, more followers, etc.
But the thing is this — Instagram might end up being the next Xanga, LiveJournal, MySpace, the next Facebook, the next Flickr, or the next Tumblr (will eventually die/lose relevance). To be honest; I think Instagram will be around for at least another decade– but who knows whether Instagram will be around 20 years from now?
Then consider, you have 100,000 followers on Instagram 10 years from now (in year 2028). But, you must pay Facebook (who owns Instagram) $50 to “boost” your post, to access more of your followers! Imagine a world where you have 100,000 followers on Instagram, but whenever you post something, only 100 of your followers see your post (engagement levels are already that low on my Facebook fan page). What will you do? You’ll be screwed!
How does the Facebook/Instagram news feed algorithm work?
Buffer did a good blog post about the Facebook news feed algorithm (as of 2018) — which is essentially this:
If you want to maximize your views/likes on your content, you need to do the following:
- Don’t post too often (ideally once a day is best)
- Focus on posting photos/videos
- Comment a lot, or try to publish your material which encourages people to comment
- Single images get more engagement than albums
Essentially the algorithm is a game. You need to tweak the different variables to maximize your reach and “engagement”, which include:
- How often you post
- What time you post
- What kind of content you post
- What kind of caption you put in the post
The reason why I think this is bad for photographers/content creators/entrepreneurs, or humans:
We focus on maximizing our social reach and engagement numbers, rather than making personally-meaningful artwork, and it prevents us from innovating (because we become slaves to the Facebook algorithm).
Once again to remind you — Facebook bought Instagram a few years ago for $1 billion dollars. Facebook is starting to roll out more of their news feed algorithm to Instagram — which means over time, you’re going to get less engagement on your Instagram, and you’re going to have to pay lots of $$$ to access your followers.
To learn more about Facebook and their news feed algorithm, google: “Facebook F8“, which is their developer conference. Here’s a recap of Facebook F8 in 2017 or the Facebook F8 Wikipedia page.
Kind of a creepy innovation they’re working on:
Building 8 project aiming to allow people to type straight from their brain and hear through their skin – Learn More
Anyways, this is the trend:
Facebook wants to control all aspects of your social, online, and digital creativity life.
Which means less creative control for you!
The solution: Build your own website, blog!
The solution: make your own website, blog, and platform! Don’t build your own empire in quicksand, and certainly don’t become a digital ‘share-cropper’ (building your following and platform solely on Facebook/Instagram/YouTube/etc).
Essentially what you wanna do is this:
- Pay for your own website hosting: This can be via bluehost.com, 1and1.com, or any other online ‘hosting’ provider.
- Install ‘wordpress.org’ framework onto your provider. WordPress is the ‘backend’ or the ‘content management system’ — which allows you to post and upload your content.
- WordPress.org is the best, because it is ‘open source’, the dominant open source blogging/website platform, and has tons of free plugins, themes, documentation, etc.
- For theme, I recommend Genesis Theme: Best theme/frame, with lots of beautiful themes that work very well (this is what I currently use).
- As an experiment: spend an entire month NOT posting anything directly to Facebook or Instagram. Instead, post it to your own website/blog! Then you can share the link TO YOUR BLOG POST to Facebook, or share it with your friends via email.
If you’re curious, a website/blog is essentially the same thing (you can customize this on wordpress admin, to either make it more blog-centric, or more website-centric).
How to get discovered/get more views/followers/etc
As a practical tip, for your own sanity — DISABLE statistics! Ignore your view counts. Disable comments. This will be bad for your self-esteem. Just make stuff that you’re interested in, and share it on your blog!
Basic blogging principles:
- Don’t treat blogging too seriously: Make something 80% good enough and hit ‘publish’.
- There’s no such thing as a perfect blog post: Embrace this! I’ve written over 4,000+ blog posts from 2010-2018 on this blog, and I’m still learning!
- Make content you would like to consume: You cannot create content that will please everyone. Solution: Make stuff you would like to read!
- Pave your own path: There’s no right or wrong way to blog — just follow your own gut, and have fun with it!
Why not Squarespace or other website builders?
Squarespace is a good platform to make a website easily, but I’m a bit skeptical of it– because there is too much power and control centralized in their service. I also see theres gonna be less flexibility in their platform later on.
Censorship on Instagram/Facebook
When I had an Instagram, I uploaded the above picture, and got it removed because it didn’t fit the ‘community guidelines’ of Instagram/Facebook.
WTF?
Well — I get it. They saw a NAZI Swatstika photoshopped onto the KKK costume — and someone perhaps reported ERIC KIM as being some pro-nazi white supremacist.
Yet, I later uploaded this photo, and it was OK:
But the question is — why did I even upload that image?
I was trying to make a cultural critique/commentary in a POSITIVE WAY. I wanted to say:
Hey guys, let’s be careful to NOT allow another Nazi genocide from happening, especially in America! #antihitler
Which made me realize– there is no ‘freedom of speech’ on Facebook, Instagram, or pretty much any social media platform. Which is technically okay — because these companies are NOT benevolent governments which allow freedom of speech.
For example in America, you can say anything you want in the streets and NOT get imprisoned. However, you cannot say anything you want on Facebook or Instagram– because Facebook is a privately-held company.
Which makes me concerned with What’s App (was bought by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion dollars!!!) Don’t you think that one day, Facebook might start spying on your What’s App messages, or perhaps monitor/censor it (maybe one day)?
And isn’t it a bit concerning that Brian Acton (co-founder of Whats App) told us to #DeleteFacebook?
Solution: join SIGNAL (encrypted messaging system):
Other concerning news about Facebook/Instagram
Sean Parker (the guy who started Napster, and was also one of the initial investors in Facebook) spoke at an AXIOS event and said why Facebook was so addictive, and why they built it the way they did:
“We needed to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever… It’s a social validation feedback loop… You’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology … [The inventors] understood this, consciously, and we did it anyway.”
Dopamine is the little hormone that makes you feel good every time you ‘accomplish’ something which your brain perceives as positive — like leveling up in a video game, getting a business deal, getting a ‘like’ on your Facebook/Instagram post, etc. Social media has been wired to hack your brain– to make you more and more addicted to social media.
Also Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya admitted personal guilt on hacking human biases:
“I feel tremendous guilt. I think we all knew in the back of our minds—even though we feigned this whole line of, like, there probably aren’t any bad unintended consequences.”
He said that the “short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops” that Facebook enforces are “destroying how society works” — “no civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem—this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem.”
The biggest problem: we are getting socially programmed in a negative way:
Personally, Chamath says he avoids social media because he “innately didn’t want to get programmed” and his kids are “not allowed to use this shit.”
Furthermore, he suggested that it is often smart folks who get more easily programmed– because they think they’re too smart:
“Don’t think, ‘Oh yeah, not me, I’m fucking genius, I’m at Stanford. You’re probably the most likely to fucking fall for it. Cause you are fucking check-boxing your whole goddamn life.”
Chamath is now founder and CEO of ‘Social Capital‘ — seeking to use money to make a positive social change.
How to build your own website/blog
Okay, I’m getting off topic as always. Some resources for you:
- Start Your Own Photography Website/Blog
- PHOTOGRAPHY BLOGGING 101
- 50 Blogging Tips for Beginners
- Why You Should Make Your Own Photography Blog
Empower Yourself: Photography Entrepreneurship 101 >
Never stop innovating: “Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Photography Entrepreneurship“.
Tools to Invest In
Life and Productivity Hacks
- My Ultimate Productivity and Life Hacks
- Life/Productivity Hack: Write (Type on a phone) While Walking on a Dynamic Treadmill
- ERIC KIM Life, Creativity, and Productivity Hacks
How to Make a Living from Your Passion
- How to Be More Ambitious
- Do It Your Way
- How to Measure Your Progress as a Photography Entrepreneur + Come Up With New Ideas
- How to Make a Living From Your Passion in Photography
Put a Dent in the Universe.
- Fear Disguised as Reason
- Distraction is the Enemy
- Innovate for the Sake of Innovating!
- Reality is Malleable!
- Stoic Entrepreneurship
- Against Self-Preservation
- The Purpose of Life is to Make New Stuff!
How to Succeed as an Entrepreneur
- You Have No Limits.
- Calculated Risk-Taking
- Invest in Yourself
- The Secret of Happiness: Shoot for the Moon!
- Moonshot Thinking
- Why We Should all Be Photography Entrepreneurs
- Memento Mori Entrepreneurship
- Why it is Better to Beg For Forgiveness than Ask For Permission
- How to Become a Digital Nomad
- Why You Must Own Your Own Platform
- First Principle Thinking for Photography Entrepreneurs
- How I Became a Digital Nomad
- Better to Beg For Forgiveness than Ask For Permission!
- Spurn Pleasing Others!
- Create Your Own Niche
- How to Gain More Exposure For Your Photography
- Intense Focus
- How to Conquer Your Fears as an Entrepreneur
- Define Yourself
- Let Dissatisfaction Drive You Forward!
- It Doesn’t Matter if Someone Else Has Done it Before!
- How to Succeed as a Photography Entrepreneur: Be Extremely Resourceful
- Open Source Business Model in Photography Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurship 101: Growth and Innovation Over Self-Preservation
- How to Create Value as a Photography Entrepreneur
- Why Become a Photography Entrepreneur?
- Why You Must Ignore Nay-Sayers to Succeed in Entrepreneurship, Business, and Life
The Modern Photographer: Tips, Strategies, and Tactics to Thrive as a Visual Artist in the Digital Age
Marketing, Branding, Entrepreneurship Principles For Success
MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER is your new philosophical and practical primer to succeed as a modern photographer in today’s digital world.
Business Mental Models

- How to Succeed as a Photography Entrepreneur: Be Extremely Resourceful
- Open Source Business Model in Photography Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurship 101: Growth and Innovation Over Self-Preservation
How to Monetize Your Photography
- Photography Entrepreneurship 101: INFLUENCE
- Should I Monetize My Passion for Photography?
- 10 Practical Photography Monetization Strategies: Pricing, Google SEO, & Entrepreneurship
- How to Make Money From Street Photography
Why Become a Photography Entrepreneur?
Take control of your own photographic destiny:
THE MODERN PHOTOGRAPHER
- CREATIVE CAPITALISM
- How to Monetize Your Photography
- 5 Practical Photography Career Tips and Advice
- 10x Thinking
- How to Hustle as a Photographer
- How to Become Your Own Master Marketer
- The ‘T’ Technique of Success
- Go Ahead and Sell Out
- What is Your Unique Voice?
- Why You Must Self-Promote Yourself
- What is Your Unique Angle as a Photographer?
- Photography Content Marketing 101
- Why You Must Become Your Own Publisher
- The Art of Cross-Pollination in Photography
Photography Entrepreneurship Articles
- Why You Shouldn’t Trust Your Pictures to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Flickr
- How to Make Money From Your Photography
- Photography SEO and Blogging: How to Become Number One on Google
- Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation
- Now is the Best Time to Be a Photographer
- PRODUCERISM
- What Is The Value of a Picture?
- Your Photographic Labor is Not Free
PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOPS 101
- Chapter 1. How to Make a Photography Blog
- Chapter 2. How to Price Yourself
- Chapter 3. How to Find Your Market
- Chapter 4. Why Teach Workshops?
- Chapter 5. How to Build Trust
- Chapter 6. How to Market Yourself
- Chapter 7: Why Should Someone Attend Your Workshop?
KEYS TO SUCCESS
- Why You Must Be a “Personality” in Order to Succeed
- THRIVE OR DIE.
- Impatience is a Virtue
- Create Your Own Category
- HOW TO DREAM BIG.
- Will Not or Cannot?
- Why Not?
- How to Think BIG
- How to Stay Ahead of the Curve
- How to Invest in Yourself
- The Two Camera Rule
- MEANINGFUL DIFFERENTIATION
- Advice For College Students
- How to Thrive in Uncertain Times
- CANNIBALIZE YOURSELF.
- DO AND GROW RICH
- Does Fear of Punishment Hold You Back?
- HOW TO GET MORE FOLLOWERS
- How to Innovate
- How to Build Your Own Empire
- YOU ARE ENTITLED TO HARD WORK.
- PICK YOURSELF.
- OWN YOUR PLATFORM
- 10 KEYS TO SUCCESS
Table of Contents
Learn how to make a living from your passion:
- Preface. BRAVE NEW WORLD OF PHOTOGRAPHY
- Chapter 1. How to Create Value
- Chapter 2. ZEN CAPITALISM
- Chapter 3. Scarcity
- Chapter 4. How to Brand Yourself
- Chapter 5. How to Build a True Following
- Chapter 6. The Blueprint to Success in Photography
- Chapter 7. HOW TO BE BOLD
- Chapter 8. How to Sell Out
- Chapter 9. GO AGAINST THE GRAIN
- Chapter 10. EXTREME ABUNDANCE
- Chapter 11. Photography Experience Economy
- Chapter 12. Why You Should Make Money for Your Photography
- Chapter 13. How to Become a Famous Photographer
Photography Business 101
How to Make Money with Photography

- How to Charge More Money in Your Photography
- Why You Should Not Pursue Photography as Career
- Can Photography Make You Rich?
- How I Earn $200,000+ a Year From Photography
- How to earn $10,000 a month as a photographer
- Why you must be an expensive photographer
Photography Marketing 101
- Why Have More Followers?
- Why You Should Do Photography Work For Free
- How I Became an Internet Famous Photographer
- Photography Blogging Ideas
- Why You Should Promote Your Own Name
- How to Build a Following
- How to Stand Out as a Photographer.
- HOW TO GO VIRAL AS A PHOTOGRAPHER.
- How to Master Marketing
- How to Sell Yourself

How to Hustle.
- Entrepreneurial Advice to My 18 Year Old Self
- How to Become Insanely Productive.
- 5 Lessons From Hesiod on Hustling
Entrepreneurial Principles
- It is Better to Beg For Forgiveness Than Ask For Permission
- The Free Way to Become Rich
- JUST DO IT.
- 7 Steps: How to Make a Living From Your Passion
- How to Do What You Love for a Living
- How to Create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
- How to Fail Big
- How to Invest in Yourself
- How to Be Bold in Photography and Life
- Mission: Cover Your Rent and Food
- 1,000 True Fans
- The “10x Principle”: The Only Difference Between “Success” and “Failure”
- Make More Value Not Money
- We Live in a Photo Utopia
How to be a Full-time Photographer
- How to Make a Living From Photography
- The 3 Principles of Making Money With Photography
- Advice for Aspiring Full-Time Photographers
- Don’t Go Into Debt For Your Photography
- How to Brand Yourself as a Photographer
- Trust: The Most Important Thing You Need to Succeed as a Photographer
Photography Blogging
- How to become rich from photography blogging
- How to Make a Living with Blogging
- 50 Blogging Tips For Beginners
- How to Start Your Own Photography Blog
- A Photographer’s Guide to SEO, Blogging, and Social Media
How to Teach Photography
- How to Become a Photography Teacher
- How to Teach a Street Photography Class
- Why I Teach Street Photography Workshops
Social Media
- Why I Deleted My Instagram
- The Social Media Blackbook for Photographers
- Why Do You Need More Likes or Followers?
- Instagram is Going to Be the Next Facebook
- Don’t Trust “Free” Photography Social Networks