How to start Online Marketing for your Photography Business

[marcal]

Originally Posted by dharmit

Thanks dakwegmo,

Can I ask following

• Where do you have your domain in Australia or US?
• with which provider?
• What is the space they provide (Google provides 100MB, I think)?
• What is the simultaneous download they provide?
• Do they provide services like Google Analytics?
• Do they have website templates to make life easier for us?

Maybe you can write a Tutorial on how to setup your domain/website for less than $10.00 a year. That would be interesting.

Cheers

I host my domains in www.3essentials.com My business Plan (the type of account I have) allows statistics about your site, 4 GB of hosting space, etc. I think they have some templates too. I don't know if this is the best provider in the world but I can tell you that they have an OUTSTANDING customer service and , sometimes, this is priceless.

Regarding the design of your website. I also like to do all by my own, but when it comes to business be really careful because, as dakwegmo pointed out, your web will be your image on the web... I'm not saying you must hire a web designer right from the beginning but just take it serious. I'm sure you have some friend who is good at it and can give you a hand... Or, even better, find a web designer and make a deal: free pictures for free design... that would be cool, right?.

Hope everything come together nicely !

[morts]

Agreeing with the "get a domain name" crowd (of one).

Think of high-street shops. Have you seen those dodgy shops that have a hastily printed banner hanging over the shop sign with a load of either imitation or other goods of dubious quality being sold? That's what having a website with google pages/geocities/etc reminds me of. Yes, it's a valid way of selling yourself, but it's not as flexible and you send across the message as being somewhat of an amateur.

Whereas if you take the time to design your own website (I realise that this is the more difficult option) and register your own domain name you get not only the peace of mind that it's entirely yours and you have full control over it, but also it adds credibility to your brand. If I were a customer and I came across a photographer who had hosted their portfolio with google, I wouldn't necessarily dismiss him out of hand, but I'd have a niggling doubt at the back of my mind that this person was too lazy to set up a proper website and went with a pre-built template and stuff.

oneandone.co.uk also do reasonable website deals and hosting. Though I have not used them for a while so things may have changed.

If you want help designing your website from a technical/standards point of view, I can give you some pointers:

• Avoid the use of excessive ********** and Flash. It will annoy people with flash blockers and those who have disabled JS globally and enable it on a case-by-case basis. You do NOT want your site to be dependant on a technology that people have to enable to see it.

• Use standards-based design. Check out http://alistapart.com/ for some very useful articles on good design practices. CSS, DIVs and lightweight separation of content from style are the in thing these days. I suggest you use it.

• Make your site clear to navigate but without cluttering the navigation interface. Instead of presenting all your categories on the front page, create several subcategories.

• I'd even say get rid of the navbar and make, say a 4x3 or something grid of sample photos for each category and put the category name beneath them. This is much more user-friendly and easier on the eye. The human brain works with images FAR better than text.

• In the gallery pages themselves, it's ok to include text links back to the homepage and other galleries. Using images there can distract the user or confuse them.

I hope this helped a little - if you have any questions, feel free to PM me. If anyone has anything to add or if you want to shout at me for being a colossal retard, feel free to do so also!

[dakwegmo]

Originally Posted by dharmit

Thanks dakwegmo,

Can I ask following

• Where do you have your domain in Australia or US?
• with which provider?
• What is the space they provide (Google provides 100MB, I think)?
• What is the simultaneous download they provide?
• Do they provide services like Google Analytics?
• Do they have website templates to make life easier for us?

Maybe you can write a Tutorial on how to setup your domain/website for less than $10.00 a year. That would be interesting.

Cheers

You seem to be missing my point, so let me see if I can make it more clearly.

The steps are essentially the same as yours. I would only add these two steps before yous begin.

1. Register a domain name. All of my domain names are registered in the US, through godaddy.com. and cost me $10/year. They are all .com, .net, or .org top level domains. I don't know if there are similar discounters for Australian domains, but I suspect there are.

2. Go to google apps for business and sign up for a FREE standard edition account. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/b.../editions.html
This allows you to use many of google's services, with your own domain. Among the features it offers, are an unlimited email accounts at your domain (Each account comes with 7 GB of storage). These use the gmail service, but instead of being @gmail.com, they are @yourdomain.com. Google sites These are exactly like the ones at sites.google.com, but instead of having to use google in the address you can use www.yourdomain.com, and you get 10 GB of storage space for your site.

[dharmit]

I would like to thank dakwegmo, morts and marcal to open my eyes.

thanks dakwegmo for showing me how google can be still used for your own domain.

thanks morts for the analogy of high street shops

I will certainly look into getting my own domain

You have changed my way of thinking

[morts]

dharmit, thanks for the credit

Take a look at Tips for creating your website if you haven't read it already - it contains a more in-depth guide that I wrote about making your own website - might help you a bit more.

[i speak in math]

By the way, GoDaddy is offering 99-cent domain name registration for 1 year with code 99DOMAIN. 20-cent ICANN fee applies, making it $1.19 per domain.

They also have free ad-supported hosting.

[dharmit]

Originally Posted by dakwegmo

I don't know if there are similar discounters for Australian domains, but I suspect there are.

Does anyone else know if there are any discounters for Australian domains?

[marcal]

Originally Posted by dharmit

I would like to thank dakwegmo, morts and marcal to open my eyes.

thanks dakwegmo for showing me how google can be still used for your own domain.

thanks morts for the analogy of high street shops

I will certainly look into getting my own domain

You have changed my way of thinking

Glad to be of help ! That's what forums (or fora) are for...