Survey on Collecting

There was a heated debate a while ago about limited editions, and there are also periodic discussions about other things that are important when selling photographs. So I thought it may be interesting to conduct some research into this. I've put together an online survey (http://www.ianleake.com/surveys/collectors.html) and I'd like to ask as many people as possible to fill it in. Hopefully this will help answer some of those questions. I'll publish the findings here on APUG in a month or so.

As an incentive, everyone who completes the survey will be entered into a draw: I'll send the winner a nice print. Of course I'll treat all information given as confidential and unless you opt in to further communications from me then you won't get any email, etc.

Many thanks for your help with this. If you've any questions then feel free to email or PM me.

Ian Leake said:

Many thanks for your help with this. If you've any questions then feel free to email or PM me.

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Ian, your first page breaks almost all known "phishing avoidance rules".

You should not ask fir this information, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who absolutely will not fill in this sort of info on an unsecure site (and only very reluctantly on a secure site).

I agree with Ole on this.


Bill

I'm not too worried about phishing in this case, but it does look like the sort of "survey" that's more about building a mailing list than it is about finding answers. Whether that's the case or not, the appearance that that's the case is going to be a turnoff for some people.

Fail!

First page turns me off completely.

David A. Goldfarb said:

I'm not too worried about phishing in this case, but it does look like the sort of "survey" that's more about building a mailing list than it is about finding answers. Whether that's the case or not, the appearance that that's the case is going to be a turnoff for some people.

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it's not that I suspect Ian of phishing, but the site is unsecure. And for that reason it can (and will) be "harvested", so I will not under any circumstance fill in page 1.

Woa - big over reaction Ole. "Phishing" is when you attempt to get someone's details (like bank accounts and passwords) for criminal purposes. That's a pretty strong accusation which I absolutely refute. And as for security, saying my site is "insecure" and open to "harvesting" is also pretty strong. Sure, I don't use https (neither does APUG) but all https does is to encrypt the traffic between the browser and server - it says nothing about security at the back end. "Harvesting" is when robots trawl through public web pages to collect data: data from this survey is not and will not be posted publicly - there will be nothing to harvest. The back end database is secure and the data won't be there long in any case. If you read the words on the page then you'll also see that it says, "All fields are optional," so people don't have to fill in something if they'd rather not do so.

Regarding a mailing list. Of course I would like a larger mailing list, and if people check the relevant box then they can opt in to that. But the default is to opt out - that's a more ethical stance than you'll find in many places. Some people who have filled in the survey have opted in, some have not. If anyone who has not opted in to follow-up communication receives so much as a single email from me then they are welcome to name and shame me in public.

What I want to achieve from this survey is to better understand the market for photographs. Do people prefer limited editions or open editions? Does it matter how a print is made? Is size important? How much do prints really sell for (as opposed to how much do photographers claim they sell them for)? Do photographers also collect prints? Questions like this regularly crop up on APUG and elsewhere. A survey is the best and most sensible way to get meaningful answers to this. As I said in my first post, I will share the findings here to benefit everyone.

Afterthought: Nothing is actually sent to the server until you press the "Submit Survey" button on the last page. So you can flip through the survey pages and look at the questions without filling in or sending anything.

A better solution may be to organise such a survey on this forum without requiring specific details such as name and addresses, with the result available to all.

I did complete the survey and included my name: anonymous comments carry little weight. As Ian says in his second post, we don't have to include any identifying data. I agree with David Goldfarb, the survey smells like commercialism. However, Ian's photographs have been an inspiration. Completing the survey is little compensation for what he has done for us.

can we use a fake name and info?