1.    Increase market reach

The market reach is how many potential clients you drive to your website through online and offline advertising and other means.

You can for instance buy banner ads, advertise via Google Adwords, distribute flyers, post on message boards to drive traffic to your website.

2.    Increase conversion rate

The conversion rate is simply how many of your visitors buy your photos or services from you in comparison to how many visitors your website had in total. For instance if 3 out of 100 visitors buy from your website you have a 3% conversion rate. This might not sound very high but believe me, a 3% conversion rate is maybe not outstanding but it’s definitely quite good.

You can increase your conversion rate in many ways by for instance improving navigation of your site, pre-selling your clients and providing a good irresistible offer.

3.    Increase the lifetime value of your clients

The third and final way to grow your business is to increase the lifetime value of your clients. The lifetime value is how much each client buy from you in total over the years you run your business.

Increasing lifetime value can mainly be done in two ways

• Increasing the price
• Selling more times to your client

A client that once purchased something from you is much more likely to purchase again so old clients should always be given special treatments. If you regularly send them special offers they can’t resist they’ll keep buying from you over-and-over again.

Don’t you agree that if you a) increase your market reach, b) increase the conversion rate and c) increase the lifetime value of your client you’ll be able to grow your business as much as you want?

In fact, everything you do should be centered around these three fundamentals for business growth:

1. Increase market reach
2. Increase the conversion rate
3. Increase the lifetime value

Nothing else is important in terms of growing your business.

You can also express the business growth with this formula:

Market reach x Conversion rate x Lifetime value = Money on the bank

Let’s assume you increase

• Market reach with 10%
• Conversion rate with 10%
• Lifetime value with 10%

Your business has not increased with 30%, it’s increased with 33.1% (1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 = 1.331).

If you methodically and consistently work to improve these three areas you’ll see an incredible growth of your business.

• The search engines and especially Google likes old domain names. All new domain names end up in the sandbox for a few months and it takes years to garner trust from the search engines
• It takes time to get incoming links to a new website
• It takes time to create content for the website
• It takes time to get a higher PR (Page Rank) value
• etc.

In short, it’s darn difficult and takes time to get a new website ranking high in the search engines. But there is an easy shortcut you can take.

Here’s how you can take a “free ride” on other websites and get free traffic

You can “piggy back” on the hard work other website owners have done to get traffic to their website and the best part it’s free traffic for you.

Note: the concept of piggy backing might not be new to you but i’ve added a unique twist that makes it much more effective.

Step 1: Find a photosharing website that fulfill the following criteria’s

• You can put an outgoing link in to your website from the photo sharing site. It’s great if you do NOT get a “nofollow” link but it’s OK if you do.
• The title you give the image is included between the TITLE tags
• The title you give the image is included in the ALT tag
• You can set keywords for the image
• Old site with lots of traffic and images, a high PR and rank high in the search engines.

It may sound complicated but it’s quite easy to find out if the photo sharing site fulfills these criteria’s. And once you found one it’s as easy as 123 to piggy back on the free traffic from the website. More about that later…

Step 2: Upload your best images images to the photo sharing site and give them keywords

After you uploaded the images you need to give each of them a very specific keyword they should be optimized for. For instance, if you have an image of the Niagara falls at sunset you can use the keywords “niagara falls sunset”. Make sure the keyword is relevant to the image and that it’s a keyword you think people would use when they search for an image like this. There are many free tools on the web that helps you find out how many times a certain keywords is searched for.

Important: Make sure you include the keyword in the caption and/or title field for each image.

Step 3: Put a link to your website in the description field

Now you just have to put a link to YOUR website by mentioning something like this “You can find many more beautiful images like this at YOUR WEBSITE”

So people come to the high traffic website, find your images and get interested, Then they click on the link and come to your website.

You just got free traffic to your website!

This concept to piggy back is not new but there’s a unique twist in that you keyword each image and put the keyword in the caption/title filelds and that the keyword also is added in the ALT and TITLE tags. This makes it easy for Google and other search engines to find your images.

Why?

Most photography websites contains mainly images and are often flash based. Google likes text but doesn’t like flash based websites at all. Actually, Google probably have nothing against flash as such, but it just can’t understand what it is.

Text on the other hand is easy for Google to understand so Google is very efficient in gobbling and understanding text based web sites.

So is it hopeless to get a photography website ranking high on Google?

No, it’s not. In fact Google is pretty good at understanding images and have started to like them even more lately. In fact, nearly 30% of my website traffic now comes from Google’s image search and it’s growing fast. You just need to help Google to understand what the images are all about.

Here’s how you can help Google to interpret your images:

1. Include a descriptive file name including the keywords for all images (for instance angkor-wat-temple.jpg)
2. Include a descriptive ALT tag including the keywords (for instance angkor wat temple)
3. Give non relevant graphics (bullet points etc.) a number instead of a name (1.gif or 55.jpg etc).
4. Include caption text for each image (of course including the keywords (or synonyms)

You should of course also do the “standard” SEO for your webpage:

• All webpages on your site should be optimized for different keywords.
• Include the keyword(s) between the TITLE tags (for instance <title>Angkor Wat Temple</title>)
• Include the keyword(s) between the H1 tags (for instance <h1>Angkor Wat Temple</h1>)
• Include the keyword(s) in the filename (for instance angkor-wat-temple.html)
• Include the keyword(s) and synonyms if you have some text on the web page.

These small tricks are fast and easy to do and gives you good value for the small amount of time it takes to do it. There are more advanced tactics but they’re more time consuming and often not worth the time it takes.

Note: don’t keyword spam because Google is not stupid. Only include relevant keywords.

Of course, getting incoming links to your website is also needed to rank high on google but i’ll cover that later in a separate blog post.

Cheers!

Why?

Well, there are many reasons but here are the most common one.

They are sending the Adwords traffic to the main homepage

Most adviertisers send the Adwords traffic directly to their main homepage, a splash page or other generic webpages they have on their website.They are hoping that the visitor will browse around and be so impressed with what they see that they immediately pick-up their credit card or call the phone number to place an order.

Believe me, it doesn’t work like that for any type of traffic and especially advertised traffic… You got maximum 1 minute and probably much less to grab the visitors attention, or else they’re gone, forever. And you just lost money.

The succeed with Google Adwords you need to send the traffic to a very specific page with a very specific purpose. That purpose is either to make them buy something immediately or even better, to grab their email address. Then you can continue to promote your services or photographs at your own will.

Let me repeat, you need to send them to a webpage with only one. You either

1. Make them buy something, or better
2. Get their email address

Let’s take a closer look at the two options.

1. Make them buy something:

If you want to make them buy something you need to be very specific what you want them to buy. If you just present them with a  portfolio of hundreds of images they’ll most likely get confused or procrastinate and say to themselves “I’ll think about it and come back tomorrow”.

Let me be clear, tomorrow never comes if you’re selling something on the web. A few hours later they either totally forgot about your website or they forgot how to find it.

You need to make them take the decision here and now, not tomorrow.

2. Get their email address

An even better option is to get their email address.

Why?

Because it’s easier to get their email address than it is to make them buy something, And once you have their email address you can continue promoting your images and services through email over-and-over again. If you don’t get their email address they’re gone forever.

To get their email address you need to “bribe” them a little. For instance you can offer them a free print (small size) in return for their email address. Or you can offer a free photo session with one free 4×6″ print and if they want more they need to pay you.

Remember, to get your free print they need to give you their email address.

Some more advice for your Adwords campaign.

1. Make sure you maintain a high CTR (preferrably higher than 3%). A higher CTR means you pay less per click assuming everything else is equal.
2. Track, track and track. Some keywords have very bad ROI and some keywords are pure goldmines. The key here is: you don’t know which keywords perform unless you track each keyword.
3. Keep the Adwords groups focused around a small number of very similar keywords. It’s easier to create more relevant ads with higher CTR and a badly performing keyword will not pull down the whole campaign in terms of CTR.

Good luck!

First some background, a referral can be 50 times more valuable than a “normal” lead. Let me ask you, who would you trust more:

1. A photographer coming up to you and telling you he takes great photos for great prices
2. One of your friends recommending a photographer and telling you he takes great photos for great prices

You are naturally inclined to trust a good friend much more than someone totally unknown.

So it should be one of your highest priorities in your photography marketing plans to get referrals whenever you can and here’s a proven game plan you can follow.

Game plan

Offer a free photo session to five families with small children and take ~100 to 200 images. Give them ten free 8×10” sized prints under the condition that they personally introduce you to a minimum of ten other families. Also “upsell” them with additional prints and larger sized prints after you gave them the ten free prints.

This should give you 5-10 paid photo sessions with the referred families where you sell 8×10” sized prints. Also offer them a few 11×14” sized prints for free if they personally refer you to their friends.

Remember to take a lot of images because it’s really hard for small children families to reject a cute photo of little Alice, especially if it’s already printed. It’s like throwing little Alice in the trash can.

Your photography business can go viral with this kind of marketing approach and the word is spreading by word of mouth which is extremely valuable. Never be afraid to offer something for free in the beginning as long as you have a plan how to monetize it at a later stage.

An additional photography marketing idea would be to offer a photo shoot every birthday for the first few years or why not monthly or quarterly the first one or two years. That would generate recurring income which is always nice to have.