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| Original Message Added : 19 August 2009 I have a prominent web presence and advertise in most of the free online business sites. Almost all of my business comes via my website. I do not have an advertising budget and I do not advertise locally. My pricing is my key business feature - because I operate part-time and from home, I have very low overheads. Business is increasing very slowly and I would like my business to become full time. I have tried Adwords but although I got an increase in hits, I got no business from it. I realise how competitive this market is and I do not expect to earn a fortune, just a comfortable living. I seem to have reached a plateau and I am not sure how to drive the business forward. I hope someone can offer me some advice please? Thanks. |
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| Reply : 04 September 2009 |
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| Reply : 04 September 2009 You need to budget for your marketing/sales efforts - which possibly means increasing your prices. It's no good having a low price unless people (customers) know it! It costs money (or time, which is of course money) to reach potential customers. I often hear 'I tried AdWords, it didn't work' - but AdWords is just a tool, it depends on how you use it. If you accept Google's 'autopilot' defaults then you will get clicks, but they won't necessarily be the clicks you want/need. Accepting the defaults is often a recipe for disaster, which means you either need to read extensively and practise, or pay someone else that already has the right skill set (no different to most things really). You either pay for your mistakes, or pay someone else that has already made those mistakes and will avoid them. Either way it will cost you, which brings me back to my first point. Success also depends on your website - is it as good as your competitors'? If you brought the right sort of people to your site and they still didn't call you, then you need to make some changes. Make it sell what you are offering, rather than just exhibit it. Potential customers often like to be told about your service, what it entails, how much it will cost, why they should buy from you, whether other people endorse it, and (importantly) what they should do next (call you probably). They also need to be able to call you or contact you easily/immediately without having to search for a phone number. Either make 'Contact Us' into a very prominent button, or put the phone number everywhere (I prefer the button, it assists with tracking visitor behaviour). Did you reach the right sort of people with your ads? Were your ads buried at the bottom of a pile of similar ads? Did they click on your ad? Did they like your website? Did they call you? Did the call meet their expectations? Did you end up paying for the wrong sort of people to visit your website (thereby using up your budget)? Are you competing in an area where supply outstrips demand? If so, are you making your differentiators clear enough? A quick look at your site tells me you need to make pricing clearer (since you say it is your main differentiator). I would not call packages things like 'basic' and 'budget' - that doesn't sound special enough, especially for weddings. I would also make the phone numbers clearer. If competing on price isn't working, I would try differentiating/specialising in a different way. It's usually better to compete on service rather than price. Hope that helps! |
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| Reply : 07 September 2009 Some great advice from Rob as usual. I would add that if you are currently using your homepage as your landing page for your adverts, it needs some work to answer visitors questions and make them stick around! Consider a list of benefits, why should they choose you? You also need to make 100% sure you are choosing a great range of highly relevant keywords and geographically targetting your adverts so your adverts appear all over the UK, which would cost you a fortune! Good luck, Claire |
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| Reply : 08 September 2009 I am a professional Full time photographer as well as other business that I run, one of my businesses (Nationalphotographer.co.uk) offers a membership service for photographers and we advise them on there website as well as everything photography and business related to photography. I’m award winning and have a international following, so as you can expect my advice will be good and direct to your needs. Your website: When you think of weddings, do you think great day, exciting or do you think dull? Grey is a dull colour. Relevant information on the home page is a pre requisite for any website. You have put key phrases on the bottom of the page, but these don’t link to anything; why not? The sections of the site have slide shows, but you have not put one on your home page, I would have thought that you would have wanted to show off the quality of your work as that it what people want to buy. Not professional Because of what you have said on here you are not classed as a professional photographer as the requirements for this title dictate, and therefore your advertising of yourself as a professional can have some legal repercussion. Photo content. I see that you are using photographs from other professionals photography services, as if you were the second shooter, this is not good for you nor your clients that you have given a false impression. You should only use image which you have set up and taken. Im not sure that people are seeing the same thing as me, I am looking at some poor quality images with soft focus, poor contrast, and lots more issues that really give me the impression that you have a long way to go before you can call yourself professional and you certainly don’t consider your own FAQ answers. You miss some of the basics and you are very much the snap shot photographer. You need training!!! You have few of what I would call good images. The portrait side of images is worse IMO, some strange fashion you have in the floating heads etc that you seem to like in the portraits that you have taken, YOU NEED to show clients that you can take a normal picture and you do actually think about the composition of the images. I think this may be the key to why your business is not growing, If you consider what you are offering, the photos are just like the uncle bobs, so why would they pay you X amount when they could buy a camera to give to someone else? And Yes I have heard of this being done. You need to stand out from the crowd and produce exceptional work, something different and exciting. Here take a look at this site and then compare the photos to what you are offering: http://trashthedress.nationalphotographer.co.uk/index.html I couldn’t see any person paying £100 for your portraits, it seems as if you have issues with working and engaging people and still some of the fundamental problems. I have a new training site coming online in a few months, but I would strongly suggest that you enrol if you would like to grow your skill and business. Services you offer: Looking at the glamorise photo service of £15 per image seems to be highly excessive. For a few reasons which may be the glow you have added and blur, which isn’t really worth its salt as anyone can download the Google picture tool and do what you have done (referenced to some of your images on the site) Or you could just sell out the work for the £2.00 per image in India for better effect and quality. Regardless of this, it should be included into the service that you offer. And from a legal stand point the packages say that all you have to pay, but this seems to be some sort of extra. Any professional photographer thinks that if they are showing their images off, that they what only the best reputation to fall on their images. Not well we had this one done and not the other and it’s about pride in your work. But why do they have to ask for this sample, there is web space to show them what they are paying for isn’t there? Wedding Packages Well first thing is that you have albums that are nothing to do with you, I would warrant that you did not take them and do not have the real photographers permission to use them. Why can you not take photos of your albums that you took the photos of? Simple really and honest.. Looking just at package B and C I can see a big issue. £200.00 for 31 photos and maybe about 30 minutes of your time? Its not really clear. I think you need to look at time as a hourly rate and express it that way. If you look at B (which I am guessing most people buy) you take the wedding and then the groups after which takes about an hour. Then people leave for the meal, which is the same as package C What is the difference between A4 and XL, an inch? Albums Your albums look tacky, offer some range and think, lasting memories in what I think look like the £35 Jessop paper paged hardback albums just really don’t cut it in any sense as there are much better options available than those. Over all, The images are not good the site looks home made, the package isn’t clear. I would say that you are gaining business as you are cheapish, and they want someone professional maybe as a status but certainly not from what I see in the images or products. Your landscapes look fine and it would seem that that is your stronger area. To increase your business, you are going to need to look at your photography skills and the end products you are giving to clients, if you have to pay £700 for training and obtain massive improvements in your photography an therefore create a want for your service, as long as you spend time in producing images and products that are really good people do not mind paying that little bit more. You should also look at replacing the site with something new and modern that works well with weddings and photography, at the moment your sites boring and doesn’t look good, but its easy to follow though your package aren’t. |
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| Reply : 08 September 2009 Saying you’re a professional photographer is misleading, you are not, you are a part time photographer and lack a number of skills required to be a professional. I do not abide liars nor your treats sent by email. Other photos used on your website, the albums images do not match anything like your photos, and as an expert I can see this as plain as day and also there are obvious images where all subject are not looking at your camera but the main photographers. Are you now working for Crew photo world? or actually have you stolen the image which can be found on this link http://www.cewe-photoworld.co.uk/photobook/xxl-photobook.php You need to set your self up correctly as you have made your comments known to me and they are slanderous and lies. Your designer was correct about 2 years ago, flash s good, but still not great. You need to have colour, but not colourful. I think you will find that the question you have asked has been answered and a professional has given you an answer that you do not like. Take it like a man and learn from it. Of course you have a right to make a living, but you should not be advertising something you are not, it’s both illegal and immoral Your Question: How can I convert website visitors into sales? Answer: Get training and take better pictures, clean up your website and only use images that you have taken. Don’t go claiming that you’re a professional when you are not, My mum and even my lowest trainees take better pictures that you do and they don’t even call themselves professional. Bla bla, I thought it was pretty clear. If you take better pictures, sort out your packages and use better products (albums) then you may get better customers. You images on the website need to be top notch as that’s what customers will be buying so you need to look at that, get some training. PS no need to be a liar, just be honest; people respect that. As for my images on that one site, I resent that my images are anyway near as poor as yours, I have one agaisnt millions of ofter photographers globally, if you win something from a professional photogrpahy body.. then you can say something... OH and I have customers and Im not needing more clients.. does that say something to you? |
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| Reply : 08 September 2009 You know You have tried to save face and people are not privalidged to the emails which you have sent me and I have sent you. so dont try plaining games, and I reccomend that you and 'your type' be removed and banned from this site. |
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| Reply : 08 September 2009 |
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| Reply : 08 September 2009 |
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| Reply : 08 September 2009 |
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| Reply : 08 September 2009 |
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| Reply : 30 November 2009 This is purely based on my experience so please take it or leave it and definitely don't take any offence it is meant to help. On this site you have four photos as examples of your presumably best work, one is a poorly exposed picture of someone carrying shoes and one is of the back of a couple head, anther looks like a police mug shot. They are neither arty or fun in fact the look like Uncle Bob snaps. Going to your site the first thing I noticed was that the text weirdly gets smaller as you read it and in relation to weddings you have few if any pictures. However you have fantastic pictures of landscapes its just a shame that you wont make the comfortable living you want a landscape photographer (even the well renowned ones don't). The equestrian shots are okay again need to be a higher standard like your landscape ones, in essence you need to learn how supplement the light better, try googling Strobist. In relation to pricing, whilst everyone wants a good deal and words like budget and basic are good key words for search engines a bride doesn't want to see them all over your site. And on the subject of pricing raise them, a couple of hundred pounds for a wedding shoot is daft for two reasons first it wont cover your expenses especially as you give away a disc of the photos and secondly what if someone books you for a key Saturday for this amount and the next call you get is someone wanting you for the whole day at your top amount? You will be stuck with a couple of hundred when you could have earned more like a thousand. I have just re read this and it sounds preachy and rambling so I will finish now with this. You have a real talent for landscape and stills photography You have a reasonable talent for portraiture Judging by the few wedding shots you show your talent there is limited and yet this is where the money is to be made. Your whole website needs a revamp, you are a photographer so more pictures and less words. Make it exciting, if you do portraits now should be your busy time, your front page should be screaming book your Christmas portrait special and whilst you are at it offer portrait gift vouchers for people to give at Christmas. Get rid of the whole glamourise thing fifteen quid per picture to make them look better that means if I book you for a session and I want twenty pics I will have to pay you an extra three hundred quid for you to make them look good? Remember the best advertising you can get is WOM and you get that by providing great pictures people will want to show off, not just okay ones because you charged extra. People like things simple and easy and your site is complicated if I book a wedding I want to see on the first page a great wedding photograph to prove you can take one, if you don't show one I will hit the back button. What you actually have is a montage of tiny pictures one of which appears to show one woman touching up another (I know its not but you get my point) another is of a shoe (again) better just one great photo.I then want information on pricing and I want it easy to understand. Do not reduce your fees for fewer hours, you will only do one wedding a day so as you are there anyway offer to shoot more but don't give them the CD so they have to buy prints from you. I would also take offence at the way you word the guests taking pictures, you are absolutely right by why mention it on your site, bring it up when you visit them. Also don't allow them to pay on the day, this is a recipe for trouble and would they really want to be bothered having to have to do this on their special day? Get paid four weeks in advance. Your links page should include links to related sites not speciality knives! Your testimonials page is really good but you need a lot more and are those really your best photos, surely if you took photographs of a wedding you must have a least one of the couple both looking at the camera? I have just revisited the site and I now see that you have a slideshow appear, this is good but just include your best pictures and for definite get rid of the one of the couple superimposed on the glass I thought I had gone back to 1974. A lot of these show poor use of on camera flash again see strobist for help here. Loose the whole Photobook page, you will be going to vist the couple anyway so show them an example then. Your landscape photos are as I said terrific and you say they are for sale but when I clicked on the Trussochs I could see no price or no way to buy one. I love the highland clan, USA pages this is genius best part of the site by miles. If I where you I would forget the rest and just promote the hell out of this it is unique. Re your model portfolios, on the basis of what you show here you either dont have the skills or the equipment to produce a professional model portfolio as required by agencies so dont advertise that you do. If however you have produced such photos but are not putting them on the site then you should rather than the family type ones you do have there. I suspect you don't sell many of your Stock photos via your site, so if you are not already a member of a stock library get signed up for one or better still lots. Your travelogue pages are great, really interesting so get a free web page and put them on there it makes you sound like a hobbiest not a pro. However if you decide to go down the USA highland route then give it even more presidence on the site. The equestrian page: the pictures could be better and there seems to be no way to buy one. There is money to be made here. You obviously have access to people with horses so choose a great day re light, get up early and spend the day shooting horses for free. Then choose a handful of your very best shots and make up some post cards with them on including your web address and send them to every stable, riding school, tack shop in the area with an offer of a horse and rider portrait for twenty pounds provided they have at least six people per day who wants them. Through in a 10x8 and you will be quids in. I like the free image of the month idea but why if you are specialising in highland stuff is it a picture obviously taken somewhere in the Med? The Ad free stats logo makes you site look bad, use Google analyticals better, invisible and free. Why have password protected galleries? Have your clients asked for them if not get them where everyone can see them and potentially buy prints or book you. In summary, Concentrate on the USA highland thing Sort your website out Stop concentrating of being the cheapest and start on being the best In an effort to do this learn to light people better, there are numerous sites on the web for this. Learn to pose people better have a look at the work of someone like Ed Pingol and try to emulate him. Ok I really have finished now Again sorry I rambled and please dont take offence at anything I have said, you have the talent to take this forward you just need to find your own USP and being cheap isnt it. All the best Steve |
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