Three months ago, we decided to take Photography Life in a different direction. At a time when most websites shove increasingly aggressive ads into people’s faces, and many replace good writers with AI-generated garbage, we removed all third-party ads from Photography Life and invested even more in our articles.
Prior to making this change, about 80% of our yearly income was from ads (with most of the remainder coming from affiliate links). I don’t know who even clicks on advertisements, but somehow, they generate enough income to comfortably run a site as big as ours. It was very difficult to stomach turning off that revenue stream.
Still, it was even harder to watch our high-quality articles and reviews be displayed side-by-side with weird ads for diets, home refinancing, and whatever Temu is cooking up these days. Our website felt like it was turning into a spam page that loaded three times as slowly as it should. Photography education is already in a state of decline today, and we didn’t want to contribute toward that.
What were the alternatives? As useful as affiliate links are, that alone isn’t big enough to cover all our costs. Launching a product was a possibility, but we didn’t have anything ready immediately; our last big products were our photography video courses, which we already released for free during the pandemic. Most of all, we didn’t want to lock Photography Life’s wealth of knowledge behind a paywall. To me, that would be even worse than ads.
After extensive discussions with Nasim, the two of us decided to start selling a combination of things – personalized instruction, behind-the-scenes posts, early access to our lens tests, and other benefits like that. This would allow the most dedicated Photography Life readers to get more out of our website, without reducing the amount or quality of articles for everyone else (and actually increasing it).
With this in mind, we turned off ads at the start of 2024 and launched our Member Page a couple weeks later. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done, a step into the unknown with no real way back.
Now, three months later, I am thrilled to say that we have reached the landmark of 1,000 Photography Life Members as of today! Not all of our Members are part of our paid Silver or Gold tiers, but even our Free Members are supporting Photography Life and helping us reach more visitors. We’re now in the top 10 biggest photography pages on all of Patreon and continuing to climb.
Today’s article is just to say my sincere thanks. It means a lot to know that we could switch away from the ad-based approach and have over 1,000 readers follow. Perhaps fewer people read blogs these days, and not as many cameras are sold as they were ten years ago, but you all make up for it with dedication.
I’m working on a variety of Member Page projects right now, including the first of our Online Workshops and the option to buy a yearly subscription at a discount (rather than monthly). I had hoped to time the launch of our yearly membership to coincide with our 1,000th Member, but Patreon is making us jump through a few more hoops before yearly is an option. I’ll enable it as soon as it’s available on our end.
Anyway, if it weren’t for the support from our readers like you, we wouldn’t be able to continue this experiment at all. Thank you for sticking with us! Photography Life has some really exciting days ahead, and I hope you’ll look forward to it as much as I do.
A year or two ago, I e-mailed you that I could not support you by reading all the ads. I told you that I would much rather subscribe directly and requested that you have paid subscribers. I am so glad that this is now the case.
I remember that! And you weren’t the only one who asked for something similar.
Subscriptions probably will never catch up to ads in revenue, but at least they’re not dragging down the site. And it opens the door to related projects down the line. I think the Online Workshops will be pretty popular once we launch them, for example.
Congratulations Spencer and the whole PL team!
Thanks, Darin! It’s been a really exciting year so far, and a lot more to look forward to soon.
This is a (growing) club I am happy to pay to be in! Keep up the good work.
We’re glad to have you there, thank you, Glenn!
I’m in and have been Spencer from the Life Member launch. I still don’t know exactly what or who Patreon is or why I get related photography transmittals from them (parent company?). All I am looking for is just your enduring PL posts and most helpful information.
Nice! As for Patreon, it’s basically a platform on the internet that allows people to become paid or free members of this site, which support the articles, tests, videos, etc. that we publish.
Thanks much Jason for the clarification!!
Good for you! How can you contribute to the community without paying?
Join the free Patreon and comment there. Commenting on our articles here also helps and of course, sharing any article you find interesting (by social media or friends) will also help too. Subscribe to our YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@Phot…ifeChannel) is another possibility! All of these help a lot.
Photography Life and DP Review are clearly the most informative photography sites.
Spencer I love your reviews , travel related stories and your excellent photos.
Hey Michael, thanks so much for saying so!
My most favorite site on photography with the most useful tips, suggestions, and the best reviews. I am looking forward on how you all will develop the site further !
Thank you, Michael! We’ll keep improving it at every opportunity.
Greatest photography related site on the web.
That’s our goal every day — it means a lot to hear it from you, thanks Liam!
Que boa notícia! Sou membro do canal (gratuíto) e sempre é uma boa notícia a evolução das coisas. Acompanho o empenho nas melhorias e decisões difíceis que tiveram que ser tomadas nesses últimos anos. Sou brasileiro e a nossa lingua mãe é o português o que me impede de assistir vídeos em função da falta de tradução. Em relaçãos aos valores, como nossa moeda é extremamente desvalorizada em relação ao dólar e euro também torna dificil arcar com os custos dos cursos, mas parabenizo o canal pela iniciativa de colocar conteúdo relevante à disposição em contrapartida aos conteúdos de baixa qualidade disponíveis hoje na rede.
Obrigado pela seu commentário! Você pode inscrever para nossa Patreon com o nível gratuito e é muito útil se você deixa commentários caso você goste de nossas artigos. Sim, o real brasileira é desvalorizada. Infelizmente, o governo do brasil insiste manter regras que são boa pra os ricos aqui. Continue fotografando!
Photography Life team. Congratulations on your success but an observation and suggestion.
Observation. I visit the site several times a month, sometimes several times a week. This is the first I have heard of your Photography Life member program. I went back and looked at your links for “Subscribe” and “Support Us”. Neither mentions this program. I do see an ad, one referring to “Photography Life Unfiltered” and another referring to “Make Every Hour Golden.” Given all the junk on some websites, I almost always ignore any ads I see on a webpage unless it contains a specific offer (e.g. buy the NAD ___ amplifier for $___ today) for something I have an interest.
Suggestion. Whatever is the name for the program, place a link to that on each webpage. Separately, currently you have the “Photography Tutorial” section on each webpage. Create something like that that outlines the benefits of your program. “NEW: JOIN PHOTOGRAPHY LIFE’S _______ PROGRAM TODAY. SILVER MEMBERS RECEIVE: ________________. GOLD MEMBERS RECEIVE ALL SILVER MEMBER BENEFITS PLUS: ______________. A link to the agendas for past workshops would help highlight the value of these benefits.
I think you’re right, we should be a little clearer about it. Maybe we could add a short note beneath our articles describing the Member benefits, as long as we can strike a balance between informing people about the page without being too obnoxious about it.
Spencer, Signed up for Gold (different email) and looking forward to the workshops! Would love to see a review by Photography Life of the Panasonic S5 II and/or IIx. Like what those cameras offer on the video side but am still uncertain about the quality of their output for photos (particularly landscapes and portraits).