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Whats the best way to market your work???
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Yours thoughts please! I sell my work to friends and family but I would love to try and market it to the public. I have no means of displaying work and I do not have my own site. For the people who have their own site: do you think its the best way to market your work or would you rather have somewhere to show it off????
Hey Fiona,
I’ve moved this to the business forum, might get more attention.
By the way the Peoples Photography event coming up. You’ll be able to show and possibly sell some photographs there
http://www.peoples-photography.com/index.html
Eddie in here in involved in the event.
Mark
Having a website is a good start and does not cost the earth. I have a website since 2000 and it has been great for showcasing work and getting bookings. However, in the past 18 months it began to die and I found it had fallen off
nearly all of the search engines. This was due to the way it was built and the way it was “marketed” towards the
search engines. I am now almost through in finishing a re-build, re-hosting and adding a few new addresses.
Currently I have http://www.gerrycostello.com and the re-built site will be http://www.gerrycostello.ie. I will repoint the http://www.gerrycostello.com at that and also point http://www.gerrycostello.co.uk also. But the most important part will be getting priority and high status listings on the better search engines……………….fingers crossed, I’ll probably be up and running by next week I hope.However, getting back, you should consider a website and get traffic going through it.
Check out this post:
https://www.photographyireland.net/viewtopic.php?t=726&highlight=I had a quick scan through the Dan Heller site last night and there are a lot of good pointers there – and not just for photographers, for all people in business.
I sell 80% of my pictures through web site. It does not cost much but involve lot of time.
Other marketing tips are:
– be involved in many competitions you can,
– exhibit with other photographers/artist (I am member of Ennis artist and we have 6-7 group exhibitions a year),
– try to have your own exhibition (it can be expensive but worthy).
– publish in magazines (for free as well, specially if your website can be mentioned).DaveC wrote:
Gerry,
Is your site down at the moment?
Dave, my “old” site is still running, that is http://www.gerrycostello.com but the new one is not up yet. At least
I hope http://www.gerrycostello.com is running……..it should be.A website is pretty useless unless people know of it’s existence, in which case it can be a very useful and powerful tool. But guess what – now you need to market the website in order to get it noticed, so you really are no better off with just a website alone. In reality, you would market your work along with your website (as your portfolio).
How you market yourself depends very much on what you are marketing or selling. Are you selling a product or a service or perhaps both – e.g., a product might be framed landscape photographs and the service would typically be your photography. Both will require a different approach.
And do not underestimate the power of networking as a marketting tool.
By the way, Dan Hellers site, which has been referred to above, makes for excellent reading.
– Thorsten.
ecp wrote:
A website is pretty useless unless people know of it’s existence, in which case it can be a very useful and powerful tool. But guess what – now you need to market the website in order to get it noticed, so you really are no better off with just a website alone. In reality, you would market your work along with your website (as your portfolio).- Thorsten.
Most people searching to buy goods, same as photos/art. If the website has good keywords people will find you. And if they like what is in your website, they became your customer.
Of course you need to do other marketing together with your web.I find Google Ad Words is a great way to drive traffic to my site (and cheap). Also, linking to other people’s sites (and them back to you) is a key way for the likes of Google to give you a higher ranking. I also find that people searching for specific Camera Clubs and Camera Shops are ending up with my site high up the list.
To find out about my visitors I use a free piece of code from http://www.statcounter.com. Put it on each page of your site and you will capture lots of valuable info about where visitors are coming from, what keywords they used, what pages they visit, how long they stay etc.
digitalbeginner wrote:
I find Google Ad Words is a great way to drive traffic to my site (and cheap). Also, linking to other people’s sites (and them back to you) is a key way for the likes of Google to give you a higher ranking. I also find that people searching for specific Camera Clubs and Camera Shops are ending up with my site high up the list.
To find out baout my visitors I use a free piece of code from http://www.statcounter.com. Put it on each page of your site and you will capture lots of valuable info about where visitors are coming from, what keywords they used, what pages they visit, how long they stay etc.
I’ve got my site hosted with Letshost.ie and the amount of stats that they have attached is super. They are not overpriced either and you can get domain names quiet reasonably from them.
Use Flickr – believe it or not you can find people willing to buy images after finding them on flickr.com! I was contacted by an ad agency in the US a few months ago and they bought an image for a few hundred dollars.. Pity about the exchange rate though. :(
This is a bit basic but when you boil it all down these are the core points of any marketing strategy
The Five P’s of Marketing
Product
what are you selling,
who needs it,
who knows they need it,
who wants it?Place
where is it,
how does the customer get it,
how can it be seen? The World or your neighborhood.
Only your server statistics can tell you.Price
how much does it cost,
who sells for less,
who sells for more Margin over costs
taxes
who pays for postage and packaging?
How do they pay; check, credit card, paypal,…Packaging
does the package sell the item,
does the package have value of it’s own,
will the package survive until delivery? Is your on-line web site the “package”?
shipping needsPromotion
who knows about your product,
how do they know,
do they know in the best light,
where and for how much will you advertise? Email (to friends)
Discussion groups
link exchanges
banner exchange
search engines
paid advs on and off the webKeith
markcapilitan wrote:
Word of mouth….cannot be beat.
Its still the way I get most of my work !
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