Photo Marketeers

On the hunt to discover more about photo sharing, I fell into some late night research and eventually found Smugmug, who describe themselves simply as “The ultimate in photo sharing.” This is VERY cool if you want to do stuff like create online photo albums, and share, store, organize and print your photos, photo uploads, etc.

If you take a quick peek at their site (see link below) you’ll notice the black background works well - especially when presenting photography. By the way, they have an impressive little photo slideshow on their intro page too. One stunning image in particular stands out - look for the lone yellow tree bathed in it’s own magical light by David Beatson.

Click here for your SmugMug photo sharing FREE trial

In summary: You pay a yearly fee ($40 - works out to about $3-4 a month) and for that get unlimited photo storage and bandwidth, photo sharing and photo upload, great photo based galleries where you can sell your photo creations and photo calendars etc. There’s no advertising (ie. nothing to distract viewers away from your photos!) and you can take a free 14 day trial too, as a taster. (See link above).

Here’s what some other SmugMug users said:

“I have been using smugmug since they launched. They are hands down the best photo sharing site I have come across for those who care about their photos. Since they charge a fee, there is no advertising or gimmicks, just great display and organization of photos. They allow viewers to download the full file size so it is easy to do photo transfer. It is worth $40 for me to have solid photo storage and great UI.”

Things I love about Smugmug and why I chose it over other competing services:

• They allow you to try the service free for 14 days. You can try EVERY feature they offer without any restrictions
• Your photos are safe and secure. They keep 4 backup copies of each photo in 3 states so you’ll always have access to them
• You can lock galleries with passwords to keep them private
• Smugmug doesn’t send you SPAM and there are NO ADS on the site
• You can share your photos with friends & family without them having to register with Smugmug
• A+ customer service. It’s fast, friendly, and professional
• Basic account offers UNLIMITED storage
• Prints can be ordered right from Smugmug. No need to get them ordered with a different company
• Comments, tags, keywords, and compatibility with blogs and forums - very convenient!
• Video clips are allowed with a Power User account
• Very helpful and friendly forum called “Digital Grin” who can answer just about any photo related question you can think of
• The company is FAMILY OWNED and not run by some internet conglomerate like Yahoo or Kodak

NB. Hey, on that last point… I emailed one of the team from SmugMug and received a friendly reply within a day. I don’t know about you but I certainly felt a real ‘family type’ feel to this site (think ‘accessible’). Maybe you’ll pick that up too. SmugMug keeps it nice and simple… “We dream of an independent company devoted to nothing but your priceless photos.” Way to go guys.

Need unlimited photo storage and photo sharing? Try this…

“SmugMug, a family-run business that will celebrate its fifth year anniversary this Friday, says it has over 450,000 paying customers and makes over $10M in revenue per year. There are no free accounts on SmugMug; users must pay a minimum of $40 per year, but they have access to unlimited photo storage and photo sharing. The company has yet to take any outside money, and seeing how well things are going, probably won’t.”
Quotes and user comments thanks to Techcrunch:

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Image via Wikipedia

Just a quick post today as I have been one very SLACK bunny. For some weird reason it’s easy to get waylaid never mind the fact that it only takes about 10 minutes to post a blog comment!

So, let me update you on new projects.

The first is a complete redo of my Digital Photo Toolkit guide - I re-wrote the sales page basing it on a story about me being stuck at the Kumbh Mela festival in India, with a Pentax K1000 and not much else. That was a few years back now, but nevertheless still a memorable and adventurous week. See that selling photos online guide here.

I’ve also busied myself with writing articles. I encourage you to do the same if you have a website setup and/or an information product. Articles? What’s writing got to do with photography? Well… you’d be surprised!

A bunch of my recent articles have touched on digital photography tips, but with a slight twist. Check this out for a title… Digital Photography Tips - How to Raise and Train Your Camera! These articles DO bring interested visitors through to my blog, and it’s a great way to become an ‘expert’ in your field too…

You can see exactly what chaos I’ve been creating by checking out the photography tips articles here.

Enjoy…

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Image by EricGjerde via Flickr

How to make money online with public domain pictures and images?

More often than not, when you’re mulling over - or in the idea phase, of a new information project, you think about writing, audio or video. Those product creation methods have always worked very well for me, but the other day I ran into a new eBook that sent me spinning into ‘idea universe’ with its fresh and ambitious approach to product creation.

And, in case you haven’t already guessed, this new approach to product creation is none other than using the magic of Public Domain images.

http://hurleypix.com/pictureproject

My good friend, Tony Laidig (the Public Domain Expert) told me that he has made thousands of dollars selling copies of maps, photos and more. And I know he wasn’t kidding either. He proceeded to tell me about his buddy, George, who takes Public Domain images of Native Americans, prints them on leather and then sells the new ‘work of art’ for hundreds of dollars… And get this… he can’t keep the prints in stock.

Tony also told me about another guy is quietly making hundreds of dollars EVERY day selling image collections on eBay. Then there is the dude who’s making nearly $20,000 per month selling poster prints of Public Domain images.

So if you’ve been wondering how to make money online then this should open your mind to wild and wonderful possibilities…

Then Tony shared something about Public Domain images that dropped my jaw… there are millions… tens of millions of photos, fine art and illustrations available for you to use anyway you want! He’s not talking about Cafepress t-shirts and greeting cards here either (although you could create those if you wanted).

http://hurleypix.com/pictureproject

Tony just created a killer, new eBook called “Easy Money Picture Project” and he reveals strategies in the book that NO ONE else is willing to talk about. And here’s the thing… these image-based products actually sell so well that Tony has people e-mailing him to beg him NOT to tell anyone about their websites or their methods.

In the book, Tony shares over 90 websites (like the one I love that has over 1.3 million images on it in high-res) where you can find and download Public Domain images. He also tells you everything he has learned about using Public Domain images from his 20+ years experience working in the printing and publishing industries…

In the “Easy Money Picture Project” you will learn:

=> Where to find Public Domain images online and offline

=> What to do with Public Domain images once you’ve found them

=> How to profit from Public Domain images

=> Who your potential customers are and why

Some people talk theory about new ways of selling, but Tony speaks from experience. That’s what I like about him. (Plus he’s always happy to email me - no matter what time it is!) So if you want to be part of the huge and profitable ‘picture business’ but you haven’t yet got your own photos, or you want to know how to make money online using images, then this will be a godsend!

Enjoy!

http://hurleypix.com/pictureproject

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I recently wrote an article about SiteBuildIt (SBI!) saying it’s a very thorough and all-in-one, complete web site and hosting package that allows you to focus intently on building yourself content rich, niche websites.

The reason I know this for a fact is because I have my own SiteBuildIt site, albeit one that I rarely do any work on. And it still gives me LOTS of Google lovin’ in the form of Google Juice (Adsense income), amongst other things.

So, yeah SBI sites do work, but only if YOU work them. Site Build It provides all the background tools and resources that you need to use, but you’ll have to follow through by bringing your BAM (brain and motivation) to the table…

But you’ll find out all this anyway after you’ve got stuck into reading Make Your Knowledge Sell - the (now) completely free guide from SBI! that’ll open your eyes wide with possibilities about how to earn revenue from what you know!

To download Make Your Knowledge Sell all you need to do is click the link below. That’ll take you to the download page. Scroll down and you’ll see the magic button…

http://myks.sitesell.com/ideal3.html

And, if you’re pressed for time, you can even use the services of SiteBuildIt to have a website built for you from scratch. See this link for details on that one…

http://services.sitesell.com/ideal3.html

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Celebrity photos of the Sell Photos Online dude?

Why not?

So I sat in front of my iMac and cranked up Photo Booth. Then with a nice neutral colored backdrop to smooth things out, I started snapping. Using the iMac’s built in iSight camera with Photo Booth, gives you 640 x 480 pixel image that actually turns out quite sharp and nicely defined.

Depending on what you shoot of course…

The next step is to open the images in PhotoShop or another image editor and check the color balance, levels, and work your magic to make sure the picture looks snappy. It has to snap right off the page.

You know what I mean, right?

Of course you’re incredibly limited to just what’s in front of your iMac at that moment. In this case, as you can see, it’s that dude also known as The Sell Photos Online Dude. But… if you have a camera that you can move around, then that opens the whole world up…

And then you can start snapping celebrity photos everywhere you go.

Right?

The only things I wish Photo Booth came with would be a longer timer (it gives you about 3 seconds before it SNAPS a shot of you), and maybe a remote, for those shots you want to take on random, or when you’re playing with the dog and can’t be beside the iMac to click the fire button.

Now let’s think of the possibilities here…

These shots took about 20 minutes to shoot. Imagine if you were to cut out the backdrop, leaving just the figure, and do a whole series of unusual facial gestures… Let’s say, elegant and business type shots, or ‘man in distress’ type shots, or ‘dude with a great idea’ shots…

Don’t you think they’d be of an interest to someone who wants to add a particular feeling to their sales page? In fact, this is what a friend asked me just recently…

“One thing I have trouble locating is shots of people on a white background, or a background that makes for easy cutting out of a given subject. You know what I mean?”

Is this giving you some ideas or what?

And, thinking of most sales pages and websites, no one wants a super high resolution picture… After all, you want your website to load fast.

Small punchy images that get an idea across as the viewer scans down the page…

You could easily do a series of 50 good facial actions. It’d take some time to edit them in Photoshop of course… BUT now think of those images on a CD or DVD… You could duplicate this CD and sell it as a package or on eBay for $20 or even much more… And you could sell this CD over and over again (you could even automate the whole process using Auction Acrobat ).

Is this filling your brain full of amazing ideas?

Think I’m going to have to shoot a few more celebrity photos and see if it works!

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Image by Saffanna via Flickr

For me I believe that learning photography is an intuitive, highly creative act that works best when one is immersed head first into the doing (action) and the learning.

In my case, I ‘learnt’ by taking pictures - honing my talents, sharpening my sword so to speak. Along the way I observed, and appreciated, the fascinating array of photographers and photography styles, whilst thinking and dreaming (idealizing) about how to do something similar.

So if we are talking about learning photography here then my suggestion is that you can go and look at stock photo agencies and microstock photo sites (check out istockphoto ) and see what great work is coming out and what is happening there.

Then you can emulate or try out certain styles and see how they fit with you. Of course you’ll bring your own personal, unique individuality to the table, and everything you do anyway. (Ie. The photography that you produce will be unique for you). Keep in mind that your images (more often than not) will need to be sellable too… but that’s a story for a rainy day. Let’s get back to learning photography, or the happy little world of beginners photography…

It usually does take a long time to get good… It’s said it takes 10 years to become an expert at something. So, that means you do need to work at it. And keep practicing… and GO find that particular photographer, photography style, or digital photography tutorial that motivates you so much you can’t wait to get out there and shoot.

There’s a fine balance between the learning and the doing. You also need to have a clear, measurable goal and destination. What this means is that if you want to create photography specifically for microstock photo sites, then you’ve given yourself a project to learn all about what type of images sell best, with a target of getting accepted and uploading 50 new images a month. (As an example).

However if you want to just create local photos, or want to start your own photography business, or even make your first information product in the photo niche, then I suggest you find the experts who are already doing this, and emulate what they’re doing.

Hold on - let’s get clear on the meaning of emulate first…

Emulate: To compete with successfully; approach or attain equality with. Also: strive to equal or match, especially by imitating.

Clear on that?  So… at the end of the day learning photography is all about having a mission, Ie. knowing what it is you want to do with your amazing creative photo talents, and then focusing intensely on that goal, learning everything there is to know about it, and continuing to take photos as you go.

It’s also about asking questions, getting involved (photo forums are helpful), and contributing something special to the world. I think that about sums up what learning photography is, do you?

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Been Thinking About How To Make Money On eBay?

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The Challenge: You’ve got an ebook, ephotos, or series of ‘how to’ digital photography tips videos that you desperately want to sell on eBay…

You know that there’s 280+ MILLION buyers who are looking to buy products from eBay every single day, with roughly over 70,000 new buyers joining eBay every day… which just means eBay is an absolute GOLD MINE for you and me.

However…

Recently there was new changes to eBay… eBay basically said ‘you can’t sell ebooks anymore’ (and enforced a complete ban on selling digital items).

As soon as I heard about that I thought about the incredible opportunities that lay in waiting… And today we’re about to see one of these opportunities realized. It’s called Auction Acrobat and in a nutshell it automates the creation, packaging, and shipping of your CD/DVD’s…

Here are some features of Auction Acrobat:

1) Automate the delivery of your CD/DVD’s on eBay.

2) Build a highly profitable buyer list on auto-pilot using your favorite auto-responder: Aweber or Getresponse.

3) Make Money Without Selling – Awesome ’secret’ email feature inbuilt into the software will enable you to increase traffic to your blogs, websites, or sell your other products to laser-targeted buyers. You can even send these ‘hungry’ buyers to affiliate pages!

See more: http://hurleypix.com/auctionacrobat

Just think about it…

You could be selling DVDs AS EASY as selling eBooks!

How does one sell info products on eBay?

Well, in my case, I’m considering using CDs and maybe even DVDs to package my products… (What other options are there?)

And let’s face it, when digital items are neatly packaged into tangible CD/DVD form, the value of these products goes way UP.

So, if you’re a photographer, artist or designer, then you could be easily putting your designs or photography onto a CD or DVD, and setting up the whole process on autopilot… Customer comes along, orders your photo screensavers CD, pays for it at Paypal, and your software takes care of the WHOLE ordering process…

ALL you need to do is keep running eBay listings… (and checking your Paypal account for sales notifications!)

Impressed yet?

You should be…

So… How To Make Money On eBay?

Create a great product that people want (need), put it on a CD/DVD, put the whole process on autopilot, and tweak until you get it right…

http://hurleypix.com/auctionacrobat

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Image via Wikipedia

How to write an article if you don’t have a clue how to go about it? And, are resale rights products the answer?

Let’s go and find out…

Firstly we need to understand what Private Label Right (PLR) products are. (PLR is also known as Resale Rights Products).

In a nutshell, Private Label Rights products are YOURS to own, edit, sell, resell, grant resale rights to and more. Basically you BECOME the author of the product without writing or creating a thing.

So it does not take a genius to realise the value of these products… You can use PLR as your own and sign your OWN name as the creator. In other words, you can have a business in a box (think affiliate income) within minutes, with all your own back links and up sells without writing a single word.

When you have your own PLR products you can:

1. Sell them on their own mini site - Use the PLR material to create your own mini website and sell your products from there.
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2. Add them to bigger packages - Take 3 or 4 related PLR products and add them to a larger package. This is turn will allow you to sell your package for a much higher price.
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3. Convert them to CD or DVD and sell them on auction websites - Place your PLR on a CD with your website links and affiliate links inside and not only create an income from selling your created items on auction websites, also make a massive residual income from the other sources of income.
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4. Create a home study course with a variety of PLR products and sell them for a huge profit - You can create and sell home study courses with the help of PLR. Package your PLR onto a CD, box it up with check lists and help manuals and you can create a home study course which you can sell for 100’s of dollars.
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5. Split your private label into articles - Place them on article websites with your website links, mini site links, auction links and generate traffic you never knew existed. (PLR articles).
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6. Create a mini course and distribute them to your mailing lists - Convert your PLR to a mini course and send it to your subscribers. This really makes PLR work for you.
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7. Convert your products to physical books, print and sell them as your own - By converting your PLR to physical books you can them place them on auction websites such as eBay and Amazon and create huge revenue potential.
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8. Add your affiliate links to your PLR - Create affiliate income sales which will earn you a residual income for years to come. By adding your affiliate links and website links to your PLR eBooks and articles and granting resale rights the viral effect is in place, your eBooks and articles will be around for years…

Can you see how you actually don’t need to write those articles yourself? All you need to do is make full use of resale rights products (PLR). And then, with some basic tweaks, you have your own instant articles!

What else can we learn about PLR?

Well, let’s see…

For starters, PLR can be very very expensive. There’s also a LOT of cheap and copy PLR websites out there to choose from. YOU have to be careful and make sure you are getting fresh content or content quality.

Fortunately there’s a nice little solution available, called PLR Monthly. And I know these guys pretty well - in fact, I’ve been ‘annoying’ one of these guys (Daniel Sumner) for the last two years or so with my ever-varied eBay related questions!

But actually what you can get here for a pretty good monthly payment is substantial. They really do over deliver with great content.

In fact, here is an idea just what you will get from them (sourced from their sales page):

• Niche Market PLR eBooks - PLR eBooks are very expensive to develop and hard to find. Such top quality private label fresh content has been sourced for you as we strive to provide the best service possible. With the Niche Market PLR package you can use the 3 PLR eBooks as a niche collection and provide your potential buyers with more than a single eBook, you can give them a whole multimedia experience.
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• Bonus PLR eBook per month - You can use the bonus PLR eBooks the same way as the package PLR. We supply all you need to get your products ready to sell.
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• Audio eBook with resale rights - You can place the audio book as an auction or include it as a bonus in your eBook packages. All audio sales letters are graphics will be provided for you.
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• Mini website graphics to use with all PLR products - Use the mini websites and sell your converted PLR to the public directly from the internet. You can use Paypal or any online banking system to do this and completely automate the process.
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• 25 PLR articles per month - Use your PLR articles with your affiliate links inside to generate you traffic for years to come. Submit them to article directories blog, and content hungry websites to earn your affiliate commissions and a steady influx of traffic.
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• An eBay sales template - Simply paste the template to eBay and we host the graphics for you. There is no need for a website hosting service for this one!
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• CD graphics - Use your CD graphics on your auctions and your mini websites. Print the covers to your CD’s and sell them as physical items.
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• DVD graphics - Why not advertise your product as a DVD and burn it to a DVD! You can charge more for a DVD than a digital delivery item.
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• eBook graphics - Use the eBook graphics for your auctions, your mini sites, your sales letters and your physical printed Book creations.
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• Header and Footer Graphics - we supply for you the graphics for your headers and footers for your mini sites and your auctions, which are all professionally prepared by our graphics team.
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• A PLR request service - This service will give you mini sites, websites, graphics and PLR eBooks (NB: for this service, certain terms apply.

As you can see the amount of content you get is phenomenal. Not only do you get all of this, you get full support for your products and a bunch of tutorials to help you move your business along. All in all this is one of, if not the best PLR opportunities I have ever seen. It’s a complete no-brainer so get involved with PLR Monthly today.

http://hurleypix.com/plrmonthly

So by the way, if you’ve been wondering how to write an article, now YOU know that one answer lies with private label rights…

Image by mugley via Flickr

How many of us pour our heart and soul into creating snappy looking websites, inspirational photo blogs, image rich presentations and then find out the only people visiting our sites are family and friends, or the occasional waylaid visitor?

I’ve been there and done that, and it’s not much fun. You become disillusioned REAL quick with just a dribble of traffic to your websites. It’s like a healthy, growing plant… if you never water it, eventually it curls over and dies. Please don’t let this happen to your website, especially if you’ve spent a LOT of your time on it.

So, what are we going to do about it then? Well… I read that there were only 3 ways to grow your business, and here they are…

• Increase customers.
• Increase the transaction value.
• Create a backend product/create more products.

So, let’s focus on the first one. How we can increase customers, or increase website traffic?

Before we jump into that, let me say that the whole ‘normal’ process of getting ‘bums on seats’ or visitors (traffic) to your website is not exactly a walk in the park. In other words, it does take quite a bit of effort on your part.

In this case, we’re focused on ‘organic’ traffic, or ’search engine traffic.’ In a roundabout way, that simply means I want you to find my website (or blog) in the first page of Google when you type in specific photo marketing or photography tips related keywords. I personally focus on Google, but Yahoo also works well for some niches too.

In the articles on this photo marketing blog you can read about many of the different ways to increase website traffic, including a free download-able guide about Article Marketing (click to download), so I won’t get into all the methods here.

But thankfully there IS an easy way… a method that allows me to get a whole bunch of my websites on page one in Google, for a number of different photo related keywords…

Basically I use a service called 3 Way Links ($47 per month). I won’t go in to the mechanics of how it works exactly (you can read more at the 3WayLinks site) but it sure has made it a LOT easier for me to hit page one in Google much faster (and with very little work on my behalf - all I did was add one page to my blog).

As you could imagine, a page one in Google for a few particular (highly searched) keywords gives me a LOT more eyeballs, plus get more sign ups to my ezine, etc.

Having said that…

• You need to choose your keywords right.
• You also will want to know how to monetize your website or blog effectively whether that’s with Google Adsense or other methods. (That is, if you want to make some money from this!)
• You also need to post regular content (often) to your website or blog (that’s why blogs are SO good for this!)

So if you’ve got a nice little WordPress photography tips themed blog or brand spanking new website, and you’re struggling to increase website traffic… then at least consider the 3WayLinks method. No matter what niche you’re in, this ’set it and forget it’ method is one way that makes getting that highly desirable page one in Google rather attractive, and very achievable.

Read more about 3WayLinks here.

How about becoming a featured artist or photographer for PhotoBox?

Sometimes opportunities reach up and grab you by the hair. (Head? Neck?) When they come it’s often good to make the most of them. Otherwise, they can be like ideas… if you don’t hook them on the tip of your pen, they can slip away into the night faster than you can blurt out “thank you Elvis.”

So, how would you like to become a featured artist on PhotoBox then?

After all, you get to…

- Showcase your photography work online

- Earn royalties (10%-20%) per card volume sold

- Potentially set up a recurring income stream

PhotoBox also…

- print the cards on environmentally friendly pulp

- Soon to include A4 and square cards (big!)

- Offer send-to-me cards where they send the card to you with envelopes, and you can sign the card and send on to someone else… (Or you can choose send-to-someone-else cards as well. They’ll post the card on your behalf using First Class post or Airmail…)

Anyways…

To get your photography work showcased online and hundreds of future customers potentially browsing and buying your photo greeting cards - just visit PhotoBox here…

The process to submit your photos or artwork is step by step (and doesn’t cost any $). You have to submit a design, choose a template, and fill in your artwork submission form…

Yes… a little bit of upfront work involved, but great potential for ongoing income… Never know where your photography might end up, and in whose hands…

Go for it…

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