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Blogs are an important part of any photography studio’s promotional repertoire. Each post can share the latest studio information or some great images that were just shot during the weekend’s wedding. A blog can easily function along side a website domain for the studio but have you ever thought about placing the blog on it own domain? Domain names are so inexpensive to own but can be so powerful in marketing the studio’s image. See if the domain you want is available -  Own An Original.   We have so really great domains that we use for our many sites because we know how valuable they can be.

 

Too many people today are designing websites without any good reason. Without the reason, or designing one just because everyone else is, you are subjecting yourself to failure. When you create a web site, you have to really focus on what you want that site to do for you. Do you want to sell a product? Do you want people to contact you for more information? Whatever the reason, the underlying goal should be to drive up your profits. You wouldn’t send out a postcard without trying to create a sale. Neither should you produce a web site without trying to create a sale. And because your site will reach people from all over the world, really focus on what you can do for these people, not just your current clientele within a few miles of your business.

When we began designing our website for our photography studio, we focused solely on reaching the people in the Denver area. As people came in to our studio to visit us, we would provide them with our URL, and put a few images up to build our portfolio. But as the months went on, we discovered our site was being viewed from people throughout the world. As our online portfolio grew, we began receiving calls from brides around the world. We made our portfolio available to anyone, 24/7, and they responded because we gave them what they wanted - information on wedding photography, and most importantly, the images. People were willing to fly us in from all over because they liked what they saw and we gave them ease. We changed our business to incorporate a larger target market. And it worked! We opened up our minds to new opportunities, and we succeeded by changing to follow what would bring us in the business - and the money!

You job is to discover how you can make the most out of your photography website. What can you put into it that will get the attention of people throughout the world? How can you make sales from people you don’t know, and aren’t even in a location that you could sell to? Service businesses are usually the hardest to develop, because you can’t imagine working with a client half way around the world - how do you work with them if you never see them? In this global economy, you have to move beyond the thought process of “sitting down at a desk” with your client. Phones and email are more than ample to conduct business. With FedEx, teleconferencing, videoconferencing and computers, there are so many ways to conduct business with anyone in the world. Just yesterday we were chatting online with a gentleman from India! It’s truly amazing the directions we can head in the next few years. Don’t be afraid to try new things, new ideas, and build a business that reaches beyond your hometown!

Did you know the standard small business website has 10 pages of content, and will never grow beyond those 10 pages? Yet the number one way to reach your prospects and potential buyers is through content.

A standard 10 page website is a great place to start, but don’t stop there. It’s time to build, and create a site that attracts clients to you. Consider these 10 reasons to continue building on to your website.

1. Depth. People like investigating, and being able to discover more resources. Multiple pages allow people to drill in deeper to your site. Cover a topic in 500 to 1000 words per page; then offer your reader the chance to move to another page for even more information.

2. Resource. What makes your site valuable? People bookmark sites that have a variety of benefits and solutions. Think of how you can generate the desire to have people come back into your site again and again. Then add those pages to your site. Keep people coming back because you offer more than your competition.

3. Power. A powerful site lets people take action. What can you do to direct people to your pages that allow people to take action? Always start with your end in mind. Do you want them to sign up for a free report? Or do you want them to fill out a form for more information?

read more>>

When was the last time your photography website was update. Is is time to look into a new style but you were afraid of the cost. Do you have a photography website designed in flash and want to update it? Not a problem. We found a perfect solution to your needs. Photography website templates are easy to modify and look professional and cutting edge. Check out the different styles available:

Photography Websites
Wedding Photography Website
Flash Websites

Or, if you have a blog and want to update it:

Wordpress Blog Templates

Keep your look fresh to bring your clients back again and again.

If you want to add a slide show to your site or blog then Slide might work for you. Check out the site and see how easy you can add a show to your latest post - http://www.slide.com/

Providing new ideas to your photography business and information on how to start a photography business. Stay up to date with our photography newsletter which provides tips on your photography studio.

Does your website lack excitement and is in need of some inspiration? How would you like to dress up how your images are displayed within a gallery? We found a great location loaded with some cool flash applications that can enhance your website’s look quickly. Flash menus, Photography Image Galleries, Video Display… these are just a few items that are available. The best thing is that these are designers that share applications and are willing to showcase and sell at amazing prices. Check them out.

Time passes quickly and what was new is now aged and dated. How is your photography business website? Keeping your site updated is an important process in running your photography studio. While it is nice to have a photography site up showing off your work, if not updated, this site becomes stale. Website face-lifts are a great way to provide an easy update. If you want a rapid way to modernize without a huge expenditure, photography business template websites and photography studio template websites are quick to modify and very inexpensive.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

A Gallery of Images
People visit a photographer’s website to see images. Don’t disappoint. Your gallery should show more than a dozen images. Let them spend hours on your site! At our high point, we had over 20,000 images online. And many people would spend hours going through every single one of them.

Contact Information
I spend a lot of time on other peoples’ sites. And I find a lot of business owners are so worried about spam, they leave off contact information in their fears. Guess what? People can’t contact you if they don’t know how. Fill out forms are great, and are the first step for contact. Give a phone number – some people prefer to call. Give an address - your prospects would love to know what city your in, and where your studio is. Give an email - you can make it a non-clickable graphic.

Content
A portfolio isn’t enough. It’s nice looking at a dozen images, but who are you? What’s your style? How did you decide to become a photographer? What’s the story behind your business? In person, you build a relationship with your prospect. The same thing has to occur online. Content is what sells your business.

Sales Techniques
Your website is more than a portfolio; it’s a sales tool. Think of how you sell in person, and use those same features online. Your website should be growing and changing all the time.

Proper Navigation
If you’ve ever been “stuck” in a website, you know navigation is so important. If you move to a page, it better be easy to move around and back out. Think like your customer. If that’s hard to do, bring a customer in and ask them what they think.

Ordering System
Professional labs and other online services have made it very easy to sell your images online. Connect to one of these services, and use this as an option for your clients. If you’re worried about upfront sales, use it as a bonus after the initial sale is complete.

Marketing
Your website is more than a portfolio; it’s a marketing tool. With over 6 billion web pages online, how will yours compete with the others? It takes marketing. Just like you wouldn’t sit at home without doing any marketing waiting for the phone to ring, you can’t sit at home without marketing your website waiting for the contacts. You have to use online marketing techniques to get noticed.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Your website is an important piece of your business should have a very professional appearance. Many photographers are tech savvy with their ability to produce well-designed, well-navigated photography studio websites.

If you don’t have the capability or time for doing a website design for your own studio, looking at website templates may be an option for you. Website templates are ready-made professionally designed websites for the Internet that provide a high-quality web presence and easy to modify with your content. Templates are available in standard HTML language of design, as well as popular flash format to display your web content and photography portfolio. Templates will have the some limitations of the expansion, but for the cost, offer a great solution to many studios. These templates are fully customizable, and available for immediate download.

Designs usually have layered Photoshop files for easy customization, as well as HTML layouts, so that you can open them in your favorite Web program like Dreamweaver or FrontPage. You don’t have to wait for your web designer to start from scratch on your design.

As studio owners, we have many responsibilities to worry about and our specialty should be our photography. Here’s a resource that you can check out the latest in photography website designs and see the catalogue of professionally designed templates.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

7 Items Every Photographer’s Website Should Have

A Gallery of Images
People visit a photographer’s website to see images. Don’t disappoint. Your gallery should show more than a dozen images. Let them spend hours on your site! At our high point, we had over 20,000 images online. And many people would spend hours going through every single one of them.

Contact Information
I spend a lot of time on other peoples sites. And I find a lot of business owners are so worried about spam, they leave off contact information in their fears. Guess what? People can’t contact you if they don’t know how. Fill out forms are great, and are the first step for contact. Give a phone number - some people prefer to call. Give an address - your prospects would love to know what city your in, and where your studio is. Give an email - you can make it a non-clickable graphic.

Content
A portfolio isn’t enough. It’s nice looking at a dozen images, but who are you? What’s your style? How did you decide to become a photographer? What’s the story behind your business? In person, you build a relationship with your prospect. The same thing has to occur online. Content is what sells your business.

Sales Techniques
Your website is more than a portfolio; it’s a sales tool. Think of how you sell in person, and use those same features online. Your website should be growing and changing all the time.

Proper Navigation
If you’ve ever been “stuck” in a website, you know navigation is so important. If you move to a page, it better be easy to move around and back out. Think like your customer. If that’s hard to do, bring a customer in and ask them what they think.

Ordering System
Professional labs and other online services have made it very easy to sell your images online. Connect to one of these services, and use this as an option for your clients. If you’re worried about upfront sales, use it as a bonus after the initial sale is complete.

Marketing
Your website is more than a portfolio; it’s a marketing tool. With over 6 billion web pages online, how will yours compete with the others? It takes marketing. Just like you wouldn’t sit at home without doing any marketing waiting for the phone to ring, you can’t sit at home without marketing your website waiting for the contacts. You have to use online marketing techniques to get noticed.

Check this site for additional articles on digital photography wedding business and starting a photography business

Okay, so life is not all work and time should be taken to play. Searching the web will uncover some pretty cool ideas and programs to use. Just found a fun widget that allows you to draw your own sledding hill and run the course with a sled. If you want to keep working, well, that is your own idea…if you want to take a quick break from you photography business word and laugh….take a look at this fun widget

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Identifying Color Choices

Consider adding color to your photography business website. When you first design your website, you usually choose a theme and build from there. The colors of your logo are a great place to start. But what if your just beginning, and you don’t really have official colors chosen? Great! Then you can begin to play around with different themes, and continue to work until a design and color combination looks pleasing to you.

Colors have so many different meanings. The best way to design is to choose colors that you are comfortable with. And choose colors that will appease your customers, and motivate them into buying from you.

Did you know men favor blue, and women favor red? A mix between the two – the color purple – is an excellent choice to solidify both. Green is a very strong, old world color. That’s why you see banks and financial companies use green. Primary colors are stronger than pastels. And children relate to purple more than any other color. Guess that’s why Barney is purple!

Consider your target audience when selecting your website colors. Who is your primary viewer? What do you want them to do on your website? Then build your color scheme around those desires. And add color throughout your site when you want your viewers to take action. Adding red to your site can be a great motivator.

Red

1. Energy * Strength * Danger * Determination * Power * Passion * Desire * Love
2. Red is a very passionate and extreme color. It should be used to highlight key points. It should be used to stimulate people into an action – such as a Buy Now button.

Orange

1. Enthusiasm * Happiness * Creativity * Attraction * Success * Encouragement
2. Orange combines the energy of red, and the happiness of yellow. Orange has high visibility and can be used to attract attention to certain parts of your site.

Yellow

1. Energy * Joy * Happiness * Intellect * Cheerfulness * Attention
2. Yellow attracts attention. It has a very warming effect. It is a lighthearted color, and can be used effectively for highlighting important points.

Green

1. Growth * Harmony * Freshness * Fertility * Safety * Nature * Stability * Endurance
2. Green is a color of safety and of stability. Green is a good color for money related sites. It is a good color for showing movement and directing people through a site, as green means go.

Blue

1. Depth * Stability * Intelligence * Confidence * Faith * Truth * Loyalty * Trust
2. Blue is a masculine color, used to show precision and intellect. It is a calming color.

Purple

1. Royalty * Power * Nobility * Luxury * Ambition * Wisdom * Dignity * Mystery
2. Purple is feminine, and is a preferred color of children.

White

1. Light * Goodness * Purity * Innocence * Perfection * Safety * Cleanliness
2. White is associated with coolness and cleanliness, and can add a sense of simplicity to high tech subjects.

Black

1. Formality * Power * Elegance * Death * Evil * Mystery * Elegance * Prestige
2. Black can give the perspective of strength and depth. Black is a difficult background color choice, but is very effective when displaying photographs.

Helping your photography business, how to start a photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

7 Ways To Make Your Studio’s Website More Sellable

“I put up my website a few months ago,
and I’m still not at the top of the search engines.”

“Why isn’t my website working?
I’m still not making money online.”

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard these phrases! Unfortunately many people still believe putting up a website will be the answer to their marketing problems. If you’re having trouble getting people in to your business using traditional marketing methods, chances are you’re problems will carry through to your online marketing methods as well.

Thousands of websites are being added to the Internet everyday. By doing a recent search on Google I discovered:

• 66,900,000 pages exist with the word “photography”
• 9,270,000 pages exist with the words “photography studio”
• 1,450,000 pages exist with the words “wedding photography studio”
• 991,000 pages exist with the words “professional wedding photography studio”
• 196,000 pages exist with the words “California professional wedding photography studio”

And if you’re beyond the top 20-30 pages, chances are you’re never getting in front of your potential customer. So where do you go from here? How do you use your website to get in front of a good, qualifying potential customer?

A successful website is….more of this article>>

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

A basic photography website with just a few pages may be easy to get into the search engines. But what happens when you have a lot of pages, with a lot of content, and links buried deep within the pages? Can the search engines still adequately find your information?
 
Not always. Depending on a variety of things, including coding structure, sometimes a search engine misses portions of your pages, thus eliminating its ultimate effectiveness. So how do you make your pages search engine friendly? With a sitemap. A sitemap, if designed correctly, will be a valuable resource to both your visitors, and to the search engines.
 
What is a sitemap?
A sitemap is a tool that provides both your visitors and the search engines with the overall organization of your website. It reflects the way a visitor would intuitively work through your website, and provides a logical flow through the pages. A good site map will:
 
* Show an easy to follow overview of your site
* Provide text links to every page of your site
* Provide a clear pathway for the search engines to follow
* Quickly provide a pathway for visitors to follow to get to your content
* Provide overviews of your information
 
Why do you need one?
Think of your sitemap as you would a table of contents in a book. It provides the headings and subheadings of the main points of your site, and provides an easy way to navigate through the information. For a search engine, it provides a quick way to follow the content, and make the determination of new items. For a visitor, it provides them with a quick resource to get back on track in case they aren’t sure of their next move.
 
You will typically find a sitemap linked to the photography websites’ home page. This allows easy access to the search engines, and puts the information at the beginning of your site for ease of your visitors. If your site is small, you may wish to put every page on your sitemap. Larger sites should not. Let’s say you sell pens. In one model, you sell 12 colors of the same pen, and every color has its own unique page for ordering purposes. You would want to site map the main page that showcases the pen, but leave off the 12 additional pages for each color. Be careful of using your sitemap as a link farm; you don’t want the search engines to see a never-ending list and assume you are a link farm.
 
And when you make changes to your site, don’t forget your sitemap. It’s an important piece to your structure. Keeping it up to date will ensure the ultimate success of your photography website.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Your website is an important piece of your business should have a very professional appearance.  Many photographers are tech savvy with their ability to produce well-designed, well-navigated photography studio websites. 

If you don’t have the capability or time for doing a website design for your own studio, looking at website templates may be an option for you.  Website templates are ready-made professionally designed websites for the Internet that provide a high-quality web presence and easy to modify with your content.  Templates are available in standard HTML language of design, as well as popular flash format to display your web content and photography portfolio.  Templates will have the some limitations of the expansion, but for the cost, offer a great solution to many studios.  These templates are fully customizable, and available for immediate download. 

Designs usually have layered Photoshop files for easy customization, as well as HTML layouts, so that you can open them in your favorite Web program like Dreamweaver or FrontPage. You don’t have to wait for your web designer to start from scratch on your design. 

As studio owners, we have many responsibilities to worry about and our specialty should be our photography.  Here’s a resource that you can check out the latest in photography website designs and see the catalogue of professionally designed templates.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Have you ever clicked onto a site and found that the address bar in the browser has a cool image next to the website address? This icon is named a favicon and your site can have too.

We found a great resource for you that will make these cool icons for you. Use this online tool to easily create a favicon (favorites icon) for your site. A favicon is a small, 16×16 image that is shown inside the browser’s location bar and bookmark menu when your site is called up. It is a good way to brand your photography website and increase it’s prominence in your visitor’s bookmark menu.

Photography business website icon

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Is your photography website in need of updates? You have a website online, do you wonder why sales are slow? We have put together a video critique of a photography website that may point out items to help your site grow. Photography website critique

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

A Gallery of Images

People visit a photographer’s website to see images. Don’t disappoint. Your gallery should show more than a dozen images. Flash Image Gallery Let them spend hours on your site! At our high point, we had over 20,000 images online. And many people would spend hours going through every single one of them.

Contact Information

I spend a lot of time on other peoples’ sites. And I find a lot of business owners are so worried about spam, they leave off contact information in their fears. Guess what? People can’t contact you if they don’t know how. Fill out forms are great, and are the first step for contact. Give a phone number – some people prefer to call. Give an address – your prospects would love to know what city your in, and where your studio is. Give an email – you can make it a non-clickable graphic.

Content

A portfolio isn’t enough. It’s nice looking at a dozen images, but who are you? What’s your style? How did you decide to become a photographer? What’s the story behind your business? In person, you build a relationship with your prospect. The same thing has to occur online. Content is what sells your business.

Sales Techniques

Your website is more than a portfolio; it’s a sales tool. Think of how you sell in person, and use those same features online. Your website should be growing and changing all the time.

Proper Navigation

If you’ve ever been “stuck” in a website, you know navigation is so important. If you move to a page, it better be easy to move around and back out. Think like your customer. If that’s hard to do, bring a customer in and ask them what they think.

Ordering System

Professional labs and other online services have made it very easy to sell your images online. Connect to one of these services, and use this as an option for your clients. If you’re worried about upfront sales, use it as a bonus after the initial sale is complete.

Marketing

Your website is more than a portfolio; it’s a marketing tool. With over 6 billion web pages online, how will yours compete with the others? It takes marketing. Just like you wouldn’t sit at home without doing any marketing waiting for the phone to ring, you can’t sit at home without marketing your website waiting for the contacts. You have to use online marketing techniques to get noticed.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Websites allow a photography studio an effortless solution to display sections of their work and present information to potential customers 24/7.

One item that we all face in our photography business is the need for an online presence. Having a website is very important for your clients to locate information pertaining to your services and viewing a portfolio of quality images. Too often, we find websites that are constructed by novice designers using a boxed website solution with very unpleasant results. Imagine if you viewed a website of poor quality, would you want your wedding photographed by the same studio? I know that I would not. Budgets are tight on most businesses just starting up and locating a great product and an affordable price can become unpleasantly difficult. For websites, a template solution could avail your situation and allow your studio to create a professional online presence without elimination of your entire bank account balance. Quality photography website templates are created as great starting solution and can help relay the proper message to entice larger events and increase your sales.

Don’t fall victim to accepting sub par website displays in relation to your photography studio, make it look pleasing and professional. Take a quick look at the many hundreds of photography business website template solutions.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Just found a pretty cool device that counts down time on a ticker system. This resides on your webpage and will work backwards until your time is up. Planning a special trip and want to know that there are a certain number of day til your cruise ship departs. What about a bride waiting for her wedding day? The number of days until your next photography expo…the ideas are endless. Check them out at the tickerfactory.com

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

 How long have you been designing your web site? Is it a true work in process? Spend a few minutes every quarter looking through the pages of your web site, and look at it as if you were a client. What are you seeing? Now may be the time to perform a web site clean up!

Continuity is one of the leading things that can change a web site from looking home made to professional. Compare every page within your web site. Make sure the backgrounds are the same. Compare font styles and sizes. Does the theme carry through?

Links can often be changed or broken. Continually check them to be sure that they are still working properly.

 

Make sure your main pages are accessible from every page. You should always have a way of moving throughout the web site with very little effort. There is nothing more frustrating than seeing something of interest, and never being able to find that button again.

Update any old data. Nobody wants to see old news. And it looks as if you haven’t changed your site in a while. If you have a lot of press releases on awards and events, create an archive section in which a client can look at the information if they are interested, but it won’t be a main topic on your site. Educate yourself. There are so many wonderful classes and networking groups on the development and maintenance of a web site.

 They are a great way of gaining ideas on how to improve both your marketing and sustenance of your materials.

Above all, have fun with your site! This is an exciting time to be at the front end of technology!

Helping your photography business, how to start a photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Does your site need a redesign? Start with one of our photography business web templates, and see your site magically change before your eyes.

You see, it all comes down to having a great website. When a prospect finds your site and decides to click over, they form an impression within just a few seconds. If it looks professional, they’ll start reading your text. If the text is informative, they’ll continue to look around.

And if it isn’t, they’ll disappear, forever.

A successful website starts with a professional template design. And from there, your website is a work in progress - something that you should work on week after week. To start you off, here are 3 ideas that you should incorporate into your photography business web template.

1. Create a professional site.

This is probably the first thing you see in any list talking about how to build up an Internet presence. Yet it’s amazing how many sites are out there that still have a homemade appearance.

Your website is an extension of your business. Not only should it be informative, it should be entertaining, and provide people with exactly what they are looking for. You are a photographer. Show people your work. Make them feel the emotion of your photography, and the service you provide to your customers. A gallery of a dozen images that each take seconds to load is not emotional. Professionalism comes from knowing what your customers want, and giving them more than they expect. 

If you can’t create a professional website by yourself, hire it done. Because you earn your money through photography, don’t expect yourself to be good at all forms of creative graphics. Websites are a marketing tool, not a creative extension of your business. Foremost, your website is a sales tool that can bring in unimaginable profits to your business – but only if you use it as such.

2. Creating a purpose.

What is the overall purpose of your website? Is it to get a potential customer to contact you? Is it to drive your existing customers to a place to purchase your photographs? Before your website can be successful, you have to discover your number one purpose. Then use every page to motivate people towards your purpose.

Again, your website is more than a brochure. It is a member of your sales team that ‘talks’ to your potential customer. When you talk with a person in person, or on the phone, your ultimate goal is to get them to make some type of commitment. Your website should have the same goal.

3. Use motivating text.

Are you writing to your customer in a professional manner? Does your website use the same language you use when meeting with a person face to face? Your website is your sales tool. Treat it as if it were a 24/7 sales person, and let your website do the talking for you.

On the Internet, the one thing you can’t do is hide. Depending on how a person searches, every website is a potential find. Because someone from New York, or California, or even India may pull up your site, how are you talking to him or her? Instead of writing your text from your perspective, write as if you are a person in a far away country that knows nothing about your industry. Her sole purpose is to find out more information on wedding photography. Are you educating her? Are you telling her what she wants to know AND what she cares about? (Most people don’t care what type of cameras you use; they only want to know how they benefit.)

Helping your photography business, how to start a photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Creating a website for you photography business is very important and producing proper colors within the design should be well thought out. We found a great resource for selecting color. Color wheels have been used for a long time but they are much easier to use today. Check out this resource: http://visibone.com/colorlab/ , which lets you choose from the 216 color browser-safe palette. This has limits but is a great place to start. We also found a 4096 color wheel located at: http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/style/color/wheel.html and has a cool hovering tool that allows you select colors and then shades. For quicker results, we also found an online color scheme program that helps select complementary colors. You can find this very handy in you wedding photography website designs or when you need to create a portrait photography business website. Check out this tool at: http://stylephreak.frogrun.com/cm.php and let us know which one you like best.

Helping your photography business, how to start a photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Top 5 SEO Myths

So, you’ve taken the time to develop a great website. You’ve gone to a professional, and have a site designed with all the bells and whistles.
 
Other people tell you they are getting leads all the time from online sources; yet your site has never generated even one lead. What’s going on?
 
If this sounds like you, you may be asking yourself questions about search engine optimization. How can you optimize your website, get it out into the search engines, and start bringing in the leads?
 
Before you run out and hire a company to help you, take a look at these top 5 myths.
 
Myth #1: Submit your site to the search engines weekly or monthly.
The search engines are built to find every site that is posted to the web. You may submit them once, but then you are good to go. The search engines are programmed to find every URL, and index it automatically.
 
Myth #2: I need to optimize my home page for every keyword in my industry
We’ve all seen the sites that list 100 keywords, trying to gain exposure in every area. A better way to optimize is to niche each page on your site to preferably one keyword or phrase.
 
Myth #3: I need to place my keywords multiple times in the content of my site
Your content is important. But Google looks at dozens of things when determining how to rank a website. You need to make sure you have all of the pieces to consistently rank in your key phrase.
 
Myth #4: SEO requires a long-term commitment
With SEO, there are many things you can do to get immediate results. SEO is a form of marketing. If you plan to stay in business year after year, you have to market your business year after year. The same goes with SEO. You can do things that have immediate effect, but will also give you long-term value.
 
Myth #5: SEO is too expensive
Actually, SEO is one of the most cost effective forms of marketing available to you. And the good thing with SEO is once you set it up and achieve results; you can continue to build from there. Many things you do today will impact you years into the future.
Helping your photography business, how to start a photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Identifying Color Choices

Consider adding color to your website. When you first design your website, you usually choose a theme and build from there. The colors of your logo are a great place to start. But what if your just beginning, and you don’t really have official colors chosen? Great! Then you can begin to play around with different themes, and continue to work until a design and color combination looks pleasing to you.

Colors have so many different meanings. The best way to design is to choose colors that you are comfortable with. And choose colors that will appease your customers, and motivate them into buying from you.

Did you know men favor blue, and women favor red? A mix between the two – the color purple – is an excellent choice to solidify both. Green is a very strong, old world color. That’s why you see banks and financial companies use green. Primary colors are stronger than pastels. And children relate to purple more than any other color. Guess that’s why Barney is purple!

Consider your target audience when selecting your website colors. Who is your primary viewer? What do you want them to do on your website? Then build your color scheme around those desires. And add color throughout your site when you want your viewers to take action. Adding red to your site can be a great motivator.

Red

• Energy * Strength * Danger * Determination * Power * Passion * Desire * Love
• Red is a very passionate and extreme color. It should be used to highlight key points. It should be used to stimulate people into an action – such as a Buy Now button. 

Orange

• Enthusiasm * Happiness * Creativity * Attraction * Success * Encouragement
• Orange combines the energy of red, and the happiness of yellow. Orange has high visibility and can be used to attract attention to certain parts of your site. 

Yellow

• Energy * Joy * Happiness * Intellect * Cheerfulness * Attention
• Yellow attracts attention. It has a very warming effect. It is a lighthearted color, and can be used effectively for highlighting important points.

Green

• Growth * Harmony * Freshness * Fertility * Safety * Nature * Stability * Endurance
• Green is