What’s Your Preference?

dharmit · #1 (**permalink**) 11-27-2008, 07:00 AM

I started taking photography seriously last year and I have started a photography business just recently. As a new starter, it is a bit tough to manage cash flow as start up fund requirements are high.

I faced the same problem when I thought of Marketing for my business. Online marketing is one of the several areas that you need to think about when you are thinking about your business. Getting a domain name, getting a business email address, making a website etc were the questions that I was thinking when online marketing was on my mind.

I started online marketing recently and the only thing that I paid for is my time. Virtually all other things are for free. I know that someone might argue that time is money but my counter argument is that it is your time and that you are not paying someone else to do the work for you yet you are getting results. I thought that I should share my experience of getting my business online for FREE with you.

My website is at http://sites.google.com/site/dharmitsphotography

I have following gear
Camera:
Canon EOS 450D
Canon Powershot S5IS

Lenses (or Glass as pros say):
18-55 IS (kit lense)
55-250 IS (kit lense)
50mm f1.4 (nifty fifty)
I am planning to get wide angle 10-22 EFS

Accessories:
A tripod
Lowepro slingshot camera bag
Pelican SD card case

Please leave a comment or two to let me know if this helped someone

The workflow is divided into five parts as mentioned below and for those who need some help I will divide this into five parts

1. Get a gmail account (for business purpose)
2. Make your own website with Google sites (for free)
3. How to add your business location on Google maps (for free) and show it on your website
4. How to make your Google calendar public and show it on your website
5. How to make a Customer information form on Google documents and show it on your website

I will be posting here about how I got my photography business online to help people with basic tasks listed above

dharmit · #2 (**permalink**) 11-27-2008, 07:04 AM

This is by far the easiest step out of all.

Go to www.gmail.com
Click on Sign up for Gmail
Fill in the details like your first name, last name etc
When applying for an email address, try one of these YOURNAME.photography@gmail.com or photography.YOURNAME@gmail.com
The reason for getting such a long name is that there will be less chances that anyone else will have the same email address
And you have an email address for your business for FREE

Some words of wisdom for this email address:

Make sure that you use this email address for all communications with your clients
Refrain from using this email address for personal use (like sending forwards to friends and communicating with friends)
Check this email address regularly (atleast thrice a day, Morning, Noon and Evening) so that if you client has replied or sent you an email, you are prompt in replying
If you are in a discussion with your client currently for photo shoots and purchasing, disregard previous advise and check you email every now and then.

dharmit · #3 (**permalink**) 11-27-2008, 07:07 AM

This post is in continuation of previous two posts

How to start ONLINE MARKETING for your business and Get a Gmail account

This step is a bit time consuming. Think of the usability of your website, think of the customers that will come to your website and what will they think.

What do you want to display on your website.

For inspiration go to http://sites.google.com/site/dharmitsphotography

Steps:

Go to http://sites.google.com
Enter your user name and password. Use the username that you created in previous step (YOURNAME.photography@gmail.com or photography.YOURNAME@gmail.com)
Click on create new site
It is a straight forward website creation wizard from here and Google has done a pretty good job to make it easy
Try to break the website into following pages

Homepage (This is default page, I think)
Photographs
Calendar
Contact Us
Sitemap (This is default page, I think)
I have got a Tutorials page on my website but this is optional

Homepage is the default page on which your visitors will land.

Photographs is the page where you will put links to other pages which shows different types of Photographs that you can take and that you have taken. It is more like a preview of what you can do for your customers.

Calendar is the page where you can show your public calendar to your clients who can see when you are busy, when can they expect you to do their work and what work you are doing. (I will write a new post on how to make your Google Calendar publicly viewable very shortly).

Contact US page can be as simple as writing your address, your phone number and your email address so that clients can contact you or you can make a form where client can put their details and what work they want from you and on what date as I have done on my website http://sites.google.com/site/dharmit...phy/contact-us.

Google makes a Sitemap page by default.

You can put as many pages as you like (Google has limited maximum 100MB on its website, check before you create your own website)

dharmit · #4 (**permalink**) 11-27-2008, 12:29 PM

This is the third part of the tutorial on how to get Online Marketing of your Photography business

There are two ways in which you can add your business on Google Maps. One is to register your business on Google Maps (The hard and lengthy process) or just add your favorite to Google maps and then share it with the world and attach that web location to your website (The easy and faster way shown here)

Go to www.maps.google.com.au
Click on My Maps on the Top Left hand corner (A bit lower than top left to be precise)
Click on the Create new map button
Sign in with your Google id that you created in step 1
Click on Create new map button (If you would have already logged into Google maps, you don't need to perform this step)
Enter the address that you want to show on Google maps in the box adjacent to Search Maps button in Centre Top of the screen
Once Google maps shows the location, click on the placement marker adjacent to the hand button and place it where you want the world to see your location
On the left hand side in the Title box enter the name of the place. Like I have "Dharmits Photography" and enter the description if you want to
In the Privacy and Sharing section, click on Public, so that it can be shared with the world
Click on Done and it will be saved.

This was just to add a placement marker on Google. Now to place it on your site so that people can click on a photo of the map and it will take them to Google maps at this location.

Go to Google maps and click on Link on the Top Right hand corner of the Maps section.
Copy the link that is displayed on the top box and keep it in the location which can be readily accessed later (Keep it in a text file)
Take a snap shot of the location you added earlier in *.jpg format
Open another explorer/firefox window and go to your website in editing mode and insert this snap shot of the map
While keeping this snap highlighted, Click on add link button. A window will pop up asking for the web address
Now copy the web address that is saved in the text file in this box.
Save the page and test it. It should work fine

Go to http://sites.google.com/site/dharmitsphotography and on the Homepage, is the photo of the location where I am. Click on the map which will take you to the Google maps page which is interactive.

This is helpful for the customers who want to come to your business location for getting their photos taken.

marcal · #5 (**permalink**) 11-27-2008, 04:31 PM

In my opinion, if you're getting serious about setting up a photography business, you should definitely get your own Internet domain and, therefore, an email address of the same domain such us @yournomain.com or something similar... You can be the best photog on earth but if you give me your business card and there something like mike.photography@gmail.com... I don't know, it doesn't look so serious to me. Also, to get a domain it is not that expensive. I have three domains and I pay 126 bucks a year...

just my $0.02

dakwegmo · #6 (**permalink**) 11-27-2008, 05:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marcal

In my opinion, if you're getting serious about setting up a photography business, you should definitely get your own Internet domain and, therefore, an email address of the same domain such us @yournomain.com or something similar... You can be the best photog on earth but if you give me your business card and there something like mike.photography@gmail.com... I don't know, it doesn't look so serious to me.

I agree with this. Even using an email address provided by your ISP is going to look more professional than using a free account from gmail. Using a free account says a lot of things about your business, none of which look particularly good to potential customers.

If you like the features that gmail offers, you can get your own domain name for less than $10/year, and setup a free google apps account for hosting email and creating your website. It's still a gmail account but instead of being mike.photography@gmail.com, you could have mike@mikesphotography.com.

Quote:

Originally Posted by marcal

Also, to get a domain it is not that expensive. I have three domains and I pay 126 bucks a year...

Does that include hosting? I own five domains and they cost me less than $50 per year.

dharmit · #7 (**permalink**) 11-28-2008, 04:23 AM

Hi dakwegmo and marcal,

I do agree with your points of getting a domain setup and paying for web hosting.

But
I still like to use GIMP over PhotoShop for the simple reason that GIMP is free and still provides nearly 80% of the functionality of Photoshop.

Moreover my clients does not (donot or don't, I have terrible English) care if I have edited photos in PhotoShop or GIMP or PICASA or in Microsoft Word

Additionally starting up a business with free stuff makes your overheads minimum if not nil so you can pass that to your clients.

I get a kick in making my own things by my own hands. In future if I feel that I need a professional look to my website, I might hire a professional person to design my website and put it on my own Domain.

Once when one has sufficient clients (high paying clients or abundant low paying clients) one can switch to a personal domain or start using Photoshop for editing

I agree with you 100% on the point you make about professional image and that dharmit.photography@gmail.com looks cheap and that http://sites.google.com/site/dharmitsphotography is a cheap way of doing business but what I believe in is providing PROFESSIONAL RESULTS to the clients and they can judge me based on my work and not where I have my website setup and what email address I have. I wont name any famous photographers, but if they have their email address as Famous.Photographer@gmail.com does not make their work cheap (my thoughts).

This is just my thinking and please dont take it other way as I am just starting. Only time will tell whether I will survive Photography business by sailing on a FREE boat with GIMP and Google or I have to go on High Paying Chartered Cruise ship of PhotoShop and Paid domain.

Please correct me if I am wrong or if I am heading towards a ditch or if I am in the hole that I am still digging as I am just starting on this journey and as is said, I want to make this journey beautiful and not just the destination.

Thanks Again

dakwegmo · #8 (**permalink**) 11-28-2008, 06:47 AM

dharmit,

I don't disagree with you on using the tools that get the job done for the least amount of money. Using gimp or picasa makes a lot of sense, because, as you correctly point out, the client won't ever know that you used a free program to process the photos. It's a sound business strategy if you're intention is to actually make money.

On the other hand, your email address and website, are visible to your potential clients. In many ways they are the public face you are showing to the world. Being too cheap there can give send a lot of negative messages about yourself and your business. It can say to clients that you aren't really serious about your business, or that you aren't good enough at what you do to be able to afford even an inexpensive website, or that you're willing to sacrifice quality to save a few dollars.

And when I say a few dollars, I really mean "a few". I currently pay $9.99 per year for a domain. If you can afford a decent camera you can afford to own a domain name. My email is still hosted through google apps, and you can host a website with them as well. Those services are FREE to use with your domain name, just like they are using the gmail/sites.google domain names. But for less than $.03 / day, you a give your business a much more professional look.

This seems like a no-brainer. If just one customer decided not to use because you were using a gmail address then you would have lost more than the domain costs you. Sometimes, spending a few bucks earns you a lot more.