Pricing is often one of the hardest areas of the business for photographers. New photographers are sensitive about their lack of experience, afraid they don’t merit a large fee and can’t compete with more established professionals. But even for established professionals, a certain sense of guilt is common when it comes to talking price. Many professionals are almost apologetic when quoting a price, and are much to willing to come down.

I’m no exception.

I recently had a revelation that has helped me a great deal with the psychological aspect of pricing. It has to do with the difference between how photographers and clients perceive any given photo shoot. What many photographers, enthusiasts and pros, often forget is that a photo shoot is a rare and big event for a client. While we do shoots every week, most people might do a professional photo shoot a few times in their lives. A FEW TIMES IN THEIR LIVES.

If you charge cheap, cut corners, or otherwise short-change your clients, you really are depriving them of something special. You are depriving them of the opportunity they may only have a few times to experience a professional photo shoot - to be the center of attention during the shoot, the recipients of small gestures that make them feel like valued clients, and ultimately the recipients of truly beautiful professional images.

Instead of skimping on the price, go ahead and price high. And then make it worth it. GIVE YOUR CLIENTS THE UNIQUE AND MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE OF WORKING WITH A TRULY PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER. Dress like a pro, act like a pro, project confidence. Do your homework before the shoot. Go the extra mile to make your clients feel valued before, during, and after. Do everything necessary to create the ambiance of an idealized “photo shoot” as well as produce great images.

Think of yourself as selling an EXPERIENCE, not just a set of photos. If you can do that, I guarantee your clients will be happy to pay for your services. And they’ll remember the experience for a long time to come.

John Mitchell, who provides great tailored photo workshops in Australia.

Gregg Lowrimore, who does some great landscape and wildlife work in Colorado.

And to some businesses that support photographers and have supported DSLRBlog or Photocrati in various ways:

FrameFit.com, which has over 32 years of experience carrying picture frames, plexiglass, mat & foamboards, plus many other picture framing items.

Delmiaco Design Studio, which provides photoshop templates & digital backdrops that are professional, customizable, press ready.

Photogenic, one of America’s leading professional photographic lighting companies since 1904, specializing in electronic flash systems for professional and amateur image makers.

Photodex ProShow, software for making breathtaking photo & video slideshows for both DVD and web.

Profiles by Rick, whose custom ICC profiles provide a great, low-cost solution for photographers who want accurate color from their printers.

i2K Quickage Panorama Software for creating great panoramas, even with no tripod, on both Mac and Windows systems.

Diversified Lab - Pro Photo Lab, which has served professional photographers since 1977 with online proofs, printing, photofinishing, albums and more.

Denevi Digital Imaging Service, which provides High quality professional scanning and DVD transfer services, including Blu-ray for great prices.

Outside of these, here is a list of great blogs that I regularly read and find to have the excellent information for aspiring professionals thinking about building their businesses.

Dan Heller’s Photography Business Blog

This is a very well-known photography business blog. Heller offers up a richer and more detailed set of writing on running a photography business than almost anyone else. Indeed, many parts of his “blog” read more like book chapters (some are). Heller is also an authority in the area of model releases - much of the information from his book on the subject can also be found on his website. He has great information on the stock photography business as well. The articles are uncommonly long and and sometimes excruciatingly detailed. danheller.blogspot.com

Photopreneur

This is a well-established blog about starting and running a photography business. The authors offer great tips in down-to-earth language that’s easy to understand. They comment on a wide array of different topics, and include a good number of articles that are just fun articles about photography, and not as much about the photography business. Compared to Heller’s blog, the articles here are shorter and easier to read, but with less detail (the same can be said for most of the rest of the blogs here). blogs.photopreneur.com

Black Star Rising

This is another group blog with well over a dozen contributors. It’s affiliated with Black Star the photojournalism / stock company, and most of the contributors are Black Star photographers. Black Star Rising is not an exclusively business-oriented blog, but much of the the content is. Unlike many other business-related blog, this one has a photojournalism emphasis. I find this blog to be fresh - it’s less fluffy than Photopreneur and less detailed than Dan Heller’s blog. rising.blackstar.com

Stock Photo Talk

A great blog on the stock photography business by Andy Goetze. If you are interested in stock photography, I would consider this blog a must-read. You won’t find a lot of highly targeted advice about running your own business, but you will find a wealth of up-to-date information about what’s happening in the world of stock photography. www.stockphototalk.com

Photo Lovecat

Photo Lovecat is a blog, again by multiple photographers, dedicated to photography business issues. This is a great blog for aspiring photographers. It’s fresh, has a ton of good business related content, and its very easy on the eyes. You’ll find articles on everything from working with clients to registering a photography business to using social media. photolovecat.blogspot.com

Strategy Avenue Blog

The Strategy Avenue blog, by Laura and John Novak, is the blogging arm of their consulting and training business for photographers (Strategy Avenue). You’ll find well written articles on various aspects of running and improving a successful photography business. Laura’s work consulting with photographers has given here a good grasp of the common problems aspiring photographers face. strategyavenue.typepad.com

A Photo Editor

This is a great blog by Rob Haggart. It’s not exclusively about running a photography business, but there are plenty of great business-oriented tips in the mix. Haggart’s perspective is particularly useful because of his long-time experience as an editor. To read his blog is to temporarily see things more from the perspective of an editor. www.aphotoeditor.com

Photo Business News and Forum

This is a great blog dedicated to photography business issues by John Harrington. It’s a blend of nuts and bolts advice on running a photo business, on the one hand, and commentary on trends in the photography industry, on the other. John Harrington is also the author of the well-selling book, Best Business Practices for Photographers. photobusinessforum.blogspot.com

ASMP Strictly Business Blog

This is a semi-official blog of the American Society of Media Photographers. It’s written by a dozen ASMP members. I like group blogs since they offer a more diverse array of viewpoints on any given issue, and that’s an advantage here. Obviously, the fact that this blog is written by one of the major photography associations gives the views of the authors credibitlity. On the downside, while this blog has great potential, but it’s relatively new and the content is still notably thin. Either that or they just don’t have very good navigation to their archives of articles. www.asmp.org/strictlybusiness

ProPhotoLife.com

A blog targeted at advanced enthusiasts and pro photographers by Jim Talkington. This blog focuses a lot on photographic technique and general photography tips, but you’ll still find a wealth of articles on the nuts and bolts of running a photography business. www.prophotolife.com

-

Of course, the blogging world is vast, so no doubt there are other photography business blogs that probably content for a spot on the list. If you know of any, feel free to mention them below.

-

When is the last time you updated your marketing plan?

This is of course assuming you have a marketing plan. If you do - good for you. If not - get on it. I certainly don’t want to hold myself up as a model of small business marketing. I have definitely made my share of mistakes (and will hopefully continue to do so) but I have invested a lot of effort, time and even some money into learning about what works and what doesn’t.

I’m not here to tell you what will work for you and what won’t because those will be different for each photographer. Your particular market, the type of work you do and your geographic location all come into play when determining the right mix. The point I want to make is that all successful marketing campaigns have a few things in common.

1. They are planned and executed according to a plan. Failing to plan is the biggest single error photographers when it comes to marketing.

2. They are executed as campaigns - not discreet events. I’m regularly amazed at how many photographers try a marketing technique, don’t see results and abandon it relatively quickly.

3. They are consistent with the core values of the business.

Whether you shoot commercial or retail work, people, food, or weddings - you’ve got to market yourself in order to bring in new business. As of this writing the international economy, well, sucks. Things are looking better now than they have for a while but they’re still way down.  In times like these it’s easy to pull back on marketing expenses, after all, if the money’s not coming in, you can’t put it out again. While I’m not indifferent to the plight of small business owners, and I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to pay for and ad before their mortgage, cutting marketing budgets and efforts right now is a big mistake. Look at it this way. If you have a 10% market share of a million dollar market, you have sales of $100,000. If that market shrinks to $800,000 you need to increase your market share from 10% to 12.5% just to hold steady. That’s certainly not possible without marketing.

Writing a marketing plan is not an easy task and brining in outside professional help can be great. A marketing consultant can bring their expertise to yours and help you drill down through your business data. In the event you’re not able to afford or find a good marketing consultant there are a plethora of books and internet tutorials on writing marketing plans. Ask 100 different marketing experts how to write a marketing plan and you’ll get 100 different answers - but the basic concepts are the same.

1.  Establish your goals - these should be solid, measurable goals, ie increase sales to $350,000 or shoot 47 weddings this year.

2.  Establish a budget - usually a percentage of your monetary goal.  It will be different depending on your particular area of expertise, geographic area and your customer base. My personal marketing budget is 7 percent of intended sales for this year.

3.  Establish methods to reach your goals.  This is the meat of the plan and requires the most research. This includes the tools you’ll use as well as a schedule.

4.  Establish systems and methods to measure the effectiveness of your efforts.

I use a program on my Mac called Omni Outliner to keep track of my efforts. This program is great because I can essentially create an outline very easily add sub headings and break down larger tasks into smaller discreet tasks.  How do you eat and elephant?  One bite a time.

Of course writing the marketing plan is not enough, one must follow and execute it.  But this is the beauty of the plan. This business is usually very cyclical and inconsistent. With a well written plan and schedule in hand you can best utilize your down time.  If this week is slow get your newsletter articles written, start the printing on your postcards, shoot for your portfolio.  In other words, use your downtime and check those things off of your list.

1. Find your niche and start shooting in it.

Most enthusiasts shoot what they want, where there at, without any overarching logic. They produce a haphazard collection of different images. Then they try to sell the resulting images. Shoot first and then find a market. Pros do just the opposite: they know their market, and then shoot for it. They specialize, get to know buyers in their niches, and shoot deliberately and strategically to deepen their portfolio in their chosen areas. Starting tomorrow, spend some time figuring out where you want to specialize, and from now on spend your precious shooting time in those areas. Unless you live in Kansas and are determined to have your niche be Central American travel photography, it’s not that hard to build a solid portfolio. Just give yourself a highly targeted list of assignments. Do some at-home product shoots, or portrait or engagement sessions with family or friends. Assign yourself to cover at least 10 mammal species at the local zoo, or spend some time at some local wild areas. Take it seriously - learn about the animals or natural areas you’re covering. As long as your niche is something close to home, you can build a portfolio relatively quickly.

2. Develop your website.

In the digital age, you must have a website and it must be a good one. A website is your online portfolio and your most effective marketing tool. A well-designed site gives you credibility and provide a point of interaction with clients and buyers. Like a storefront, it is a place to which you can direct people, and a way for others to stumble into you while searching the web. Indeed, many people today find photographers today by doing Google searches. If you don’t have a website, you won’t even be found or considered. Beyond that, web sites provide a platform for selling prints and stock photos directly, and for offering blogs, reviews, and other important content that adds value for your potential clients. Over the next week, either develop your site yourself, or find someone to develop it for you. Read my best photography website template series for reviews of photography website templates you can use to create great sites fast.

3. Develop a list of buyers in your target market.

Once you know your niche and start developing your site, you need to begin defining your target market. Who are you shooting for? If you are selling to magazines or publishers, go to the book store and buy copies of your target magazines, and find the names of publishers in your field. Register at Photosource International, and pay for a list of buyer contacts in your niche. Go through Photographer’s Market, and list those buyers in your field. If you want to do commercial assignments, make a list of local companies in the industries in which you specialize. If you are going to do weddings, figure out what the best mediums are in your region for advertising to engaged couples. Over the next two weeks, consolidate your list of potential clients, with contact information, in one place.

4. Send out three submissions.

From your list of potential clients, choose the top three—those that are the most attractive to you but also the most likely buyers. Focus on those that offer the best fit with your work in terms of content, style, and quality. Send high quality submissions to these three buyers (I’ll post on how to do a high quality submission shortly). If you do this right, there’s a good chance you will make your first sale. If not, you will have taken the first step to building a relationship with what will be an important client for you in the future.

5. Sign up for photo buyer requests.

In addition to initiating contact with your target buyers, you should also sign up to receive image requests from photo buyers. First, when you contact Photosource International to obtain contact information for buyers in your niche, you should sign up to receive their weekly and daily buyer requests. You will need to apply and be approved to receive the daily list, with more competitive and higher paying clients. You should also go to Photographer’s Direct, and apply to receive their photo buyer requests. As with the daily list at Photosource International, you will need to submit an online link to your portfolio to be accepted.

6. Join a Stock Agency.

You know your niche and your market, have a growing portfolio, and have started marketing directly to buyers. Now it’s time to reach out and put your images on file with a stock agency. If you are really new, or don’t have a deep and coherent portfolio of images, then you can go right now to Alamy, and start the process of signing up with them. As long as your images meet minimum standards of size and quality, Alamy will provide you with a marketplace. You will learn how the stock universe works, and when your portfolio is deeper, you can take the next step. If you already have a strong image library, you may be ready to go immediately to a more specialized and competitive agency. Choose a smaller agency that closely matches your photography in content, style, and quality. I cannot overemphasize that last point - you’ll make your life much easier, get accepted, and make sales by choosing a smaller specialized agency that sells the kind of images you make. Do some online research, peruse the Photographer’s Market, and make a list of five agencies that are attractive and match your style. Find their submission guidelines, and follow them closely. For more ideas, see How to Choose a Stock Agency.

7. Start advertising for assignments.

You’ve started marketing directly to buyers, and started the process of putting your images with a stock agency. The next step is to start looking for paid assignments. If you are just starting, then start with family and friends. Let them know what you are doing, and that you are available to start shooting wedding or other important events. (Note: If you have not done weddings before, you should read and prepare thoroughly before doing one. It’s an important event, and you need to provide high quality images. See my list of recommended Wedding Photography books in the side bar.) You may want to do the first 1-2 events at low rates, or even free. Your friends are giving the opportunity to get started, and you are giving them the gift of your valuable photography time. Use the resulting images as a basis for your initial wedding / event portfolio. If you are more are more experienced, then you can develop a wedding website, and start advertising at local shops or online usin Google Adwords (see article on Google Adwords).

8. Get a local shop to display your images.

You’ve started marketing directly to photo buyers, starting working with a stock agency, and started looking for assignments. Now you can take advantage of one more avenue to sell your photos: selling prints. Start paying attention, and you’ll notice that many local shops, coffee houses, and cafes display artwork, often from local artists. (Even if your local shops don’t, talk to the owners and they might be willing to start.) Using an online print lab or your local lab, print large mounted prints of your 10 favorite images, take them with you, and ask shop owners if you can display your images.

9. Order some great photography books and learn more.

Even if you manage to read every article on my site, you will only be getting the tip of the iceberg in terms of the information available to help you make it as a photographer. Because there are so many books on the topic, and because I believe strongly in continual learning, I’ve compiled a list of what I consider to be the best books in different areas. If you are serious about making as a photographer, order some now and read them over the next month. They will provide the foundational knowledge you need to start thinking like a professional photographer. As a starting point, you can see a list of recommended books to the right in my sidebar.

-

Any other thoughts for very immediate actions steps you’d recommend?

This is the third article in a series on the best photography website templates. Also see:

The Best Photography Website Templates: Introducing a New Series

Review of Photobiz Website Templates

Overview of Printroom.com Online Storefronts

Printroom.com offers online storefronts for photographers. Although still in the realm of website templates, Printroom.com is an entirely kind of solution from Photobiz-style templates. After setting up an account, you upload images to your Printroom site. They offer very few choices regarding the appearance of your “homepage” or galleries, and very little flexibility. The major advantage of Printroom and similar sites like Smugmug is the integration of galleries, shopping carts, and order fulfillment. In a Printroom store, your clients can browse images, select what they want in terms of print sizes and styles, speciality items, even digital downloads. They checkout and pay, and Printroom alerts you to the order. If you have not done so already, they will ask you to upload high resolution versions of the relevant images. And that’s it. Printroom handles all order fulfillment - printing, packaging, shipping.

I’d like to emphasize something up front. In some sense, comparing Printroom or other “pro storefronts” to full-blown website solutions like Photobiz is unfair. I can’t imagine any pro photographer using a Printroom store front as their sole or even primary online presence. Printroom just doesn’t offer the kind of attractive templates or customization options that allow photographers to present their online portfolios in all their glory. Usually, Printroom is a secondary site, one used to store client images after a shoot and give clients the ability to browse and, most important, order prints. That’s the best use of Printroom.

Overall Appearance

I personally find this to be a weak aspect of Printroom.com. They are not alone, sadly. Compared to the beauty and elegance of Photobiz flash templates, I find both the home pages and gallery pages at most printing-companies-cum-online-storefronts to be elementary looking and clumsy, especially the galleries. Above is a screen shot of my Printroom.com homepage; below is a shot of one of my galleries.

The design elements are very basic. The homepage is passable, although very lacking in flexibility. The galleries are just unnecessarily ugly. I don’t like using such a strong word, but if a duck quacks…  I’ve spent a lot of time staring at my gallery page, trying to figure out what bothers me about the look. It’s partly the white “shadows” cast to the right and bottom of each image. It’s partly the design of the toggle boxes and magnifying glasses.

The individual images page are just a bit better. Here is a screenshot:

I like the large image with thumbnails on top. But the little table to the right of the images, where clients are supposed to type the number and type of images they want, have the same 1990s-clumsy-but-gets-the-job-done look. It’s just a plain flat table with hard square lines.

And, again, the final shopping cart, pictured below, has the same look.

I have to admit that the appearance may not bother everyone. I’m continually trying to figure out if it really is ugly, or if it’s just a matter of personal taste. I’ve provided the screen shots, so ultimately you can decide.

New Flash Sites

Printroom may recognize that they are lacking the design area. They have very recently introduced new Flash websites. These sites are a marked improvement over the basic html homepages of yesteryear (above). They are quite passable. But, again, all things in comparison. Compared to Photobiz templates, the Printroom Flash templates look like first drafts. They have somehow managed to import the same clunky looking into their flash sites that undermines their html sites. Here are three sample flash website that Photobiz links to as samples.

http://www.printroom.com/studio_homepage.asp?userid=robynsdesigns
http://www.printroom.com/studio_homepage.asp?userid=ClarkLara
http://www.printroom.com/studio_homepage.asp?userid=rarroyo02

Looking at these, I am somehow underwhelmed. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that the image areas are all the same stock light gray, or if its the use of tabs for the menu, or the overall sense that the site has chunks (background and image area) that don’t work together as a unified whole.

Grade: D for HTML sites, C for Flash sites

Ease of Use

This is a mixed area for Printroom. The main back-end management area is good enough. Below are three screenshots to give you a sense of the feel and functionality of the Printroom Backend. The first is a screen shot of what you see when you first log in. You can see the various menu items (square buttons) and you can see a list of galleries. The second screen shot is what you see if you click on a gallery. Here, you can change image names and order proofs. Finally the third screenshot is the page on which you set prices for prints and products of various sizes. You can prices specific for each gallery, which allows you to tailor your pricing to particular clients (say wedding versus your travel poster gallery).

I find this back-end management area fairly easy to use, which is a big feat given the amount of functionality for ordering and pricing. For image uploading, they encourage you to use their own software, Pro Studio Manager, which you download and install on your computer. This software allows you to create galleries, import images, delete images, and make other adjustments on your computer. You then upload or synchronize, and the software batch uploads your images and re-creates any changes.

I must say that I found this to be an awkward solution. I don’t like having to down load new software, first of all. But then you have to be vary cautious about making changes within the backend management area, since synchronization seems to run just one way, from Pro Studio Manager to your site. They encourage to you to make ALL changes in their software. I guess it just seems to me that there should be a simpler way - something that’s quick and easy and online.

(By the way, while we’re on the topic of ease of use, there is one more thing to comment on. Printroom makes another software package called Printroom direct, which is supposed to allow Photographers to upload images and order prints and products easily and separate from whether or not you have a Printroom storefront. AVOID this at all costs. When I was doing a lot of work with Printroom, this software was the bane of my existence. It’s slow, impenetrable, and senseless. Well, I should add a caveat. I haven’t used the software in over a year. I thought about trying it again so I could include something in this review, but I just can’t do it. I like you, my readers, but not that much.)

Grade: B

Flexibility of Design

This is another weak spot (there are strong spots, really, coming below). Printroom store fronts offer very little flexibility and very few options for customization.
As with Photobiz, you don’t have access to the source files that comprise you’re site, so you can’t make any individual tweaks you might like. You can’t add extra notes and announcements or elements to your home page. For technically skilled people, this may be a big turn-off.  At Photobiz, this lack of access is offset a bit because they’ve provided a good number of built-in options. You’re still hostage to the options they provide, but at least there are options. Printroom provides very few options for customization of your pages.

In fact, you can see for yourself. Here is your online store front set up page. This includes all the options you have:

They have added a new bit of flexibility with the option of flash websites. But again, the options for customization seem quite limited once you’ve had a chance to fool around with Photobiz. Below is the how Printroom describes the functionality and customization options of their Flash pages:
* Sleek, clean design
* Create your own slideshow- upload up to 15 of your images
* Upload your logo- or create a text header with a wide selection of fonts
* Custom background colors to match your style
* About Us page, Contact Us page, and a custom page that you can define
* Online tool allows you to create your site in minutes
* Integrated Storefront with your photo galleries displayed right on your homepage

If you want to test drive their “flash homepage tool” you can do so and get a very clear sense for what’s possible. Click on the demo link here:
http://www.printroom.com/info/Store_Front_Designer.asp?

Grade: D

Blogging Capability

None. There is no blogging capability. If want to maintain a blog, you would need to host it on a different server and different domain name. Given the importance of blogging today as a critical way to interact with past or potential clients, that’s a surprising omission and big, big limitation, as least as far as I’m concerned.

Grade: F

E-Commerce Functionality

Now we finally move solidly into one of the big strength areas of Printroom. Indeed, it is the main reason Printroom exists. Printroom is a storefront. It’s designed to provide browsable galleries in which client can select, customize, and order photos. Although the appearance isn’t always elegant, it does this very well.

One of the big weaknesses of Photobiz is that although they have a shopping cart, they do cannot provide any order fulfillment services. Well, Printroom is a printing company. So the integration between online shopping and order fulfillment is essentially seamless. If you are not picky about which photo lab you use, this can be a HUGE time saver.

As I noted in the introduction, Printroom is not really designed to be a stand alone website solution. Most photographer use it as a secondary site to host photos for clients and provide online ordering options. For that purpose, the seamless integration of galleries, online shopping carts, payment, and order fulfillment is great.

Grade: A

Cost and Fee Structure

The fee structure for Printroom is fairly straightforward. They offer three membership levels. The first level is free. That’s right, you can set up a Printroom storefront for free. This membership comes with limited space for images, no option for flash websites, and limited support from Printroom, but it’s still a good way to get started. How does Printroom make money? Easy - they charge you when you order prints. Printroom is after all a printing company. They figure if you set up a free account with them, and upload galleries, you are more likely to use their printing services. Which is true.

At the second level you can buy a pro member ship for $9.99 per month or $99 per year. This membership comes with 1GB of storage space, the option to use flash, and more or less full support. It’s important to note that this compares very favorably with Photobiz, which costs more than $99 just for initial set up PLUS a much higher monthly fee. At $99 per year, Printroom pro is still a very affordable solution.

At the third level, you can buy a premium membership for $199 per year or $19.99 per month. This level comes with unlimited storage and a range of options like the ability to create a fully customized flash website and priority support from Printroom.

In addition to their monthly or annual fee, Printroom also charge a printing cost, but this would be paid anywhere and Printroom’s charges for printing are quite reasonable. A 4X6 print costs $0.39 and an 8X10 $2.99.

Grade: A

Search Engine Optimization

This is a huge weak area for Printroom. Despite the fact that the URL for my Printroom includes my name (www.printroom.com/pro/erickdanzer), my Printroom site has never shown up on the first page of search results EVEN WHEN SEARCHING FOR MY OWN NAME. Needless to say, if your site doesn’t show up when you search for yourself, you’ve got problems. I just did a test and searched for myself. My Printroom site shows up on page 4 of search results. By comparison, my main site erickdanzer.com is the number one result, and my Photobiz site shows up on page one.

I don’t what the problem is with Printroom’s SEO structure, but it is clearly not a place where you will “be found” unless someone is actively looking for you.

Grade: F

Free Trials and Guarantees

Photobiz offers a free membership, so you can test drive it completely as long as you like. Hard to beat that for free trials.

Grade: A

Conclusion

In short, Printroom offers a great service: seamless integration of online galleries, print ordering and shopping cart functionality, payment processing, and photo printing and order fulfillment. This kind of service is hugely convenient if you shoot events and want to offer browsable galleries and online ordering to clients. And they offer this service at a very reasonable price. Back-end management is reasonably straightforward

On the downside, their online storefronts and galleries can be visually unappealing. They’ve made some improvements in this area with the introduction of Flash websites, but even their Flash sites are not nearly as beautiful or elegant as some of the others out there. In addition, Printroom sites lack flexibility and options for customization (with some exception for premium members), lack blogging capability, and have an awkward system for image uploading. These sites are terrible as far as search engine optimization is concerned.

The bottom line, as I’ve mentioned several times, is that Printroom probably isn’t a good option for a stand alone site to represent your work, but it is a good secondary option for offering galleries and online ordering to clients. For you main web site — the online portfolio that represents you to the world — you will want a solution that offers more visual impact, greater flexibility, and, ideally, blogging capability.

Overall Grade: C

Anyways, now that the flurry of changes is done on Photocrati, I can get back to sharing some business tips here. Up shortly: a review of Printroom.com online storefronts.

Thanks for the patience, Erick

So here are some tips on how to get started with Google Adwords and how to make sure you get the biggest bang for your advertising dollars.

Have a good website

Before you start, let me underscore that you need to have a good website. Ideally, you’ll have a great website. With Google Adwords, you will be sending prospective clients to your site. So the overall design and functionality, as well as the images you have in your online portfolio need to be of sufficient quality that they will convince at least some of people who come that you are worth contacting.

Set up your Google Adwords account if you don’t already have one

Assuming you’ve good a high caliber website, the other basic thing you need is a Google Account. You can set one of these up very quickly and easily. Just go to www.google.com, click on Business Solutions underneath the search box, click on Adwords, and follow the instructions.

Add a new Adwords campaign and set your settings

Now it’s time to get started. Once you are inside your Adwords account, you will want to click the Campaign Summary tab, and then click “New Campaign.”  This brings us to a quick aside about the structure of campaigns and ad groups. A campaign is highest level categorization. Use different campaigns for very different projects (ie, say one campaign for you wedding photography, and one campaign for your corporate product or real estate photography). Within each campaign, you may want to have different ads that use different titles and keywords.

GEOGRAPHIC TARGETING. When you are first setting up your campaign, there are a few settings you need to pay close attention to. One of the most important is geographic targeting.

If you live in Atlanta Georgia, and you are trying to find wedding clients, you don’t really need your ads to show up for users in Oregon. Google gives you the ability to narrowly limit the geographic space in which your ads appear. So you might set the geographic targeting to the state of Georgia. That way, any users in Georgia searching for “wedding photographer” will see your ads. But those in other states will not. That can save you a lot of wasted advertising revenue.

TOTAL BUDGET AND MAXIMUM COST PER CLICK. You will also need to set your daily budget and your maximum cost per click. These two amounts are obviously related: if you have a high total budget and a low cost per click, you’ll be able to generate more traffic on your site and more leads. If you have a low budget and high cost per click, then you’ll get less.

Your cost per click is critical here. The CPC is how much you pay every time someone clicks on one of your ads. It determines how quickly you blow through your advertising dollars, but it also determines where you ads appear in the list of ads that appear alongside Google search results. The higher your ads appear in the list of ads, the more clicks you will receive.

Unfortunately, the ideal CPC varies from keyword to keyword and is largely determined by the amount of competition over any given key word. If you specialize is Poodle Photography, and you want your ads to appear every time some types “poodle photos” in Google, then you’re probably not going to face high competition, and you can set a low CPC (maybe .15/click) and still appear very high if not first in the list.

If, by contrast, you want to appear on the first page of search results for “denver wedding photographer”, you may need to increase your cost per click to $6 or higher just to appear on bottom of the first page. (I know this because I’ve had to go that high several times over the past month for my own Adwords campaign for wedding photography in Colorado).

So your cost per click is partly out of your control. You can set it at initially what ever level you want, from 1 cent to $10 or more, but you will want to adjust your CPC strategically. In short, your goal is to find the lowest CPC that will get you onto the first page for your keywords and, ideally, will get you into the 4th position or higher.

It’s important to note that you DON’T need to be the first result. The difference in click throughs for spots 1-3 are not all that different, and you can save a bit of money by appearing a bit lower.

The combination of your CPC and your daily budget will determine the maximum number of visitors you get each day. If your max CPC is $.20 and you set a daily budget of 10, then you will get about fifty visitors a day on your site. If your CPC is $1, you’ll get ten.

TURN OFF CONTENT NETWORK. There’s one last setting you should adjust. You’ll probably want to turn off the “Content Network”. You know all those Google ads you see when you are tooling around on websites? Those are the content network. For some kind of advertising these spots are very valuable.

In this case, however, you want to put your ads in front of people are looking for your kind of services RIGHT NOW. If you are a Chicago portrait photographer, your target audience includes people actively looking for Chicago portrait photographers. And those are the people going to search engines and typing “Chicago portrait photographers.” If you leave the content network on, your ads can appear on any site where key words like chicago, portrait, photographer appear. Those might be photography blogs or news articles or something else. But in any case, someone who sees your ads while reading a photography blog is not likely to become a client. And you will still need to pay when they click on your ad. So it’s better to keep your campaign as targeted as possible.

Tips on Designing Adwords Ads

A google ad includes a one line title (maximum of 25 characters) and two lines of description (maximum of 35 characters each). So you have three lines of 25, 35, and 35 characters. That is not very much space in which to convey your message, so you really need to give it some some thought and make every word count.

In choosing your title and description, try to empathize with your customers and think about what they would want to see. If you were looking for a photographer in your line of work, what kind of headline and description would compel you to click?

It’s needs to be descriptive, clearly conveying what kind of photography you do. You may want it to include buzz words in your area of photography. In wedding photography, for example, photojournalism or photojournalistic-style wedding photography is very popular.

You may also want to include specific reference to your geographic area. Many people are looking for photographer that work in the same city, so they will more likely to click when they see their location in your ad.

Another important tip is that you may want to create different ads with different wording for each of your important key words. For my wedding photography business here in Colorado for example, I have separate ads for Denver Wedding Photography, Boulder Wedding Photography, Wedding Photojournalism, Engagement Photography, and other key words. The trick is to match the wording in the ads to the keywords that people are searching for. If some one is searching for “denver wedding photographer,” then they are more likely to click on an ad that includes those same key words.

The great thing about Adwords is that you can create as many different ads as you want, even one for every keywords, at no extra charge.

Making Adjustments

Once you’ve created your ads, they will start to run and you will immediately generate some relevant traffic and potential leads for your site. At this point you will need to constantly go in adjust your ad settings. If your ads are not appearing on the first page for relevant terms, then you may need to increase you CPC. If you are appearing in the #1 spot for everything, you can reduce your CPC and save some money. Depending on which ads seems to be generating higher click throughs, you may adjust wording of other ads or create new, more effective ones.

How Much to Spend?

Finally, you may want to control you overall spending by increasing or decreasing your daily budget.

The budget issue brings us to a final point. Be careful with Adwords. It’s easy to spend a lot of money on Adwords advertising. You can set a budget of $1-200 per day and generate tons of traffic. But you’re also spending $3-6000 per month on advertising. Set a budget of $20, and you are $600 per month.

How much should you spend? Think like a business person. How much you spend depends on the returns. If you sell wedding packages for $1500, you can spend $1500 in advertising, get one job and cover the costs. Of course, that doesn’t leave any profit for you or any money to cover your overhead.

In large part, how much you spend depends on your “conversion rate” - the percentage of people who come to your site and actually decide to use your services. You should assume that less than 5% of visitors will become clients. A good estimate is 2%. Using that number, if you send 100 people to your site at a CPC of $1, then you have spent $100 in advertising.

If you have a good website, somewhere between 1 and 5 of those people will contact you and strongly consider buying your services. If you are charging $300 per shoot, then that’s $3-1500 in revenue depending on your conversion rate. As you can see, a high conversion rate dramatically increases the returns on your advertising dollars. That’s why having a good site is so important.

Unfortunately, you probably can’t precisely guess your conversion rate. You will need to launch your campaign, watch the numbers, and adjust accordingly.

-
Do you use Adwords? If so, how has your experience been? If not, why not?

The General Rule: If a photo of a person, or of copyrighted or trademarked property, is used to advertise something, then the publisher of the photo needs a release.

The Privacy Exception: If you are hired to take photos of someone (say a wedding or studio shot), those photos cannot be published, even editorially, without a release.

If you really understand those sentences, then you know almost all you need to know about the legal requirements of model releases. Most of this article elaborates on these sentences above to make sure each part of it is clear.

The General Rule for Photography Model Releases

The first thing to note is that, for the most part, only photos of people need releases. Contrary to popular belief, neither animals nor buildings nor other property require model releases, except in the specific case where the property is the subject of a copyright or trademark. That will come as a bit of a surprise to most people, who are used to hearing about property releases. It’s also a surprise to many property owners, who think their buildings or other property is protected. But it’s not, unless it’s trademarked or copyrighted.

Second, model releases are only needed if an image is used for advertising purposes. That is why pictures used for editorial purposes—textbooks, magazine articles, newspapers—don’t generally require model releases. Hence the old rule of thumb: commercial work requires a release while editorial work does not. The same rule applies to copyrighted or trademarked property: photos of copyrighted or trademarked property only need a release if used for advertising purposes.

Third, it is the publisher who is legally obliged to have a model release, not the photographer. For the most part, unless you lie and tell a publisher you have model release when you don’t, you are not legally responsible. Publishers of photos are responsible for knowing if a given use requires a release, and they are the ones who are legally responsible if they publish a photo without one. Of course, even if you are not legally responsible, it’s no good if one of your buyers gets in legal trouble due to one of your images. So you should have a basic understanding of the law, and you should communicate the exact release status of any images you license.

Note also that if you decide to self publish, then you become a publisher and are thus liable like any publisher.

Model Releases and Privacy

No legal discussion would be complete without an exception. If you are invited or hired to take pictures of someone, say for a wedding or studio shot, the resulting images are protected by privacy laws. You can’t sell those photos EVEN FOR EDITORIAL USES without a model release. Much like attorney-client privilege, the established relationship between you and the client creates a responsibility to safeguard privacy.

This can create a strange situation, because this responsibility applies even in public places where other people might take pictures of your clients at the same time. Since they don’t have an established relationship with your clients, they CAN sell their images editorially without a release while you can’t.

Model Release Summary

So let’s summarize. First, you (the photographer) don’t need model releases. Only the publishers of your photos need releases. And they need releases in three specific situations:  First, they are using a photo of a person to advertise something. Second, they are using a photo of copyrighted or tradedmarked property to advertise something. Third, they are publishing a photo of your clients, who hired you to take their photos.

Outside these situations, except for arcane situations you are unlikely to face, the buyers of your photos don’t need model release. And if they don’t, you don’t. Mostly.

An Alternative Answer: If Your Buyers Require a Model Release, You Need One

Whatever the legal requirements are, the simplest answer to the model release question is this: If your buyer requires a release, you need one. This is important because buyers often want releases even if they’re not necessary. Since they’re the ones who are liable, they take extra measure to protect themselves and remove even the possibility of a lawsuit.

So, Should You Obtain a Model Release?

Let’s say you’re traveling someplace and you taking photos of the people you see during your journey. Should you stop to get a release? If you have commercial clients, or you think you’ll want to sell the photo for commercial purposes, then it may be worthwhile to stop and get a release. If you do mostly editorial work, and the likelihood of commercial sale is low, then you should probably skip it. If you do stop to get a release, it will severely interrupt if not halt your shooting altogether, preventing you from getting all the other great shots you might have captured. And you’re not likely to need it anyway.

Recognize that there are armies of photographers who never get model releases. Most notably, photojournalists and press photographers who do editorial work rarely obtain releases.

The important point is that whether you obtain a model release is ultimately a business decision not a legal one. It affects which client you can sell to. Obtaining a model release can be valuable because it opens up the arena of commercial clients as potential buyers of your photos.

More Information

That is the shortest and most direct answer I can give for model releases. If you would like a longer and more detailed answer, I would strongly recommend reading Dan Heller’s guide to model releases. He’s written a good book on the subject, and almost the entire contents of the book are available on his website. It’s very thorough, and probably the only reference you’ll need on model release. If you want to more information on the book, click here: A Digital Photographer’s Guide to Model Releases: Making the Best Business Decisions with Your Photos of People, Places and Things.

Sample Release Forms

If you’ve decided you do want to get a signed model release form, you can find a list of sample forms at the National Press Photographer’s Association here.

We are now in the process of going through ALL our articles and reorganzing them into sensible, easy-to-find categories. All the content should be reorganized within the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, please pardon the dust on the sidebar!

Thanks.

Erick

But I’d push you to move beyond simple site design and think creatively about all the other content you might add to attract people to your site, enhance your reputation, and increase your income. While the types of content you might add are limited only by your imagination, you might start by considering things like blogs, reviews, or advice. Blogs, especially, are becoming almost standard for many pro photographers.

Why? First, good quality content attracts more viewers and more potential clients, and keeps them coming back to your site. That is, it generates traffic. High traffic helps you indirectly by getting your name out there and expanding your reputation. It helps you directly by generating more leads for your photography. And, if you manage your site well, it will help you directly by generating immediate sales and advertising revenue from your site.

By far the most common type of additional content today, and easiest to start and develop, is the blog, one of the great new communication forms of the web. As I’m sure readers here know, blogs deal with all kinds of subjects: photography, law, politics, economics. There are many blogs that don’t seem to deal with anything at all. They just circulate gossip or recount people’s personal stories. There are at least two broad categories of blogs that you can consider adding to your photography site: a blog targeting other photographers, or a blog targeting prospective and past clients.

Client-oriented blogs

Client-oriented blogs are by far the most common for pro photographers. On a client-oriented blog, you write light fare about recent photographic work you’ve been doing, post samples from recent shoots, announce new projects, and offer personal ruminations about your photography work. Much of the content is specifically client-related - “check out this photo from my wedding last weekend…Mark and Lisa were great!” But other posts may be of a more personal or general nature - “I was out at Red Rocks park yesterday taking landscape photographs. The lighting was brilliant, and it made me think about …..”

The overall effect of such a blog is to allow readers to get a strong sense of your personality and your work as a photographer. These are the kinds of blogs that family, friends, and fellow photo enthusiasts will enjoy reading as well as clients. But a real advantage is that the blog allows clients to get a feel for what kind of person you are and whether your personality and style fits with what they want.

Depending on how open you are about sharing your own personality, some people use blogs essentially like diaries, just to tell their personal stories. If you think no one is interested in your personal ponderings, think again. It’s always surprising to me that people are interested in reading the personal diaries of others, but they are. People seem to be voyeuristic by nature.

If you are reading this, then you aspire to be a professional photographer. How many other people in the world do you think aspire to be professional photographers? A lot! We often consider that to be a bad thing, because it means more competition. But from the perspective of a blogger, all these people are your compatriots, interested in the same things and engaged in the same struggles. There’s a good chance that many would be interested in reading about your personal journey.

Blogs oriented toward fellow photographers

For this kind of blog, you find a photography-related subject that you have (or can get) special knowledge or insight about. You share that information with other photographers. And if it’s valuable enough, they will come. This blog is a good example, as are two other groups blogs that I run, Photocrati and SLR Geek.

Many people think they don’t know enough about anything interesting to write their own blog. Think again. You know more than you think you do, and you DO have some special knowledge that would be valuable for others. Good possibilities might include the best photography locations in your town, including the best places for landscape shots or wedding photos or some other kind of photography. You might talk about the techniques you’ve used to produce your favorite shots. Or the best camera stores in your town. Or the problems you’ve had with photoshop and how you’ve solved them. Or the best photography books you’ve read.

One adaptation of this kind of blog is to collect existing online advice and to provide an intuitively organized clearinghouse of information on certain subjects. The web universe is so vast that it can take hours of searching to find the right resources, and even then you often don’t find the best ones. If you can find the best resources for others, you can save them time and provide a valuable service.

Another adaptation for the truly enterprising is to expand your blog beyond yourself. You can invite others who know as much (or perhaps more) than you on particular subjects to contribute to your blog. Some blogs are based entirely on this model, providing a forum for many bloggers to post their thoughts on a given subject.

To make all of this more concrete, consider an example. Let’s say you enjoy doing macro and super-close up photography. In addition to showcasing your own imagery on your site, you could collect and organize the most valuable information on the web for close-up photography—locations, techniques, equipment. You could also find other great close up photographers, local or national depending on your ambitions, and get them to post on your site. Now your site is becoming a focal point for the community of photographers who do close-up work. From there you can keep expanding. The additional content not only generates traffic, and therefore opportunities for revenue, but also solidifies your reputation as a close-up photographer.

You can do the same thing if you specialize in weddings, cultural photography in Jordan, wildlife in Kentucky, or extreme sports.

Starting Your Blog

Blogs are remarkably easy to start. The simplest approach is to go to Wordpress (www.wordpress.com) or Blogspot (www.blogspot.com) and simply follow the instructions to get started. Your blog can be up an running in minutes, free of charge. They will give you a site address like janesmith.wordress.com to host your blog, and you can just add a link to that address from you photography website. Even those lacking tech savvy will find setting up a blog to be a relatively easy process.

If you want to have the blog based directly on your site (ie. www.janesmith.com), I would suggest downloading and installing Wordpress software directly to the server where you site is hosted. While this may sound complicated, it’s not. If you have set your site up yourself, including setting up your domain name and hosting service, then you can simply call your hosting service and ask them for instructions. Most webhosting services have a simple, “one-click” option for installing Wordpress on your site that greatly simplifies the process.

Indeed, if you are still waiting to set up your site, you can go to bluehost.com now, use the check domain link to find a web address you like (www.janesmith.com), and then call Bluehost to set up your site and install Wordpress at the same time. You can have the whole thing up and running in 15-20 minutes.

Blog as Business Activity

I’ve already noted some of direct benefits of runnig a blog: it solidifies your reputation as an expert in the kind of photography you do, it shows readers your personality, and (due to both of the previous) it helps you attract and keep clients.

If you are enterprising enough, however, you can make your blog a source of income in it’s own right. I’ve written in another article about the importance of Multiple Streams of Photography Income. I honestly believe that most photographers, especially those starting out, need to think beyond the simple take-photos-and-get-paid-for-it model of the photography business. Most pros do a range of income earning activities beyond photography - from writting magazine articles or books to conducting workshops to providing photo editing services to other photographers.

In this spirit, a well-done blog can be its own business activity. Once your blog develops a decent readership, it’s quite feasible that you can bring in an additional $1000/month from a blog. This article is not the place to go into great detail about how to “monetize” a blog. I’ll be clear in saying that you need to do this carefully. Many a blog has been ruined by excessive emphasis on income. But it can be done right, with taste, grace, and a continued emphasis on providing a enjoyable experience for your readers.

-

Have a blog? What you think about the role of blogging in photography?

Here are the basics: 15.1MP, HD video capture (full 1080p HD video recording at 20fps), a DIGIC 4 Imaging Processor, 3.4 fps for up to 170 large/fine JPEG images or up to nine RAW images in a single burst, ISO speeds up to 3200 in whole stop increments (plus H1: 6400 and H2: 12800), a 3.0-inch Clear View LCD (920,000 dots/VGA). The camera comes with Canon’s Auto Lighting Optimizer, Creative Auto Mode and Live View.

The T1i is scheduled for delivery by early May and will be sold in a body-only configuration for $799.99 and in a kit version with Canon’s EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens at an estimated retail price of $899.99.

Initial Reactions to Canon Digital Rebel T1i / 500D

Joe Decker, a Photocrati contributor, talks about implications of the 500D / Digital Rebel T1i the “narrowing” of the market for digital slr cameras, and how the increased power and resolution of “entry” level cameras may soon reduce the size of the market for flagship pro models.

Digital Photography Preview says “this is most of a 50D stuffed into the familiar 450D body.”

Camera Labs says: “if the Beta unit’s quality holds up, … the Canon Rebel T1i’s image quality is at least as good as the Canon 50D, delivering more detail than most of the 12-megapixel cameras on the market for less money.”

Both the DPreview and Camera Labs comments above are based on preliminary use of beta models, so it’s a bit early to tell what the verdict will be. But it’s clear this is intended to be Canon’s new flagship model at the lower end of the market, and that it will be popular camera.

For most photographers, the word “portfolio” evokes images of a physical “portfolio” of images, often in a big black portfolio case, that represents who you are as a photographer. There are still a few situations when such classic portfolios are relevant—for example, if you are applying for a prestigious art gallery, going to visit a high-dollar commercial photography client, or meeting in person with prospective wedding clients.

But for most photographers most of the time, the traditional “portfolio” has always been of limited value. That’s not to say most photographers don’t use portfolios. Indeed, every time a photographer sends a submission to a magazine, stock agency, or other prospective buyer—whether slides, prints, or an email with digital images—that photographer is sending a portfolio. In this case, each portfolio is different, depending on the client.

Today, however, the portfolio concept is taking on yet another connotation. In the digital era, your website is your portfolio.

A website is like a conventional portfolio in that it showcases your best work and presents an overall impression of your style and identity. Yet a website is also much more powerful. It offers an enormous range of creative design possibilities. And it is capable of reaching hundreds or thousands of people with relatively little extra work on your part. It’s also the first impression that most prospective buyers will have of your work.

Even the conventional situations above—art galleries, high-end commercial assignments, and weddings—most clients will see your website before they see anything else. Many stock agencies and buyers will now simply ask for a link to your website instead of asking for a submission of photos.

So in the digital era, the question “do you need a portfolio” is synonymous with the question “do you need a website.” And the answer is yes, absolutely. And you need to give your website — it style, the images it includes, the aura it projects — the same attention you might have given to preparing a portfolio in a bygone era. It’s the most critical step you can take to start selling photos and getting clients.

The Best Photography Website Templates: Introducing a New Series

Of all the template shops I considered in my recent search for a new web template for danzerphotography.com, I ultimately chose Photobiz. Here is a screen shot of a gallery page on my site as it currently appears with thumbnails on the right:

Since I chose Photobiz, that should mean I think it’s the best choice out there, right? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Photobiz, like all template-style solutions has it’s own limitations. For some users, lack of flexibility, high cost, or search engine optimization challenges might mean trying another solution.

OVERVIEW

Photobiz is an all in one web solution for photographers. For a mixture of one time fees (to buy a template, set up shoppting carts etc) and monthly fees (for hosting), they handle everything: flash templates, hosting (in fact, you HAVE to host there, which is a limitation), online proofing and sales functionality so you can sell prints directly to clients, and a range of other functions and services.
Photobiz templates and the system for selecting them is at the heart of the Photobiz solution. They offer over 30 different templates, all with Flash and HTML equivalents, to choose from. One of the best features is that you’re allowed to change templates as often as you like. So if you decide you don’t like one (which I do often) you can change to another with a few mouse clicks. That’s incredibly useful. Their internal architecture ensures that all your galleries and information pages get convert seamlessly to the new theme.

OVERALL APPEARANCE

The main reason I chose Photobiz was that I liked the look of it’s websites. I wanted to try a flash site for my website this time, and Photobiz offers a ample array of beautiful flash templates and allows you to switch between them effortlessly. Their templates vary from traditional to modern, simple to decorative. You can see demos of most of their templates from their home page. Here is a screen shot of the template selection page in the back end where you can change your template with a few mouse clicks:

For each template, Photobiz offers an array of color palettes that can transform the look of your site even with the same template. They also offer the option of  setting your own colors - you can manually change the color of backgrounds, titles, text, menus, and other parts of the site.

While I have not set up the e-commerce functionality on my site yet, I should also note that the appearance of their online ordering pages seems quite elegant, simple, and user friendly. See below for full description.

The combination of beautiful templates, and the ability to not only choose between templates but customize colors within them means that, overall, I really give Photobiz high grades on appearance.

Grade: A

EASE OF USE

This is another strength of Photobiz. Their back end management system is super easy. I don’t think they could have made it any easier to add, substract, and change your website than they have. Here’s a quick look at the backend management system. When you first log in, you are taken to this page:

The round “Flash/HTML” icon on that screen shot, which takes you to all of your main site content. Here’s what you see when click that button and look at your site from the back end:

On the left hand side, you will see a list of pages and galleries. To make changes to any of those, you click on the relevant menu item. You change text using a normal text-edit box. And you upload photos with an easy-to-use, java-based upload system that looks much like the page above. You tell Photobiz which directory on you computer you want to upload photos from, and it show a list of thumbnails in that folder on your computer. You just select the ones you want, and click upload. The uploading process is relatively fast and glitch free.

Grade: A

FLEXIBILITY OF DESIGN

As already noted, there is substantial flexibility to choose between templates and customize colors within templates. That is, however, as far as the flexibility goes. While Photobiz’s template system creates all kinds of advantages, one of the biggest disadvantages is that you cannot customize your site in the myriad small ways you may be used to if you’ve had your own site in the past. You can’t add extra notes and announcements to your home page, and your home page title is limited to a specific number of characters.

What this ultimately comes down to: when you set up a site with Photobiz, you won’t have direct access to any of the html, css, or other files that comprise your website. Actually, since the sites are flash-based, even if you had access to the site files, making any adjustments would be very difficult. So it’s partly a function of flash, and partly a function of the fact that Photobiz only allows you to work on your site through their provided back end management system. You don’t get FTP or other access to the server.

As a consquence, YOUR ARE LIMITIED TO WHAT EVER DESIGNS AND FUNCTIONS PHOTOBIZ HAS THOUGHT TO PROVIDE. If you are technically savvy and like the ability to tweak the appearance of your site and add little extras here and there, that won’t happen at Photobiz.

Grade: D

BLOGGING CAPABILITY

None. The other, and perhaps even more important limitation to a Photobiz site, is that there is no blogging capability. If want to maintain a blog, you would need to host it on a different server and different domain name. Give the importance of blogging today as a critical way to interact with past or potential clients, that’s a surprising omission and big, big limitation, as least as far as I’m concerned.

Grade: F

E-COMMERCE FUNCTIONALITY

Now we move back into one of the potential strength areas for Photobiz. I haven’t set up e-commerce functionality on my site yet. It costs an extra $125, and I have not yet had a reason to pay the extra fee.

Once set up, a link appears on the top menu of your site that takes you to the main landing page for online proofing/shoppting galleries. The landing page can be set to show categories; within each category you can set up a list of galleries. Click in the galleries for thumbnails of images, and click on the thumbnails to see a particular image. Pretty straight forward.

Here’s an individual image page, where clients are able to place orders. You can see the interface on the upper right where clients can select print sizes, number of prints, etc, before adding the image to their cart.

There seems to be an upside and a down side to Photobiz’s e-commerce functionality. On the upside, their online ordering pages and seem remarkably elegant and user friendly. This seems to fit with their overall knack for design. Also on the upside, this functionality is remarkably easy to set up, and it’s great to have a beautiful selection of flash templates AND online ordering in the same place.

On the down side, while the Photobiz online ordering system takes orders for you, it DOES NOT offer order fulfillment. Once a client submits and order, Photobiz simply emails you with the order, and you must fulfill the order through your normal labs. I talked to a Photobiz representative about this, and they said they may add this functionality in the next year. They also noted that many photographers prefer it this way, because they can use their own preferred labs.

Personally, I would strongly prefer to be removed from the order fulfillment process, and have orders go directly to a lab, as happens with pro storefronts at places like Printroom or SmugMug. Individual order fulfillment can be very time consuming.

Grade: B

COST AND FEE STRUCTURE

So how much does this all cost? Clearly, Photobix is a premium template provider. They’re not selling based on price, but based on an impressive packages of services. Accordingly, Photobiz is very much on the expensive side of spectrum for photographer templates. Beyond that, I also find their fee structure a bit confusing in the sense that there are a lot of add on costs that you won’t expect if you are not paying very careful attention.

For most of their services, they charge a one time fee. For example, it costs $125 to get a flash template plus the right to switch templates as often as you like. It costs $45 to set up an HTML mirror of your flash site, $95 to set up online shopping functionality, etc.

On top of those one-time fees, you then pay a monthly that varies depending on the total number of images hosted on your site. On the low end, you can pay $15/month if you have 200 or less photos. On the high-end, it will cost you $100 if you have 12000 photos. For most photographers, the best level is someplace in the middle - say $60 for 3600 photos.

This monthly fee is the potential killer. If you are pro who shoots lots of weddings, for example, and you upload 500 images per wedding for your clients, those photos add up fast. You are going to need to pay between $60 and $100 per month to host all those images.

In addition, there are strange small fees that seem a bit stingy. For example, by default a website comes with 4-5 text pages - any non-gallery page with text on it, like your about page or the page where you describe your services. If you would like to add another text page, you have to pay a one-time fee of $15. Seems like an unnecessary way to extract a bit more from you.

Given all this, how much would it cost to set up a basic site? One time fees are $140, including flash template for $125 and an extra text page for $15. Monthly fees are $15 per month (for 200 or less total photos on your site). So the total for the first year: $320.

How much would it cost to set up a very complete site and take advantage of all Photobiz’s functionality? One time fees are $310, including flash tempate $125, HTML mirro4r $45, shopping cart and online ordering $125, an extra text page $15. Monthly fees are $60-100 (for 1800-12000 photos on your site). Total cost for first year: $1030-$1510.

Needless to say, that’s quite a bit. Obviously you’re getting a lot for the money. And, of course, if you compare it with the cost of hiring a web designer to create a flash html site with e-commerce functionality - which would cost $1500-5000 - it seems reasonable. But the difference is that if you keep your site with Photobiz, you will continue to pay this amount year after year, rather than just once for your own site. And the appropriate comparison here is not your own designer, but other templates you might consider.

Grade: C-

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Flash-based websites have traditionally created problems for search engines. This is of critical importance, since most traffic to most websites comes via search engines. What’s the point of having a beautiful site if it can’t be found?

The problem with flash is that search engines see your whole “flash unit” for lack of a better term, as a single image or video with no readable information. Because the text is effectively part of the flash animation, search engines cannot see it, and that’s how they generally determine the relevance of a given site. So you don’t get the same benefits of a text rich website.

There are a number of ways to mitigate the negative SEO-effects. Photobiz is obviously aware of this and provides a means to add meta tags to each of your pages.

From their FAQ: “Can I optimize my website for search engines? You will have the ability to add meta-tags to your website. We also offer useful links to submit your website for free to major search engines.”

But this only gets you so far. In addition to the internal SEO challenges, another related problem is that you can’t link to any of the individual pages on your site. You can only link to your homepage.

Grade: D

FREE TRIALS AND GUARANTEES

Photobiz offers a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee. I haven’t tried it, so I don’t know how easy it is to ask for a refund, but I’ll take them at their word and assume it’s relatively straight forward.

Grade: A

CONCLUSION

In short, Photobiz offers an impressive array of beautiful flash templates, and allows you to switch between them for free. The templates, the back end management system, and online ordering system underscore that Photobiz has some great designers who know how to make websites that look great and are very easy to use, all while packing powerful functionality.

On the downside, Photobiz occupies the most expensive end of the spectrum for template-style solutions at $300-$1500 for the first year. It lacks flexibility for tweaking a site if you are the tech-savvy type and, more important, lacks any blogging functionality. It’s online order system, while elegant, does not offer any order fulfillment, so you still have to do that part yourself.

Overall Grade: B+/A-

I’m assuming that most readers of this blog are familiar with the basics of how stock agencies work. You take photos, you send them to the agency, they sell them, and you split the sales proceeds. That’s the basic model. That said, that said, the stock photography world is a universe unto itself. Various articles in this series will deal with some of the bigger differences you should be aware of, as well as more detailed thoughts on how to pick and work with any given agency.

For now, let’s say you’ve decided to sell through a stock agency…how do you decide which one to sell through? I’d say the answer depends on where you are in your photographic journey.

Part One: If you are just starting out

If you are completely new to stock photography and / or if you do not have at least 500+ high quality images in a singe niche area, then I would recommend that you take two steps.

First, choose your niche and start shooting to develop a deeper library in a particular issue area. Second, in the meantime, get your feet wet in the world of stock photograph, and possibly sell some images, by applying to Alamy or a similarly flexible agency.

Alamy is the largest online stock photography agency, with nearly 14 million images at time of writing. They require that photos meet certain minimum standards of size, resolution, and quality, but otherwise, their view is that if you have images, you should have a place to market them. Thus, they more open to new photographers than other agencies.

Working with Alamy will get you accustomed to the laborious process of preparing your digital files for submission. It will also give you a outlet for possible sales (don’t expect a lot). Finally, it will give you some credibility. When you apply to other agencies later, you can tell them you have 1000 photos on file with Alamy. Also, Alamy will give you your own searchable homepage.

Part Two: If you have experience and/or a larger portfolio of images

If you have a large portfolio of high quality images and you know enough about stock photography to prepare and submit images, then you have more choices. The big question is whether to try to get into a larger, generalist agency or a smaller, specialist agency.

For the most part, unless you are a recognized name in the industry, you’ll do better with smaller, more specialized agencies. Most important, you’ll be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. The agency will be more interested in your work because it matches the agency’s niche field. Because it’s smaller, you have a better chance of developing a strong relationship with the editors.

Because you’ll have a closer relationship and because your photos match the agencies niche area, they will be more likely to promote your photos in catalogs, online, and with buyers. You will do much, much better with an agency if the agency promotes your images and puts them in high profile locations.

Beyond these benefits, there’s also the fact that smaller agencies are less competitive and easier to get into. If you are just starting out, that’s probably important. Indeed, the biggest and most competitive agencies—Getty, Corbis, Jupiter and the like—can be very difficult to get into unless you are already an established photographer.

At some level this decision is made for you. If you are the kind of photographer who has a chance for getting into Getty or Corbis, then you already know it, and you probably don’t need to be reading this. If not, you’ll probably be looking at smaller agencies.

So the remaining question is: which small agency do you choose?  Simple. Remember this refrain: match content, style, and quality. You should find an agency that matches your content, style, and quality. The same advice applies if you are sending magazine submissions: send your photos to magazines whose images have the same content, style, and quality as yours.

If you follow that simple advice when sending submissions—whether to magazines or stock agencies—you have won have the battle.

If you find more than one agency that matches your work in content, style, and quality, then you can look at other criteria. Other things equal, you should choose the agency that:

a) has the more established reputation
b) pays the highest percentage to the photographer
b) matches your content, style, and quality the best
c) will do the most to promote your images
d) has the smallest number of photographers
d) offers the most attractive terms regarding exclusivity (ie, gives you the most leeway to continue to market your images yourself)
e) offers the most attractive terms for removing your images (ie, doesn’t require you leave your images on file for two years).

So ideally, you’d find an agency that sells just the kind of photos you take, has a great reputation, works with few photographers, pays a high percentage of sales, lets you market images yourself, and lets you pull your image when you decide to. If you find that agency, you’ve got a great match.

Indeed, once you find that agency, you’ll probably continue to work with them for the rest of your photographic career, even if you establish relationships with other agencies for other types of photos.

While I’ve done weddings and portraits in the past to supplement income from my other photographic work, I recently entered the waters of wedding and portrait photography more thoroughly. As part of the new venture, I needed a new website dedicated exclusively to wedding and portrait photography.

These days, there are tons of great website templates and pro storefronts available to photographers: Printroom, Smugmug, BetterPhoto, ifp3, Snapfish, Foliolink, and others. Although all of these solutions have limitations, they also offer some great websites. Unless you’re a web guru or have lots of money to burn, there’s really no reason to build a site from scratch.

In the past, and in my more recent search, I’ve examined or tested a wide range of photo website templates. There are almost no genuine reviews of what’s out there, and the information provided by the sites themselves is obvious biased and limited, so you often have to actually buy and test a templates to really see if it’s the right fit.

The aim of this series is give photographers a better and more systematic basis for choosing their web template. So over the next couple of months, I’m going to write reviews of all the major web template providers. Here’s the list of site providers you’ll hear about over the next two months:

BetterPhoto
Big Black Bag
Foliolink
ifp3
Photobiz
PortfolioSiteZ
Printroom
SiteWelder
SmugMug
Snapfish
Wordpress Templates (from various providers)

I’ll also prepare a article with a round-up review of general template sites like Template Monster, Entheos, and Flash Mint. These are huge template shops that provide photography templates along with many, many others. While they have nice looking templates, they generally don’t anticipate photographers’ needs as well as sites dedicated to photographers.

That’s still an incomplete list, and I’ll add additional sites as I find them. If you know of good quality photography template providers, please let me know in the comments.

In order to be systematic and provide a basis for effective comparison, we’ll be looking each of the following aspects, which reflect some of the features I think are important for today’s photographers.

OVERALL APPEARANCE
FLEXIBILITY OF DESIGN
BLOGGING CAPABILITY
E-COMMERCE FUNCTIONALITY
COST AND FEE STRUCTURE
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
FREE TRIALS AND GUARANTEES
CONCLUSION (INCLUDING PROS AND CONS)

I’ll provide screen shots of sample websites and links to demos built from the templates as well as screen shots of the back end management system so you’ll know what you’re really getting into.

The first review will cover Photobiz, which is the provider I ultimately chose  for my new wedding and portrait site. You can see the evolving result at danzerphotography.com. While I like the look, Photobiz also come with important limitations that I’m just now encountering. Look for the first review by early next week.

Making a living in photography is hard. There is a big difference between an occasional sale, and actually making enough money to live—to pay your mortgage, health insurance (since you are self employed), business expenses, and all your other daily expenses. Depending on your living standards, you may need $50,000 or $100,000 or more in net income to maintain the living standard you want. That’s a lot of photos.

Yet this site is about making the full transition to being a pro photographer, not about making a few sales. And it IS possible to make it as a full-time photographer. That’s the good news.

So how do you do it? In my view, the key to making it as a full time photographer lies in establishing multiple streams of income. If you are truly, honestly determined to make it as a freelance photographer, then this is probably the most important advice you need to take to heart. The key to freeing yourself to shoot full time lies in establishing multiple streams of income.

What do I mean by multiple streams of income?

I like to distinguish between “primary” and “secondary” income from a photography business. Primary income comes directly from the work you do as a photographer. It includes selling prints, licensing images to editorial photo buyers, working with stock photography agencies, doing assignments relevant to your niche, and doing event photography.

Secondary income comes from photography-related activities that don’t entail actually taking or selling images. This includes income from workshops, article and book writing, web advertising, and other sources. You need to diversify in both of these senses–expanding the ways you make money from traditional photography activities, as well as expanding by finding secondary sources of income that are only indirectly related to your photography.

Diversify Your Primary Income from Photography

You need to be active in all different aspects of the photography business. Sell images directly to magazines, publishers, or other buyers. Sell images through one or more different stock photography agencies. Sell prints, either through your website or at exhibitions. Obtain assignments—whether commercial assignments, editorial assignments, or weddings and similar events. Indeed, given how lucrative weddings are, I would say that most professional photographers shoot at least some weddings to supplement their incomes.

The point is  that you need to be willing to do as much diverse work as possible. If this sounds contradictory to other advice on this site or others—for example, finding your niche—then it is, but only a little. Having a niche and establishing diverse streams of income are compatible.

Let’s say you shoot agricultural photography. You can sell directly to magazines or publishers specializing in rural or agricultural topics. You can sell either your photos or services (assignments) to commercial farms, commodity trading companies, or state agricultural agencies. You can sell photos through stock agencies. You can sell your beautiful farm landscapes as fine art prints from your website.

If you decide to shoot a few weddings per year, then it’s true that this diverts from your niche. You may not want to incorporate that work into your image as a photographer, or include references to your wedding work on your website. But unless you are already established a high-powered photographer living off assignments with major magazines or corporations (and if you were, you probably wouldn’t be reading this), then you SHOULD shoot weddings and events as a way to enhance your income. Even as a part time activity designed to support your main photographic activities, income weddings and other events can often match income from your core photographic work.

Diversify Your Secondary Income from Photography-Related Sources

So far, I’ve focused entirely on making money from your photography—that is, by selling either your photos or your services as a photographer. Now, I want to push  one step further. I think you also need to establish streams of income based on activities related to your photographic work, but that don’t just entail selling images and photographic services.

What I am I talking about here? Well, think about the professional photographers you’ve heard of or read about. In addition to their photographic work, they sell books, write magazine articles to accompany their images, conduct workshops, and provide other services to would be photographers.

For many photographers, magazine writing, book royalties, workshop fees, web businesses, and other such apparently peripheral activities often account for a large percentage of total income. This is one of the aspects—one might say “secrets”—of the photography business that often eludes enthusiasts who think about making the transition.

Sometimes these secondary projects can be quite large. The well-known photographer Ron Engh maintains a website, Photosource International, that provides a forum for interaction between photographers and photo buyers. Photographers put portfolio’s of images on his site, and he sends out lists of photo buyer requests to photographers who pay a fee for this useful service.

The web has provided an important medium for such “peripheral” activities. A case in point is this site, which not only provides some supplemental income, but synergistically works to promote my photography services.

The possibilities for secondary income are endless. You can provide graphic design services to the general public or photoshop services to other photographers. You can venture into video work, where the competition is less intense. You can start your own mini-stock agency, using your site to host images from other photographers who do similar work to you. You market their images to buyers or as prints in exchange for a percentage of sales.

This way of making money from your photography business is limited only by your creativity. The ability to find and take advantage of such opportunities is one reason that entrepreneurial instincts and business knowledge are as important to you as your photographic income.

Add Income from Non-Photography Sources

Finally, to all the photography and photography-related sources of income above, we must add one more category. You should seriously consider trying to establish or take advantage of sources of income entirely outside of photography.

In many books by pro photographers, the authors joke that one thing you need to make it as a professional photographer is family wealth or a working spouse. Actually, they’re not joking.

Although we can’t know for sure, I would venture that many well-known photographers had substantial wealth to draw on to ease the transition to full time photography. With out such wealth, it is hard to accumulate the tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment that most pros own. It’s equally difficult to find the time to accumulate the tens of thousands of images needed to make a living.

If your spouse works, especially at a job that pays well and includes health care, then you have a major advantage. You could, conceivably, focus all your time on developing your image library and marketing your photos without threatening the well-being of your family. It gives you the time and space to build your photography business.

In the absence of accumulated wealth or a working spouse, you should consider putting in place other ways of generating non-photography income. I would like to say that, at this point, we are departing from the scope of this site. But really, we’re not. This is a practical guide to making it as a freelance photographer, and this is an important issue. So let’s take brief look at it.

In the realm of non-photography income, what you need is not just another source of income that requires you to trade labor for earnings. Working another job, while it is another source of income in the short term, inhibits your ability to make a complete transition to photography. This is because all the time you spend working your job is time not spent on your photography. And in most cases, that’s a lot of time.

That said, if you have the capacity to work as a part-time consultant in whatever industry you currently work in, that may be an option for alternative income. Unlike regular full time work, consulting can be arranged on a part-time or seasonal basis, thereby creating more time for your photography.

Ideally, however, you need what is often called passive or automated income. Let’s say you own a piece of real estate on which someone pays you rent. While the management of that property may take some time, it’s relatively small compared to the income provided (and the management can be delegated to someone else). In this case, you receive monthly income that based on your invested capital rather than your invested labor.

For that reason, real estate is one of the most common forms of semi-passive income. That is one reason it is usually an important part of investment strategies for wealthy people and for those trying to be wealthy.

The point here is not to encourage you to go into real estate, but rather to get you thinking about ways to establish streams of income that require less of your labor time, and free up more time for photography. As with photography-related activities above, the only limit on your non-photography income is your creativity. And as with above, this is another reason that entrepreneurial and business sense is as important to you as your photographic talent.

If you have the mind to digest and act on these business concepts, then I would strongly encourage you to read more on the subject. There are great resources out there for how to build wealth and automated income.

To sum up the point of this post, if you really, honestly want to make it as professional photographer (and you are not ALREADY there), you need develop multiple streams of income based directly on your photography, but also on photography-related activities, and possibly on sources entirely outside of photography that require less time than your current job.

You should try to sell you photos through as many different channels as possible (magazines, publishers, stock agencies, fine art prints, exhibitions), to obtain commercial assignments from local businesses, and to shoot weddings and other events when the chance arises. You should develop a great website, and think of ways (like this site or Photosource International) to use it to generate extra income. You should consider writing magazine articles to accompany your images, or even writing a book. You should, in short, look for any available opportunity to leverage your photographic knowledge and the rest of your existing skill set for additional income.

Stock versus Assignments (Selling Photos versus Services)

The first and most common division is between those who sell images (“stock” shooters) and those who sell their services (assignment photographers). Stock photographers take photos on their own time and resources, accumulate large libraries of images, and sell the rights to use those images. Assignment photographers, by contrast, are paid to take the specific images that clients need. After the assignment, they may or may not retain rights to those images.

While that’s the basic difference, there remains great diversity within each category of work. For example, stock shooters may sell their images directly to photo buyers at magazines or publishers. They might sell photos through stock agencies. Or they might specialize in selling fine art prints.

Assignment photographers, on the other hand, include those who do fashion or commercial assignment, but also those who shoot weddings and special events. In each of these cases, a client is paying for the services of the photographer, for the process of having photos taken.

Editorial versus Commercial

Another important distinction is between editorial and commercial or creative photography. Editorial images are those used in newspapers, magazines, textbooks, and similar publishers. Commercial or creative images are most often those used for advertising—including, for example, fashion, product, and conceptual photography.

The divide between these categories is clear on most major stock agencies. Go to the sites for Getty Images or Corbis, for example, and they will ask you to select whether you want to search their editorial or creative collections.

Editorial and commercial images are very different in terms of style. Editorial images are often photojournalistic in style, taken to illustrate important news stories or contemporary issues. Conceptual images are generally taken in studios or in other locations with highly controlled lighting.

Most editorial images are published in educational, informational, or news-type publications, and as a result they require much more detailed captions: who did what, where, and when. Commercial images, by contrast, are designed to invoke a mood or idea or give an appealing appearance to a particular product. Neither the location nor the timing nor the identities of people involved are of great importance, so captions can be brief.

One of most important difference between these two types of images lies in the need for model releases. The vast majority of editorial uses do NOT require model releases, while the vast majority of commercial images do. For more on this issue read Model Releases.

Putting these categories together and adding a few others, we can distinguish 7 types of photographers.

7 Types of Photographers

Using the two distinctions above, we can immediate distinguish four categories of photographers.

1. First, there are editorial stock photographers who take their own images and concentrate on selling those images in book, magazine, and similar markets. Two good, well-known examples are John Shaw and Ron Engh.

2. Second, there are editorial assignment photographers. These people are sent on assignment by major magazines and publishers. The classic example is a National Geographhic assignment photographer. As a general trend, such editorial assignments are increasingly rare, limited to the largest (and best funded) magazines and publishers. Most editorial outlets increasingly rely on editorial stock photographers for their images.

3. Third, commercial stock photographers are stock shooters who specialize in creative imagery for advertising. They come up with creative themes and concepts to illustrate with their photography, and often take their images at home or in studios with controlled lighting. They also hire models to shoot “lifestyle” images that capture situations and emotions and relationships in ways that are likely to be useful for advertisers. Most commercial stock photographers work with major stock agencies. A good example here is Lee Frost.

4. Fourth, commercial assignment photographers are those generally hired directly by companies to take specific images for advertising purposes. These assignments may include fashion shoots to advertise beauty products, product shots for catalogues, or architectural shots for corporate brochures. An important sub-category here are those who make a living through their own portrait studios, often working directly with end consumer rather than with corporate buyers.

In addition to these four categories, it might be useful to distinguish four sub-categories of photographers who technically fall into one of the fall categories above, but who represent such a large or unique group that they could be considered separate.

5. There are event photographers, those who shoot weddings and other special events. Event photographers are essentially commercial assignment photographers, but who work with end consumers rather than corporate entities and who constitute such an important industry to be a category in their own right.

6. There are print sellers, who make a living selling prints either online or at art exhibitions or fairs. They are essentially an editorial stock photographers, but rather than selling to magazines and publishers, they sell retail fine art prints to end consumers. An interesting example here is Dan Heller, who has built a successful business with a blend of commercial assignments and online print sales.

7. There are staff photographers who are directly employed as full time photographers for major national magazines and newspapers. Unlike the freelance photographer, they have regular employment with benefits and insurance, and a much more rigid schedule.

8. Finally there are the artists. Artists are less focused on photography as a business. They have often attended photography schools, and either enjoy photography for its own sake or strive to compete for places in the best-known galleries. Here, the approval of art critics is more important than making money, although the two may ultimately go well together. The world of high art photography operates according to its own rules. You should consider studying photography formally, and should try to establish links to art directors and photographers doing the type of work you like.

Combining Models

The distinctions between the business models above are important. But unless you are already a well-established photographer (in which case you wouldn’t be reading this), you will almost certainly need to blend several of the models above. Indeed, even most established professionals do a blend of stock and assignment shooting, and perhaps even a blend of editorial and commercial work. Combining models is crucial because in the competitive world of photography today, you probably can’t make enough revenue to survive from just one type of activity.

-

Am I missing any? Let me know in the comments if so.

DSLRBlog is now under new management, and it is being transferred to a guy I know you are going to love, Erick Danzer.

Long time readers will have noted that I have been letting the writing responsibilities slide. I just haven’t had time to give this site the attention it deserves, and Erick, as well as being a great writer, is actually an expert photographer. I am sure you are now in much better hands!

That said, Erick has told me I am welcome to come back and inflict my bad snaps and worse grammar on you any time, so you haven’t seen the back of me for good

Thanks for taking on our baby Erick, I am certain you will take good care of her!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/balakov/sets/72157602602191858/