Learn how to run a Groupon deal for photographers that works
Sherri over at The Business Lens posted a new Groupon Disaster example. Then she listed out what she expected would be the time needed to complete the 1200 plus portrait sessions, how much was given to the photographer as a result of the deal and, in the end, how much the photographer would be making from the deal.
Go take a look HERE: http://thebusinesslens.com/2010/09/15/groupon-photography-sessions-vs-working-mcdonalds/
It just took her a few minutes to realize that this was not going to be pretty. One legal pad and a calculator and a few minutes of thought can help you not to make a huge mistake with your business.
Now, if you are considering running a Groupon, Living social, or other similar buy it now online and save type deal, go to the bottom on here post and click on the link about “How to run a Groupon for photographers that works.”
Living Social photography deal explains “professional photography is really expensive, I’m not very professional”
“Photographer’s” Living Social Deal leaves me wondering
In the past I wrote about a Groupon deal by a photographer that left me thinking, “What is this photographer thinking?” This time it is a Living Social deal, but I cannot say,”what is this photographer thinking?” because she explains right on her web site that she doesn’t think she is very professional.
Let’s unwrap the deal first
So, lets start with the deal being promoted on Living Social. Her regular rate for a session is $150. With this deal you get the session for $75 which will include 25 color and 25 Black and white images full resolution with no copyright restrictions on a CD. Now, Living Social runs this promotion at not charge to the “photographer” until deals are sold. But, when the deal is sold online Living Social takes between 40% and perhaps ups to 60% (not sure what their actual numbers are, but somewhere in there) on the money paid for the service. Now the photographer is getting let’s say $37.50 for the session fee including the delivery of 50 images unrestricted on a CD.
The “photographer” has a Dayton phone exchange number, but in the ad it clearly says that the session could be in Columbus, Dayton, or Cincinnati. That means that this “photographer” may need to drive an hour and a half or more each way to the location for the session. But, for the sake of argument, lets say that only people from greater Dayton respond to the promotion. Lets say she lives in Centerville and gets a session in Troy for about a 30 minute drive each direction. Gasoline expense is going to be $4 to $10 perhaps. The one hour drive time has no value and the photographer is not compensated for it.
If she had to drive to Columbus and back it might cost between $30 and $50 is gasoline and about 3 hours total drive time, not including the session time at all. But, wait, there is more (as they say on the TV “buy it now” late at night commercials ). The photographer will go to as many as three locations for the session time. This “photographer” will be paying her clients to take their “pretty pictures”.
Lucky for consumers that they are doing their due diligence and checking to see what this “photographer’s” portraits look like and what is on her web site. As of this point only one deal has been sold which is a good thing for the “photographer” and for the public.
Here is what you find on her website
You get to buy “pretty pictures” from this “photographer” and oh, wait, her session fee is really $125 (not $150 as stated on the ad) for a session that has NO TIME LIMIT. And this “photographer” carefully reserves and preserves the rights of humans and animals (Okay, not sure what that means…other professional photographers torture animals and infringe on human rights I guess). She also offers packages for weddings… Really! There are no wedding “pretty pictures” on the site at all. There are a few bride in dress images with bad color correction.
At one point in her pricing pages she states that “professional photography is really, really expensive…. I’m not that professional”. On this page she explains that she has NO TRAINING.. “none” was her answer to the question, “What type of training do you have in your field?”.
Based on the images throughout the site, it appears that she doesn’t do any color correction. Shadowed areas in prints are purple (see bottom left images on page above) and in some images people are even purple. But in question three she explains that to receive these images on a CD may take up to three weeks from the time of the session. I’m not sure why it would take so long given that it appears that she does nothing to the images.
Why you would want to order “professional prints” directly from her when you have an unrestricted CD of all the images from the session baffles me, but looking at the prices it is clear that no professional could survive on print sales at these rates and that she values her own work very little.
The last image that I want to show you is typical of the color correction that I found on other images throughout the web site.
Well, I just don’t know what else to say, except that I am glad for this “photographer” and for the consumers that only one person had put their money down. Imagine if she had gotten 20 or 40 or 60 responses. It would have been another disaster in the making. Living Social Deal Disasters and Groupon Deal disasters. These are photographer disasters right here in Dayton, Ohio. I can only imagine what is happening throughout the country. There are a whole bunch of people who received digital SLR cameras for Christmas, so don’t be surprised at what you see in the weeks to come. If you received a digital SLR, please read on.
I am supportive of people who want to learn photography, portrait photography and even the business of photography
I consider photography to be a lifelong learning experience. I learn something new each day. I am not saying that my photography is perfect and I know there are professional photographers that are better than me. I am very supportive of people learning photography, but I also encourage people not to start charging for photography until the quality of their work and service to the client is of professional quality. Learning best practices of photography as a business is also important BEFORE putting your shingle out and soliciting business from consumers.
What do I say when someone says right on their website “I’m not very professional?” There is a difference between charging low fees to practice on family members, but that is far from offering your services on a nationally known website as a professional. Before “going pro” or publicly promoting your photography, join some professional photographer forums on the internet. Put your images out there for critique and suggestions and learn about professional best practices. I think that the “photographer” above is a teacher. Teachers are encouraged to use best practices as they teach their students. There is nothing wrong with a teacher being a professional photographer, I know a teacher/photographer that is exceptionally talented and always seeking to grow as a photographer and business owner, however the above example is not an example of how to do it.
It would be impossible for this person to actually make money based on the deal presented. In most cases she would be paying the client to take their pictures (based on gasoline, time spent during and after the session (if she were to do proper color correction), delivery of CD, paying taxes, paying for insurance and so on). There is no opportunity to up-sell and there would clearly be many customers disappointed with the results from their un-color corrected, faces blocked and cut off images, in one of her unlimited sessions. Understanding the business of professional photography is also important if you are going to present yourself to the public for hire. Saying “…I’m not that professional” right on your website is no excuse.
Feel free to make your own comments below (or sometimes at the very top) by clicking on “comment”.
How to Christmas family portrait, the little things that most people don’t do that can improve your family portraits
Christmas gatherings are great times for group portraits
This year we had several families on my wife’s side gather at my wife’s sister’s house for a nice Christmas party. Of course I brought my camera and a few other things as well. Usually I don’t make it into too many pictures at these events, but this was a lot of people who had come a long way to be together so I figured I would be taking a group picture.
Prepare to take the portrait
Here are some things that I did in preparation for the image. First, I set up my camera on a tripod and pointed it toward the fire-place and chair that I thought would make the most pleasing arrangement. I took some images and determined that I could get away without using my flash (however, in retrospect I think that the flash would have helped and if I had been working on a professional basis, I would have devoted much more time to determining lighting).
MOVE THINGS and get rid of clutter
MOVE FURNITURE… There was a coffee table in front of a sofa facing the fireplace. Rather than have them show in the pictures, go ahead and move things around some to PRE-COMPOSE the shot without distracting elements like coffee tables in the image.
While checking composition of the background look around for other things that can be removed from the picture. In this case, there wasn’t anything else that needed to be moved out of the view of the camera. I took a couple of shots to test out the auto timer on the camera. There was the short one and the long one. The short one would not give me time to get into the picture in time, so I set it to the longer timer and that looked like it would work fine.
Start with the key people then gather others around
Now I started moving people into the frame. First grandpa who would be on the large chair, then is daughters and their families grouped somewhat together.
I made sure there was a pathway for me to get where I was going to stand then I explained to everyone that I would be taking 10 pictures. When shooting a group it is very common for someone to blink each time the camera fires. In this case, I had a very slow shutter speed of about 1/20th at f4 with an ISO of 1000. Again, I would certainly not use ISO 1000 on my current camera for professional portraits (there is a certain amount of digital noise at a higher ISO and this is an older camera / Canon 1D mark IIn). But, for a quick family portrait on a non-professional level, this was going to work fine. I explained to look toward the camera and that as the red light flashes quicker, the camera will fire. After about 4 shots, I checked the images and found that my son was making faces each time. After several people explained to him scornfully that this is something that everyone wanted to be nice, he relented and I took about 6 more shots of the group.
Don’t forget to have some fun
Now for some fun. “Okay, everyone do something cooky for this picture.” Here is what resulted. With family and even professionally, why not have some fun with the people you are photographing. Make is something to remember.
With a little further investigation on your part you can see that I was not quite able to move the coffee table out-of-the-way enough to completely remove it from the portrait. However, with a little Photoshop stamping I was able to use the open area of carpet to cover up the coffee table in the top final image.
What might I do to improve these images. I would have attached my camera flash and pointed it up into the gabled ceiling to my right. By bouncing the flash off of a wide area the light would have been soft and pleasing (Never use on camera flash directly pointed toward your subjects if you can find something that you can bounce it from). I would have moved the sofa and coffee table some more so that I would not have to do Photoshop work on the image.
Did you take any family portraits at Christmas time? Did you have some fun with it? I hope so.
An 8×10 is not a wall portrait…and size does matter
It’s fun to surf Facebook and see what other photographers are up to and I like to promote other photographers by blogging about them and what they are doing.
Yesterday, I found a side by side photo of a gallery wrapped canvas mounted on a wall. The first pictures shows an image that is not 8×10, but is even bigger. It is an 11×14 print. Some would be so impressed that they invested in such a large wall print, that is what they are thinking. But, as you can see this 11×14 portrait is way undersized for the place selected for the image. The photograph next to it shows what a 30×40 gallery wrap looks like in the same space. Now we are talking. The image fits the space.
This picture is a great idea to help people see that an 11×14 is really a very small image depending on the space that it will be displayed in. The 30×40 portrait matches the space much better.
Meg Bowman Photography does lots of small children, but she also seems to work with seniors and wedding photography as well. If you live in Wooster, Ohio visit her web site and be inspired by her work.
Here is her Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/MegBowmanPhotography
Photography funk…what to do when days become gray and too short in Ohio?
RAIN, RAIN, RAIN…and Dark by 6 pm
It’s been raining for 3 or 4 days straight here in Dayton, Ohio. The days have also shortened up such that by the time I get home from work, it’s already getting dark outside. It sort of puts me into a photography funk.
At least until there is a freezing rain or some nice white snow outside. But for now it is just gray and muddy.
What do you do to bring yourself out of a photography funk?
One thing that I am doing is working out on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week. I’m trying to fight back against that dull tired feeling that sometimes comes over me when its rainy and dreary, cold and dull outside.
My Barn studio is finally taking shape
In addition I have invested in studio lighting equipment that is due to arrive very shortly. My barn studio will soon be a place of learning for me. Terri Johnson, who used to be a very active photographer her in Dayton, now works with me at Multi-ad selling incentive direct mail advertising. She still holds on to some of her equipment, but it is mostly in a storage building. She still loves photography, but just does not see making a living at it any more. Things changed so fast with digital that she got out of photography as a career. She will be helping me to learn studio lighting.
I also have some local photographer friends that I’ve met in PPSO who are giving and selling me some backgrounds to get started with. I will invite some of my photography friends over to play in the new studio some evenings and perhaps invite a student model to help us out as we learn and experiment together.
My barn studio has a long way to go – My winter project
It is still just a shell of white walls and concrete floor. The fluorescent lighting is harsh and needs to be changed out and it needs some color, paint and some repairs and finishing out. I have to clear out some old furniture that my kids (now in college) brought in for their Garage Band and video game get-togethers that they used to have when they were in high school. I’m hoping to have the energy to actually get some work done over the winter (I’m hoping my working out will give me new energy to work hard all day and come home and play even when it does get dark too early).
This summer when the days are bright and unending, I will migrate outside and start to build and plant landscaping that can be backdrops for portraits. My goal is to be able to walk someone around and take portraits then move into the studio for some additional poses and different looks. Instead of being very slow all winter long, it can become a time for experimentation and learning. I will offer studio and on-location sessions going forward once I have a good understanding of studio lighting. For me photography has been and can be a lifelong learning endeavor.
So, my question to you is what do you do when the weather gets gray and dreary and you feel like you are in a Photography Funk?
I’d love to hear what you do. I think I will go exploring now to find some portrait photography inspiration that I can post about. But, while I look around, I would love to hear from you who love to take portraits and pictures. Click on the comments and leave one.
5 Ways to get inspiration for your horse photography and portraits
Yesterday I received an email from a young lady wanting to grow learn more about photography. In particular she enjoyed looking at my equine portraits and wanted to ask me some questions. I replied that I would respond on my blog so that others who might have the same questions could get some answers too. I asked her to go the home page of my web site and put her email into my subscription box which is at the top right of the page, but under the main header for the site. Then each time I post she can receive my answers to her questions.
Young photographer emails with some questions
Peter Demott:
My name is Amanda Gunderson and I am a senior at Mountain Pointe High School in Phoenix, Arizona. This is my second year of taking a photography class, and I am extremely interested in your work. I actually ride horses and am looking to getting my own soon, and I love photographing them. I had a few questions that I would love to have you answer about your work.
How do you find the inspiration for your work? I looked through your web site and saw that you have several options for horse photography. Are those the only photos you take of horses, or do you take them for your own pleasure as well? How do you decide on the scene and the background? Also, how do you get the photos to look so natural? That is one of the biggest problems I have when I try to photograph horses, is getting the scene to look natural.
I would really appreciate if you could give me some pointers on equine photography and answer my questions. I would love if we could exchange several emails to talk about your technique.
Thank you very much for your time. I am looking forward to a response from you. Again, thank you.
Sincerely,
Amanda Gunderson
5 ways to get inspiration for your horse photography and portraits?
Hi Amanda. Today I am going to answer your first question. There are several ways that I get inspiration for my work. With the internet we can get inspiration from all over the world. I take portraits of horses, of people, and of horses with their people. Since I do a lot of senior portraits, I look for inspiration for my portrait work too.
1) I am a professional member of The Equine Photographers Networkand I have been for some time. They have a one month free membership so you can check things out a bit, but the most valuable area is the photographer’s forums. After your free month you can join as a regular member or as a pro member depending on your status.
Here are some of the things that you can do on The Equine Photographers Network. You can participate in online courses specifically about taking better horse photographs. You can join in monthly photography assignments and have other photographers tell you how your pictures could be improved. One exciting and challenging thing is that you might get a comment from a professional photographer from the UK or Australia or Colorado or it might be someone near you on the regular member forum or the pro member forums.
They also have real life equine photography training events in various parts of the country. I’ve been to a couple of events and have relationships with people from about everywhere because of those hands on, face to face events. You can read all about them on the site.
When I first started there my photographs were mediocre or average at best. After participating and learning for a year or two my horse photography was significantly better. Now that I have been doing this for some time, I think my images are sometimes inspiring to others in the group.
2) Subscribe to other photographers work/blog/Facebook page etc. When I see a photograph that I find intriguing or inspiring, I try to figure out how I can see more of that photographer’s work. With web sites and Facebook and the like, many times I LIKE a photographer or subscribe to their website so that when they post images I have a chance to see what they are up to. Each time they post to their website or Facebook Page I get a chance to see new work that can inspire and challenge me to do better. Here is a link to my Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/PeterDeMottPhotography . With so many people on Facebook there are unending opportunities for learning an inspiration. Remember with Facebook, that it is about the conversation and not just about selling something. To subscribe by email to my blog here is my home page: http://www.photosbypdemott.com/
3) Participate in a local photography group or club. I am a member of several professional photographers organizations. I have also participated in photography clubs in the past, but most of my interest is in professional photography now. Face to face club meetings, competitions and hands on workshops are very valuable to learning to be a better photographer. There is something about being with people and doing something together, hands on, that magnifies your learning exponentially.
As a Professional Photographers of OHIO member I have opportunities to participate in semi-annual conventions here in OHIO. Several weekends ago I participated in the fall convention in Columbus, OHIO. Throughout the day there were various seminars and speaker events about various types of photography and topics very interesting to me. In between there was time to get to know some other photographers from the state and visit the trade show.
I also participate in a PPA affiliate group here in Dayton, Ohio called Professional Photographers of South West Ohio. We meet each month for dinner and to listen to a speaker present about a top of interest. Each month we can participate in the print competition and get some feedback on images we submit. I have a group of photographer friends that would help me out in an emergency or who will let me talk with them about issues that I am facing from lighting to business to which lens to buy and so on.
There are also two photography clubs that I have belonged to in the past and there is a free group that meets monthly here in Dayton called an FEO group (stands for “For Each Other”). If there is nothing in your area you can join something in a nearby city or even start your own club or group where you are. There are many young photographers that are look for places to encourage each other and learn.
4) Back to FACEBOOK, there are Pages (You LIKE someone’s business page), Profiles (You FRIEND a person from their profile), but there are also GROUPS (You JOIN a group on Facebook). There are quite a few groups. Some are closed and others are open. This is one Group that I find has a lot of activity and inspiration as well as advice on how to improve. The group is called: Photogs Unleashed~ a place to learn, grow and make mistakes together . One thing that I like about this particular group is that it is well moderated. They do not permit offensive, violent or nude images in the group, and within seconds of posting an image, you will have feedback along with encouragement.
5) The best way to grow and learn photography is to take pictures and take risks. What do I mean about taking risks. What I mean is to get a tough shell and be willing to show your image to people who are not friends and family. By visiting various online groups, web sites and forums you can determine how encouraging these groups are before you post some of your images for critique, but be willing to take the risk. Your friends and family don’t want to hurt or offend you and they will always be UNHELPFUL with regard to improving your image. They are too darn nice to you to provide the challenge to improve your work. But, it is important that you take what you get and use criticism from others as a challenge to improve. If you want to improve you have to understand that NOT EVERYONE GETS A PARTICIPATION TROPHY in real life. If you post something and someone comments that your image is not that good and tells you why, are you going to cower into a corner and pout or get out there and try again and put another image up for review? Take lots and lots of pictures and see what happens when you shoot from this angle and that, with this background and that, etc.
Peter DeMott Photography • 937-478-6222 • peter@photosbypdemott.com
What little thing can you do to improve your images? Video podcast
I’ve been talking for a long time about starting up some podcasts. Today I am giving it my first try with a short video podcast about one little thing that you can do to improve your images. Tell me if you have any questions that you would like me to answer. This first one is for fun, just to see what people think of it and if there is an interest for more small tips that will improve your pictures.
Check out this link for more reasons to use your lens hood: http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Canon-Lenses/Lens-Hoods.aspx
This Nature Photographer blog shows a before and after example of with and without lens hood:http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0507/rb0507-1.html
Now, tell me what you think. Am I a goof? Are you interested in any topics. Marketing, networking, advertising, pricing, etc?
As a photographer you should know the difference between copyrights and model releases
Copyrights and Model Releases, they are NOT the same thing folks
This is not going to be a full-blown discussion about copyrights and model releases, but I just wanted to get this out there a little bit. It amazes me that people who say they are photographers sometimes have no clue as to the difference between copyrights and model releases. I hear the terms mingled and used incorrectly frequently on various photographer forums and discussion groups.
Here are a couple of the things I hear people saying:
“I got a copyright release from the person I photographed”
“Do I need a copyright release in order to post a picture I took on my website?”
” I sold them a CD with all the copyrights and they think they can tell me take the images off my website”
Just off the top of my head, you own the copyrights to images that you create the moment that you click the shutter unless you are employee photographer or you have signed a document called “work for hire” giving up your copyrights. In the USA that is how it works. In the UK and Canada it is somewhat different and I believe that photographers have to protect their ownership of copyrights to images in the contracts that they present to their customers.
But, owning the copyright to an image does not mean that you can do anything you please with photographs you take of people. In some cases you need a Model Release. A model release has NOTHING to do with copyrights. These two things are completely different matters.
Lets look at the statements that I mentioned above:
“I got a copyright release from the person I photographed”
“Do I need a copyright release in order to post a picture I took on my website?”
This is a mingling of copyright and model release as far as I can tell. YOU generally own the copyrights (see above exceptions) of the photographs you take so there is no need for you to have someone sign something that says they release the copyright to you.
However, it may be appropriate to get a Model Release from someone you photograph. A model release will make your image more marketable because it will allow the photograph to be published in an expanded list of ways because the person in the photograph has authorized that their likeness may be used by you in an expanded list of ways.
With copyrights, if you allow someone to publish your photographs you would give them a “License to use” your images. For example portrait photographers generally are selling “A license to display a print to their customers.” In some cases, photographers who sell a CD full of images would give a “license to print and display images from this disk”.
If a photographer were to give the client a “Copyright Release” for a CD this is rather ambiguous. It sounds like they are giving up their copyright to the client. In that case, they (the photographer) would no longer own or be able to use or display those images without permission from the client.
If they are not giving up copyrights when they “sell an image to a customer” it is important to be clear about what is being given to the customer. For example ” When you purchase this CD of images you have a limited use license that allows for the printing and display of unaltered images from this disk.” It would also be a good idea to provide optimized images for display on forums and for emailing that have your copyright displayed on the image and to explain to the client why it is important to use these particular images when posting to Facebook and other online forums (you wouldn’t want you image used for advertising in Russia, would you).
Good communication and clearly worded licenses are both critical for a good understanding of this for both you and your customer. Your client needs to know what is and is not appropriate in a clear usage license that is included with and image files that you give up.
” I sold them a CD with all the copyrights and they think they can tell me take the images off my website”
Yes, in fact they can tell you what to do with those images if you gave up your copyrights when you sold them the image files. Many new photographers are giving away their copyrights to their clients without realizing how important words are. If you give away your copyrights, you are giving up the ownership of the images and the rights to copy or display those images. I have heard some photographers refer to “Print release” with regard to images on a CD provided to clients. Although this is still rather unclear, it would be much better than a “Copyright release” if you did not intend to give up your copyrights to the images on the CD. Better to be more clear as explained in the previous several paragraphs.
The proper thing to do is to give a license for usage of the images on the CD so that you retain the copyrights to the images, unless you don’t care if you can ever display or publish those images yourself. If you say to a client that you are releasing the copyrights to the client, you are in essence giving them authoritative ownership of all rights to those images.
In most cases it would be better to offer “unlimited use license” in which case your retain your copyrights to the images, but allow the purchaser to use the files in any way they wish. Again, a more clear and restrictive license is probably appropriate (With the purchase of this CD you have the right to display and print unaltered copies of the included images for personal and none commercial purposes. Any commercial usage may require an additional license and additional fees).
Additional reading on Model Releases
Now, with regard to MODEL RELEASES, here is some additional reading that can help your understand about when you can and cannot display and sell images that you have taken of persons. I highly recommend Dan Heller’s book “A digital photographers guide to Model Releases” . In this link he reviews some things that have come up after he wrote the book. Perhaps some of this discussion is from the back and forth I had with him regarding some questions that I had after reading his outstanding book.
http://danheller.blogspot.com/2011/09/busting-myths-about-model-releases.html
What does commercial use mean? Does commercial use require a model release?
http://danheller.blogspot.com/2011/09/commercial-uses-and-model-releases.html
If you are a photographer and have no clue about these things, get to it. Not understanding things like copyrights and model releases can cause you a lot of worry and frustrations. In some cases having a poor understanding of these things can be a financial liability to your and your business. In other cases, fear and lack of knowledge can prevent you from making sales that are perfectly legal for you to make. In either case, you lose money.
Peter DeMott • Peter DeMott Photography • peter@photosbypdemott.com • 937-478-6222
My fovorite self hosted Word Press web site plugins
It’s about learning what works for you!
I have a set of plugins that I use on this self hosted wordpress blog and web site. I’m no programmer so I need things that are pretty straight forward and clear and things that help me do a better job. A few people have asked me to send them my must have list, so here you go:
WordPress.com Stats by Automatic
Although some say they have trouble getting this to work correctly sometimes, I find it easy and extremely useful. Getting it set up is a pain in the pituty (getting an API code and installing it), but once it is up and running it keeps a daily graph of your page views along with a list of referencing web sites and organic search phrases that brought people to your web site. In addition it lists all the links within your site that your visitor has clicked on. All this stuff is available by setting things up with Google analytics, but I personally find it difficult to gather up information and navigate. WordPress.com stats brings everything from TODAY and everything from YESTERDAY together for your quick review. The graphing of your daily page views, weekly page views, and monthly page views is also one click away. Now, here is why this information can be so valuable.
The organic search terms that brought people to my web site are extremely valuable. I will just give you one example here. I do quite a few senior portraits (graduation portraits for high school students). As a photographer, I consider what I do to be portrait photography, however, when kids are looking on the internet for a senior portrait photographer they use these words in their searches: senior pics, senior pictures, girl senior pictures, posing ideas for boys senior photos, etc. Since I have a wordpress web site/blog it is easy enough to add some of these phases into the next post about a senior portrait that I have taken. If I had a static web site, I would have to try to figure out where and how to add this content to my web site, but with a Word Press blog and web site combined, I can just add a sentence like this: ” I like to call what I do ‘Senior portrait photography’ even thought the high school kids call it senior pics or senior photos.” Now, when someone types in “creative senior pics for boys”, guess what? Google knows they can send that person to my web site.
Another thing that stats gives me is referring web sites. If I post one of my entries to LINKED IN or to Facebook and people click on that link it tells me. I can see how popular any given entry is among prospective clients and I can try to provide more similar content in the future. I can also see when another blog or directory web site sends me visitors. Since I know where the visitors are coming from I can perhaps go to that location and add more information or maybe thank them for the mention.
SEO Friendly Images by Vladimir
My understanding is that this plugin will rename my photos to the name of the post if I neglect to add the appropriate information when I am uploading the image. Sometimes I just crank out a post and I am not careful about properly renaming all the images. This makes it so that at least it has a name other than RRxyz1234. (P.S. If I have a wrong understanding about any of these plugins, please correct me in the comments section of this post as I would much appreciate the help).
Redirection by John Godley
This one is pretty straight forward. It just keeps you from making title errors for your blog entries. An example would be if you named a post “Senior portrait session with Miamisburg High School football player Joe Smith” then after you posted it you realized that this was wrong. Joe Smith is actually on the swimming team. If you go back and correct the title and repost it, the first post is still out there in Google land. Each time someone clicks on it, it would say the page is missing. That is because you renamed the page and the original post is no longer there. It has a different name now. What Redirection does is to create a link from the old title to the new title so that no matter which title a person clicks on it will bring them to your corrected post.
Sexy Bookmarks (Shareaholic) by Shareaholic
This is a nifty little plugin that adds little icons for facebook, linked in, printer friendly print out, email this post and options for about another 100 buttons at the bottom of each post you make. This is a convenience for the reader if they want to share your information with a friend or on one of their other forums.
Network Publisher by Links Alpha
This plugin automatically posts whatever you have added today to any of the other forums where you may want them to go. For example I have this set up to automatically repost onto my Peter DeMott Photography facebook page. I do not have to do anything. At the end of the day it just sends it on over for everyone to see there. There are about a dozen places and forums that you can set up for automatic distribution.
Akismet
This is a program that captures all “comments spamming” before it goes onto your blog. The stupid things that come in the for of blog comments are just ridiculous. If you have this you will not have to go through individually and delete comments spam about various drugs and get rich urls that post as unrelated spam to your blog. In some cases, without this you might have 20, 50, or even 100 unrelated comments on your blog posts that you would have to moderate by deleting. The amount of spam captured goes up and down from week to week, but even it were just a couple a day, this would be a big time saver.
Yet Another Related Post Plugin by mitcho
This is a program that looks over what you have written in your post and compares it to other posts in your blog. It will list other posts with similar content at the bottom of your current entry. This way a visitor who is interested in something specific can easily and quickly find addition reading content. I would expect that this post will link to some other posts that I have written about photographers using self hosted wordpress blogs as their web site.
WP Super Cache by Donncha
Although I am not a programer, this tells me that it speeds up the loading of my Word Press blog for the reader. Since Google considers speed of loading of pages important, I have added this plugin. It cashes your pages for quicker loading time. One thing to remember though is that if you are making a lot of minor changes to your site and you want to see how they look, you must turn this plugin off. Otherwise when you make a change it will feed you the page in the cache rather than the newly changed page. Until I figured this out I had several very frustrating sessions on my web site.
WP touch
This plugin detects if a smart phone or other mobile device and converts your web site into a mobile device friendly web site.
WordPress SEO by Joost de valk
This does a whole bunch of things to help your web site SEO. It is a little confusing to set up and I still have some things to do to straighten out what I have done with this, but it says that it is one of the best SEO plugins for self hosted Word Press web sites. At the moment it is causing a few glitches on my other web site Grow Your Business in Dayton. In particular when I have this plugin turned on it will not allow me to place links within my posts. It does not do it with this web site however, so I don’t know if the problem is with the template or the plugin. The plugin that I may have to go back to on that web site is All in One SEO Pack, but I believe that it started to cause some glitches when it was not keeping up with WP version upgrades. This is an important area and I will continue to try to figure out what is best for me. As I said, it is all about what works for you.
Happy posting.
Peter DeMott • peter@photosbypdemott.com • 937-478-6222 • Dayton’s people photographer, senior portraits, family portraits, children and also equine portraits
Getting noticed on the Internet and SEO tips for photographers
A talented fine art portrait photographer who doesn’t get notices on the Internet
Today I visited a photographer’s web site in Zurich. She had posted on a Photography Business group on LinkedIn and explained that she was not very good at “marketing” and needed some help.
I like the style of her work. She does a lot of very interesting things, but I could immediately see why her web site was not generating much activity for her. She has very little “content” in her web site. What I mean by content is WORDS. You see Google can not read pictures and Google cannot read FLASH either. So a lovely web site that has few words will hardly be seen by Google. If the entire site is FLASH then it is for all practical purposes invisible to Google and organic searches by consumers.
This particular site is not a Flash web site, but it does have very few words so here is what I told her. But, first before you read what I said, go take a look at the site and tell me what content you would add (what words) to help more people visit the site and to help people want to have their portrait taken by this talented photographer.
SEO advise for a photographer in Zurich
Here is what I told her:
“It appears that you have a blog site which could give you good traffic, however you are not adding content so that google and other search engines can find you. Here are things that you need to add to your site. You can do this with blog posts or by adding pages to the site.
* An introduction to YOU including your photograph and how you came to be a photographer and the types of photography that you enjoy and want to do.
* Where you are located. Add your city/country to the bottom of each post with your name and phone number as well. Google gives priority to LOCAL searches. If someone searches for a portrait photographer in Zurich it will find you first. Also, if I am in OHIO USA, I need to be able to see quickly that I will not be able to hire you for a portrait session even though I like your style. However, I also need to know more about your event photography which I could perhaps buy a photo from.
* EVERY POST should have “content”, that is WORDS THAT DESCRIBE the photo session or the event. Where, when, who, what you liked about the people or the event. These are the words that help google FIND YOU and match you up with people looking for a photographer. Google cannot read photographs and has no idea who to send to you if all there are is photographs on your site.
Each Helga photo should explain something about what it is. A short paragraph is sufficient. One or two sentences. Where, when, what, why, etc.
In your portraits you can explain why you like black and white for your portraits and the ageless beauty of a fine art portrait…..etc.
Are you shooting with FILM? If so, then your posts should talk about that. Why, where processed, how printed etc. Always use short paragraphs of one to 3 or 4 sentences with a return separating the paragraphs. If you look at my posts, you will see that I also headline the paragraphs for easy reading.
Take a look at my blog/web site. Each time that I add “content” my page views go up. When you get to 30-50 posts with “content” in them you will start seeing a significant increase in page views. In September of 2009 I had about 500 page views in a month. July is my new highest page views at over 10,500 views.”
I have been working with a self hosted WordPress blog web site for just under two years now. There should be several other related posts listed below if you want to read further about SEO for photographers.
Can you help Aline with some ideas?
I hope you will take a look at Aline Marandet’s web site and tell her some ideas you have about the “content” that would draw you to her site and make you want to have her do a portrait session for you or your family. Add a comment below and if she subscribes to this post she will get each of your thoughts as they are approved. I will send her an email encouraging her to place a comment as well so that each new comment will come to her as well.
Another thing that can draw in clients is posts that express something about Aline’s personality, what she loves in life and why she enjoys recording timeless portraits of families and young children.
Peter DeMott • Peter DeMott Photography • South West Ohio • Senior portraits, family portraits, children, horse and rider portraits, and more. • peter@photosbypdemott.com • 937-478-6222