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How To Make A Photo Mug In 7 Ridiculously Easy Steps

April 15, 2011 By 2 Comments
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Here's 7 ridiculously easy steps to make a photo mug, because I'm sure you're curious…

I'm sure you already know that personalised, custom-made photo mugs are great for any age – people who receive a cool lil' photo coffee mug tend to hold on to it for years… and why not?

Just so we're clear though, when I talk about (things like) respecting your grandfather with a custom-printed photo mug of his family, I'm not meaning those photo mugshots that police stations distribute looking for criminals…

After All, Your Grandfather
Wouldn't Be Like That, Right?

Of course not. But anyways, what's cool about those photo coffee mugs is that they make great gifts… yep, REALLY great gifts…

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They Laughed When I Used Public Domain Photos To Create Photo Books – But When They Saw What I’d Done…

April 13, 2011 By 2 Comments
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They could hardly believe it…

The first time I heard about photo books being created I thought to myself "this is horrible!" (I could have sworn that I came up with that idea a few years back!) But, it was inevitable… take a couple of great photos, print them into a book, add cover and wait patiently for…

The Look On Your Friends Faces
When They See Your Photos!

But how many people do you think are actually using public domain photos to create their photo books?

My guess is, probably very few. Now in my humble opinion using public domain images is a cool little untapped resource that you can milk as much as you want and need…

Except for one minor problem…

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Too Busy Taking Photographs To Earn Any Money?

April 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment
truckshow05

Did the headline get your attention?

Actually I really meant “too busy creating your own photo blog” but “taking photographs” sounded better at the time!

And if you’ve ever tried to create a website or build a blog (somewhat like this one) then you’ll probably know that…

It’s Easier Said Than Done!

And you know what? It’s not the actual writing part that’s difficult either. That just flows out… think of what needs to be said… to nimble fingers… to keyboard and into WordPress… that part couldn’t be easier!

What’s tricky is the actual nuts and bolts of setting up the look and feel of your photo blog…

Things like RSS feeds, social media, choosing the right plugins, themes and widgets, where to put stuff on the page, making sure YOU can read the important posts… and all that behind the scenes stuff that few really know about (unless you’ve actually done it!)

WordPress (bless her heart) does make things a WHOLE lot easier though! Actually WordPress is a bit like riding a classic Ducati… most of the time it rides beautifully… but now and then you’ve got to do some extra tweaks to the engine…

So… anyways… I’m glad to be back, with a whole new super-theme, and will be writing my usual mad-capped blog posts on a weekly-enthusiastic-basis.

Yep, this whole photo blog is going to be giving you a…

Serious Flow Of
Insider Information!

So stay tuned….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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10 Quick Ways To Sell More Photos Online

January 25, 2009 By 1 Comment
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All Around Washington
Image by danny.hammontree via Flickr

1. Explore digital stock photography… Cast your eyes over iStockphoto or Fotolia… Learn more from Yuri Arcurs who makes an exceptional living from selling his stock photos. Yuri says “…branding yourself by having a unique style that is recognizable and consistent is probably the most important aspect in microstock.” Here’s a list of 10 popular microstock photography sites to sell stock photos.

Read more photo articles about digital stock photography…

2. Nurture your brand of one… Create stunning t-shirts, calendars, greeting cards, clothing etc that makes folks go wow. Use CafePress to sell your photography, photo image or photo illustration you created in Photoshop…

Right now if you look around you’ll spot lots of t-shirts, prints etc that are inspired by President Obama and are probably still going to still be popular for a while to come… How can you tap into this? Turning your photos into a photo product WORKS…

3. Stand in front of the hungry crowds… Use eBay to sell your photos on CD or DVD. Take a selection of interesting photography you have… find out what is selling well on eBay… then automate the whole eBay to DVD to buyer process by using Auction Acrobat.

4. No time to reinvent the wheel… Know about public domain? This means photos and illustrations and music etc that is copyright free and freely available to be used by you (the public!) Dig around the public domain until you find an amazing image or two, then re-idea them to your heart’s content… Think t-shirt designs, logos, website photography, blog headers, etc. Tony Laidig is the master of public domain and his picture project will get your visual IDEAS clock spinning madly…

5. Get a name for being unique… Use boutique photo galleries or photo agencies like these friends of mine (www.farmboyfinearts.com) to get your abstract or landscape photos lining the walls of restaurants, resorts, billboards, upscale hotels, etc… Create custom artwork… site specific artwork… Every wall needs a photo, right?

6. Create free desktop wallpaper screen-savers… Create screensavers or other popular downloadable ‘toys’ – stuff such as wall papers, desktop screen savers etc that put your photos on other people’s computer screens… Look at http://www.download.com for more…

7. Take the photos that no one else wants to take… and then get paid for it! See what I mean here: $200 A Day… Think of all the folks that need insurance, home, vehicle etc ‘photo documentation’ and then you BE the one who does it…

8. Tap into people’s passions… Everyone is enthusiastic about something right? Hobbies, enthusiasts… think modified cars, trucks, motorbikes, sports, homes, vacation spots etc … Make the necessary arrangements then shoot… After which you present said collection of images in a beautifully bound digital photography book using PhotoBox

9. Explore the 7 seas… Travel based photography ring any bells? Be the wordsmith and wield the camera, or just shoot and then develop a working relationship with another writer (they can live almost anywhere too)… You’ll want to be familiar with posting the images you take on blogs, using web 2 sites etc. Think ‘how to’ articles, either for photo blogs, or offline publications… Photo/text features easier to sell than individual photos… Plus you can on-sell this photo article to other magazines…

10. The wide world of pets… Folks LOVE pets like nothing else! And they’d like a photo of them too, wouldn’t they? Here’s some thoughts on the matter… “Before you hire yourself out, though, practice with your own (or a friend’s) pet – when people are paying money for photos, they want good ones. Some tips: Don’t use a wide-angle lens at close range unless you want an elongated, distorted look. Enlist the pet’s owner as an assistant to help manage the subject. And get some shots of the pet with the owner too…”

OK that’s 10 quick ways to sell more photos online (and off)… Comments?

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Can A Digital Photography Blog Help You Start Making Money In Photography?

January 17, 2009 By 2 Comments
xray_bus
16 SortidozZ
Image by Paco CT via Flickr

Do you lie awake at night ‘imagineering’ potential ideas in your mind… mulling over the creative possibilities of where you could go with a digital photography blog?

Photo blogging is actually one superb way to start making money in photography. Of course though, you DO need to put the effort into it (like anything, right?)

Although it’s easy enough to set up a WordPress blog (like this one), keep in mind you’ll still need to post (write) to your blog often, be willing to work hard at it, learn the basics to blogging, and make sure you keep firing questions to passionate marketeers like me!

However it’s not always as easy as it sounds. You kind of need to have your own ‘mission’ and blog purpose – and continue working on it no matter what. Otherwise you can have “…unrealistic expectations of how fast your readership will grow and how much money you will make, and when these expectations are not met, the disappointment can crush the desire to continue blogging.”

To counter-defend yourself against the frustrations that inevitably sneak up as you look up to the summit and see how far you’ve STILL got to trek, you need to have a realistic plan and stick to it. Everyone has their own plan, but in any case, it can be something as simple as writing a blog post, or contacting another related photo blog for a reciprocal link once a week.

And if you’re serious about making money in photography from blogging, then you’re going to have to do a little bit of photo marketing too… Stuff such as taking the time to let other folks know about your photo blog, posting comments on other related blogs, making comments in photo forums, and so on.

More often than not though, you’ll automate some of these processes to save you time. A really good example of hands-free, easy-automation is Jonathan Leger’s 3 way linking tool that’ll help to get your digital photography blog ranking highly in Google. But all in all, prepare to work at it for a good while before you start seeing results. :)

Once you understand that it does take work, you’ll know that to cultivate the regular visitors, you’ll need to keep posting on your blog, and continue the photo marketing side of things as much as the actual writing part.

You can also do things like drop a subscription form into your blog that invites your visitors to join your mailing list, or promote affiliate products through writing reviews or using banner advertising. When a website visitor clicks and buys one of these products you’ll earn a nice little commission.

The key to all this is staying committed to your project. To stay motivated, set goals for how often you will update your photo blog, and how many readers you want to attract, and then reward yourself for sticking to your plan. By mastering the basics, and taking action, you’ll be ahead of 99% of the market…

So, a digital photography blog does a few things well… It’s a creative ‘canvas’ for your ideas, a good way to ‘put you on the map,’ and a potential (and very cool) way to start making money in photography too!

.

:)

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How To Get Unlimited Photo Sharing And Complete Photo Devotion At the Same Time

December 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment
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photo sharingOn 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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Random Photography Tips And Fantastic Festivals Somewhere In India

December 4, 2008 By 1 Comment
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The 2001 Kumbh Mela.

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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:)

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Learn Photography Skills And Grow Your Digital Photography Business Into A Monster

April 28, 2008 By 2 Comments
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A student using a handheld digital camera.Image via WikipediaIn all honesty I personally never took photography lessons, know nothing about the technical side of cameras, and when I went to learn photography skills, I found myself daydreaming of adventures in far and remote lands…

But for some of you, you’ll really get into how the camera works, depth of field, the best new lens, etc, etc…

I, on the other hand, ‘trained’ myself to look for situations that were suitable to shoot. I looked for the right times of the day, locations, objects and materials that were noticeable enough to take note of.

So this means I’m unable to give out photo tips…

But I CAN go for hours on how you can expand your ‘brand-of-one,’ super-charge your website or blog, create multiple information products from what YOU do…

And now, after inserting a huge and overwhelming dosage of Internet marketing into my blood, and carefully mixing that with the vision of a ‘portable’ digital photography business, it has come to be.

Well, almost anyway. :)

Anyways, no matters what I think, the whole point of all this is about you. Let me help you build up your portable empire, your passive income photo business, so that you are free to do what you darn well want to do, everyday…

The best way to start is by firing your questions at me…

Look for the little ‘comments’ link and click that… and ask away.

Whether you want to sell photos online, sell photos to Alaskans, get your own funky and terrific photo blog, do screen savers or slideshows, create podcasts, or whatever… It’s all DO-able…

:)

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