OK - having got myself healthwise to the stage where I think I could do a full day shoot for a wedding I need to increas my web presence and work out how to advertise effectively. I need low cost t attarct a semi-pro level of existence I seek.
I have only just discovered the part of my website where I can add window titles,meta descriptions and meta keywords which seem to be to be repititious and have not upped my daily views in the first weeks of implementation at all. I came up on page 7 of a google search for "affordable wedding photographers in Leeds" when I looked me up lately which is clearly no good. Is it best / good parctice to list loads of major towns in yorksire rather than just Leeds and Yorjkshire if I am willing to shoot there? Is it right that because have other pages offerign portraits / commercial stuff I am unlikely to get wedding hits as 80% of your site need to be wedding focused? Told that I should be running other websites for other work.
Re: facebook - I now have a work page in addition to my onw persona page. When I select to be on facebook as my business page do my existing friends see me or just people who have liked me. I don`t know many that do facebok so have only 55 friends and only 20 or so people have liked my work page so far. What`s the best way to get more out there - any quick tips?
I have managed to do a wedding portfolio shoot and a couple of venues are now recommending me and I have cards/ leaflets with all the wedding dress shops in Leeds - though most seem overwhelmed with photographer cards / leaflets. I asked about advertising in a popular north Leeds advertising booklet but half a page covering their 30,000 population coverage was goign to cost £500 a month.After a chat and showing them my portfolio I have now agreed to supply some local images for inclusion and the odd front page on request in return for credits / links to website and depending how things go on first few they may give me a free advert for a month to try.testing them out this mont to see how straight the are.
Anyone else got any grea starter up tips - my free Yell listing onl resulted in getting dozens of calls from advertisers wanting more money! :(
Hi Paul,
As many folk use Google, a Google blog (which is free) with links to your site will help keep you high up on the search engines. Other than that, I think it is a case of target marketing in the areas and localities you are in. Word of mouth is always the best promotion and if you can get the local hairdresser boutiques to display a bridal shot or two of work they have been involved in, it advertises both parties.
Discount on a couples engagement shot may lead to work on their big day ;)
Best of luck.
Don't forget word of mouth too. Many couples will have friends getting wed soon and will point you out to them. Once you've shot a wedding, see if the couple would agree to allowing you use of a couple of shots for a portfolio/online presence.
Quote from: jinky on June 06, 2011, 09:27:56 AM
I have managed to do a wedding portfolio shoot and a couple of venues are now recommending me and I have cards/ leaflets with all the wedding dress shops in Leeds - though most seem overwhelmed with photographer cards / leaflets.
Mmm-hmm....... (actually, I'm slightly alarmed that venues are recommending you if they haven't seen real work from you)
Your question looks pretty much like "how do I advertise my business"? And if that were something I could answer in a forum post I'd spin it into a day's course and charge £30K for it (srsly - I know people who have spent far more than that to find out what doesn't work).
Anyway some starter tips:
1. Build an engaging website. Have a site that people want to visit and tell their friends about. Shooting underwater bridal hasn't (so far) booked me a single wedding but it raised my profile a lot - and web linking and traffic went up which leads to higher Google ranking.
2. Tell everyone about it.
3. Teach yourself SEO - it will save you more money and help fend off more con artists than most things you can learn. This site http://www.seomoz.org/blog talks more sense than most (note that they are using an interesting article feed to build traffic and sell their software. There's a lesson there...)
4. Network. Really.
5. Build business relationships. I could drop cards in every wedding shop round here and watch them get left for the recycling. Or I can drop in to a very places who know me occasionally for a coffee and a chat and see the gorgeous albums they show all their customers. Guess which gets me more work ;)
6. Repeat. This isn't a one off thing. This is a process. For example, my site is updated at LEAST once a week. Google likes new stuff. So do people.
Cheers all. Yes sorry it was a bit of "down in the dumps help" mood inflicted stuff. It was just quick tips that I was looking for that might be new to me.The couple of venues recommending me have seen me work - one in an actual wedding shoot and the other in a staged shoot with models / venue set out to promote their own place. I found it hard to engage in all but one of the weddign shop venue as some (especially high end) had a real "we are not sales people" approach that made it clear they resented callers wanting to talk about joint promotion, free product shoots etc but I`ll keep at it as one or two did atleast want to see my stuff and talk.
The SEO self training route looks good - though not sure what I can do wit stuff in my website that is based on a clikpic type template approach through luxipics. I have been thinking of a blog but the website people I have established with don`t have the automatic blog type button to use / create so will experiment with that.
I am offering discounts including engagement / lifestyle shoots with bookings and have made contacts with local jewellers re: one of your previous suggestions Andy - awaiting formal response.
I am at an age qwhereit is daughters / sons of frineds that will be marrying in the next few years rather than friends and have a few saying they will be using me as they know my work but that all gets a bit awkward when you want to differentaite between peopel you would shoot for as a gift and others you`d offer mates rates. I know word of mouth is the crucia thing but it is getting started. It`s a little unfortnate that the weddings I have shot so far have been up in my old Geordie homeland rather than in Leeds though I have second shot on a few in Leeds.
I have linked up with a few local people through flickr wedding groups and shared some shoots / chat/advice so will put my positie hat on and see about gettign going properly now. Thanks ;)
I use Blogger, on the basis that Google promote their sites first. Is there not a Blogger button like the Facebook one you have on your home page ? :beer:
>> The SEO self training route looks good - though not sure what I can do wit stuff in my website that is based on a clikpic type template approach through luxipics.
Then change your hosts. Seriously, if you can't do your own SEO your host is going to cost you money either in workarounds or (more likely) lost business.
>> I found it hard to engage in all but one of the weddign shop venue as some (especially high end) had a real "we are not sales people" approach that made it clear they resented callers wanting to talk about joint promotion, free product shoots etc
Pick your time carefully - these shops are busy on weekends, lunchtimes and Friday afternoons. Go in then and you'll be lucky even to get acknowledged. Mondays are quiet but they are often closed or using junior staff. Basically do your homework before you visit them. Do you know your Benjamin Roberts from your Amanda Wyatt? Maybe think about an unconventional approach - if 20 photographers pitch up at your shop wanting free advertising then you may find drawn to the one who brings cupcakes.....
>> I have linked up with a few local people through flickr wedding groups and shared some shoots / chat/advice
It's nice to network with other photographers and you can generate a nice support network like that. But they are (almost) never going to bring you work. Network with people who can help you or buy from you.
BTW I'm literally hours from exploding into a rant over all these Flickr "wedding portfolio" shoots..........
Quote from: Jonathan on June 06, 2011, 01:19:52 PM
BTW I'm literally hours from exploding into a rant over all these Flickr "wedding portfolio" shoots..........
Did the one for a venue that had requested help in shooting and it was a nice shared experience with wedding shop, make up artist, models and venue but agree not rooted in real world wedding shoot. Not likely to do another but they have their place I think in developing links and wish that had been in Leeds and not Northumberland.
I created that Facebook link Andy and can no doubt do the same again with blogger so will have a look at that. Trouble with facebook / blogger/ twitter and the like is that I have spent so long taking the p*** out of people sharing the banale that I feel guilty launching into it :)
Seeing the problems faced by today's wedding photographers, and how to seek business in what would appear, according to the ONS staistics, a rapidly shrinking business this may be of interest,
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/mar0311.pdf
It points out the movement from religious ceremonies to civil ones following the change in the law and registration of civil sites.
I think it's what one would call a tough competitive industry.
I Googled Wedding Photography Yorkshire and I got 1.8 million results and a Google map peppered with red spots indicating their locations. :o
Quote from: ABERS on June 06, 2011, 04:31:27 PM
Seeing the problems faced by today's wedding photographers, and how to seek business in what would appear, according to the ONS staistics, a rapidly shrinking business this may be of interest,
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/mar0311.pdf
It points out the movement from religious ceremonies to civil ones following the change in the law and registration of civil sites.
I think it's what one would call a tough competitive industry.
I Googled Wedding Photography Yorkshire and I got 1.8 million results and a Google map peppered with red spots indicating their locations. :o
I don`t care if it is religious or civil as long as it is in a nice place :)
I reckon 1.6 million of those are in Leeds. There are people shooting them for free, for less than £200. I guess I just need to get a few more under my belt for word of mouth to get around. I`m telling my commercial clients that I am expanding out into weddings via the contacts I have there so we will see. One thing for certain I`m not shooting for free to get known - I`v done enough of that now.
Just a thought! Do you know any florist, established or otherwise that wants to get into weddings. Perhaps a joint venture offering a special deal for pictures and posies might get you both some business.
Could make a story in the local press.
231,490 marriages. I only want 30. 40 a year is very tough.
As for civil vs religious......well, so far this season I've been told off by one registrar and 2 clergy so the more civil ones the better for me :D
Wedding photographer Kent gives 39.6 million results. Which is greater than the number of people of wedding photography age in the entire UK. I'm page 1 (depending how you count it I'm either 2nd or 9th) which is good enough for me.
Identifying your keywords & using them wisely helps, not just on the front page, in your metadata, opening paragraph, sub pages.
It helps if your keyword forms a part of your domain name and your page titles.
Getting other people to link to you helps a great deal. part of Google's engine rates sites higher the more links they have, though this can be an art in itself as well as not using dark practices to get yourself penalised.
I'm no expert in ranking but one of my websites ranks usually between 2nd & 10th for a single keyword which lists over 39 million hits & has done for over 10 years. It helps that I own a top level domain which is that keyword. (breastfeeding, if you're interested)
Interesting stuff, although it does sound a bit depressing...
What's this Google every one keeps talking about?
It almost sounds like if you're not into Google, you've got no chance in business... :-[ :uglystupid2:
Quote from: picsfor on June 06, 2011, 07:21:17 PM
Interesting stuff, although it does sound a bit depressing...
What's this Google every one keeps talking about?
It almost sounds like if you're not into Google, you've got no chance in business... :-[ :uglystupid2:
Google it :2funny:
Quote from: Cathus on June 06, 2011, 06:51:08 PM
I'm no expert in ranking but one of my websites ranks usually between 2nd & 10th for a single keyword which lists over 39 million hits & has done for over 10 years. It helps that I own a top level domain which is that keyword. (breastfeeding, if you're interested)
So, that's how you keep abreast of the competition. :2funny: :2funny:
As you may know my main website and trading name is Lancashire Photography but when I recently opened my shop in Leyland I decided I needed some sort of local presence on the internet so with help from my son ( because he's young and knows more about this sort of thing than me ) we bought the domain www.leylandphotographer.co.uk for £ 10.99 for 2 years then created a link site to my main site www.lancashirephotography.com but most importantly we listed it on Google Maps and if you Google "leyland photographers" I am No: 4 ( or D ) and it has started to bring in customers and work for me.
Not knowing which area of Leeds you are in I did a quick search for available domains in the Leeds area and these are available : cookridgephotographer.co.uk & .com, shadwellphotographer.co.uk & .com, morleyphotographer ( Taken ), rothwellphotographer.co.uk, pudseyphotographer.co.uk & com ( which supprised me with the connection to Pudsey Bear and all that ). Update !!! Just had a look on flickr and found your area and post code. meanwoodphotography.co.uk & .com are available also leedsandbradfordphotography.co.uk & .com are available.
Another usefull free site is accessplace.com which usually comes up on Google first page after the Google Map entries. For leyland I am the first listing.
Hope this is some help to you.
If your wondering why I am up so late I have been babysitting a new pup. Its asleep now but ........ :legit:
Cheers Dave. I`ll put that into my thought process. New puppy must be great - I am not allowed a dog in our house :(
If you are wondering why I am up so late I decided it was time to set up a blog and link it to my website. Good grief I am on facebook and blogging now - please someone shoot me if I start tweeting next ::)
No problem Paul :tup: A customer suggested I promote myself on face book but to be honest I hate it. Do you find it helps you in any way ? As for Twitter well thats not for me either, I have enough problems with the cat following me halfway to the pub.
Quote from: Dave on June 07, 2011, 02:46:37 AM
A customer suggested I promote myself on face book but to be honest I hate it. Do you find it helps you in any way ?
It's going to make me sound old but I really struggle making sense of FB. But then one day I realised that with no effort I'd booked a couple of weddings and some other stuff from it and I started to get interested ;)
Not directly helped me yet on facebook but then I need to make more friends. My daughter has out me around a bit and and I am going to link my blog with facebook to try and develop both but early days yet. I have had one contact of a friend facebook me to suggest a link with a local wedding planer and highlight that her son is to marry next year and she has me in mind but then she was alerted by my leaflet through a friend rather than facebook itself. Still hoping to cultivate that one. ;)
Somehting I don`t understand about facebook. I`ve got 2 accounts.
1.The personal one with around 55 friends thus far hich ends up with all sorts of stuff in feeds / posts that I would not necessarily want to link to from my work website
2. A work based business one which people can "like" and is more basis with people only able to comment o n what I put up there. Just 25 likes so far.
Using the same email address for each (probably a mistake) means that I can only use one of the identities on facebook at one time. If I use the business one - do my 55 contacts from the personal one still see what I am doing or just the 25 who "liked" me? They do not seem to show up as available on chat on bottom right so I suspect not.
Given that I now have a blog that I have lnked to my website it seems repetitive to post updates on what I am up to on my blog, facebook business and facebook personal. I am thinking of just using the blog link on website as pure work / comments and then only using the personal facebook to keep contacts up to date who maybe don`t look at the site. Am I missing something?
As Jonathon said earlier there is a lot of rubbish talked about SEO.
What I have found is that keywords mean less nowadays than they used to but if you are using them make sure that the keywords that you use appear appropriately several times on the home page of your website.
Google wants you to have a sitemap so make sure that you have created one.
The most useful thing to help your ranking is incoming links from appropriate websites. Don't get conned by one of the link farm companies and sign up with them as this will actually hurt your ranking.
Anorther thing that helps is to use your url in your signature on all your emails and if Mick doesn't complain ;) when posting on forums.
Make sure you check out the webmaster tools on all the search engine websites and then follow their submission procedure to get your site indexed by them.
I have found that these all work for me and placed me on the first page of Google and Bing. Hope they work for you.
Quote from: Colin on June 08, 2011, 07:45:36 AM
As Jonathon said earlier there is a lot of rubbish talked about SEO.
What I have found is that keywords mean less nowadays than they used to but if you are using them make sure that the keywords that you use appear appropriately several times on the home page of your website.
Google wants you to have a sitemap so make sure that you have created one.
The most useful thing to help your ranking is incoming links from appropriate websites. Don't get conned by one of the link farm companies and sign up with them as this will actually hurt your ranking.
Another thing that helps is to use your url in your signature on all your emails and if Mick doesn't complain ;) when posting on forums.
Make sure you check out the webmaster tools on all the search engine websites and then follow their submission procedure to get your site indexed by them.
I have found that these all work for me and placed me on the first page of Google and Bing. Hope they work for you.
Thanks Colin - i`ll give these a try. I use my url in all signatures on emails and will tidy up my keywords. How do I know if I have a sitemap already - given that I set my website up through luxipics. i`l ask them but just wondered? Looked up how to create one and was immdeitaely put off by all the compuer speak and codes - just not me. I`ll tidy up my keyowrds next ;). I guess I need to link to more sites but step at a time.
Jinky, If you want to tell me your url I should be able to do the sitemap for you and email it to you. Alternatively you can do it yourself here (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/) and all you have to do is then upload the normal xml and html files (you don't really need the others but if you want to upload them they are only small and it won't hurt) to the same folder as the home page of your website on the webserver.
Cheers Colin - I`m not sure how Id do it. I did go onto xml and get a site map emailed to me. My site providers do not provide site maps at the moment they say and their view is that they do not make a great deal mof difference to engine searches. I`ve no idea how to access the server but know I had huge problems early on when I bought my domain name from 123 and tyhen tried to link it to luxipics siste to get rid of the luxipics .com extension. 123 kep giving me plain wrong advice and in the end it was only luxipics at first time of asking who agreed to use my passwords to set it up. i`ll leave it for now and see how I go unless you know a way of doing it without messing up what I have. Alternatively if you or others can give me something showing the importance of site maps I can try and persuade luxipics to adopt them as they say it is something they could look at in future if enough demand for it.
Quote from: jinky on June 09, 2011, 08:39:26 AM
their view is that they do not make a great deal mof difference to engine searches.
They are wrong. It's one of the very very few things that Google, Yahoo. Ask and Bing agree on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_map and even better http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=183668
I've said it before - you need a new host. Luxipics will cost you money.
Quote from: Jonathan on June 09, 2011, 09:44:48 AM
Quote from: jinky on June 09, 2011, 08:39:26 AM
their view is that they do not make a great deal mof difference to engine searches.
They are wrong. It's one of the very very few things that Google, Yahoo. Ask and Bing agree on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_map and even better http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=183668
I've said it before - you need a new host. Luxipics will cost you money.
Thanks for that - will take it up with them. I`ll be sticking with them for now as just recently renewed for a further year but will see what they do. Trouble is I can not afford / do not need an all singing and dancing website. Strictly semi-pro basis I am looking at with jobs to fund gear and a trip or two is my aim as I have other things I plan to do with my early retirment and photography is not my sole source of income. Wish I knew more about site creation or had a contact who would be reliable / cheap enough to do me one but not just now. i`ll use your links to talk to luxipics.
Quote from: jinky on June 09, 2011, 08:39:26 AM
Cheers Colin - I`m not sure how Id do it. I did go onto xml and get a site map emailed to me. My site providers do not provide site maps at the moment they say and their view is that they do not make a great deal mof difference to engine searches. I`ve no idea how to access the server but know I had huge problems early on when I bought my domain name from 123 and tyhen tried to link it to luxipics siste to get rid of the luxipics .com extension. 123 kep giving me plain wrong advice and in the end it was only luxipics at first time of asking who agreed to use my passwords to set it up. i`ll leave it for now and see how I go unless you know a way of doing it without messing up what I have. Alternatively if you or others can give me something showing the importance of site maps I can try and persuade luxipics to adopt them as they say it is something they could look at in future if enough demand for it.
As far as I am aware (and someone please correct me if I am wrong) ; The search engines trawl the landing pages first , which is usually the home (parent/index) page and on most basic web site maps the rest of the pages are linked as sons and daughters in the tree. If you have a site that includes more than one landing page (ie more than one parent/index page) the information on those pages will come up in the first trawl, along with your home page. Or indeed as itemised in your meta tag / data search info, when users type their search words in to find someone or something.
All really useful stuff wasted on an ITY illiterate lie me. I`ve sent my request to luxipics to do it or tell me how to do it if I can and will see it as a test of their customer service which I must say has been excellent to press. I think for me local advertising and word of mouth is probably the way to go rather than a heavy , costly advertising route that if it works might bring me more business than I want. Thanks all.
Quote from: beauxreflets on June 09, 2011, 10:09:55 AM
Quote from: jinky on June 09, 2011, 08:39:26 AM
Cheers Colin - I`m not sure how Id do it. I did go onto xml and get a site map emailed to me. My site providers do not provide site maps at the moment they say and their view is that they do not make a great deal mof difference to engine searches. I`ve no idea how to access the server but know I had huge problems early on when I bought my domain name from 123 and tyhen tried to link it to luxipics siste to get rid of the luxipics .com extension. 123 kep giving me plain wrong advice and in the end it was only luxipics at first time of asking who agreed to use my passwords to set it up. i`ll leave it for now and see how I go unless you know a way of doing it without messing up what I have. Alternatively if you or others can give me something showing the importance of site maps I can try and persuade luxipics to adopt them as they say it is something they could look at in future if enough demand for it.
As far as I am aware (and someone please correct me if I am wrong) ; The search engines trawl the landing pages first , which is usually the home (parent/index) page and on most basic web site maps the rest of the pages are linked as sons and daughters in the tree. If you have a site that includes more than one landing page (ie more than one parent/index page) the information on those pages will come up in the first trawl, along with your home page. Or indeed as itemised in your meta tag / data search info, when users type their search words in to find someone or something.
Yes and no. Spiders will crawl every page on the internet that they have access to eventually. Because everything is interconnected.
Google suggest using an XML sitemap as a way to accelerate this process. It's usually wise to follow their advice if you want results from them ;)
If I work at a new venue I make sure the wedding from it is blogged with some suitable keywords pretty soon after. Once the post goes live the site automagically regens the sitemap and pings Google. I've hit page 1 for some venues within 15 minutes of making a new post.
Jinky, You already have a domain and you can get a shared webhosting package for considerably less than luxipics charge. You could build a website or get someone to build one for you fairly easily and cheaply. Something like a Wordpress blog with a Gallery would give you all you need to get you started. You can probably get a local teenager to do it for you or may be quid quo pro it with some photography for someone local.
If luxipics think that you don't need a sitemap I wonder why they have one for their own site?
Jinky,
my web space costs me £100 pa. It's mine, it's backed up and it comes with full e-mail facilities to go with my domain as well as the usual stuff like PHP, Perl, MySQL, and best of all, WordPress.
The thing with Wordpress is you can get some really great photography templates out their for a few dollars that will more than do the job, and are fairly easy to learn and manage.
When i say templates, you acquire a licence for a 1 off fee of, well lets say $40 (seems to be the high end for most).
And that's it - really is that simple. If funds allow, you can even, as suggested get an aspiring geek to custom code you a site, especially WordPress one.
I mean, $40, that's not even a meal out nowadays.
£100 pa - £2 a week, so the Sunday paper might have to go...
Oh yeah, now i've sung their praises - i use http://www.bpweb.net (http://www.bpweb.net) - and their support is absolutely spot on. Wouldn't use any one else...
And forgot to say, space is plentiful so no limit on how many pics you can have in your album - and if you exhaust the given bandwidth, then the trade generated should be able to cover the extra :tup:
if it's any use, I have my own server running cPanel, lots of space & lots of bandwidth, I rent out virtual servers to friends & acquaintances for £25 a year, much like what lots of you probably have with companies like bpweb (I used them for a couple of years but ran out of resources so went over to renting my own server), webfusion, 123-reg, 1&1 etc.
You can use it any way you wish & run any software, such as wordpress, joomla or self made web sites.