Why are you a photographer? Perhaps you weren't interested in this because you thought it was a get-rich-quick scheme or for status or power. Perhaps you love taking photos, hanging out with people, and the excitement of running your own business.
At least it was for me as a photographer.
I got into photography after a friend of mine who was a sponsored skier started thinking more and more seriously about becoming a professional skier. While we were jumping on our bikes, I was taking pictures of him with a very old digital camera whose shutter lag was painfully slow at his 1.3 seconds. He looked at some of the images I had taken and replied: “Hey, you should buy a camera and be my photographer!” We were his 17 years old and it was 2004, so there were a lot of “guys” scattered around.
I immediately replied: “Hey (again, we were 17!), a camera is like $500!” But after a few hours of contemplation, I took the plunge and ordered my first “pro model” camera. I think it was around $699. This was the beginning of my career as a photographer.
Photo provided conor walberg / Athlete: Matt Lutzkow, the same pro skier who told me I should shoot pro.
Through photography, I have been able to combine my greatest passions: the outdoors. I photographed professionally because I love skiing, cycling, skateboarding, and doing creative things all while spending time with my best friends. Add in my love for technology and it was a dream come true.
But over time, I quickly realized that photography (and any business in general, especially in the early stages) is like a roller coaster ride. In some months, I would be on top of the world, even if he booked one or two high-paying gigs. However, the next two months could be a complete slump as they scramble to make rent. You might know what this feels like.
As most creative types do, I've tried new avenues over the years. Through these new avenues, I learned that this roller coaster exists in most businesses, but it doesn't have to be that way. The main difference between a sustainable business and a business that has ups and downs is the ability to consistently attract new leads and customers. In marketing terms, it's “filling the top of the funnel.”
What happens to most photographers is that they can barely keep up with their work during busy hours full of shooting and editing, and marketing is almost forgotten. Then, when the situation slows down again, we will engage in all kinds of marketing activities until new results are achieved (all marketing will be paused again in the meantime). This leads to another downturn after a good period.
maintain business stability
So how do you deal with all this? How do you overcome marketing slumps and maintain a strong and stable photography industry? Systems and channels. It may sound boring and not fun, but if you get these things right, you can shoot consistently and make a great living.
Before we go any further, I want you to realize that there are stages in marketing. What I mean by this is that when you first start, you need to take a stage one marketing approach. What works best at that stage (and will continue to work in the future) is word of mouth, networking, and referrals. Anything you can do directly, by actually talking to someone or being introduced to someone, can be very powerful. The more you do this, the more natural it will become, and soon you won't even have to think about it. It becomes an extension of your daily life.
Once you acquire clients and achieve great results with the first tier, add the second tier. Below are some marketing channels you can take advantage of.
- Social media
- SEO
- paid advertising
- mailer
- Partnership (depending on type of shoot)
At this point, I'll steer you in whatever direction I like. Here's why: After becoming a photographer, he founded a skate clothing company where he designed t-shirts, sewed pocket t-shirts, and even art.He held contests and custom designed and sold his items. Did. skateboard. I learned SEO here. SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”. At his T-shirt company, Longboard, he wrote and posted one helpful article about skateboarding, and each day he received 1-2 organic visitors (visitors from Google's free ads). has increased to over 200 people. I sell them regularly through my machine.
The best part? There was no need to do anything else. Buyers consistently found me for the right reasons (they were a semi-warm audience ready to buy)! After this discovery, I built and operated his SEO business and served clients for about 7 years.
During that time, I realized that what I really wanted was to work with photographers again. They're very passionate about what they do, they're usually one-man shows, and they're often on the roller coaster of business.
Your second channel: SEO for your photography website
Okay, so let's give you a little more backstory and see what I do with this. In my opinion, once you prove yourself to real clients and get the job, SEO is the channel to focus on. I like social media more than social media. Social media requires constant attention, paid advertising, and requires a large investment and learning curve to get started. SEO is like building an automated traffic machine. You can enter what you want, when you want, and over time it will do the heavy lifting and provide you with consistent leads.
With these consistent leads, you can escape the roller coaster of business.
Now that you understand the reasons behind SEO and understand its benefits, the next difficult part is to get started. Here are some quick tips to get you started. If you decide this is right for you, click the link below to get his easy guide to SEO that I've put together.
Tips for getting started with SEO as a photographer
- SEO takes time. be patient. This won't happen overnight. Expect it to take at least a few months, depending on your approach and the time you dedicate to it. It's easy to get discouraged if you don't see results right away, but trust the process and keep going.
- SEO often pushes you into the technical side of things. SEO doesn't have to be so technical. While working with clients, I noticed that the more technical I got with their sites, the less impressive the results became. Instead, I focused on making the site better for visitors and creating more content, and things improved dramatically.
- Local SEO – a method of ranking for specific areas and photo styles – is much easier to implement and rank for. National ranking means competing with every photographer in the country.
- Choose your specific area and make sure it is the main focus of your home page. The homepage is the most important page on almost any website, and it's often the one most likely to rank well in SEO. By choosing one specific niche, you are clearly telling search engines that this is what you do and should be ranked for. The clearer the better.
- Your site should be beautiful. This doesn't necessarily affect SEO, but photography is an art, and if someone visits your site and it doesn't look good, even if the photos are good, you can't tell if you're their photographer. It's much less likely that you will.
- If your homepage has only photos or very little text, adding text is the first step. Add great content to your homepage and take your customers on a journey as they scroll down. When doing this, put yourself in your potential customer's shoes. what do they want to see? What do they need to hear? What is most important to them?
- Last but not least, set up a Google My Business page and fill in as much detail as possible. Make your description compelling and specific to your niche or the location you serve. This is one of the best ways to start ranking locally. Finally, show Google and potential customers how much people love your work by asking for reviews on your Google My Business page.
As mentioned above, each step you take when it comes to SEO is an advancement towards one day getting traffic to your site on its own. It won't happen right away, so plan on sticking with it for a while, even if it's just 30 minutes a week. It all adds up!
After completing these tasks, Click here to get an easy guide to SEO to get started.
