5 Ways To Boost The Most Important Page On Your Photography Site

What’s one of the most important pages on your website?

Your home page?

Your gallery section?

While they are all important in creating your overall brand, there is one page that stands out above the rest, and has the most impact in converting a complete stranger into a potential prospect. Yet its also one of the pages we think the least about, and throw up more as an afterthought.

It’s the About Us page.

Statistics continually show your About Us page is the second most trafficked page on your site. Yet if it’s just a few bullet points, a few sentences that give basic information about you, it’s also the number one page that is holding you back.

Your About Us page should be used to sell who you are and what you can do. And while that sounds easy in theory, statistics also show its one of the most difficult pages for people to write. There’s something about “tooting your own horn” that people simply find impossible. They consider it bragging. And therefore they write up a few sentences and leave it at that.

Having trouble writing up your own About Us page?
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Adding The Pizzazz To Your About Us Page

1. Start with a story. Every business started with one late night idea that built up because of passion. Every photographer loved the art of photographing, and somewhere along the way decided to turn it into a business. People love to hear that story. They love to know what was “the moment” for you, and what persuaded you to take action and create the business you are in today.

2. Who else loves you? Over the years, you’ve accumulated awards and accolades. Now is the time to share them with the world. Whether it’s a degree in photography, finishing a week long seminar and training session in Italy, or a 1st place award from the county fair, that’s you starting point. That’s why you are doing what you do today. And someone else has appreciated what you do as well.

3. Say it with a photograph. I’m always amazed at the number of photographers who don’t like to have their personal image showcased on their websites. Why? Be creative with it. Showcase your personality. Create an image that you’ve always dreamed of creating with your clientele. And use it on your site, and throughout your social platforms.

4. Use different media tools. The great thing about the online world is you have a variety of tools available to you to enhance your look and feel. Use them all to showcase what you do. Animoto, YouTube, SlideShare, Photoshop and others offer you amazing tools to create a variety of ways to showcase your talents. Don’t be afraid to use this new technology to make them say “wow”. (example)

5. Ask for comments. Instead of telling people about you, ask your current customers what they think. Then use those in your About Us page as well. Chances are they can say it better, and your prospects will completely relate to what they have to say about who you are and what you offer.

Bottom Line: Online or off, the ultimate job of self-promotion comes down to us, the business owner. If you can’t toot your own horn and make yourself stand out from the competition, it’s that much harder to convince people to use you as their photographer. Its your time to shine. What’s holding you back?

Promote yourself with a new About Us page today >>

More Than 3 Packages Could Ruin Your Photography Business

The human brain is an amazing thing. We can learn everything from a foreign language, to complex scientific formulas. Every day can be filled with the excitement of learning something new.

 

But if you think about how you learn things, chances are you learn a small part of something in one day, and quickly begin to block other things out. That’s because we learn in short bursts. If someone is talking, we tend to retain less than 20 percent of what was said. That’s why in training programs you’ll hear the same things again and again, trying to make the most important items stick with you.

 

 

No matter how much a person is interested in your photography, after awhile they’ll begin losing attention, and getting lost in your words. It’s not they aren’t interested; you’ve just reached their retention point. So if you have a huge pricing structure that takes several minutes to go through, they’ll retain the first minute or so, and be completely lost after that.

 

Instead of creating a long, complicated package list, keep it simple. Present everything you do in three clear ways. Don’t have multiple packages where each package increases slightly in price with just one or two difference. Make them distinctly different, and make it clearly obvious that you get a better deal by moving to the next package.

 

In my Pricing Guide I talk at length about building packages for you, not for your client. The ultimate goal of a package isn’t to give your client a good deal (though they ultimately do), the goal is to get you the sales you need for your business, and the profit you need to stay in business.

 

By sticking with three packages, your client won’t lose interest as you talk about each one, and they won’t get confused over the differences in each package. Make each package distinct and stand alone. You should never have to think about the differences – they should be obvious. You should also concentrate on making your middle package being the best – the package you would love to sell again and again to every client. Because ultimately that’s what you’ll do. People love the middle – the smaller one seems too “cheap” and the higher one seems a little “extravagant”. Which means the middle one is “just right”.

 

If you sold 100 packages over the next few months, 10 at the bottom level, 10 at the top, and 80 in the middle, would that make your business? If the answer is yes, then you’re on your way to creating perfect packages.

Create A Photography Business Checklist To Help Start Your Dream Business

Create A Photography Business Checklist To Help Start Your Dream Business If you’ve been thinking of starting your own business for some time now, the easiest way to get started is to begin with a photography business checklist. This list will provide you with the details of what it takes to get started, and give you a something that makes the tasks seem more doable.

So, if you’re ready to move forward in photography, where do you start? What are the most important steps to consider when starting a photography business?

1. Start by defining the type of photography you choose to offer your clients. Everyone has a different reason for becoming involved in photography. Some love working with babies and children. Some prefer working on location with families and pets. Some love commercial work, and making products come alive. Some find passion in creating wedding photography.

While many photographers choose multiple specialties, keep in mind that any one of these can make a lucrative career. The more passion you have in your chosen line of photography, the easier it is to promote your work, and get known within your specialty.

2. Establish your business identity. Once you decide on your specialty, use that specialty to identify your name and your brand. While some photography studios are named after the business owner, others use a more generic name. A name is a personal choice. But above all, make sure your name speaks to your desired clientele.

3. Decide what resources you need for your business. Do you need a commercial location for a studio? Will you work out of your home? What type of camera equipment will you need? While a start-up business shouldn’t invest in extravagant equipment, you should purchase enough equipment to sufficiently do your job, and to have backup equipment available at all sessions.

4. Decide what vendors you will be using for your business. A photography studio needs a variety of services, including a professional photography lab, album companies, framing companies, office supplies, and production supplies.
An easy way to find many of these vendors is to attend a photography expo. There are many local, regional, national and international expos available to the professional photographer, including Professional Photographers of America, and Wedding & Portrait Photographers International. And sign up for newsletters at places like VirtualPhotographyStudio.com to stay on top of some of the newest and most exciting trends.

5. Join professional organizations to network with like-minded individuals. There are a variety of professional photographer organizations. It’s also important to join organizations in your community, such as entrepreneur groups, networking groups, and chamber of commerce’s. All can provide you with invaluable resources.

6. Market your business to prospective clients. Every business needs customers to survive. Top priority for any new business is to bring in new clients not only to establish yourself as a business, but also to begin making a profit for your business.

7. Add your own goals to your photography business checklist. Provide specific goals that will help you realize your dream. Add things like “quit full time job in October” to help motivate you to take action on your ideas.

Helping your photography business, how to start a photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Using Your Photographs The Right Way In Your Blog

Do you blog on a regular basis? One of the things I love about blogging is how easy I can share information with readers. But that doesn’t mean I only think about the text. I also think about the structure of the post as well. While my ultimate goal is to write quality content for my readers, there’s nothing wrong with attracting a little Google attention as well.

As a photographer, you should be inserting at least one photograph in every post you do. And when you insert a photograph, you need to make sure you do it in the right way, and use these three steps every time before you hit the publish button.

18 Reasons Why They Leave Your Site In Under 10 Seconds

Have you ever entered a site and you can’t hit the back button fast enough? Something about the page is an instant turnoff, and you back out or get out of the browser window as fast as possible.

I did that this morning when I entered a new page from an email I received. And it got me to thinking about all the reasons a site doesn’t work. And by understanding what doesn’t work, you can reassess your own site, and determine what you can do to make it work – to make it more attractive to the people that are coming there for the very first time.

1. Autosound. This is what got me this morning. I entered a page and started looking around, and a voice started to talk with music in the background. The only problem was I couldn’t find where it was coming from – no audio or video button was noticeable on the page, so I had no way of turning it off. I backed out of the page as fast as I could. I work from a home office, so sound doesn’t really matter. But imagine if I would have been in a busy office. That sound – whether its voice of music – would have made me hit “delete” even faster.

2. Popups. Popups are a dying breed, but they are still around and visible on some sites. I don’t mind an occasional popup asking me to sign up for a free report – once. What really bugs me (and a lot of other people too) is when the popup appears again and again, every time I click to a new page. I get it – you want me to sign up. But that’s not a way to motivate me to the next step.

3. Slow load times. Everyone online has what I call online-ADD. If something doesn’t happen FAST, we move away. We won’t wait 15 seconds for a photograph to load – it’s either there now or I move on. If you load more than thumbnails, or have a slow server, you risk losing your best customers.

4. No purpose.

What Photography Task Are You Doing Every Day?

So you want to be a full time photographer – what have you done in the past week?

Human nature has us doing the things we love, and avoiding the things we don’t.

If we hate sales, we’ll let the customer control the entire buying process.

If we hate networking, we’ll wait around for the phone to ring.

The trouble is, as a business owner, you can’t wait for things to happen, or you won’t be in business for very long. You have to control the situation, and make sure everything comes to you.

So my question to you is, “what have you done in the past week?”

To find out, take out a notebook and record everything you do this coming week. Don’t leave anything out. Even if it seems trivial, write it down. You may find things like:

• answering email – 30 minutes
• shopping for camera equipment – 60 minutes
• surfing websites – 60 minutes
• photoshopping sample photographs – 50 minutes
• talking on phone – 45 minutes
• buying office supplies – 50 minutes

· and so on

Now that you have your list, what does it say about your business? Are you doing things to grow your business, or just plain busy work?

While you do have to spend time on the above mentioned items, if your entire week looks like that, you’re not accomplishing goals that will grow your business. You should have things like:

• networking function – 90 minutes
• mailing postcards – 45 minutes
• cold calling – 30 minutes
• blogging and Twittering – 30 minutes per day
• trade show booth – 1 day

Most of your time should be devoted to revenue earning tasks – or your business will no longer exist in a mere few months.

Now that you’ve seen what you’ve been doing with your week, try and write goals for the following week. Change your tasks to revenue tasks – and stick with it. Your business will thank you.

10 Things You Never Want To Do With Your Online Photography Portfolio

As a photographer, your most important marketing tool is your online photography portfolio. On your website or your blog, this is what’s going to showcase your work, and get you hired. Yet I see mistakes all the time. And I have a ton of questions like, “Why isn’t my site getting any traffic?” and “Why aren’t people contacting me online?” Here are 10 mistakes I see frequently – do you see yourself here?

1. Enter Page
Do you really need to divide up your site, and dedicate one whole page to making your visitors choose? If they type in your URL, they want to see your site. They want to start learning about you immediately, not have to decide if they want to visit your Flash site, Mobile site, Fast site, Slow site, Blog, Flickr portfolio, etc. Yes, you can weave things into your site, and have things on the side of your content that allows them to navigate elsewhere. But don’t make your first impression just a choice.

2. Photo Size
Have you ever gone to a photographer’s site, only to wait 30 seconds for it to load a huge file thousands of pixels in size? Boring. This is the web. You don’t need large files – the smaller the better for loading, and to protect you from clients downloading them to manipulate them. Stick to an image that is between 500-1000 pixels on the long edge, depending on how you are grouping them together.

Building Your Photography Business as an Amateur or a Professional

One of the focuses of this blog is to help you build up a professional photography studio. For the most part, we focus on writing about the business and marketing side (with an occasional article on becoming a better photographer).

And through your comments on such posts as

The Pendulum Swing of Photography

Wedding Photography-It’s Not That Easy

Photography Studio – Going Out Of Business

The Difference Between Amateurs and Professionals

I know you also agree there is a difference between the two. But how do you get the consumer to believe there is a difference? And more importantly, how do you get them to pay for the difference.

The first thing to keep in mind is there are always people that will pay for what they love. Some people love the idea of traveling, and will scrimp and save to be able to visit exotic locations every year. Some people love driving an expensive car, and will live in a small apartment, investing a high percentage of their monthly salary on their vehicle. And some people love memories, and will pay a professional very well to have an amazing portrait of their family every year.

No matter what type of photography you choose to specialize in, how many clients do you need to succeed? If you photograph weddings, how many per year will make you the income you desire? Or if you are a stock photographer, how many images do you have to sell every year? Knowing this number now will help you with your marketing in 2009. Reach out for this goal, and put it in perspective.

Next, you have to shoot as a professional. Take a serious look at your own work. Is it just an average portrait – potentially one they could even take in their own home with a good digital camera? Or is it something that makes them say WOW!

A true professional will be able to take images that you simply can’t get at home. They reach beyond the normal, and go for the WOW factor. They give their clients a little bit more. And they also give a complete package. Your client should never have to take their portrait to a frame shop – everything should be included, from beginning to end.

So with all of this in mind, what should your goals be for 2010?

1. Treat your business like a business. Establish yourself as a professional, and tell the world you are a professional photographer.

2. Create a complete customer service business. Provide everything from beginning to end. Include complete packages, including framing. (Maybe you even go in and install.) The idea is to be thorough in all you do.

3. Give 110%. You can’t expect your clients to pay for average – they want the WOW. Attend classes with mentors. Practice. Practice. Practice. Do everything you can to become the best you can be.

4. Teach your clients to see the difference. If you look like an image they can create at home, they won’t see the difference. And they won’t pay. But if you give them something they could never accomplish on their own – and could never get from another photographer – you can sell well.

Dreaming Big – Using Photography to Achieve it

Wouldn’t it be nice to take the family to the Caribbean, and have your business write off the entire trip?

What about skiing in some of the best snow around (pick your place – The Rocky Mountains, The Swiss Alps) knowing your business is paying you to be there?

For many people, these dreams sound wonderful. They talk about doing it. They may even read a few things on how to do it. But when Monday rolls around, it’s back to the same old job, working with the same old tasks.

It doesn’t have to be that way. But you do have to put some effort into it. After all, dreams can’t come true if you don’t set goals to achieve your dreams.

Imagine you love traveling, and want to travel several months out of the year. Why not become a travel photographer? There are many sources that will pay you good money for images of destination locations. Every magazine needs quality images. Stock houses will pay well, once you become an excepted photographer.

Imagine you love weddings, and want to photograph weddings anywhere in the world. You can’t just put up a sentence on your website that says, “I’m a destination wedding photographer” and expect it to happen. You need to choose several destinations, and work at getting known in those locations. The more you’re “known”, the bigger you’ll become – and not just in your choice destinations.

Imagine you love fashion, and would love to photograph for magazines and catalogs. Take your first step, and find a small company to work with. Every business started out small, and needed just a few images for their first catalog (or magazine). I know the founders of two start-up magazines right here in Colorado – I’m sure you can find similar contacts in your area.

Take a few minutes and think about exactly what you would like to do. In your dreams, what would you like to be doing a year from now? Write it down! (Email me – I’d love to hear your dreams!)

Then take the next step, and do one thing that will help you make your dream a reality. It may be to choose a destination for your wedding photography services. It may be to book a trip to a resort in your community. It may be to join an association to get closer to catalog producers.

Remember the saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Neither is your business. But you do need to take action towards your goal every day. When you complete one task, start in on another. When one task fails, try something new. Never give up!

How To Develop A Great Senior Portrait Package

Each year over 2 million high school juniors make their way into their senior year, and start the long trek to finishing up high school and starting out life as an adult. Because it’s the last step to enter adulthood, it’s always been a right of passage to commemorate it with a special portrait session – the high school senior portrait.

Competition is fierce within this marketplace these days. Even just a few years ago, many high schools had a closed door policy, and they would interview and select a few photographers to recommend, and require each of their seniors to go to a pre-approved photographer. Schools have opened up now, and allow anyone to go anywhere. Yearbook inclusions are more lax, and you’ll see a variety of sizes, styles and displays within the senior graduating class section.

Just because anything goes doesn’t make that the right approach to senior photography. If you make it an experience, it can still bring you in a substantial amount of income during the few months of shooting time. But you have to know how to package accordingly. Here’s some advice.

Start out with a plan

Many senior photographers grab a client, head out to the park, and spend 30 minutes shooting a few images. They put them on a disk, hand it over to the client, and pocket $50 or so. And that’s the end of the revenue stream. You will never get a reorder if you hand over the files for this price. The client will take them and run, and do whatever they choose with the images. So that should never be an option.

Your first strategy is to set up more than one package, and gently lead a client to the higher package.

If I offered 3 packages: $150, $300 and $450, and offered the files in the $450 only, how many clients do you think would jump at the $450 package? Yep, a good majority of them. And I’ve increased my profits because I’m still willing to give the files, just not at the lower price.

And your $450 client will be a much better, easier to work with client than the $50 special. They will have more patience, more time, and be willing to let you do a variety of things to bring out the best in the senior. Plus you will feel more comfortable spending time with the senior, knowing you will be bringing in a lot more income.

Give a professional presentation

How do you advertise for your seniors? If you want to bring in a lot of business, you have to showcase your talent.

Marathon Press has always offered a variety of ways to market to the senior market. They have preproduced pieces that give you an easy way to order postcards and brochures, ready for mailing. They also provide fully customized services, allowing you to place your own images into a variety of formats. Because they specialize in marketing pieces for the photographer, their work is 100 percent quality, and their goal is to help you bring in the business.

Create a theme each year, and carry that through your entire promotion. You should also update your images each year, including the recognizable faces from the last class. If you are including photographs from several years back, the new graduating class doesn’t recognize the faces, and has less motivation to use you.

Turn the package into something fun

If you provide a package with an 11×14, a few 8x10s, 5x7s, 4x6s and wallets, it’s easily comparable to everyone else – and to the discount stores that do the printing for a very low cost.

But if you include a 20×20 wall portfolio with a series of images in it, it’s no longer comparable. It’s unique.

Look for ways to turn your senior packages into more than anyone else can offer. Look for groupings, special sizes, and special ways to display your images.

Then showcase your differences. Anyone can take a senior picture. But only a professional can give you the experience of a senior portrait session.