I never knew real fear until I did my first big job.
That said, I never knew how fulfilling it could be either.
Photography as a profession takes a lot of guts and a lot of determination. Your basically putting everything on the line and selling who you are as much as what you can do.
I suppose this is my story, how I started [am starting] a business having been an artistic photographer solely for the idea of photography, and it's aesthetic beauty...
For years I've spent almost every waking hour wondering why my blog posts never showed up in searches, why every site I put up on WordPress disappeared into the either! Well now I know.
There's a lot of stuff about key words, and a whole mess of things that make a page or a post rank, but that detail is for another post. Suffice it to say that I recently discovered that I'd been talking to myself. As someone once told me it's pointless talking to an empty room unless you are somehow a little crazy. Well I probably am, but I'm happy with who I am...
So I went along to
Creative Live and found a course that I thought might help me get some in depth knowledge on marketing myself. It turns out that for years I've been going about this all wrong. So this is what I figured out [some of it a while time ago, some of it recently].
1. There's no point in having a website that no one visits:
The whole point of a website is to drive your business. If no one ever goes there then you are basically paying for a vanity project. If your happy doing that then fine, but a business is by definition something that make a profit. Over the yeas I've done jobs for people, but none of them have come from my site.
2. Pictures are great, but they won't come up on a search.
The way search engines work doesn't take into account your images. Just what you say about them. So even if you put up great pictures it won't make any difference. Unless you actually talk about your content in a meaningful way search engines can't index it. EXIF data doesn't count in this arena, even though technically it should...
3. Owning a great camera is pointless unless you use it.
This one may sound obvious, but it's not. I'm not talking about going to a fate and snapping pics of local traders. I'm talking about using it in a meaningful way. Anyone can shoot the obvious, but a photograph only becomes interesting if people have a reason to look at. To this end I have been contacting a few charities and other non profit orgs while I have some down time.
In the mean time please check out my new web page at
New Street Photography. I will be working on ranking it so that it comes up in searches other than New Street Photography.
Thank you and stay happy :-)
