Staying Savvy Series: Exposure, Baby! (part 1)

This is Number Seven in a series of posts, which will present some simple tools for protecting yourself from common mis-uses of your work. You can find the rest of the series over here.

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Exposure. It gets bandied about so much. “Contribute a project to our book. It’s great exposure for you.” “Write for our website. It’s great exposure.” “Enter our contest. It’s great exposure.”

Let me state right up front: I think that exposure is nearly always a good thing. If you have a small crafty business, you always need low-cost ways to get the word out.

But I also think that not all exposure opportunities are created equal. You’re a busy person, and you get offered a lot of “exposure opportunities.” So how do you tell the good ones from the not-so-much?

Here are some ways:

First, how much time/money/energy are you putting in? It’s no secret that exposure is often a trade-off for payment. These projects you do “for the exposure” always have a cost to them, however, so you’d be wise to evaluate that up front. How many hours will it take? What will you spend on materials? Travel? Meals? Shipping? There are so many hidden costs. Try to total them up realistically before you commit to anything. Make sure that the exchange is equal: the time and money you put in should equal the real exposure you get out.

Next, can the exposure be measured? When you’re offered an opportunity to do something “for the exposure,” it’s wise to ask: is there a way to tell just how much exposure you’ll get from this project? If you’re being asked to write for a website, for example, then you can find out about the site’s stats. If you’re being asked to contribute a project to a book, then you can find out how many copies the first printing will be. This gives you some idea of how many people you can reach, and whether the opportunity is worth the time and money.

If you can’t measure the potential exposure you’ll get from the project, you may want to be careful about how much time and money you put in.

Who’s offering the exposure? Behind every exposure opportunity is a company. It’s a good idea to do a little research into who they are. For example:

- Is the company large and established, or small and startup? A larger, more-established company naturally reaches more people. A startup company may not have much exposure potential, but may still be an exciting opportunity for other reasons.

- Who owns the company? If you contribute to an exposure project, you are in effect lending your name to the company sponsoring it. So make sure you know all about who they are. Dig around on their website, or if you can’t find this information there, try Googling the company’s name. Make sure you can honestly support any affiliate or parent companies that may be tied to the one offering you the exposure opportunity.

- How have they handled other exposure projects? See if you can find other books/websites/contests that this company has produced. Did they take good care of the people who contributed to these projects? Is the quality of the photography and writing good? Did each artist get full credit for their work, with proper links to their own websites?

In fact, if you can, contact some artists who’ve done exposure projects with this company and ask about their experience. Did they actually get good exposure for their time and money?

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These suggestions will hopefully help you decide whether an exposure-project is worth getting involved in. In the next Savvy post, I’ll talk about some ways to protect yourself from potential exposure-mishaps. Stay tuned!

. . . It’ll happen sooner than six months this time, I promise.