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Please!
Before you ask this question, would you just take a moment
to think.
Most
of the time, I am invisible to all in Ross-on-Wye except
dogs and Jehovah's Witnesses. When it comes to promoting
local events however, or showing how well they went afterwards,
suddenly I find that all doors are open.
Now,
I realize that this is human nature and bound to happen
and I accept it happily. After all, promoting the beautiful
market town of Ross-on-Wye was the reason I started Wyenot.com.
I would however, just like to point out one small matter
. . .
When
I attend an event and take photographs, sometimes for
as long as eight hours at one event and during holiday
weekends, sometimes as many as six events in one day spread
over a distance of twenty miles and rarely in running
order of one to the next closest, I get paid the grand
sum of £zero. This weekend just past - I photographed,
two artists in Ross Library, The Sheepdog Trials, a concert
in St Mary's, Civic Sunday at Council Chambers followed
by St. Mary's and the Ross in Bloom Awards. I spent roughly
six hours in bed and two hours at home on each day - during
which I worked on preparing the photographs for the Ross
Gazette and this week's Wyenot News.
This
web site has a few advertisers who pay me £45 per
year, bringing in a total amount which does not even cover
the cost of the petrol I use to travel to half a year's
worth of the various events I cover. The only way I make
any money at all is by selling to the printed media one
or two of the photographs I take at each event, and from
the few prints I sell.
Wyenot.com
brings thousands of tourists to the area every year and
takes 100% of my time seven days per week to keep going.
The amount I receive for bringing this prosperity to the
area, from either County or Town Council is again, £zero.
Although I generally find Ross Town Council to be a good
council, earlier this year I wrote a letter to the Ross
Town Councillor in charge of tourism (a councillor who
was all too willing to be in the photographs I took of
'Civic Sunday' yesterday) asking for some support with
my Wyenot.com venture - not money - just support. My letter
was not even granted the courtesy of a reply.
The
good thing is that all of those who currently advertise
with me have made their £45 back within days (minutes
in some cases) and slowly, the word is beginning to spread
that advertising on Wyenot.com really does work. I do
see a bright future for Wyenot.com, where I may even be
able to get paid for some of the average 5,840 hours I
have spent working on it every year for the past five
years. If more local businesses eventually come on board
with a £45 page, it will certainly help their respective
businesses and I may even eventually be able to cover
my own costs and begin to 'earn a living'.
Before
you ask the most frequently asked question I am asked,
'Would you put those photos on a CD for me?' Please bear
in mind that I may have earned ten quid for selling one
photo which took eight hours to take. I freelance for
the Ross Gazette and do not get paid a salary. Before
you then add the suffix, 'But our event was for charity',
please remember that - so were the other six hundred events,
whose organizers recently asked the same question.
I
am really not griping here - just trying to put across
the reason I cannot afford to do it. I am not a materialistic
person - far from it! When I am earning enough money to
survive and pay back some of the money my family has bailed
me out with, I will willingly give to certain charities
but, until then, I am afraid that charity, by necessity,
has to begin at home.
A.J.W.
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