But with this accessibility comes increased competition for work. How do you get your work seen and, more importantly, published? For real money?

Accept Rejection

The first thing you must do is accept rejection. If you’re serious about turning your hobby into a career, it has to happen gradually, with the likelihood many knockbacks along the way. This happens to all self-employed content creators, especially in a field as competitive as digital photography.

Trying Stock Photography?

Selling stock photography is perhaps the easiest way in to start making money. Book publishers, magazines, advertising firms, film companies, web designers, graphic artists – they all use stock photographs to save money and time. The photographer makes a percentage of the image sold. It may be as little as 25p per photo, but the more images you have out there the more you will make. You really must be prolific as well as creative.

Among the big agencies selling stock photographs are iStockphoto, Fotolia and Dreamstime. Each one has different requirements, but generally you need a camera that takes images no smaller than 2mp. Once signed up, you can start uploading images. If any of your shots are accepted, they will become part of the site’s stock inventory. If one sells you receive a small payment. If you sign up to a few agencies and upload hundreds of good images, you can start to make a living, or at least a good supplementary income.

The best thing about this approach is the ease with which you can track the success of a picture. If your images are doing well, an agency might offer you an exclusive contract, meaning more money per image.

Do your research

You can save yourself a lot of grief and disappointment by thoroughly researching the agencies you submit to. Find out what their technical guidelines are. Take time to discover which kind of images sells the most. Read the small print so you can avoid falling afoul of trivial errors like unauthorized logos.

Find interesting subjects

Remain distinctive and avoid clichés. There’s no shortage of cats and babies on the internet, and no reason why your bundles of fur and flesh will stand out from the crowd. If it’s easy for you to capture, it’s easy for anyone – so get out there and find interesting subjects if you want to increase your chances of success.

Use your social skills

Another great thing about microstock photography is that it’s a true internet meritocracy. Traditionally, photographers had to hustle and politick, working their way into a network of contacts who would employ them, yes, for their photographic skills, but also for their social skills and likeability. Working as an online stock photographer removes all judgment except that passed down on your work.

Sujata Ghosh is a freelance writer currently working on number of projects. She loves her job, which gives her the opportunity to enjoy travelling, photography and cooking.

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1. Find your niche and start shooting in it.

Most enthusiasts shoot what they want, where there at, without any overarching logic. They produce a haphazard collection of different images. Then they try to sell the resulting images. Shoot first and then find a market. Pros do just the opposite: they know their market, and then shoot for it. They specialize, get to know buyers in their niches, and shoot deliberately and strategically to deepen their portfolio in their chosen areas. Starting tomorrow, spend some time figuring out where you want to specialize, and from now on spend your precious shooting time in those areas. Unless you live in Kansas and are determined to have your niche be Central American travel photography, it’s not that hard to build a solid portfolio. Just give yourself a highly targeted list of assignments. Do some at-home product shoots, or portrait or engagement sessions with family or friends. Assign yourself to cover at least 10 mammal species at the local zoo, or spend some time at some local wild areas. Take it seriously – learn about the animals or natural areas you’re covering. As long as your niche is something close to home, you can build a portfolio relatively quickly.

2. Develop your website.

In the digital age, you must have a website and it must be a good one. A website is your online portfolio and your most effective marketing tool. A well-designed site gives you credibility and provide a point of interaction with clients and buyers. Like a storefront, it is a place to which you can direct people, and a way for others to stumble into you while searching the web. Indeed, many people today find photographers today by doing Google searches. If you don’t have a website, you won’t even be found or considered. Beyond that, web sites provide a platform for selling prints and stock photos directly, and for offering blogs, reviews, and other important content that adds value for your potential clients. Over the next week, either develop your site yourself, or find someone to develop it for you. Read my best photography website template series for reviews of photography website templates you can use to create great sites fast.

3. Develop a list of buyers in your target market.

Once you know your niche and start developing your site, you need to begin defining your target market. Who are you shooting for? If you are selling to magazines or publishers, go to the book store and buy copies of your target magazines, and find the names of publishers in your field. Register at Photosource International, and pay for a list of buyer contacts in your niche. Go through Photographer’s Market, and list those buyers in your field. If you want to do commercial assignments, make a list of local companies in the industries in which you specialize. If you are going to do weddings, figure out what the best mediums are in your region for advertising to engaged couples. Over the next two weeks, consolidate your list of potential clients, with contact information, in one place.

4. Send out three submissions.

From your list of potential clients, choose the top three—those that are the most attractive to you but also the most likely buyers. Focus on those that offer the best fit with your work in terms of content, style, and quality. Send high quality submissions to these three buyers (I’ll post on how to do a high quality submission shortly). If you do this right, there’s a good chance you will make your first sale. If not, you will have taken the first step to building a relationship with what will be an important client for you in the future.

5. Sign up for photo buyer requests.

In addition to initiating contact with your target buyers, you should also sign up to receive image requests from photo buyers. First, when you contact Photosource International to obtain contact information for buyers in your niche, you should sign up to receive their weekly and daily buyer requests. You will need to apply and be approved to receive the daily list, with more competitive and higher paying clients. You should also go to Photographer’s Direct, and apply to receive their photo buyer requests. As with the daily list at Photosource International, you will need to submit an online link to your portfolio to be accepted.

6. Join a Stock Agency.

You know your niche and your market, have a growing portfolio, and have started marketing directly to buyers. Now it’s time to reach out and put your images on file with a stock agency. If you are really new, or don’t have a deep and coherent portfolio of images, then you can go right now to Alamy, and start the process of signing up with them. As long as your images meet minimum standards of size and quality, Alamy will provide you with a marketplace. You will learn how the stock universe works, and when your portfolio is deeper, you can take the next step. If you already have a strong image library, you may be ready to go immediately to a more specialized and competitive agency. Choose a smaller agency that closely matches your photography in content, style, and quality. I cannot overemphasize that last point – you’ll make your life much easier, get accepted, and make sales by choosing a smaller specialized agency that sells the kind of images you make. Do some online research, peruse the Photographer’s Market, and make a list of five agencies that are attractive and match your style. Find their submission guidelines, and follow them closely. For more ideas, see How to Choose a Stock Agency.

7. Start advertising for assignments.

You’ve started marketing directly to buyers, and started the process of putting your images with a stock agency. The next step is to start looking for paid assignments. If you are just starting, then start with family and friends. Let them know what you are doing, and that you are available to start shooting wedding or other important events. (Note: If you have not done weddings before, you should read and prepare thoroughly before doing one. It’s an important event, and you need to provide high quality images. See my list of recommended Wedding Photography books in the side bar.) You may want to do the first 1-2 events at low rates, or even free. Your friends are giving the opportunity to get started, and you are giving them the gift of your valuable photography time. Use the resulting images as a basis for your initial wedding / event portfolio. If you are more are more experienced, then you can develop a wedding website, and start advertising at local shops or online usin Google Adwords (see article on Google Adwords).

8. Get a local shop to display your images.

You’ve started marketing directly to photo buyers, starting working with a stock agency, and started looking for assignments. Now you can take advantage of one more avenue to sell your photos: selling prints. Start paying attention, and you’ll notice that many local shops, coffee houses, and cafes display artwork, often from local artists. (Even if your local shops don’t, talk to the owners and they might be willing to start.) Using an online print lab or your local lab, print large mounted prints of your 10 favorite images, take them with you, and ask shop owners if you can display your images.

9. Order some great photography books and learn more.

Even if you manage to read every article on my site, you will only be getting the tip of the iceberg in terms of the information available to help you make it as a photographer. Because there are so many books on the topic, and because I believe strongly in continual learning, I’ve compiled a list of what I consider to be the best books in different areas. If you are serious about making as a photographer, order some now and read them over the next month. They will provide the foundational knowledge you need to start thinking like a professional photographer. As a starting point, you can see a list of recommended books to the right in my sidebar.

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Any other thoughts for very immediate actions steps you’d recommend?

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Outside of these, here is a list of great blogs that I regularly read and find to have the excellent information for aspiring professionals thinking about building their businesses.

Dan Heller’s Photography Business Blog

This is a very well-known photography business blog. Heller offers up a richer and more detailed set of writing on running a photography business than almost anyone else. Indeed, many parts of his “blog” read more like book chapters (some are). Heller is also an authority in the area of model releases – much of the information from his book on the subject can also be found on his website. He has great information on the stock photography business as well. The articles are uncommonly long and and sometimes excruciatingly detailed. danheller.blogspot.com

Photopreneur

This is a well-established blog about starting and running a photography business. The authors offer great tips in down-to-earth language that’s easy to understand. They comment on a wide array of different topics, and include a good number of articles that are just fun articles about photography, and not as much about the photography business. Compared to Heller’s blog, the articles here are shorter and easier to read, but with less detail (the same can be said for most of the rest of the blogs here). blogs.photopreneur.com

Black Star Rising

This is another group blog with well over a dozen contributors. It’s affiliated with Black Star the photojournalism / stock company, and most of the contributors are Black Star photographers. Black Star Rising is not an exclusively business-oriented blog, but much of the the content is. Unlike many other business-related blog, this one has a photojournalism emphasis. I find this blog to be fresh – it’s less fluffy than Photopreneur and less detailed than Dan Heller’s blog. rising.blackstar.com

Stock Photo Talk

A great blog on the stock photography business by Andy Goetze. If you are interested in stock photography, I would consider this blog a must-read. You won’t find a lot of highly targeted advice about running your own business, but you will find a wealth of up-to-date information about what’s happening in the world of stock photography. www.stockphototalk.com

Photo Lovecat

Photo Lovecat is a blog, again by multiple photographers, dedicated to photography business issues. This is a great blog for aspiring photographers. It’s fresh, has a ton of good business related content, and its very easy on the eyes. You’ll find articles on everything from working with clients to registering a photography business to using social media. photolovecat.blogspot.com

Strategy Avenue Blog

The Strategy Avenue blog, by Laura and John Novak, is the blogging arm of their consulting and training business for photographers (Strategy Avenue). You’ll find well written articles on various aspects of running and improving a successful photography business. Laura’s work consulting with photographers has given here a good grasp of the common problems aspiring photographers face. strategyavenue.typepad.com

A Photo Editor

This is a great blog by Rob Haggart. It’s not exclusively about running a photography business, but there are plenty of great business-oriented tips in the mix. Haggart’s perspective is particularly useful because of his long-time experience as an editor. To read his blog is to temporarily see things more from the perspective of an editor. www.aphotoeditor.com

Photo Business News and Forum

This is a great blog dedicated to photography business issues by John Harrington. It’s a blend of nuts and bolts advice on running a photo business, on the one hand, and commentary on trends in the photography industry, on the other. John Harrington is also the author of the well-selling book, Best Business Practices for Photographers. photobusinessforum.blogspot.com

ASMP Strictly Business Blog

This is a semi-official blog of the American Society of Media Photographers. It’s written by a dozen ASMP members. I like group blogs since they offer a more diverse array of viewpoints on any given issue, and that’s an advantage here. Obviously, the fact that this blog is written by one of the major photography associations gives the views of the authors credibitlity. On the downside, while this blog has great potential, but it’s relatively new and the content is still notably thin. Either that or they just don’t have very good navigation to their archives of articles. www.asmp.org/strictlybusiness

ProPhotoLife.com

A blog targeted at advanced enthusiasts and pro photographers by Jim Talkington. This blog focuses a lot on photographic technique and general photography tips, but you’ll still find a wealth of articles on the nuts and bolts of running a photography business. www.prophotolife.com

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Of course, the blogging world is vast, so no doubt there are other photography business blogs that probably content for a spot on the list. If you know of any, feel free to mention them below.

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Pricing is often one of the hardest areas of the business for photographers. New photographers are sensitive about their lack of experience, afraid they don’t merit a large fee and can’t compete with more established professionals. But even for established professionals, a certain sense of guilt is common when it comes to talking price. Many professionals are almost apologetic when quoting a price, and are much to willing to come down.

I’m no exception.

I recently had a revelation that has helped me a great deal with the psychological aspect of pricing. It has to do with the difference between how photographers and clients perceive any given photo shoot. What many photographers, enthusiasts and pros, often forget is that a photo shoot is a rare and big event for a client. While we do shoots every week, most people might do a professional photo shoot a few times in their lives. A FEW TIMES IN THEIR LIVES.

If you charge cheap, cut corners, or otherwise short-change your clients, you really are depriving them of something special. You are depriving them of the opportunity they may only have a few times to experience a professional photo shoot – to be the center of attention during the shoot, the recipients of small gestures that make them feel like valued clients, and ultimately the recipients of truly beautiful professional images.

Instead of skimping on the price, go ahead and price high. And then make it worth it. GIVE YOUR CLIENTS THE UNIQUE AND MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE OF WORKING WITH A TRULY PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER. Dress like a pro, act like a pro, project confidence. Do your homework before the shoot. Go the extra mile to make your clients feel valued before, during, and after. Do everything necessary to create the ambiance of an idealized “photo shoot” as well as produce great images.

Think of yourself as selling an EXPERIENCE, not just a set of photos. If you can do that, I guarantee your clients will be happy to pay for your services. And they’ll remember the experience for a long time to come.

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For most photographers, the word “portfolio” evokes images of a physical “portfolio” of images, often in a big black portfolio case, that represents who you are as a photographer. There are still a few situations when such classic portfolios are relevant—for example, if you are applying for a prestigious art gallery, going to visit a high-dollar commercial photography client, or meeting in person with prospective wedding clients.

But for most photographers most of the time, the traditional “portfolio” has always been of limited value. That’s not to say most photographers don’t use portfolios. Indeed, every time a photographer sends a submission to a magazine, stock agency, or other prospective buyer—whether slides, prints, or an email with digital images—that photographer is sending a portfolio. In this case, each portfolio is different, depending on the client.

Today, however, the portfolio concept is taking on yet another connotation. In the digital era, your website is your portfolio.

A website is like a conventional portfolio in that it showcases your best work and presents an overall impression of your style and identity. Yet a website is also much more powerful. It offers an enormous range of creative design possibilities. And it is capable of reaching hundreds or thousands of people with relatively little extra work on your part. It’s also the first impression that most prospective buyers will have of your work.

Even the conventional situations above—art galleries, high-end commercial assignments, and weddings—most clients will see your website before they see anything else. Many stock agencies and buyers will now simply ask for a link to your website instead of asking for a submission of photos.

So in the digital era, the question “do you need a portfolio” is synonymous with the question “do you need a website.” And the answer is yes, absolutely. And you need to give your website — it style, the images it includes, the aura it projects — the same attention you might have given to preparing a portfolio in a bygone era. It’s the most critical step you can take to start selling photos and getting clients.

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It’s been an educational experience, and it’s given me a great feel for the landscape of the wedding photography industry. One of the most insightful aspects of this is seeing what kind of things separate the best from the rest.

The best wedding photographers are those who produce awesome, modern, artistic imagery. They combine great composition and lighting with incredible post processing to produce breath-taking imagery. But more than that, they are the ones who build distinctive, bold brands for their work that separate them from the rest. They participate in groups like the WPJA, ISPWP, Modern Photographers, Photographik, and now Best of Wedding Photography, and they use their participation in those groups to enhance their credibility and reputations among brides and prospective clients. They position themselves at the top of the market, shooting premium and destination weddings. These people shoot 30-200 weddings per year, at prices averaging between $3,000-$6,000 per year. If you multiply those numbers out, you’ll see that they really add up. For many of these photographers, it’s not uncommon to shoot destination weddings in Europe or the Caribbean for $10,000 or more. Many of these photographers share their knowledge, and add a lot to their bottom lines, by launching their own workshop series in which they’ll teach everything they know to you and a dozen others over a weekend for $850.

These are the people who don’t just scrape by as photographers, they thrive and prosper.

So how do you get there?

I’m not primarily a wedding photographer. My background is in photojournalism in Asia, and now I spend most of my time bringing photographers together for big projects like Photocrati or Best of Wedding Photography. But I have a good business mind, and exposure to the greats in wedding photography has given me a sense for exactly the steps I WOULD take if I wanted to join these photographers at the pinnacle of the industry.

I don’t plan to go that route, but rather than let the knowledge go to waste, I thought I’d go ahead and share my thoughts with any of you who think you’d like to try it. So here are the steps. I honestly believe that someone who did these with focused energy could establish themselves at among top in the field within about 2 years. The key point here is that you need to know what they know and do what they do. That means that you will need to invest in training, resources, branding and advertising. Many would-be photographers balk at such investments, but keep in mind that this is business, not a hobby. Every business requires investment – nothing ventured, nothing gained.

1. Achieve technical mastery by learning from the masters and using Photoshop Actions

You can’t thrive and prosper in this field unless you master the ability to produce consistently outstanding imagery. That appears to be a daunting challenge in part because most people learn slowly through trial and error or through reading books. You can dramatically accelerate your learning curve by finding people who produce the kind of outstanding imagery you want to produce, and taking a small, intensive workshops with them to see, first hand, how they do what they do. You model them, get feedback, and quickly and dramatically improve. Right now, if I were going to invest in one workshop, I’d do it with David Beckstead.

One important note here is that there are two distinctive steps in producing great imagery – the actual shooting, in which your ability to read light and compose are the critical talents, and post processing, in which your expertise with Lightroom and Photoshop is critical. In fact, my recent experience leads me to believe that the quality of post processing is now as important or possibly more important than your shooting skills. The top photographers are masters of post-processing. The fastest way to start post-processing like them it to buy a set of Photoshop actions, perhaps like those from KJImages. I would absolutely find a photographer who’s actions you like, buy them, and start using them. To be honest, I can’t think of a single step that would more immediately and dramatically improve the imagery of most wedding photographers.

2. Build your wedding photography portfolio with free shoots and model shoots

If you are an established photographer with a large body of work, but with imagery that doesn’t compare with the top people, I’d invest a few weeks re-processing my images from the last few years with new photoshop actions, and create a new portfolio of exquisite imagery that way. I’d strip everything off of my site that didn’t have the cool, fresh, modern style that premium brides are looking for. You need to be brutally honest with yourself. I’ve seen a lot photographers with 20 years of experience and good client and referral bases, but they are still shooting and post processing with a style circa 10 years ago, or even circa the 1980s. The top photographers produce bold, modern, and artistic imagery. That’s the kind of work that brides at the top of the market are looking for. Look at their sites, and compare what they’re producing with what you’re producing.

If you are newer and just starting out, you need to get shooting. I would begin offering free portrait and engagement shoots to build up my portfolio. That’s a great way to build up not just your portfolio but your client list. Free engagement shoots are particularly valuable for newbies. The benefits: you get the experience of working with clients; you get the images for your portfolio; if you do a great job on engagements shoots, they’ll likely use you for their wedding; and you’ll get word of mouth referrals.

You’ll also need to build your portfolio of wedding images. One great way to do this is to hire models with wedding garb. This can be expensive, but it allows you to tightly control your shooting situations and work with people who know how to make your photos look great. A lot of top photographers use model shoots to produce some of their more exquisite and distinctive imagery. If I were you, I would also offer my camera for free as a second shooter to an established photographers, on the understanding that you get to keep a selection of the images to display on your own portfolio.

3. Get an awesome website with a great, sidebar-less WordPress BLOG

If you don’t have one already, get a professional caliber website. For your portfolio site, get a slick, flash-based site. I know, I know, many people (including myself) talk down about flash because of it’s SEO disadvantages. But flash sites display with a quality and pizazz that is just not achievable any other way. To get around the SEO disadvantages, you need to set up a blog on a separate domain. In fact, many people are using ONLY blogs, and skipping the flash portfolio. If you are shooting enough to keep your blog regularly updated, I think that’s a reasonable approach. But regardless, you must have a blog, and it must be a great looking blog. I would opt for a WordPress based blog WITHOUT a sidebar. Photocrati is about to release some great themes of that kind. The other great place to look, albeit rather expensive, is prophotoblogs.com.

4. Invest in a great logo and bold, distinctive brand

Great branding is second only to great imagery in distinguishing the great photographers. What is great branding? When people come to your site, what they see should be unusual, distinctive, bold, fun. Your site and style should stick in their minds. Achieving this effect is a combination of the name you choose for your business, the logo you have to represent you, the colors of your site, and the kind and quality of your imagery. For me, a great example of branding is Our Labor of Love photography. They have a great, unusual name, and that combined with the logo and distinctive image on their home page makes me remember them (and brides will remember them too).

Part of your brand is also market positioning. The best photographers in the world position themselves at the top of the market. They’re looking for brides who are willing to pay $3-10,000 for truly outstanding imagery. That’s where you need to move as quickly as possible, rather than competing with the masses for $1000-$1500 weddings. To justify the higher prices, you need to be able to produce outstanding imagery, which is why the training above is so important.

5. Master SEO

Any business today must master SEO – this is not distinctive to photographers. If you can get on the front page of Google for a specific set of keywords, and you have a decent site, you WILL get a endless stream of leads. If this is the only thing you did to promote yourself, you could still be highly successful in terms of bringing in a lot of wedding photography business. There’s a lot that goes into producing great SEO results. Sometime soon, we’re going to start offering SEO training and services for photographers through Photocrati. We’ve developed a great strategy there, and although Photocrati is just 9 months old, we now get 80,000 visitors per month, about half of which are from Google. Since we’re not offering those services yet, let me give you two other tips to get started.

First, while you want to do basic SEO steps for your flash portfolio site, you want to focus most of your SEO efforts on your blog. For many reasons, blogs do better.

Second, when you do SEO, you need to orient your efforts around specific keywords. In your case, the selection of those keywords is easy. You want to show up for “[location] wedding photographer” where location is nearest large metropolitan city or town. If you are near Denver, you want to show up on page one for Denver Wedding Photographer searches. That will be more valuable to you than, say, Denver Wedding Photography. You need to make sure that those keywords are prominent in your site title (ie, “Denver Wedding Photographer – John Smith”) would be a good title. And make sure those keywords appear throughout your site. Use those terms in the titles of your blog posts.

Third, you need to start getting links back to your site. Submit your site to relevant, quality directories (either photography-related directories, or the big, important ones like the Yahoo! directory or Dmoz). Every time you do a shoot, post photos from it on your blog and let your clients know. They’ll link back to you, and those will boost your rankings. Comment on other blogs and link back to your own site that way. Produce great content on your blog that other people consider worth linking to. One idea is ask some great photographer if you can interview them for your blog, then post the interview. Mostly likely that person or others will link to the interview. Finally, you sometimes just need to go out and ask for links. Email website owners, comment on why like their sites, and politely but unabashedly ask if they’d be willing to link back to you. Uncomfortable, yes, but also critical.

There are a lot of other link building strategies, but that should at least get you started. The other big thing I might suggest is taking a workshop such as one with Lawrence at ToFurious here  or one with us at Photocrati when we get it our services launched.

6. Advertise via Google Adwords and Strive for High Conversion Rates

In addition to your SEO efforts, or until they kick in, you should also plan on investing a substantial amount of money in Google Adwords advertising. If you cannot appear in the organic search results for “[your location] wedding photographer” then you need to appear in the paid search results for those terms. If brides go to Google and search for those keywords, they are looking for someone to shoot their wedding. They are ready to buy, and that’s precisely the time you want to be in front of them. Once you dominate search results, or once you’ve built a powerful client base with a lot of referrals, you can drop this advertising. But for now, you need to think of this as a necessary business expense to build your client base and brand awareness.

Paid search can be expensive. You may layout as much as $1000 per month to be in the top 1-5 keywords throughout the month. But keep in mind that if you charge $2000 for wedding, you only need to get one wedding every two months to break even on your advertising.

Conversion Rates. One important side note to this is that if you are going to do Google Adwords, you need to take every possible step to increase your CONVERSION RATE. If 200 people click on your paid search result during the course of a month, and each click costs you $3, then you’ve spent $600 on advertising. Conversion rates online tend to vary between .5% and 6% depending on the quality of your site, your marketing message, the quality of your imagery, and lots of other things. A conversion rate of .5% mean you’ll get 1 job from those 200 clicks. A conversion rate of 2% means you’ll get 4 jobs. If those are weddings with an average price of $2000, then 1 job = $2000 and 4 jobs = $8000. That means that a very small improvement in your conversion rate (1.5%) produces $6000 in additional revenue. That’s why conversion rates are so important.

How do you increase your conversion rate? That’s a science unto itself, and I could write a small book on it. But for now some things to keep in mind are: only display your best imagery; make it very, very easy and tempting for people to contact you; use various methods to enhance your credibility (membership in wedding photography groups, awards, etc); if you are just starting out, give people a risk free way to try you out, such as free engagement sessions. You need to spend time and energy on a free engagement session, but if you do a great job, the wedding will be yours.

7. Join Every Wedding Photography Group You Can

This get’s to the last point above about enhancing your credibility. Brides are more likely to see you as established and successful if you are a member of the WPJA, or the ISPWP, or Modern Photographers, or some other group. Of course, to get into these groups, you need to meet various standards, and that’s why their valuable. Some are more prestigious than others, such as the Grace Ormonde Platinum List. We’re trying to create the most prestigious of all with Best of Wedding Photography, but that’s invitation only and you can’t get an invitation until you’ve already established yourself at the top.

Once you are a member of these groups, display their badges prominently on your site.

Many of these groups run competitions on a quarterly basis. If you are a member, enter the contests. Winning third place in a quarterly WPJA competition allows you to write “International Award Winning Wedding Photojournalist” on your website, and that will increase your conversion rate (see above). The more such awards you have, the more credibility you will have, and the more likely brides on your website will call you up and try you out. Of course, to win these awards, you need to produce great imagery and that, again is why you need to invest in the technical training above. It’s the starting point for everything else.

8. Build Relationships with other Wedding Vendors

So far, I’ve focused on online mechanisms for building your client base. But another important mechanism is meeting, networking, and building relationships with great wedding vendors in your area. You are looking for wedding planners, cake makers, florist shops, wedding and reception venues, and other providers of wedding-related services. When you find ones you like, go meet them and introduce yourself. Stay in touch.  Add them as preferred vendors on your own website – that is, you direct brides on your site to those vendors. You send them business referrals. And if you do good work, and you build good relationships, they will list you likewise on their websites and materials and send business to you. Getting plugged into that kind of wedding vendor network can transform your business, so it’s worth the time and energy you need to put into building the relationships.

A great way to build these relationships, as well as get more clients directly, is to attend bridals shows. If you have not done so, find the big ones in your area and do what’s necessary to sign up and attend.

9. Build Relationships with Other Great Wedding Photographers

There’s an old saying that you become like the people you spend the most time with. Ideally, you want to spend more time training with, corresponding with, and meeting with top photographers. Call up the best photographers in your area and ask if they’d be willing to spend 30 minutes sometime in the next month sharing their wisdom in exchange for lunch. Take workshops with the best photographers. Find the best photographers in places like Digital Wedding Forum, and interact with them via the forums. Consider asking top photographers if you can interview them for your blog – start an interview series. There are a lot of ways to break the ice and begin interacting with top photographers. The more you do, the more their knowledge and strategies will rub off on you.

10. The Transition: Moving Toward the Pinnacle of the Market + Destination Weddings

As you build a larger client base, a better portfolio with great imagery, and a better reputation with stronger branding, you need to keep focusing your efforts on moving toward the top of the market. Raise your prices, be more selective, radiate excellence from your site and blog. You would much rather shoot 20 wedding per year at $4000 each than 40 weddings per year at $2000. Same income with fewer clients and less work.

One step that distinguishes the best photographers is also a move toward destination weddings. Most top photographers shoot A LOT of wedding that are not in their own geographic locations. They travel around their countries or to increasingly exotic destinations to shoot weddings. You should make this a focus. Why? There are several reasons. First, destination weddings pay more. When people are willing to fly you to New York or Mexico for a wedding, that means they really want you. Destination weddings often pay$7-10,000 or more. Second, destination weddings add an elite flavor to your branding. If you can say you regularly shoot destination weddings in this or that exotic location, it enhances your credibility and attractive even to brides who want a local wedding. Third and finally, destination weddings often produce spectacular wedding imagery. The images from a beach wedding in the Caribbean make a GREAT addition to your portfolio.

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Ultimately, you want your branding, website, blog, imagery, and relationships to look like those that distinguish the top wedding photographers. Study the greats, emulate them, train with them to accelerate the learning curve dramatically. If you walk, talk, shoot, process, and look like a top wedding photographer, eventually you will BE a top wedding photographer. The big thing to recognize is that looking and acting like the top photographers is NOT as difficult as it might look. If you have good photographic talent and a decent business mind, you have the basic resources you need. After that, it’s just a question of learning what they know, emulating them as much as possible, and spending time with them. Once you’ve emulated them successfully and mastered what they know, you can start innovating and pushing yourself in directions even they have not gone.

UPDATE: You can also get started by checking out the work of some of the masters in the field. Here’s a selection from Best of Wedding Photography from around the world:

INTERNATIONAL WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Italy Wedding Photographers
Mexico Wedding Photographers
United Kingdom Wedding Photographers
France Wedding Photographers
Toronto Wedding Photographers
Vancouver Wedding Photographers
Spain Wedding Photographers
Tuscany Wedding Photographers
London Wedding Photographers
Switzerland Wedding Photographers
Riviera Maya Wedding Photographers
Bahamas Wedding Photographers
Greece Wedding Photographers

US-BASED WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Los Angeles Wedding Photographers
New York City Wedding Photographers
Hawaii Wedding Photographers
San Francisco Wedding Photographers
Boston Wedding Photographers
Miami Wedding Photographers
Seattle Wedding Photographers
Atlanta Wedding Photographers
Napa Valley Wedding Photographers
Orange County Wedding Photographers
Denver Wedding Photographers
Charleston Wedding Photographers
Minneapolis Wedding Photographers
San Diego Wedding Photographers
Chicago Wedding Photographers
Kansas City Wedding Photographers
Portland Wedding Photographers
Philadelphia Wedding Photographers
Washington DC Wedding Photographers
Phoenix Wedding Photographers
Houston Wedding Photographers
Virginia Wedding Photographers

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When is the last time you updated your marketing plan?

This is of course assuming you have a marketing plan. If you do – good for you. If not – get on it. I certainly don’t want to hold myself up as a model of small business marketing. I have definitely made my share of mistakes (and will hopefully continue to do so) but I have invested a lot of effort, time and even some money into learning about what works and what doesn’t.

I’m not here to tell you what will work for you and what won’t because those will be different for each photographer. Your particular market, the type of work you do and your geographic location all come into play when determining the right mix. The point I want to make is that all successful marketing campaigns have a few things in common.

1. They are planned and executed according to a plan. Failing to plan is the biggest single error photographers when it comes to marketing.

2. They are executed as campaigns – not discreet events. I’m regularly amazed at how many photographers try a marketing technique, don’t see results and abandon it relatively quickly.

3. They are consistent with the core values of the business.

Whether you shoot commercial or retail work, people, food, or weddings – you’ve got to market yourself in order to bring in new business. As of this writing the international economy, well, sucks. Things are looking better now than they have for a while but they’re still way down.  In times like these it’s easy to pull back on marketing expenses, after all, if the money’s not coming in, you can’t put it out again. While I’m not indifferent to the plight of small business owners, and I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to pay for and ad before their mortgage, cutting marketing budgets and efforts right now is a big mistake. Look at it this way. If you have a 10% market share of a million dollar market, you have sales of $100,000. If that market shrinks to $800,000 you need to increase your market share from 10% to 12.5% just to hold steady. That’s certainly not possible without marketing.

Writing a marketing plan is not an easy task and brining in outside professional help can be great. A marketing consultant can bring their expertise to yours and help you drill down through your business data. In the event you’re not able to afford or find a good marketing consultant there are a plethora of books and internet tutorials on writing marketing plans. Ask 100 different marketing experts how to write a marketing plan and you’ll get 100 different answers – but the basic concepts are the same.

1.  Establish your goals – these should be solid, measurable goals, ie increase sales to $350,000 or shoot 47 weddings this year.

2.  Establish a budget – usually a percentage of your monetary goal.  It will be different depending on your particular area of expertise, geographic area and your customer base. My personal marketing budget is 7 percent of intended sales for this year.

3.  Establish methods to reach your goals.  This is the meat of the plan and requires the most research. This includes the tools you’ll use as well as a schedule.

4.  Establish systems and methods to measure the effectiveness of your efforts.

I use a program on my Mac called Omni Outliner to keep track of my efforts. This program is great because I can essentially create an outline very easily add sub headings and break down larger tasks into smaller discreet tasks.  How do you eat and elephant?  One bite a time.

Of course writing the marketing plan is not enough, one must follow and execute it.  But this is the beauty of the plan. This business is usually very cyclical and inconsistent. With a well written plan and schedule in hand you can best utilize your down time.  If this week is slow get your newsletter articles written, start the printing on your postcards, shoot for your portfolio.  In other words, use your downtime and check those things off of your list.

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So here are some tips on how to get started with Google Adwords and how to make sure you get the biggest bang for your advertising dollars.

Have a good website

Before you start, let me underscore that you need to have a good website. Ideally, you’ll have a great website. With Google Adwords, you will be sending prospective clients to your site. So the overall design and functionality, as well as the images you have in your online portfolio need to be of sufficient quality that they will convince at least some of people who come that you are worth contacting.

Set up your Google Adwords account if you don’t already have one

Assuming you’ve good a high caliber website, the other basic thing you need is a Google Account. You can set one of these up very quickly and easily. Just go to www.google.com, click on Business Solutions underneath the search box, click on Adwords, and follow the instructions.

Add a new Adwords campaign and set your settings

Now it’s time to get started. Once you are inside your Adwords account, you will want to click the Campaign Summary tab, and then click “New Campaign.”  This brings us to a quick aside about the structure of campaigns and ad groups. A campaign is highest level categorization. Use different campaigns for very different projects (ie, say one campaign for you wedding photography, and one campaign for your corporate product or real estate photography). Within each campaign, you may want to have different ads that use different titles and keywords.

GEOGRAPHIC TARGETING. When you are first setting up your campaign, there are a few settings you need to pay close attention to. One of the most important is geographic targeting.

If you live in Atlanta Georgia, and you are trying to find wedding clients, you don’t really need your ads to show up for users in Oregon. Google gives you the ability to narrowly limit the geographic space in which your ads appear. So you might set the geographic targeting to the state of Georgia. That way, any users in Georgia searching for “wedding photographer” will see your ads. But those in other states will not. That can save you a lot of wasted advertising revenue.

TOTAL BUDGET AND MAXIMUM COST PER CLICK. You will also need to set your daily budget and your maximum cost per click. These two amounts are obviously related: if you have a high total budget and a low cost per click, you’ll be able to generate more traffic on your site and more leads. If you have a low budget and high cost per click, then you’ll get less.

Your cost per click is critical here. The CPC is how much you pay every time someone clicks on one of your ads. It determines how quickly you blow through your advertising dollars, but it also determines where you ads appear in the list of ads that appear alongside Google search results. The higher your ads appear in the list of ads, the more clicks you will receive.

Unfortunately, the ideal CPC varies from keyword to keyword and is largely determined by the amount of competition over any given key word. If you specialize is Poodle Photography, and you want your ads to appear every time some types “poodle photos” in Google, then you’re probably not going to face high competition, and you can set a low CPC (maybe .15/click) and still appear very high if not first in the list.

If, by contrast, you want to appear on the first page of search results for “denver wedding photographer”, you may need to increase your cost per click to $6 or higher just to appear on bottom of the first page. (I know this because I’ve had to go that high several times over the past month for my own Adwords campaign for wedding photography in Colorado).

So your cost per click is partly out of your control. You can set it at initially what ever level you want, from 1 cent to $10 or more, but you will want to adjust your CPC strategically. In short, your goal is to find the lowest CPC that will get you onto the first page for your keywords and, ideally, will get you into the 4th position or higher.

It’s important to note that you DON’T need to be the first result. The difference in click throughs for spots 1-3 are not all that different, and you can save a bit of money by appearing a bit lower.

The combination of your CPC and your daily budget will determine the maximum number of visitors you get each day. If your max CPC is $.20 and you set a daily budget of 10, then you will get about fifty visitors a day on your site. If your CPC is $1, you’ll get ten.

TURN OFF CONTENT NETWORK. There’s one last setting you should adjust. You’ll probably want to turn off the “Content Network”. You know all those Google ads you see when you are tooling around on websites? Those are the content network. For some kind of advertising these spots are very valuable.

In this case, however, you want to put your ads in front of people are looking for your kind of services RIGHT NOW. If you are a Chicago portrait photographer, your target audience includes people actively looking for Chicago portrait photographers. And those are the people going to search engines and typing “Chicago portrait photographers.” If you leave the content network on, your ads can appear on any site where key words like chicago, portrait, photographer appear. Those might be photography blogs or news articles or something else. But in any case, someone who sees your ads while reading a photography blog is not likely to become a client. And you will still need to pay when they click on your ad. So it’s better to keep your campaign as targeted as possible.

Tips on Designing Adwords Ads

A google ad includes a one line title (maximum of 25 characters) and two lines of description (maximum of 35 characters each). So you have three lines of 25, 35, and 35 characters. That is not very much space in which to convey your message, so you really need to give it some some thought and make every word count.

In choosing your title and description, try to empathize with your customers and think about what they would want to see. If you were looking for a photographer in your line of work, what kind of headline and description would compel you to click?

It’s needs to be descriptive, clearly conveying what kind of photography you do. You may want it to include buzz words in your area of photography. In wedding photography, for example, photojournalism or photojournalistic-style wedding photography is very popular.

You may also want to include specific reference to your geographic area. Many people are looking for photographer that work in the same city, so they will more likely to click when they see their location in your ad.

Another important tip is that you may want to create different ads with different wording for each of your important key words. For my wedding photography business here in Colorado for example, I have separate ads for Denver Wedding Photography, Boulder Wedding Photography, Wedding Photojournalism, Engagement Photography, and other key words. The trick is to match the wording in the ads to the keywords that people are searching for. If some one is searching for “denver wedding photographer,” then they are more likely to click on an ad that includes those same key words.

The great thing about Adwords is that you can create as many different ads as you want, even one for every keywords, at no extra charge.

Making Adjustments

Once you’ve created your ads, they will start to run and you will immediately generate some relevant traffic and potential leads for your site. At this point you will need to constantly go in adjust your ad settings. If your ads are not appearing on the first page for relevant terms, then you may need to increase you CPC. If you are appearing in the #1 spot for everything, you can reduce your CPC and save some money. Depending on which ads seems to be generating higher click throughs, you may adjust wording of other ads or create new, more effective ones.

How Much to Spend?

Finally, you may want to control you overall spending by increasing or decreasing your daily budget.

The budget issue brings us to a final point. Be careful with Adwords. It’s easy to spend a lot of money on Adwords advertising. You can set a budget of $1-200 per day and generate tons of traffic. But you’re also spending $3-6000 per month on advertising. Set a budget of $20, and you are $600 per month.

How much should you spend? Think like a business person. How much you spend depends on the returns. If you sell wedding packages for $1500, you can spend $1500 in advertising, get one job and cover the costs. Of course, that doesn’t leave any profit for you or any money to cover your overhead.

In large part, how much you spend depends on your “conversion rate” – the percentage of people who come to your site and actually decide to use your services. You should assume that less than 5% of visitors will become clients. A good estimate is 2%. Using that number, if you send 100 people to your site at a CPC of $1, then you have spent $100 in advertising.

If you have a good website, somewhere between 1 and 5 of those people will contact you and strongly consider buying your services. If you are charging $300 per shoot, then that’s $3-1500 in revenue depending on your conversion rate. As you can see, a high conversion rate dramatically increases the returns on your advertising dollars. That’s why having a good site is so important.

Unfortunately, you probably can’t precisely guess your conversion rate. You will need to launch your campaign, watch the numbers, and adjust accordingly.

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Do you use Adwords? If so, how has your experience been? If not, why not?

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The General Rule: If a photo of a person, or of copyrighted or trademarked property, is used to advertise something, then the publisher of the photo needs a release.

The Privacy Exception: If you are hired to take photos of someone (say a wedding or studio shot), those photos cannot be published, even editorially, without a release.

If you really understand those sentences, then you know almost all you need to know about the legal requirements of model releases. Most of this article elaborates on these sentences above to make sure each part of it is clear.

The General Rule for Photography Model Releases

The first thing to note is that, for the most part, only photos of people need releases. Contrary to popular belief, neither animals nor buildings nor other property require model releases, except in the specific case where the property is the subject of a copyright or trademark. That will come as a bit of a surprise to most people, who are used to hearing about property releases. It’s also a surprise to many property owners, who think their buildings or other property is protected. But it’s not, unless it’s trademarked or copyrighted.

Second, model releases are only needed if an image is used for advertising purposes. That is why pictures used for editorial purposes—textbooks, magazine articles, newspapers—don’t generally require model releases. Hence the old rule of thumb: commercial work requires a release while editorial work does not. The same rule applies to copyrighted or trademarked property: photos of copyrighted or trademarked property only need a release if used for advertising purposes.

Third, it is the publisher who is legally obliged to have a model release, not the photographer. For the most part, unless you lie and tell a publisher you have model release when you don’t, you are not legally responsible. Publishers of photos are responsible for knowing if a given use requires a release, and they are the ones who are legally responsible if they publish a photo without one. Of course, even if you are not legally responsible, it’s no good if one of your buyers gets in legal trouble due to one of your images. So you should have a basic understanding of the law, and you should communicate the exact release status of any images you license.

Note also that if you decide to self publish, then you become a publisher and are thus liable like any publisher.

Model Releases and Privacy

No legal discussion would be complete without an exception. If you are invited or hired to take pictures of someone, say for a wedding or studio shot, the resulting images are protected by privacy laws. You can’t sell those photos EVEN FOR EDITORIAL USES without a model release. Much like attorney-client privilege, the established relationship between you and the client creates a responsibility to safeguard privacy.

This can create a strange situation, because this responsibility applies even in public places where other people might take pictures of your clients at the same time. Since they don’t have an established relationship with your clients, they CAN sell their images editorially without a release while you can’t.

Model Release Summary

So let’s summarize. First, you (the photographer) don’t need model releases. Only the publishers of your photos need releases. And they need releases in three specific situations:  First, they are using a photo of a person to advertise something. Second, they are using a photo of copyrighted or tradedmarked property to advertise something. Third, they are publishing a photo of your clients, who hired you to take their photos.

Outside these situations, except for arcane situations you are unlikely to face, the buyers of your photos don’t need model release. And if they don’t, you don’t. Mostly.

An Alternative Answer: If Your Buyers Require a Model Release, You Need One

Whatever the legal requirements are, the simplest answer to the model release question is this: If your buyer requires a release, you need one. This is important because buyers often want releases even if they’re not necessary. Since they’re the ones who are liable, they take extra measure to protect themselves and remove even the possibility of a lawsuit.

So, Should You Obtain a Model Release?

Let’s say you’re traveling someplace and you taking photos of the people you see during your journey. Should you stop to get a release? If you have commercial clients, or you think you’ll want to sell the photo for commercial purposes, then it may be worthwhile to stop and get a release. If you do mostly editorial work, and the likelihood of commercial sale is low, then you should probably skip it. If you do stop to get a release, it will severely interrupt if not halt your shooting altogether, preventing you from getting all the other great shots you might have captured. And you’re not likely to need it anyway.

Recognize that there are armies of photographers who never get model releases. Most notably, photojournalists and press photographers who do editorial work rarely obtain releases.

The important point is that whether you obtain a model release is ultimately a business decision not a legal one. It affects which client you can sell to. Obtaining a model release can be valuable because it opens up the arena of commercial clients as potential buyers of your photos.

More Information

That is the shortest and most direct answer I can give for model releases. If you would like a longer and more detailed answer, I would strongly recommend reading Dan Heller’s guide to model releases. He’s written a good book on the subject, and almost the entire contents of the book are available on his website. It’s very thorough, and probably the only reference you’ll need on model release. If you want to more information on the book, click here: A Digital Photographer’s Guide to Model Releases: Making the Best Business Decisions with Your Photos of People, Places and Things.

Sample Release Forms

If you’ve decided you do want to get a signed model release form, you can find a list of sample forms at the National Press Photographer’s Association here.

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I’m assuming that most readers of this blog are familiar with the basics of how stock agencies work. You take photos, you send them to the agency, they sell them, and you split the sales proceeds. That’s the basic model. That said, that said, the stock photography world is a universe unto itself. Various articles in this series will deal with some of the bigger differences you should be aware of, as well as more detailed thoughts on how to pick and work with any given agency.

For now, let’s say you’ve decided to sell through a stock agency…how do you decide which one to sell through? I’d say the answer depends on where you are in your photographic journey.

Part One: If you are just starting out

If you are completely new to stock photography and / or if you do not have at least 500+ high quality images in a singe niche area, then I would recommend that you take two steps.

First, choose your niche and start shooting to develop a deeper library in a particular issue area. Second, in the meantime, get your feet wet in the world of stock photograph, and possibly sell some images, by applying to Alamy or a similarly flexible agency.

Alamy is the largest online stock photography agency, with nearly 14 million images at time of writing. They require that photos meet certain minimum standards of size, resolution, and quality, but otherwise, their view is that if you have images, you should have a place to market them. Thus, they more open to new photographers than other agencies.

Working with Alamy will get you accustomed to the laborious process of preparing your digital files for submission. It will also give you a outlet for possible sales (don’t expect a lot). Finally, it will give you some credibility. When you apply to other agencies later, you can tell them you have 1000 photos on file with Alamy. Also, Alamy will give you your own searchable homepage.

Part Two: If you have experience and/or a larger portfolio of images

If you have a large portfolio of high quality images and you know enough about stock photography to prepare and submit images, then you have more choices. The big question is whether to try to get into a larger, generalist agency or a smaller, specialist agency.

For the most part, unless you are a recognized name in the industry, you’ll do better with smaller, more specialized agencies. Most important, you’ll be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. The agency will be more interested in your work because it matches the agency’s niche field. Because it’s smaller, you have a better chance of developing a strong relationship with the editors.

Because you’ll have a closer relationship and because your photos match the agencies niche area, they will be more likely to promote your photos in catalogs, online, and with buyers. You will do much, much better with an agency if the agency promotes your images and puts them in high profile locations.

Beyond these benefits, there’s also the fact that smaller agencies are less competitive and easier to get into. If you are just starting out, that’s probably important. Indeed, the biggest and most competitive agencies—Getty, Corbis, Jupiter and the like—can be very difficult to get into unless you are already an established photographer.

At some level this decision is made for you. If you are the kind of photographer who has a chance for getting into Getty or Corbis, then you already know it, and you probably don’t need to be reading this. If not, you’ll probably be looking at smaller agencies.

So the remaining question is: which small agency do you choose?  Simple. Remember this refrain: match content, style, and quality. You should find an agency that matches your content, style, and quality. The same advice applies if you are sending magazine submissions: send your photos to magazines whose images have the same content, style, and quality as yours.

If you follow that simple advice when sending submissions—whether to magazines or stock agencies—you have won have the battle.

If you find more than one agency that matches your work in content, style, and quality, then you can look at other criteria. Other things equal, you should choose the agency that:

a) has the more established reputation
b) pays the highest percentage to the photographer
b) matches your content, style, and quality the best
c) will do the most to promote your images
d) has the smallest number of photographers
d) offers the most attractive terms regarding exclusivity (ie, gives you the most leeway to continue to market your images yourself)
e) offers the most attractive terms for removing your images (ie, doesn’t require you leave your images on file for two years).

So ideally, you’d find an agency that sells just the kind of photos you take, has a great reputation, works with few photographers, pays a high percentage of sales, lets you market images yourself, and lets you pull your image when you decide to. If you find that agency, you’ve got a great match.

Indeed, once you find that agency, you’ll probably continue to work with them for the rest of your photographic career, even if you establish relationships with other agencies for other types of photos.

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