Many of my clients are celebrity gossip and entertainment bloggers.  The gossip niche has been our bread and butter for many years now.  We stumbled across the category by accident really.  It turns out that in 2006, there were a lot of high traffic gossip sites that needed real technical management in order to keep growing.  Now, the category is huge.

The biggest traffic drivers  for gossip and entertainment sites are photos.  People love to click through photos of celebrities doing everything from walking the red carpet to getting their morning Starbucks.

For your average work at home gossip blogger, getting licensed images legally was always a challenge. Photo agencies like x17Online, Bauer Griffin, Getty Images, etc. can charge thousands of dollars a month for a subscription.  Exclusive photos can cost 10 times that.  For years, that made the entire concept very cost prohibitive.

Sites that were able to generate enough advertising revenue were the only sites able to afford these fees (other than major media sites).

However, in the last year, the game has changed.  There are some affordable options out there.

The Game Has Changed

Photo agencies used to have a monopoly on the paparazzi style photo market.  That’s not the case anymore.  Virtually everyone in LA and New York has a camera with them 24/7.  It’s called a cellphone. [Read more...]