Business, Startup
Photography Startup – How to Build an Online Business in Photography
ALL PHOTOGRAPHERS HAVE BRAVE HEARTS
Continue to Build an Online Business in Photography
Build – an – online business – in – photography is not an easy thing but if you have courage steps can be made very easy. This article is about how to continue to build an online business in photography once the first steps have been made. My article will try to focus on important elements in the strategy for growth and is possible that I will miss some important steps. However, I will write from my own experience integrating photographic websites.
Inspirations
Deciding on what your website will look and feel like is another check to make on your list. Look around and decide what is your path probably someone is already out there looking just a little bit like you. Or in most of the cases exiting websites will have some of the things which you already desire and want to be present on your website. The list is endless with photographers which are already there for years and their work is representative of the entire community. And we want to be part of the community! I have gathered just a few – and I do apologize I will not bring you more from the ones you already know – and the idea is to have a list of the website an take a note of what you could use in yours. Try not to copy the entire website! Not cool!
There is the smallest list in the world :
- http://www.korenman.com/
- http://www.luisholden.com/
- http://nicktuckerphotography.com/
- http://www.jochemgugelot.nl/
It does worth to mention that my examples are just representative of the website layout and the categorization and not for the photographic style. The photographic style belongs to you so make it yours.
Themes
Reinventing the wheel is not a viable solution when comes to a website and building from ground up a web solution is costly and time-consuming. On the market are a few free content engines that will satisfy any need to build a website. Probably the most known web engine is WordPress. Build for SEO and blogging over the years had become the facto platform for small and medium businesses for artists and artisans alike.
WordPress engine allows the one-click install to have a skeleton of the website and additionally if we like to improve any appearance or internal functionality you can install plugins. Dedicated WordPress plugins will increase your visibility on the web and also your business opportunity. In all cases, pluggings can be free to download or paid.
Software infrastructure, at this stage, is solved and we need to think of the appearance of the website. WordPress does works with themes which means that we can install on the top of the core software engine a theme. A theme can be acquired for free and installed on the one-click action. Otherwise, it can be bought and installed on upload and with one click installed. Both actions are painless for any WordPress user even for a beginner.
Resources
Those being said you can acquire a professional theme from websites like:
https://themeforest.net
https://www.elegantthemes.com
https://graphpaperpress.com/themes/awesome/
Or smaller creative theme builders like:
http://organicthemes.com/theme/photographer-theme/
http://themeisle.com/themes/rokophoto
Still, there are FREE themes that probably you like to have before going forward: https://themefurnace.com/blog/free-wordpress-photography-themes/
If this is not enough you should use the web search engine and get results for :
- best WordPress theme for photographers
- top notch WordPress theme for photographers
A result can be found at the following web page: http://topnotchthemes.com/best-wordpress-photography-themes/
Criteria
Deciding which is best of all is not an easy task and we should consider all the aspects of the online business in photography and furthermore. In the following table I have put some of the most common features and factors [together] that I personally consider when is required to buy a theme:
- The number of sales: This factor will drive the development of the theme and the high number of features that it is holding.
- The number of layouts for photography: Factor that will allow you to be creative with your gallery.
- Color scheme: There should be at least 2: black and white since there some of the photographers will opt in for black.
- Customer interaction : Customer personal area [login/proofing/etc]
- Plugins: The number of plugins which can be wire-up in the theme. Connect with Lightroom or Photoshop for the gallery. Events plugin engine for events
- Multilanguage support: Important for all photographers.
- Gallery Plugin Support: It is important to have included in the theme plugins that will render your galleries or banners for mobile devices [resizable] and include swipe functionality.
Momentarily, at the time writing this article some of the best themes on https://themeforest.net are :
https://themeforest.net/item/photography-responsive-photography-theme/13304399
or
https://themeforest.net/item/kinetika-fullscreen-photography-theme/12162415
Domain name and hosting
Domain name is the name given to the website URL. Is that thing which will appear in the web search engines and makes you visible to your potential customers. Picking a right name for the website is not a random process or a punch of inevitability. The website name should reflect what do you want to do? Where do you want to push the photography boundary? It should resolve some other questions and probably more. Have courage by creative.
Hosting recommendation can be found anywhere on the web still I believe for the bigging it’s required at least 2GB of space. If you are not in the mood to spend money on space the good old WordPress has plugins which allow anyone to connect to cloud repositories like Dropbox, Box, Drive, and others. There is no limit! Money should be spent wisely at the begin of the online activity and do not forget that if it’s cheap the service is cheap.
Legal Documents
Hot topics among photographers after the jump are the plethora of legal documents required for you and for the customer to sign. Unpleasant? Well, there is some dirty work to do and it’s required for a better sleep at night.
Customers will start coming eventually and it’s required legally to have a signed contract which will explain in absolutely clear fashion what each party to the contract is expected to do. Handful of contracts are available for download on the web and provided as samples, therefore should be carefully analyzed before implemented in your business. Based on your business model you should carefully revise all the details and add them to your contract selection. The online samples have no guarantee whatsoever for covering every or all legal aspect of your business model.
For example, you need to avoid creating confusion when your customers are reading conditions of the contracts: if the customer cancels the event then what is going to happen? If the deposit has been paid should the photographer return the deposit! Probably you know most of the photographers will request a deposit and therefore the deposit should be returned when the photo event is canceled.
Examples of legal documents can be found at the following addresses:
- http://improvephotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IP-ShortFormGeneralPhotographyContract.pdf
- https://www.slrlounge.com/photography-contract-template/
- http://www.joannebphotography.co.uk/commercial-contract.pdf
- http://www.ashtonlamont.co.uk/docs/photo-video-contract-g50.pdf
- http://www.thelawtog.com/product/wedding-photography-contract/
Before closing
Hoping that the information provided will help you continue your magical journey to build -your- online busines in photography, I would like to mention to all my readers that courage is something that never dies. Courage as in photography immortalized a moment and a character which will be remembered forever. Have courage and grow your way in photography.
MULE ESB Configuration
How to set configuration details for flows and environment in Mule ESB CE
- Global variables, local variables, and configurations with MULE ESB CE middleware.
- Flow Variables
- Session variables
- Configuring Properties
- The Project
- Conclusion
How to set configuration details for flows and environment in Mule ESB CE
- Global variables, local variables, and configurations with MULE ESB CE middleware.
- Flow Variables
- Session variables
- Configuring Properties
- The Project
- Conclusion
How to create RESTful API
Restful APIs services and Microservices with Mule E.S.B Community Edition
The PDF file contains hand on tutorial alongside with technical details related to flow components. Standard screen shoots have been made however some of them have low quality. There are34 pages in landscape mode. What is in this chapter?- Why MULE ESB RESTfull APIs?
- Development
- Bounded Context
- Size
- The Project
- Products API URI
- Customer API URI
- Order API URI
- Conclusions
How to create RESTful API
Restful APIs services and Microservices with Mule E.S.B Community Edition
The PDF file contains hand on tutorial alongside with technical details related to flow components. Standard screen shoots have been made however some of them have low quality. There are34 pages in landscape mode. What is in this chapter?- Why MULE ESB RESTfull APIs?
- Development
- Bounded Context
- Size
- The Project
- Products API URI
- Customer API URI
- Order API URI
- Conclusions
How to consume SOAP Services
Consuming web services with Mule E.S.B
The PDF file contains hand on tutorial alongside with technical details related to flow components. Standard screen shoots have been made however some of them have low quality. There are 20 pages in landscape mode. What is in this chapter?- Why consuming MULE ESB CE SOAP Services?
- The Project
- Consuming Order SOAP service
- Building the workflow
- Groovy StringWriter and MarkupBuilder
- StringWriter
- MarkupBuilder
- Reading the response POJO
- XmlSlurper
- Saving the response
- Response Processing Result Script
- Saving Order into Database
- Conclusion
- Resources
How to consume SOAP Services
Consuming web services with Mule E.S.B
The PDF file contains hand on tutorial alongside with technical details related to flow components. Standard screen shoots have been made however some of them have low quality. There are 20 pages in landscape mode. What is in this chapter?- Why consuming MULE ESB CE SOAP Services?
- The Project
- Consuming Order SOAP service
- Building the workflow
- Groovy StringWriter and MarkupBuilder
- StringWriter
- MarkupBuilder
- Reading the response POJO
- XmlSlurper
- Saving the response
- Response Processing Result Script
- Saving Order into Database
- Conclusion
- Resources
HTML Templates
How to build and send elegant HTML emails with MULE E.S.B. C.E.
The PDF file contains hand on tutorial alongside with technical details related to flow components. Standard screen shoots have been made however some of them have low quality. There are 16 pages in landscape mode. What is in this chapter?- Emails with MULE ESB C.E. middleware
- The Project
- Order Confirmation HTML Email
- Send Order Email - Java Component
- Parse Template Component
- Conclusion
- Resources
HTML Templates
How to build and send elegant HTML emails with MULE E.S.B. C.E.
The PDF file contains hand on tutorial alongside with technical details related to flow components. Standard screen shoots have been made however some of them have low quality. There are 16 pages in landscape mode. What is in this chapter?- Emails with MULE ESB C.E. middleware
- The Project
- Order Confirmation HTML Email
- Send Order Email - Java Component
- Parse Template Component
- Conclusion
- Resources
How to create SOAP Services
Why Mule ESB CE SOAP Services
The PDF file contains step-by-step tutorial. Standard screen shoots have been made however some of them have low quality. There are 15 pages in landscape mode. What is in this chapter?- Order SOAP service
- Interfaces and classes for the SOAP service
- Flow components for the SOAP service
- Flow components setup
- HTTP Listener
- CFX Component
- Java Component
- First Run
- Annotations
- Extend the order model
- Conclusion
- Resources
How to create SOAP Services
Why Mule ESB CE SOAP Services
The MDA file contains the source code for the step-by-step tutorial described in Chapter 2. Standard screen shoots have been made however some of them have low quality. The pages in landscape mode. What is in this chapter?- Order SOAP service
- Interfaces and classes for the SOAP service
- Flow components for the SOAP service
- Flow components setup
- HTTP Listener
- CFX Component
- Java Component
- First Run
- Annotations
- Extend the order model
- Conclusion
- Resources
Introductory Chapter 01
Create a New Project using Anypoint Studio
The PDF file contains step-by-step tutorial. Standard screen shoots have been made however some of them have low quality. There are 15 pages in landscape mode.- New Project.
- Run the First Flow.
- Export for deploy.
- Conclusion.
Introductory Chapter 01
Create a New Project using Anypoint Studio
The MDA file contains the source code for the Introductory Chapter 01. The source code has been generated using Anypoint Studio - Tooling for Mule ESB version 6.3.0 on Mac OS Sierra. The code compiled and is not a guarantee that will work on Windows machine when imported. Has not been tested on other OS than Mac OS Sierra.- New Project.
- Run the First Flow.
- Export for deploy.
- Conclusion.
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