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Best of the Rest: Other Awesome Photography Resources

I got such amazing feedback from people last time I did this, so I figured it was time for another round of amazing links from around the web.

1. 5 Things To Do Right Now if you Haven’t Already – Quick things you most definitely want to do!

2. 10 Lightroom Shortcuts and Clickables You Don’t Know About – I even learned a few shortcuts and I’m pretty Lightroom savvy. Good stuff.

3. Google+ What does it mean for your Small Business? – Excellent things to consider about how this may change things for us small business owners.

4. The 21st Century Neanderthal’s Guide to Social Media – I’m thought this was a helpful article about how to use all those social networks well.

5. How to Write a Fabulous Bio – Because I know you’re fabulous. So now, go learn how to write a good bio for your website that reflects how amazing you are.

6. One of my Favorite Business Purchases – This is not a link to another blog, but I thought I’d share one of the most practical and awesome things I have in my bag. And they’re cheap. They last longer than any others I’ve seen, and they hold their charge for months. It goes especially well with this little piece of equipment. Enjoy.

The Secret to Facebook News Feed Optimzation: Don’t Lose Out on People Seeing Your Posts!

Facebook is one of the best free tools for photographers to use to market their business.

The ability to tag clients and have all their friends see the photos you took of them is one of the best ways to get new clients, especially when people leave a lot of awesome comments on your work for their friends to see.

Yet have you noticed that some posts get a lot more response than other posts? I’m always a bit disappointed when I post something and get little or no response from people, when other posts seem to go crazy with people responding like mad. Or maybe you find that you get lots of response when you post it on your personal profile page, but very little when you post stuff on your business page.

Fear not, I’ve just learned the secret to getting your posts to show up in people’s news feeds, ultimately getting more people to see your amazing work and hire you! [Click to read more]

5 Quick Tips for More Album Sales

Albums can be one of the most awesome products you offer your clients. They’re profitable, easy to design, have high sentimental value, and do a gosh darn amazing job of showing off your work! But many photographers have a tough time actually selling albums. Sure, they sound great and all, but what good are they if you can’t convince your clients to buy one?

Well, you’re in luck. Selling albums is actually not that difficult! There are some simple ways for you to ensure that your clients are actually *excited* to buy an album!
[Click to read more]

5 Travel Tips for Photographers

Kyle Hepp Beach Image Tilt Shifted — All photos in this post taken by the amazing Kyle Hepp

I travel a bit for work. And by a bit, I mean that in the past four months I’ve shot weddings in

Santiago (Chile)
Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Richmond (Virginia, USA)
San Francisco (California, USA)
Lyon (France)
Surrey (England)
Hershey (Pennsylvia, USA)

I will be finishing up this streak of destination (for me) weddings with one in Paris (France) and Lake Anna (Virginia, USA) in a week and a half.

At first when Jamie asked me to guest post for The Modern Tog I didn’t feel like I’d have much to offer. But then when she said it would be great if I posted traveling tips for weddings, I thought “Ah HA! Now THAT, I just might be qualified to write about!”

So here’s 5 Travel Tips for Photographers that I’ve learned along the way. [Click to read more]

The Photographer’s Guide to Building Links (And Why They Are Necessary)

No matter how optimized your website is, around 60% of the ranking factors for search engines involve links from other sites to your site called backlinks.

There are important aspects to each link which may make one more valuable than another.

So lets see if we can break all of this down and tell you how to get these valuable links without getting too technical (like I promised in my last post).

[Click to read more]

Don’t Waste Your Money: 6 Regrettable Photography Business Purchases

We all have them: things we bought that we regret buying and wasted our hard-earned money on.

There are so many things out there for photographers that it can be hard to know what is worth the money and what isn’t. I’ve already listed out several essential purchases for photography businesses, but here’s a list of 6 things to avoid buying no matter how tempted you may be to spend money on them.

[Click to read more]

How To Have Happier Clients and Better Leads Using Photography Questionnaires

I think I’m in love.

My friend Andy recently told me about something called Gravity Forms that he uses for his client questionnaires and contracts.

I’ve been doing an informal questionnaire with my wedding clients before each wedding, but Andy and I photographed two weddings together this past month, and we used his questionnaire. It was so awesome to have all that information in one place and I loved how easy his form was to use. So I finally bit the bullet and purchased it this past weekend.

Oh. My. Word.

This little WordPress plugin rocks my world.

It’s the most easy to create form I’ve ever seen, and being able to use conditional logic (that’s a fancy way of saying that you only show certain questions based upon answers to other questions before it) is just rad.

Yeah, I just used the word “rad”. I like to pretend I’m cool. 😉

So after figuring it out and getting it all set up, I immediately decided that I had to tell you all about it and why I think you should buy it, too.

Not only that, but I created a free contact page for you to use on your photography site, just because I love you and want to save you some time. [Click to read more]

Get More Business by Treating Your Potential Clients Like Sheep

Confession: I never really put much thought into my website design. I considered what template I wanted and customized how it looked, but that was about it.

It pretty much looks the same as all the other photographers’ websites out there who use the same template that I do.

I don’t even want to know how many people I may have lost because I never thought about it. In fact, I didn’t start thinking about it until we started planning out our re-branding process, which still isn’t finished (insert sad panda face here).

But then I had one of those “ah-ha!” moments. I don’t even remember what caused it, but everything I’ve been reading lately all came together and it just made sense.

Basically, you have to treat your visitors like sheep. [Click to read more]

Increase Photography Product Sales by Offering Less

I love to eat. Give me something savory, like a juicy marinated tenderloin steak, grilled shrimp scampi, garlic mashed potatoes slathered in butter, and fresh green beans cooked just right with a crisp garden salad and a glass of wine and I am a seriously happy mama.

My mouth is watering already. Yours?

We don’t go to restaurants much (unfortunately) but when we do, my pet peeve is opening up to a menu that has about 300 different options.

Being the food lover that I am, I feel obligated to make sure that read through all of my options to make sure I get whatever sounds best on the menu. I don’t want bad food on one of the rare occasions that we go out to eat, so I sit there for far too long trying to decide what I want.

And I sit some more.

And we tell the waiter to come back again, and again, and again.

Finally, we give up and just make some decision. Hopefully it is good, but it is SUCH a frustrating experience.

I much prefer menus that are smaller, making my decision easier. I’m hungry when I get to a restaurant. I want to enjoy the company I’m with, not spend 20 minutes trying to read the menu and deciding what to order.

The same thing applies to the products you offer your clients. If you’ve ever had a client procrastinate on ordering or not place an order after seeing their images, you may want to consider how hard you’re making it for your clients. [Click to read more]

The Best of the Rest: 5 Must-Read Posts From the Web

Confession: I read a LOT of blogs. While there’s some really great stuff out there, I also see a lot of fluff as well. I thought I’d save you a bunch of time by sharing my 5 favorite posts from the last few weeks.

Read them. They are fantastic.

5 Ways to Make $1000 – Ridiculously simple ways to add $1000 to your bottom line at the end of the year. It’s a must-read for sure.

Getting Your Clients to Buy More – Sarah Petty shares 4 awesome tips for selling more products.

A Surprisingly Easy Way to Handle Client Workflow – I do something similar to this, only using Excel. I should probably use their suggestion though as I don’t open the document often enough and so I fail to really use it how I should.

Red-Carpet Posing Tricks – Just a few quick tips for posing women to make them look their best.

The Ultimate Twitter Guide – Everything you want to know and more about Twitter. It’s seriously exhaustive, and something that I plan to read more in-depth so as to satisfy those of you who have been so kind as to follow me on Twitter.

Have a post that you’ve read lately that is super-helpful? Share a link to it in the comments so we can all learn from it as well! Bonus points of honor if you share your favorite link from The Modern Tog with your Facebook friends or Twitter followers.

The Secret to Creating a Successful Photography Business

No, it’s not by buying some expensive marketing package or showy website.

Those artistic & vintage photoshop actions that you love? They won’t get you there either. In fact, you’ll probably ditch them in a year or two. Trust me. Just like that “amazing” shirt you picked up awhile back that was so cute then, but is so very wrong for you now.

The things you need to guarantee your business will be a success cannot be bought in any store. I promise that if you have all these things, you will most certainly “make it”.

Can you guess what these things are?
[Click to read more]

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