Hey Girl, Nice Shot

The Photographer Has No Shoes

You know how the cobbler's children have no shoes?  The cobbler is so busy with customer work he has no time to make shoes for his children?  Well, that can happen to photograper too.  Usually we are pretty good about at least taking occassional photos of our children, but what about ourselves.

To be honest, I'm right there with you.  Maybe when my hair grows out.  Maybe when I lose a few pounds.  Maybe when the spring flowers are out.

And you know what happens?  You never take that picture.  I used to frequently joke with clients that I take photos so I don't have to be in them. 

But it makes me so sad that so many of my friends don't have a picture of themself as their profile picture on sites like facebook.  Usually they have a photo of their kids instead.  But I want to see them!

So when I saw Leah's contest on the Go 4 Pro site, it struck a cord with me immediately. 

I consider myself lucky.  When I went to Workshop on the Waterfront my friend Celia took this awesome pic of me so I've had that to use when I needed a picture of myself. 

But every now and then I turn the camera around and try to take a new picture of myself.  This contest has inspired me to think about a new photo of myself.  I'm going to give it some thought and see what I come up with.

In the meantime, Leah Remillet is super cute in her self portraits below.  I love her dress. Don't you agree?

So, are you ready to step in front of the camera?  Here's the details of the contest:

Create a SELF PORTRAIT! With that SP you can either write a creative about me page (but you have to post it as a blog post as well to count here) or you can write a blog post about the experience of creating this image. Which ever way you choose to write, your Self Portrait Submission must come with a directly linked BLOG post. Use the linky tool on the Go 4 Pro site to show us your self portrait and link to your blog post entry.  The panel of judges… Leah Remillet, Kelli France, and -->> myself <<--and who knows, maybe more will come!

The Rules….

1. The linky image must be your SELF PORTRAIT submission, Please name it your name or your photography business name.
2. When we click the link it must take us directly to your submission blog post that has your self portrait and either your creative ‘About Me content’ or a post about what having this picture means to you.
3. You must reference and link Go{4}Pro in the post.

4. All entries must be made by December 15th (you have 3 weeks!) GOOD LUCK!

5. This contest if for anyone. Whether you have a self portrait and want to update or need one to replace the snapshot where you cropped out your family or just don’t have one at all.

I can’t wait to see what you come up with…. I’m so excited!!!

What will the winner of the ‘About Me Page’ contest receive?

Since you’re doing the work to get your business looking great with your new ‘about me’ page, We wanted to offer an awesome prize pack to help your business continue to move forward and some awesome friends of mine said they wanted to contribute too…

The Ultimate Completely Customizable Marketing Kit -Paysen by Go{4}Pro (200.00)

The iPhone Collection by Go{4}Pro (50.00)

1 hour Phone Consult with me, Leah Remillet aka Go{4}Pro Girl (100.00)

$100 Gift Card from Simply Color Lab / Simply Canvas (100.00)

Francypants Academy’s  Boutique Business Bundle (135.00)

Photographer’s Kick Start Training (299.00)

{ Total Grand Prize Value $884. }

Black Friday Steals and Deals for Photographers: The Savvy Photographer

If you have not already checked out the Savvy Store now is a great time because they are offering a discount good through November 30th to celebrate Thanksgiving weekend!  Why not get ready for the new year with some barnwood floor?  Or get some new frames to update the look in your studio?  I think the templates for the gallery wraps that have the "frame" built in are especially cool.

Black Friday Steals and Deals for Photographers: MCP Actions

MCP Actions The MCP Actions site offers great photoshop tutorials and actions you can purchase. MCP Actions has some news you may be interested in - if you plan on buying their products this weekend! Visit MCP Actions

 

Black Friday Steals and Deals for Photographers: Francypants Designs

Kelli France was one of the other speakers at the Workshop on the Waterfront hosted by The Savvy Photographer last March and I absolutely fell in love with her.  She spoke on marketing and branding for phtoographers and is just so full of energy.  Her brand is like her: Fun and Chic!  What does your brand say about you?  Do you have a marketing materials?  Do you need some?  Check out the Francypants Designs site find a template set that matches your personality!

I saw that she was offering a HUGE 50% discount until Friday on her Marketing templates.   Enter the code iheartshopping during checkout for your discount but hurry because the offer ends 11/26!

Black Friday Steals and Deals for Photographers: SEO for Photographers

Below is a guest blog post by Zach Prez, developer of the Photographers SEO ebook and other training.  I have blogged about these tools in the past and continue to get lots of leads from the search engines after my SEO improvements. 

20 Instantly Done SEO Tips for Photographers

Everyone likes the easy way to search success, or a single tip that they can implement right now and see results. As an SEO specialist for photography websites I took some great nuggets from my SEO ebooks and training for photographers and made a quick cheat sheet that you can implement today!

Homepage
 
1.       Update your homepage title to focus on 1-2 key phrases that you want to rank (ie. Las Vegas Premier Portrait & Wedding Photography Galleries). Too many keyword phrases in your title make search engines think you’re a little about everything (broad/general), but they will only rank a page that is a lot about one thing (specific).

2.       Make sure your homepage has 300+ words of text (the standard minimum for SEO). Google doesn’t want to refer it’s searchers to a page without content on it.

3.       Update your meta description to make users want to click your link from a search results page. The meta description is what appears as the black text underneath the link. With tons of other choices to click, a great meta description will help searchers click on you. Include your business name, why you rock (award-winner, lots of experience, etc) and a call to action (“view my stunning photos”).

4.       Add hyperlinks to 5 other pages that are important for you to rank (galleries, blog posts, etc). Your homepage has the most SEO juice, and that juice passes down to the pages you link to.

5.       Remove any unnecessary links, like a link to a Flash installer or website directories that asked you to link to them. Your homepage SEO juice is divided among the number of links on your page, and you want that passed only to your pages.

6.       Add a testimonial and contact information. Users from search are brand new to your site and may only look at one page. You need to get them to trust you and call you right away.

Blogs

7.       Update your blog homepage title so that it uses a different phrase than your homepage. Otherwise (ie. Destination Wedding Tips from a Las Vegas Wedding Photographer)

8.       Remove your blog name from the titles of individual blog posts in the All in One SEO Pack (see 5 Minute Photography Blog SEO Overhaul for instructions)

9.       Create a sitemap (I suggest the Google XML Sitemaps plugin by Archibald) that will automatically ping search engines every time your blog changes

URLs

10.   Change the permalink structure to use keywords instead of the default post ID. For example if you wrote a post about Great Vegas Weddings you would like /great-vegas-weddings/ in the URL instead of ?p=123. See (Photography Blog Keyword Rich URL Video for instructions)

11.   Change your image upload folder to something that uses keywords. For example put your images in a /wedding-albums/ folder instead of your website system’s default folder like /wp-content/uploads/

Images

12.   Name your image filenames with descriptive keywords. Google can’t see the image like a human, so it relies on other factors like the filename. By changing DS001.jpg to mother-cradling-infant-soft-

white-blanket.jpg, now you know the topic of the image without being able to see it

13.   Provide unique alternate text for every image. Describing the photo with a single sentence. “A new mom cradles her baby girl in a soft blanket just hours after birth” will help you rank for lots of related searches while “Las Vegas baby photographer” as alt text won’t affect your rank much for that competitive phrase

14.   Reduce image filesize as much as possible without affecting quality. Page load time is becoming more important to Google’s ranking algorithm. Nobody likes to wait for a page to load

15.   Write a caption for your most important photos. Many times a caption is the first thing a user will read on the page – right after they look at the image. Captions often use very descriptive; niche phrases that will help you rank for related searches. They also add word count to the page to help Google understand what the page is about

Links
16.   Add a signature to any community/forum profiles you may have. Put a link in the signature so that every time you post in the forum, you’re adding a link back to your site

17.   Write a testimonial for a partner or product you like. Sites love to feature great comments and can easily link to your site within your quote

18.   Create accounts in review sites like Yelp, SuperPages, and Merchant Circle. These feed into Google Places (the map results for local businesses) and can help move you higher on the map

Stats Tracking

19.   Create an account at google.com/analytics and look at the Traffic Sources > Keywords report. These are phrases people click in search engines to find you. It’s great for ideas on what to write about next. For example if you see “Valentine’s Day Sessions” as a keyword then you might want to start creating more pages around this phrase, or pages for other holidays

20.   Create an account at google.com/webmasters and upload your sitemap. Google Webmaster Tools provides great insight to how you rank in search engines and if they are finding any malware or crawl errors in your site

Subscribe to SEO tips for photographers here.

Black Friday Steals and Deals for Photographers: PKS Training

This module is designed to provide you materials to start offering a Beginner's Photography class to your clients.  These class materials are designed to be used for in-person classes and are not licensed for use in an online class.  A great way to boost revenue after the flurry of activity of the holiday season is over.  SPECIAL OFFER: Save $150 by using the promotion code "turkey" at checkout between now and Monday 11/29/2010.