Don't go too crazy link building, anymore than a couple a day risk Google thinking it is spam links...

but good tips, thanks for writing

Essential, basic information that everyone needs to remind themselves every now & then. Links dont build themselves - thanks for the prod !

Nice advice here. I think it helps to have a listing on Google Maps as well. You need to put an address and it needs to be yours, but a couple reviews will throw you right to the top of your area.

As far as music on a website, do you recommend it at all? I've thought about this one a lot, and while I like the 'life' that music gives my website, I don't want to alienate potential clients because of it either. One thing I haven't done is start a blog. I've considered it, but not really sure where I'd start!

That's actually a really good point. I think you can probably do more than a couple of links a day before you set off any alarms at Google, but I don't think it's very easy to do so organically.

One thing people seem to miss, that's oh so simple, is to make sure you fill out your profiles and signatures when you sign up for forums and social networks. We gain new members in our photo community every day, and there's a spot for people to add link to their websites, as well as a signature area, but no one is really using them effectively.

Don't forget to participate in photography forums while you're at it. The more you participate the more likely your links will be visited and the more you sprinkle your signature throughout that website. Just DON"T BE SPAMMY! Forums are meant to be a helpful community type of thing. If you become spammy people will notice and you'll get booted!

"Links don't build themselves"

That's going on my mirror in the bathroom!

Agreed. All photographers should have their business listed in Google Maps. Rosh Sillars talks about this often on his podcast and it's sage advice.

I personally don't like music on websites that auto-starts. If you have it there, with a play button, it's great. I just don't want my speakers blasting while I'm in my cubical at work, browsing the web because there's nothing to do. ;)

Here's the thing about music on photography websites. It's so freakin' personal. And sometimes personal can turn off business.

Here's an example: I live in West Texas and I HATE country/western music. I cringe every time I hear it when I walk in a restaurant or boutique or whatever. You know how often this happens.

This translates on the Interwebs. Not everyone is going to like your music. Not everyone is going to be prepared to listen to your music. I often use the speakers on my computer to blast my iTunes library when I'm working out or practicing ninjitsu (damn you Jackie Chan...I will have my revenge!) and if I forget that they're turned up and I'm quietly surfing the web, in the office next to my kiddos bedrooms at 3AM, and stumble upon your photography website and it starts blasting the last Glee cover at me without any warning, waking my kids and my dog and my cat and my wife, I'm driving to Odessa and wake you up in the middle of the night with a bull horn! Just kidding.

Seriously though. I don't think most people really are fans of the whole music on the flash intro website thing anymore.

People, I think, multitask too much. They're listening to their music while they're surfing the web. Or they're watching some crapality TV program while they're surfing the web. Or maybe they're the kind of user who always has 12 tabs open on their browser and if one of them starts playing music they have to figure out which one it is and it just becomes too much of a pain. And you never want to associate pain, or frustration, or anything negative with your business.

I think music should not ever, EVER, start playing when I visit a website. Especially if I can't easily find the mute button because if that's not the first thing I see then the next thing I look for is the little "x" that closes that tab and I'll likely never visit that website again. But that's just me.

It amazes me how many photographers forget to build an email list.

I'd agree that it is pretty amazing how many photographers don't have email lists, however, I often wonder if this is an issue of ignorance rather than forgetfulness.

I think that in today's hyper social networking world email has fallen out of favor with most of the social media gurus.

Perhaps this is a matter of photographers thinking it's not worth the effort to do the email lists if everyone is on facebook?

I think that's exactly the reason, but the problem is that it's not a good one. As a photographer, if you are trying to sell prints, sessions, books etc then email will outperform social media for sales by a factor of 50 to 100 times. There is a country mile in distance between how well they perform for the purposes of building your business or getting your name out there.

If you asked me to choose between Light Stalking's 160k Twitter followers or our email list of 23k, I would choose the email list without hesitation.

I'm sorry if I this comes across wrong, but stop building interference between you and your potential client. Get rid of the Newsletter sign up's that pop up every visit, get rid of the ads in the upper right corner (this is now considered a blind spot) and stop acting bigger than you are. (This site only commits the first two).

There is almost nothing worse than every time you visit a site a message pops up, even if you are already a subscriber (Light Stalking, your's is horrible because of the delay, you're already starting to read content and then wham, stupid pop up).

Most web users have also begun building a blindness to ads, especially those small pile of them in the upper right corner. I understand the reason for them, but if your income is from photography (as opposed to blogging) then don't use them. You will lose more money from annoyed visitors than you gain from ad revenue.

Lastly is probably the worst turn off, and that's acting like a bigger business than you really are. If you're a one person shop, communicate as a single person with your visitors. Etsy is such a success because buyers enjoy the fact that there's a personal connection (with individual shops) behind a large entity. Don't use 'we' and don't communicate in the third person 'Jill is a wedding and event photographer....'.

Most importantly, is provide something of use for the viewer. Having a blog, and facebook page and twitter account are all well and good, but actually using them to interact with clients is the key. Even if you just picked one and stuck to it, that's better than having all three and only using them for link bait. (I don't have a public facebook profile, I'm only intermittent on my blog, but I'm always on Twitter).

No need to apologize. We always welcome feedback here. It's the best way for us to gauge how we're doing. Plus, it gives us an opportunity to clarify where we stand on issues or subject matter.

I understand how people feel about pop-ups. The reason that so many websites, like this one, use them is because they are effective in helping accomplish goals, whatever they are, for webmasters/blog owners/administers/etc. The newsletter is crucial to the growth of this website. This is something that I've trended and researched time and time again. Pop-ups allow us to grow the newsletter, which in turn, allows us to continue to work on the website in a positive growth direction.

I've tried out a few different pop-up programs, in the past, and have ditched all of them because I thought they were too intrusive or that the pop up was too difficult to dismiss. The one that we're running now seems to be a pretty good "meet in the middle" solution. It only pops up the first 3 pages (or visits if you're only hitting one page at a time), unless you clear your cookies, and you can dismiss it easily by either hitting the "x" or clicking outside the lightbox. I like that you brought this up. I'm going to add a text to the pop-up that explains the 3 visit and cookie issue so that new and returning visitors don't think that it's something they'll have to deal with every time they visit this site. Thank you.

As for the ads, this website is an advertiser revenue run venture. The advertisements allow us to continue positive growth by providing revenues that allow us to hire contributors (which we are in the process of doing now) and provide prizes for giveaways and contests, as well as paying for hosting costs and outside advertising to bring in new readers.

Ad blindness is, in many people's opinion, a debatable subject. We, as well as our sponsors, are able to track whether those advertisements get clicked by our readers and visitors. When they're relevant and helpful to our readers they do, in fact, get clicked, which means that they do work in our experience.

The question of whether one's income comes primarily from photography or from outside ventures (such as blogging or sponsorship) seems irrelevant to me. If someone who is a professional photographer chooses to take on advertisers on their blog then it's their prerogative to get "paid" or at least minimally compensated for the time and effort that goes into running a blog or website. Further, there are many professional photographers, in all niches, that take on "sponsors" such as Kodak, Canon, Epson, etc to supplement or increase their income and profile in the community. They speak on their behalf at conferences and/or write on their behalf on blogs, websites, trade journals, etc.

My personal income doesn't come as a professional photographer anymore. This is a medical issue where I could no longer offer services as a wedding and portrait photographer because of injuries sustained in an accident. You really don't want to have to tell a bride that you can't shoot her wedding she scheduled a year ago because your back went out, again, days before her wedding. Because of this I have turned my photography back towards my original goals of working in the art world with camera in hand. I'm actually much happier doing photography for myself rather than for clients so it has worked out well in my case.

I certainly agree with you about why Etsy is so successful. Personal touch is so important when engaging in a virtual world. I do intermittently, change from "I" to "we" on this website because I am in the process of hiring other bloggers and the goals for this website are, in the end, to have a voice of "we" rather than "I".

On your last point: I see your point. I think that having multiple web presences can be a tricky thing to juggle if time doesn't permit and it may be more beneficial, for some, to concentrate on one vertical rather than spread yourself too thin. I think this is a matter of juggling goals, time management, and reader/client engagement. I am not a regular user of facebook. As much as I know how important it is to be more engaged on that platform (and every thing I track and trend solidifies this) I still just can't sustain a constant engagement there. It's just not my thing. I'm active here (obviously) and on Twitter, but facebook just doesn't do it for me. That said, many of our readers do come from facebook and our fan page grows steadily which is why I'm hoping our new contributors will be able to help me with engaging, positively, our readers who do spend much of their time on facebook.

I really do appreciate your feedback and welcome more of it in the future. Thank you.

Thanks for the clarification about three visits Damien, I'm constantly on a different device so that might be why I didn't notice it here. Just so you know I wasn't directing my comment directly at your site, like I said, I understand the need for these things on a blogging site like this.

I was mostly directing the comment to photographers that see sites like yours or Light Stalking and blindly copy them. I just meant that if your site is there as a portfolio to find new client work, remove the barriers from them enjoying the experience. You'll likely get more work and income that way than through ads.

Sorry to hear about your injury, a good friend of mine is going through a similar thing, two surgeries in less than 18 months. He had to cancel a few wedding gigs because his doctor doesn't want him further extending the injuries.

I agree that if your photography website is designed to garner clients or works as your portfolio then you probably shouldn't have ads on your site unless, perhaps, they are a big name sponsor (Canon, Nikon, etc) that provides equipment, sends you to conventions on their behalf, etc.

Sorry to hear about your friend. I certainly empathize. I've learned to live with my back injuries, although giving up on wedding and portrait photography was tough, I'm actually much happier now as a photographer and as an artist.

Again, thank you for your input.

Nothing turns me off of a website faster than auto-play music.

In regards to Twitter accounts (and to some extent, Facebook Pages) make sure you are putting out your own information. Unless you're running YourPhotoTips or other like Twitter accounts and your purpose is to be an aggregate of all things photo tip related. To many photographers do not tweet their own thoughts and instead choose to RT from other streams. And I don't mean just tweet your own photography related thoughts, show your personality out there and tweet a little about yourself. You don't have to tell me every time you take a sip of coffee, but it would be nice to know there is a personality behind your camera.

I agree. I think you should have a good mix of Tweets in order to be successful on Twitter. You want to share your own stuff regularly, and you want to share links to things you find on the web that would likely interest your followers, and you need to show your personality. RTs are good to mix in because it shows you participate in the community.

Have a good mix!

Do many professional photographers like the idea of stock photo websites?

I think that depends on whether you are a stock photographer or not. Professional photographers work in niche markets so it's rather unlikely that any professional photographers would dislike the idea of stock photo websites as a whole.

That said, I think the bigger question would be: Do stock photographers like the idea of micro stock photo websites?

That's where the conversation gets interesting!

With regards to #2 "The Blog", I mainly show images on my blog. You call it the heart, but I'm not sure if that's portrayed on mine. And honestly have no idea if there is any real traffic to the page, based on all of the ridiculous spammy comments. If you have some time, I'd love some feedback.
http://heidijoportraits.com/wp/

Also I was wondering about your thoughts on becoming a PPA member or Pro4Um member? This was recommended to me by another photographer to keep up with other Photographers, but I haven't decided if its worth spending the money.

That popup is clicked away so fast, there is not even time to display information, let alone for me to read it. Same with the top-bar ads. Poof! gone. Was there? No idea. And you've already annoyed me. It's not a good idea to ask people to sign up for anything at all before they've had a chance to see what you actually have on offer.
Even though this page may contain some useful information, I am not bookmarking it. I don't, as a rule, bookmark annoying pages.

There are ways to ask people to subscribe for something without annoying them - after they've had a chance to see your content and actually *want* to know more. Likewise, there are ways to advertise without being annoying. This site fails on both counts.

Given how many brides browse for wedding services at work, if they hit a site with music they just shut it down instantly so absolutely no is my vote!!
PS Our websites are up for major overhauls to incorporate both video and photography together.

I laughed out loud when reading about link building. Only because it seems like a far fetched dream to get traffic to sites. Thank you for not mentioning "believe in yourself/dream big".
Great post!

I found this really interesting but my generation is being rather slow to discover Facebook and getting people to Like my Facebook page is hard work. It also seems to have a huge address when I link to it which isn't helpful. I guess people can just search for Moray Photographics or for Jan Barrett-Photographer but how to get them to know I'm there to do the search first.

Facebook relies on people passing stuff on and many don't. I've had some success with my art project Babes in the Wood but that's not brought any commercial value as yet to my business. But then, personal projects are for the art aren't they?

Yes, personal projects should probably fall into the "art" category (depending on your business).

You should be able to get a "personalized" URL for your fanpage and that should shrink the URL quite a bit.

Log into Facebook.

Go to: http://www.facebook.com/username/

You can give your Facebook page it’s own unique username and that will give you a shorter URL.

As for getting more people to "like" your fanpage. It's all about the content and the engagement.

Here are a few random motivational quotes to get you going;

Tough times never last, but tough people do. - Dr. Robert Schuller

You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?" - George Bernard Shaw

The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination. - Tommy Lasorda

Now go forth and build links!

; )

If you're having problems with spam comments then I suggest tapping into Akismet. You're using wordpress so you're halfway there.

The first thing that jumps out to me when I visit your blog is that it's only showing one post at a time. I'd up that to either 3 or 5 depending on your average length of blog post. You want people to get a good feel of what you're writing about. Also, consider adding a plugin like "Yet another related posts plugin" that will automatically find content, within your own blog, that is likely related to the content of each post. This let's people wander about your blog a little more and that helps them got hooked a little more.

As far as PPA or any other memberships...that's a business decision. Can your business afford it? If not, consider joining up with photowalk groups that are free. You'll easily meet many photographers who are passionate about photography more than business. Meetup.com is a great resource for that.

Noted...and thanks for stopping by!

These are really use full ways to get your self promoted in this field, but most important you should have sound knowledge of what you are doing with out it you couldn't be successful.

Useful info, thanks for the post. Oh, and fully agree about music on websites, makes me just close the browser and i work from home :/

A good portfolio is always a good thing. Show them what are your visions and maybe lessen the elements in your site. Also research and try to figure out how can you be unique. Be the apple in a basket full of mangoes.