Build a web presence and generate income to support your photography.

trentchau.wordpress.com | my original blog website

Long before I started this blog, I ran (and continue to run) another blog dedicated to photography equipment review, photography techniques, and just pretty much photography enthusiasm.  Mr. Jones was aware of this and was pretty cool about the fact.  While he didn't want me to use that blog because it was sort of unfair to class, which is completely understandable, he did give good advice in the fact that the blog could be more streamlined and cleaned up.

Well the blog is still there, and still active, and will be a major part of my online presence which I'm building.  Check out the blog here.

Read more about why building a presence can help generate long term financial support for your photography goals.

The reason it's being mentioned is because that blog has been a great vehicle not only for expressing opinions concerning photography, but also a great catalyst to go out and shoot.  To try out new ideas, and also give a hands on account of why I liked a certain feature on a new camera.  It got the point that a major online photography retailer, B&H Photovideo, asked me to advertise for them and in turn pay me for my time.  That's pretty cool guys, and shows you that a blog can make you money for doing something you love.

I personally believe a blog is one of many avenues in which a photographer of the 21st century will find a way to make money.  Here are several key factors why.

•  Blogs give a photographer personality.  With the photography market being inundated by more and more photographers, it's paramount to show people why they should hire you.  Photography is very personal and when someone hires a photographer that person likes them.  For you naysayers who are saying "What if your personality turns off clients"  Well you probably either don't want to work with those people anyways, or maybe you should keep yourself in check.
  
  
• Blogs allow you to keep people up to date on you.  A typical photographers website is static.  Even if it's updated weekly, people don't check it as a means of keeping up to date with that photographers work.  The mindset of a blog is different.  It's up to date, daily, and in many cases raw.  As mentioned above blogs give people a sense of the photographers personality.  Blog also allow people to see what the photographer is working on, or as a great marketing pitch where the photographers is working at (this is great for weddings, or venue specific photography).  While it's not common to place 14 pictures of the same person in a web portfolio, it's perfectly okay to do that on a blog post.  This is common for say a wedding you just shot.  Now update your blog about shooting a wedding at a specific venue, and all of a sudden anyone who has interest in having a wedding at that venue is now looking at your blog if they know how to do a simple Google search.
• Blogs generate viewer feedback.  As mentioned above websites are static, but they also don't generate two way communication.  A photographer may get a private message from an admirer, but that conversation will never be seen on the web.  In turn on a blog a photographer may communicate with the public and be able to show his/her photography acumen by the responses they give.  I have personally met many photographers who have pulled an extra couple gigs just by giving the time to reply to a comment on their blog.  While it may not be amazing, it's still several hundred/thousand dollars more one just received for having courtesy to respond back.

There are many other factors that could be cultivated to help a photographer generate income from his blog.  I didn't touch base on facts like affiliate links to companies can help generate income, but there are plenty of options such as that to help a photographer grow his potential income branches.

Something I highly suggest to any photography student at Gwinnett tech with me is to take some marketing class, or classes outside of photography.  Shake every student hand you meet in your extra curricular class and tell them you are a photographer.  If 10% respond in a 30 student class with a gig for you, even it's for only $150, you've made $450 more than had the day before.