Photographers.com.au, a once-popular marketing directory for professional photographers, has broken down under the ownership of cheap on-demand photography platform, Snappr, which failed to support the website after its 2018 acquisition.
At the time of publishing Photographers.com.au, a kind of online ‘Yellow Pages’ for professional photographers, returns a blank page and appears to not be operating. Inside Imaging was alerted to the apparent shut down by professional photographer, Robert Monteleone, who claims Snappr didn’t honour his Photographers.com.au paid subscription.
‘As Snappr bought out Photographers.com.au, surely it is their responsibility to notify clients and advise them of what happened and refund fees charged for services not rendered,’ Monteleone told Inside Imaging. ‘I didn’t receive my full year of advertising that I paid for, as I am sure many others didn’t. The way the shut down occurred was unprofessional and shonky.’
Rory Daniel, another photographer impacted by the Photographers.com.au closure, claims he paid $384 for an annual premium listing in mid-2022, yet never received his service upgrade.
‘I paid $384 for a premium subscription. This should have placed my Photographers.com.au listing above non-subscribers in their listings,’ Daniel informed Inside Imaging. ‘This did not happen. My listing remained on page nine in their listings, and I couldn’t make any changes. I complained to Snappr, they seemed keen to help, but then stopped responding to me.’
On April 10 Melbourne photographer, Andrew Blyth, left a review on Photographers.com.au Facebook page noting the business is ‘non-responsive. They’ve taken my money, but gave nothing.’
And photographer, Ben Raynor, also left a review on Facebook in August 2022 stating: ‘There is absolutely no way to communicate with the site admin. They do not respond to phone calls, emails, messages or even the technical support requests through the site. Even the password reset does not work.’
Even way back in July 2021, Melbourne-based aerial photographer, Celia Furt, warned others via Facebook she paid a fee and applied to list her business on the website, then encountered ‘technical issues’. ‘I sent them several e-mails to solve these issues which haven’t been answered! I tried to call them, their phone was ‘busy’. Also, I sent them two DM [direct messages] on their FB page. NO ANSWER!!! What kind of business is that???’
Snappr hasn’t yet confirmed Photographers.com.au is shut down or what fate may lie ahead. Commercial photographer, Andy Railton, informs Inside Imaging he contacted Snapper a few weeks ago to find out what happened, but received no reply.
‘I had kept up a paid listing for a few years after we last spoke [in 2018], but I can’t be sure exactly when it expired,’ he said. ‘Or should I say, when the business and website of Photographers.com.au expired. I don’t recall receiving any correspondence advising of a planned closure. Unless it ended up in a junk mail folder. Who knows?
Inside Imaging is awaiting a response from the Snappr PR team. In the meantime, one photographer shared an e-mail exchange with a Snappr support team member, who admitted they were unable to ‘completely take over the website’ and were unable to ‘properly manage the users and its other features’.
But first some background.
Photographers.com.au served as a directory for professional photographers, who could pay monthly or annual subscription fees for a preferred profile placement to yield greater visibility.
Several photographers inform Inside Imaging the directory generated some genuine client leads. As Photographers.com.au had terrific Google Search indexing, one photographer used it solely as a tool to improve their website’s Search Engine Optimisation. It was by no means perfect, with plenty of poor-quality leads and time-wasters shopping around for cheap quotes. But thousands of photographers had a presence on the directory and found some value in using it.
‘Initially it [Photographers.com.au] was a really great way to get clients and referrals and I was on there for a few years,’ Melbourne photographer, Catherine Black, told Inside Imaging. ‘The person who was in charge of the photographers – David – was excellent at taking care of us. Then I believe he left – or it changed over and the communications became dismal.
Black is referring to David Lye, Photographers.com.au founder, who sold the business to Snappr in 2018.
Snappr is widely regarded as being harmful to professional photography, due to rock bottom pricing and low fees to photographers. Like other on-demand service providers, Snappr may be a good side gig for part-time semi-professionals, or photographers looking for quick work between jobs. But it disrupts the established photography market by setting unrealistic pricing standards for full-time photographers to compete against. And photographers have also reported that working for the Snappr can be a nightmare.
After the Photographers.com.au acquisition Snappr used the directory to advertise its own service, by including a ‘book instantly with Snappr’ button below the photographer profile search function. The cross-promotion was an awkward fit, with the on-demand photography service essentially competing with the directory’s paying customers.
‘I am assuming Snappr shut down Photographers.com.au only because they purchased the platform, and it was in direct competition with their “usual” business model,’ Monteleone said. ‘If this is not the case, then it is strange, as Photographers.com.au ran well for a number of years without any issues that I am aware of prior to the buyout.
‘Up until Photographers.com.au abruptly shut down without any notice, my personal experience was very positive. I liked the user interface of the website and they genuinely represented professional photographers. Pricing was not mentioned! I received regular quality leads from potential clients. The website also ranked very well in Google.’
Snappr’s broken promise
Snappr founder, Matt Schiller, vowed to improve Photographers.com.au after his start-up acquired it.
‘We are already in the process of putting in place even better customer support for the Photographers.com.au platform, and users can expect to see shorter response times for any customer service enquiries,’ he told Inside Imaging. ‘Snappr has always been know for impeccable customer service and operations, and this is something we are really looking forward to bringing to Photographers.com.au as well. But more importantly, we are already in the process of bringing our team’s design and technical skills to bear on the site, and in just a matter of days, users will see a much improved and more modern site design that better showcases their portfolio photos, experience and much more.’
This didn’t go to plan. The platform slowly fell apart following the acquisition. Two photographers report that customer support offered no solutions when primary features stopped working, and eventually they became unresponsive.
Black was ‘unable to get my reviews posted; if anyone sent a quote request, I was not notified; the paid subscription listing was moving around all over the place’.
‘I contacted [them] quite a few times via email – only way to get in touch – but the replies were few and far between – if not, none at all after 1 or 2,’ she said. ‘So I gave up.’
Daniel was also frustrated by the inept customer support, as well as paying for services that didn’t work.
‘My gut feeling is that when Snappr took it over they lost the ability to manage the site. But they kept taking subscriptions – ones they couldn’t support,’ he said. ‘The customer support team were enthusiastic and motivated to help, but I suspect management told them not to engage, and the customer support went silent. Then Photographers.com.au stopped working around the same time. I assumed they messed up the site while trying to fix it. It never came back on line.
‘I ran out of options, so I gave up chasing Snappr for a refund. They clearly weren’t going to support me.’
Did Snappr even ‘complete’ the take over?
Daniel’s speculation stems from an e-mail exchange with he had in mid-2022 with Snappr Support Team Lead, Marcel Lawrence, regarding his paid subscription profile issues.
Lawrence told him that the Snappr engineering team ‘did some digging and they uncovered multiple failure points after the migration’.
‘One being the password reset emails failing since December of last year,’ Lawrence said in the e-mail. ‘We suspect it is an issue with the integration with Mailgun (an email service provider) which we currently do not have access. The team is still currently investigating and is trying to find ways to completely take over the website and properly manage the users and its other features, which, admittedly, Snappr hasn’t really checked in a while.’
On September 21, 2022, Daniel responded stating he ‘noticed that the site no longer works’.
‘It [Photographers.com.au] hasn’t since last Thursday,’ Daniel e-mailed Lawrence. ‘I assumed it was a temporary glitch while the engineers put the finishing touches on their fixes – but it has been a week now. The site has also fallen out of the Google search listings.’
Lawrence, who still works at Snappr, didn’t reply to Daniel’s follow-up e-mail, or several others with the photographer requesting a refund.
It’s alarming that more than four years after the acquisition, Snappr had seemingly just discovered glaring errors with controlling Photographers.com.au, with Lawrence admitting a lack of interest. Yet Snappr continued charging photographers to use the broken service.
It’s possible Snappr never completed a full ‘take over’ to fix various issues. And with all hope less, it as opted to abandon the business. It’s an embarrassing outcome that may explain why it’s unresponsive.
It’s worth noting that four out of six photographers with premium listings were unaware Photographers.com.au wasn’t working when Inside Imaging contacted them. Since Snappr’s acquisition their listings progressively had less impact. Black noted Snappr randomly stopped billing her card a while ago, and others hadn’t bothered cancelling their memberships.
I once wrote an article about snappr on my WeddingSnapper site and since google gets a bit confused between the two business names I get several phonecalls a month asking ‘Where are you?’ or ‘What time is the photographer arriving, he’s late?’
I always had a good idea of what their business was like but the regular phonecalls confirm it.