“Curiouser and Curiouser”
My peers not using the power of the internet to get their work seen, must be akin to what Alice was feeling after falling down the rabbit hole, it just gets “Curiouser and Curiouser”.
This is a repost: (for the most part) but the message is as strong if not stronger than the day I posted it at this
link.
From Last Winter 2008
Hang on! Only a few more days until spring is here and we can start to thaw out and get back to work. No doubt Its been a brutal winter for many around the globe with record breaking snowfalls, and the coldest temperatures ever recorded. Is this "Global Warming"?
The past few months have been really hard on the architectural photographers I have spoken to both in person and via the IAAP forums. The economy is in the tank, fuel prices are at a record high, marketing budgets are not what they used to be, in short we have all got to really hustle to get our overheads met, our bills paid, and something to put in our savings accounts.
So lets try to put this awful winter behind us, look forward to the thaw and with the right steps in marketing our services it will be the beginning of a new and prosperous season for the "Architectural Photographer".
The IAAP can help you right now without any out of pocket expense, how? Well, there are several things you can do to add more relevance to your website, and thus attract more unique visitors to your site. Some of these little tricks are so simple and cost effective its a wonder more people are not taking advantage of these techniques. I'll outline three (four) things you can do right now without spending a dime.
Number One: Blogs!
Recently the IAAP has upgraded its forum to include
"Member Blogs". Blogs are food for search engines, they cant get enough of them! I have seen members start an IAAP blog and in only one day the Google crawler is busy at work cataloging the contents of the members blog. Blog entries that have terms (keywords) like, architectural photographer, photography, the city and state they live in, types of services they offer, links to the members website, and bios and project/client information are all tasty snacks for the search engine bots, the more you feed the bots the result is higher page rank.
When you have links from a site such as ours that is crawled all day and night by every search engine you become more credible, and relevant to the search engines, and that results in higher placement in search results for the terms that describe the service you offer.
How to get your blog running. Well you can subscribe to a free blog service or you can use
ours. Using ours insures that your data will be seen by the bots, and it only takes a few short minutes. Here's how.
If you are already a member of the IAAP all you need to do is access your
UserCP (user control panel) in the forums and set up your blog (way at the bottom of the page on the left side). It's that simple. Five minutes max. Then you need to add content, content is king! Keep it updated, and current and the bots will love it!
If you are not a member of the IAAP forums, you can still register to the forums as a trial user for 30 days, set up a blog and judge for yourself if this little tool isn't the greatest no-brainer of all time.
Number Two: Forum participation.
When you are participating in the forum, and your signature line contains your information web-bots see that too! And the more times a bot sees your name and web url it logs that info. The more you are seen by the bots, the higher your page rank is. Its really that easy.
Number Three: Links on our Links page.
In the forum we have
web-links. Adding a link in that section is just more food for the bots, and as I've repeatedly said in this post, more links to your site adds credibly, relevance and the result is a higher page rank.
Number Four: Photo Gallery Page
(added 11/11/08 kinda like that because our U.K. friends understand that date too)
The
Photo Gallery is a great place to show-case work. It really doesn't matter if someone comments on how great your image is, its about it being seen by the Google-Bot, and with the EXIF data going to your website.... pardon the teenage verbiage but...
duh!
I sold one (1) image from this site last month. Four prints netted me $850.00 US, not much, but it was two car payments.
All of these tools are free to Forum & IAAP Associate Members, and free to try for 30 days for non-members.
Non-Members
If after 30 days you want to benefit from the tools offered by the IAAP for the long term, you have two options.
The first option is to buy a "Forum Only Membership" for only $4.00 USD per month. "Forum Only Membership" will include the blog feature, and web-links.
The second option is a full membership to the IAAP. The details can be found on our site at International Association Of Architectural Photographers Join Page - IAAP.
Attention IAAP members who have a full membership:
The Directory listing membership or "Associate Membership" includes full access to the IAAP forums and all of the items I discussed above. If you are a member who has a listing, but does not have access to the forums, or you just forgot to register to the forums, registration is free and is part of your membership. It only takes a few minutes to set up. The forum uses a different log-in system and database than does the Member Directory for security reasons.
“Couriouser and Couriouser”
Linear Mode
