Chai Jijun: From photography enthusiast to “picture broker”

In late May 2012, pictures of the wedding held in the United States between Nanjing girl Ms. Chen and Facebook boss Zuckerberg, who has a net worth of US$18.7 billion, appeared on the Internet and received a lot of clicks in just 3 days. Just over 15 million people. The photographer of the photo, Zhao Mei, never dreamed that she would earn 100,000 yuan just by uploading it to a "picture bank". In fact, this is all the credit of "picture broker" Chai Jijun.

Mature opportunities in the Internet era

Chai Jijun was born in an intellectual family in Shanghai in 1974. After graduating from the Department of Journalism and Communication of Nanjing University at the age of 22, he worked in the photography department of "China Youth Daily" Worked as a photojournalist and photo editor.

Chai Jijun’s job is to process photos sent by express mail from photographers from all over the country every day. However, due to limitations in subject matter and layout, only one-tenth or even less of them can actually be used, leaving the rest are often thrown away because no one wants to keep them. Chai Jijun felt that it was a pity to do this. Maybe the editor of another newspaper was worried about the lack of these pictures!

As a photography enthusiast, Chai Jijun knows that it is not easy to take a set of good pictures. For example, for some works that reflect Western customs and beautiful natural scenery, photographers often have to climb mountains and even risk their lives. Danger is difficult for outsiders to understand. So, he tried to transfer some photos to colleagues in other media for use, and then mailed the royalties to the contributors. Although he was exhausted from "asking for trouble", Chai Jijun saw the surprise and gratitude in the letter from the author and felt that what he did was valuable!

One day in April 2000, Chai Jijun and Li Xueling, an IT reporter, were working together on a topic about Internet heroes such as Zhang Chaoyang and Wang Zhidong. While eating in the newspaper cafeteria, this colleague said to him: "People on the Internet burn money. How about we build a business that doesn't burn money and can make money?" Chai Jijun suddenly thought of recommending pictures to others. Because I am in the photography circle, I am very aware of the needs and pain points of the industry: on the one hand, it is difficult for authors to accurately find the right "in-laws" for their works, resulting in a large waste of photo resources; on the other hand, hundreds of newspapers, periodicals, publishing houses, etc. The photographers lack communication, and the editors are anxious and distressed every day for the lack of good pictures. Few media have established their own image databases, and the lack of intermediary service providers between photographers and image requesting agencies makes the efficiency very low.

Chai Jijun identified photos as a product that is very suitable for marketing on the Internet.

In fact, some people wanted to do the business of buying and selling pictures in the past, but "in the era before the Internet, the cost was too high." Chai said that before the emergence of the Internet, commercial creative pictures mainly relied on copying the main film and product pictures. News pictures mainly rely on a huge satellite transmission system. This channel is controlled by large organizations like Xinhua News Agency and Reuters. Only they can afford expensive satellite transmission royalties. The Internet has completely broken the monopoly of large institutions on the image market by digitizing images and easily uploading and downloading them.

Colleague Li Xueling agreed very much with his point of view, so the two began to write a business plan while looking for technology partners and financing.

“Pictures are coming”

Xiao Li quickly persuaded Chen Zhihua (now CFP Vice President) to join. On May 1, 2000, the website was officially launched. Li Xueling named it "Photoe", which means "pictures are here".

Like all entrepreneurs at that time, the three young people hoped to quickly obtain investment to expand their business. Initially, they found a traditional business owner in Shenzhen. This person was also a photography enthusiast and was very interested in the picture business. But when he explained this investment project to other shareholders, he unexpectedly encountered strong opposition. They said this is absolutely not possible. These two people have nothing yet. We have invested millions and still don’t have a controlling stake. Is there something wrong with our brains?

So, with only Chen Zhihua working full-time and Chai Jijun and Li Xueling working as ***, this small website still struggled to get started.

What’s interesting is that from the first day of its official launch, this photo trading website began to generate income for Chai Jijun and his photographer friends, and Sina became the first buyer of their pictures. One checkable data is that in the first month, more than 40,000 yuan of pictures were successfully sold. Soon, Sohu followed suit and became Chai Jijun’s client.

The inflow of large amounts of cash not only gave Chai Jijun hope, but also doubled the confidence of the photographers. Soon more than 50 professional photographers uploaded pictures to participate in the transaction, and within half a year there were 1,000 Many photographers came online to provide pictures.

In 2003, Li Xueling hoped to transform the company from a professional picture trading website into a picture community. He said that we should not care too much about the cost of renting several servers. Although this doesn't make money, it can make the company bigger quickly. Of course, there are still disadvantages, and everyone feels sad that it is “too expensive”! Seeing that his idea could not be realized, Li Xueling sold 10% of his shares to investors for US$100,000, and then switched jobs to NetEase as editor-in-chief.

After his good friend left, Chai Jijun, who had no hope of promotion within the system, made up his mind to resign from the company and devote himself wholeheartedly to growing the picture business.

“It’s like a company that picks up sesame seeds”

The most interesting recent incident is that on May 19, 2012, Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, worth $18.7 billion Ge, held a low-key wedding in his back garden. At that time, only 100 relatives and friends were invited. Everyone thought it was for his 28th birthday, but they didn't expect that it would be his wedding. Who is the bride? Everyone guessed that she must be a stunning beauty. It wasn't until Nanjing Xiaoya Miss Chen showed up that people discovered that she looked very ordinary, with dark skin and even a little fat. Zhao Mei, a Chinese girl present, immediately took pictures of her. Later, with the consent of the person involved, she uploaded several daily life photos she had taken of Ms. Chen to Chai Jijun.

Unexpectedly, after these pictures were adopted by major websites, the number of clicks exceeded 15 million in just 3 days. It is no exaggeration to say that the shock wave generated by this set of photos is far greater than that of a full-page newspaper report. There are quite a few Chinese and foreign media who purchased these photos online. In just three days, the author Zhao Mei earned 100,000 yuan. Maybe in a few days, a brand new BMW will be able to drive into your home.

“We are like a sesame-gathering company, picking up all the sesame seeds together.” Chai Jijun and his partners spent 12 years turning a small picture agency that most people look down upon. The business has become a high-threshold visual imaging data industry. He is even a little "arrogant": From 2000 to now, we have images of all important events in China and the world. Relying on the threshold of content accumulation, it will be difficult for latecomers to shake CFP’s leading position in this field.

Today, Chai Jijun’s company has grown to have more than 3,000 contracted photographers and artists, updating 2,500 pictures every day. In addition to 4,000 domestic newspapers, TV stations, advertising companies and websites as its customers, it also works with More than 100 overseas photo agencies and copyright agencies cooperate to sell images as agents. This little-known company in the past has now become the largest photo library in the country.

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Photography