The Most Powerful Business Building Tip Is …

Are You Building Trust Through Your Website?

I love marketing. I love seeing how other people put together campaigns. And because of it I follow a lot of people online to see what they will do next.

About a year ago I was introduced (through an online newsletter) to a woman who has a huge following online. So I started following her. And I really like her style. I love how she has set up her website, how she communicates with her fan base, and how she makes her offers.

But there is something else. I don’t like her as a person. At all. We don’t have the same beliefs or the same ethics. Some of the things she talks about actually gets me riled up in the mornings.

And yet she is busier today than when I first started following her a year ago. Why? Because she is true to herself and isn’t afraid to communicate heart and soul to her followers.

When you head over and read her site and blog posts, she is an authentic person, meaning she tells you exactly what she believes. She mixes personal ideals with her business strategies all the time. You not only get to know her business, but you also really get to know her as well. And I know if you have the same beliefs as her, you end up feeling connected almost immediately.

“That’s me.”

“She’s speaking directly to me.”

“She so gets what I’m feeling.”

Yep, she’s heard all of that and more. (She posts testimonials so I know what people are saying.)

Both online and off, being true to yourself means you’ll resonate with others as well. Think about your hot buttons and the things you love and support. If I say “National Rifle Association” or “Greenpeace” I’m sure your mind automatically begins churning things over. You may be passionate one way or the other on these topics. And if we get into politics, I’m sure the opinions would really fly.

Yet when you’re with a group of people that you “gel” with, you let your guard down. You know you can speak freely because they have the same opinions as you. And even if they vary in small degrees, there is still enough common ground that you can remain great friends.

And no matter what beliefs you have, wouldn’t you rather work with “friends” than with people you really don’t agree with?

So why not show your true colors? Yes, you have to draw your line in the sand and only talk about online what you truly want other people to know about. But if you create content, develop your marketing and your services around what you do and love, others will pick up on it. If you show your true personality in all that you do, your prospects and clients will love you all the more.

They want to work with a friend, not a business owner.

They want to feel like you truly get them, and aren’t just handing them something so you can make money.

Filed Under: Website Marketing Tagged With: building trust, marketing, Photography Business, web presence, Website

Will You Regret Not Jumping Into A Full Time Photography Business?

by Virtual Photography 2 Comments

If you look back at your life so far, what do you regret?

I’m sure a few things pop into your head immediately.

Do you regret not finishing up your degree? Or maybe never going to school at all?

Do you wish you would have followed a different career path? Or chosen a different job?

I watched one of the top TED videos from 2011 today on regret, and I’ve included it here. It’s around 15 minutes in length, and I would highly recommend watching as it teaches a lot about how we look at ourselves.

One of the most interesting things Kathryn Schulz mentions is:

When we look back at our lives, there are many things we regret:

Education 33%
Career 22%
Romance15%
Parenting 10%
Self 5.47%
Leisure 2.55%

Yet financial regrets are even less.

We don’t wish we made more money and had more cash to buy bigger houses and cars. We want to take care of ourselves and the people around us; the ones that we love the most. We want to educate ourselves to feel fulfilled. We want a great career that we love and feel we are contributing to society.

We regret not taking chances that have could have done more to improve our lives. We regret not taking advantage of opportunities that come by.

So now is the time to think of what you have today, what opportunities are being presented to you, and what you will do that will affect the rest of your life.

Will you move forward with your goal of creating a successful full time professional photography business?

Or will you face regret at some point in the future?

Filed Under: Get Inspired Photography Tagged With: Photography Business, regret, start a photo studio, ted, video

Best SEO Practices and Tips For Your Photography Business

by Virtual Photography 3 Comments

Search engine optimization, or SEO, has been around for a long time. As new techniques are developed and new strategies are put into place, people question the effectiveness of SEO. Is it still something you should work for, or are there better ways to spend your time and energy?

The short answer to this is, of course, yes. SEO will always be in place in some manner, though the strategies and the way we approach it may change over time. But SEO ultimately is about creating the best content to attract the right people when they perform a search. And not matter how you do that, the ultimate goal is traffic. Its about getting people to find you, click through, and connect up with you for the possibility of becoming a client at some point in the future.

Dig Deeper: SEO – A Primer For Photographers

Dig Deeper: 3 Ways To Make Sure Your Blog Posts Are Perfect For Search Engine Placement

Essentially, SEO is about ranking well in the search engines. The higher you rank under specific search terms, the more likely you will connect up with people that want to do business with you. And the way you rank well is to provide quality and optimized content. While different search engines and directories have different ways of ranking, there are key strategies that work well across the board.

On Page SEO

On page SEO is the items we can control. It’s the content we use to develop a new page on our site, and the way we use key strategies within that page. It’s the factors we control ourselves, such as keywords, tags and links.

Keywords – When you are writing and creating a new page of content, it will invariably be about one topic. That is the keyword you are trying to rank well for. It can be one word such as “photography” or a phrase such as “wedding photography in Colorado”.

As you write your content, remember you are writing for two – the search engines and for your readers. If you fill your page with keywords, your reader will get bored and tune you out. Strike a balance between the two, and as you write over time, you’ll come out a winner.

You should also use other SEO strategies with your keywords. Use your keyword in your title, your title tags, within the first 100 words of your starting paragraph, anchor text, image tags, and even in comment tags. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: best seo practices, bing, google, Online Marketing, Photography Business, search engine optimization, seo tips

Is Your Photography Business A Mac or a PC?

by Virtual Photography 4 Comments

Are there differences between Mac’s and PC’s? You bet. And I’m sure if I asked each and every one of you, you probably have a strong opinion one way or the other. Everyone knows the two are distinctly different. And while there are some generalizations everyone would probably agree upon, I’m also willing to bet you have your reasons for staying with one or the other.

A few weeks ago I wrote several posts on our recent adventure – downsizing. As a part of our process, we converted from being a PC based home and business, to a Mac driven home and business. And now after several weeks of running almost exclusively Mac, I have my opinions on the differences between the two. And also have made quite a few correlations towards running a business.

Dig Deeper: How To Look At Your Money Differently

Dig Deeper: Google Voice – an Amazing Tool For Virtual Photographers

Dig Deeper: 5 Big Ticket Items Photographers Pay For, Then Seldom Use

Price Matters

One of the top reasons people end up with PCs over Macs is cost. If you need to buy several computers and laptops for your small business, plus a variety of software packages, the cost difference can be tremendous. You purchase PCs to save money. And you purchase Macs to own a true work of art. PCs control about 90 percent of the US market share, while Mac’s control about 10 percent. There is a difference.

The same could be said for photographers. Many people want a quick photograph to mark a period of time. They don’t care about the art form; they are looking for representation. They want the smiling faces towards the camera, and artistic expression isn’t in their budget. They shop around for “value” and are happy with more photos for less money.

A smaller portion of people want to create a piece of artwork for their wall. They want something they could never achieve on their own with a point and shoot. And they want something they won’t see in any of the homes of family and friends. They are willing to pay what its worth in order for the experience. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Customer Service Tagged With: business planning, customer service, Is Your Photography Business A Mac or a PC, Photography Business

1 Simple Rule To Making Money Over Night

by Virtual Photography 4 Comments

It’s easy to make money.

It’s easy to start up a business from scratch and have it make a full time income your first month.

It’s easy to become a millionaire.

Yep, you can hear and read statements like that everywhere. And it always seems like when times are bad and things are at their worst, those “promises” turn up more regularly than ever.

But if they are true, why don’t we see more people jumping into their own businesses and becoming profitable “overnight”? Why don’t we read about the millionaires instead of the people hard on their luck?

The problem with most of these promises is they are simply not true.

Yes it may be easy to make money – if you have a great job, have a solid business in place, and have products and services people are willing to buy.

Yes it may be easy to start up a business and have it make money the first month – if you understand what it takes to make that happen.

And yes, it may be easy to make a million dollars – but only if you know what it takes to make a million dollars.

There may be the case studies and the examples of people that have “been there, done that”. But for most of us, that isn’t reality. And the only way it will truly happen is if we follow the one simple rule needed to make money … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Make Money With Photography Tagged With: creating a plan, making money over night, making money with your photography, Photography Business, planning, simple rule

How Can You Turn Your Passion Into A Photography Business?

by Virtual Photography 2 Comments

What if you grew up loving something and being very passionate about it, and always wondered if you could turn it into a business and a career. Can you really turn “anything” into a lucrative business model?

I think that’s one of the exciting things about small business, and what the Internet has done for us as a society.

Small businesses can be started from scratch, immediately, and you’ll know within weeks if it has potential. Add in the Internet where you can reach millions of people with just a few clicks of the mouse, and you’ll be able to define your target market, and whether or not you’re truly onto a unique idea.

This week I found a great video from a photographer who makes her living photographing “secret” places. She’s invited into some amazing sites, and has created photographs that will haunt you and inspire you. In her presentation, she makes one key point that to me relates directly back to turning your passion into a business. She says she spends more time contacting and connecting with people to allow her to photograph in the places she loves then she does actually photographing. That’s the key.

You have to be willing to do whatever it takes to make your business ideas a reality. If you want to sell something big, it may take weeks or even months getting the idea into place. You can’t get discouraged. And you have to knock on as many doors as it takes to make it a reality.

Filed Under: Start A Photo Business Tagged With: passion, Photography Business, planning, Start A Photo Business, ted, turn your love into a business

How To Change Direction With Your Business When You Absolutely Hate What You Do

by Virtual Photography Leave a Comment

It doesn’t matter what you do; at some point you will reach your absolute limit, and have the desire to start all over again. It happens to everyone.

For some people, they let a little piece of them die, and keep plodding along doing the same thing over and over again. They don’t change out of fear. And so the fear stifles their creativity, and holds them back from what could have been.

For others, they embrace the need for change. If you take notice of your desire to change and actually do something to put the change in place, that’s where the true results can happen.

Have you ever read Dr Seuss’ Oh! The Places You’ll Go! It’s one of my favorite books. In it is a great message: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Planning Tagged With: change direction, photo, Photography Business, start a new business

Is Generosity Killing Your Photography Business?

by Virtual Photography 5 Comments

Everyone today seems to have a story. And I’ll admit some of them are good … REALLY good. So much so that you really want to hand over your photography for free in order to help the cause.

But the problem with one is it quickly becomes two. And two becomes four. And so on.

Pretty soon you’re doing all of your work for free, barter, or at a discount, and you barely have enough to survive on your own.

Sometimes generosity can become extremely challenging, and have you start questioning why you’re in business in the first place. But how do you stop it? How do you know what causes to take on, and which one’s to pass by? How can you strike a balance between running a business, and still being generous in the process?

What Is Your Policy?

A few years ago I had a real problem.

I would be approached by dozens of different businesses and non-profits, asking if I would provide my services in exchange for “something”. It could be the opportunity to promote to their group, for charitable reasons, for exposure, and a host of other reasons. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sales Tagged With: charitable causes, charity, Is Generosity Killing Your Photography Business, Photography Business, sales, selling

The Most Powerful Business Building Tip Is …

by Virtual Photography 2 Comments

What does it take to build a successful business – a business pulling in more than $250,000 per year – in under two years?

If you talk with any successful business owner, they can probably pinpoint one precise moment, one technique or tool that catapulted them forward.

For us, that one technique was actually very simple, and yet it changed our business forever.

We knew the key to success was building relationships with the RIGHT people in the right venues and industries. So we thought about all the ways we could connect with those RIGHT people.

And when you think about it, that’s all marketing really is. It’s finding the perfect way to reach out to your prospects, clients and referral sources, and give them all the information to become clients and refer clients for life.

So we looked for something that would be familiar and easy to produce; yet be different enough to set us apart from our competition. And we found it simply by “going shopping.”

Is It A Magazine?

Whatever field you are in, you need to stay up to date by looking at everything that affects your target market within that field.

So if you are a baby photographer, you should be getting baby and parenting magazines, and visiting baby websites.

If you are a senior photographer, you should be getting magazines that appeal to teenagers, and visiting the most influential sites for teens.

And if you are a wedding photographer, you should be getting wedding magazines, and visiting the top wedding sites.

So that’s what we did.

Two of my favorites have always been Town & Country, and Martha Stewart Weddings. It’s the photographs. It’s the stories. It’s the layouts.

So we took inspiration from those two magazines, and created our own quarterly newsletter that we mailed out to prospects, clients and referral sources.

It wasn’t just a newsletter like you get from everyone else, set up in generic format, with mini stories on “what we’re doing” and “studio news”. This was a very detailed, multi page newsletter that was almost like a magazine, that showcased each and every client we had, just like they did in the magazines.

Was it successful? I guess a $250K+ business in under two years says it all. [Read more...]