The recession is coming! The recession is coming! The recession is coming?

Sounds like a war cry from the American Revolution or an old nursery rhyme about a little chicken and a piece of fruit. The truth is I don’t know if a recession is coming and, from what I’ve read, neither do the economists.

If a recession were to happen, what will it mean to advertising? Back in 2001 when we heard the cry of recession, advertising budgets dropped by almost 10% and internet advertising by a little over 25%. History has shown us that television and print ads are likely to be cut back first. I personally know commercial photographers that never recovered from the drop in assignment work and believe another recession would cause the assignments to drop even further. And, perhaps, the media that would feel the sting from the cut in advertising the worst will be the newspapers, which are already reeling from a drop in circulation (sorry guys).

So batten down the hatches, we may be heading for rough water! But, before we launch our proverbial life rafts, let’s ride the waves of opportunity. One of the greatest opportunities we have today is online advertising. Times are very different and more and more money is going towards internet advertising than ever before, resulting in a greater return on our clients’ ad dollar investment. And, to help get these ads noticed, are the SEO’s (search engine optimization) companies. These companies are growing faster than the national debt and are expert at expediting the visibility of these online ads.

As a designer you may consider developing more internet strategies for your clients. Become educated on SEO companies and how to help better position your customers’ advertising in the search engines. As a photographer I go back to what I have always said: you need to have multiple sources of income including assignment photography as well as numerous stock agencies representing your work.

Whether a recession is coming or not, we wanted to offer you yet another way to get your work noticed. This quarter we will be launching our new MYSpin Community and offering you a great way to advertise your services for free to over 1,000,000 people that buy or create commercial art. We’d love to hear your thoughts and welcome your feedback on our newest project as we enter into the beta testing phase: http://www.photospin.com/myspin-directory.asp.