It is done. On Saturday Night, (and technically Sunday Morning) - I photographed yet another wedding, and I'm kinda over it. It's time to share with you all the progress that I've made on my photographic rebuild.
The new site is now on my testing domain, and it has some some cool bits of text that I wrote with the intention of attracting other jaded creatives like myself, while still maintaining appeal to the general public.
Will it work?
Well, considering it doesn't appear on Google at all, that's not a great start. I'm not a SEO master, and that's bound to be a problem. Perhaps I'm searching for the wrong terms, or SEO is not compatible with the language I'm using.
That's okay. I just want it to be a nice little portfolio website with a tinge of attitude. The same attitude that I normally uphold when I'm shooting people. (With a camera, I don't have a gun, let's make that totally clear).
The site is designed to be simple. It is really just one HTML page, but with a few different elements woven in. First there's the gallery, which doubles as the home page and bio.
Then there's the text of the bio, which really only works as an image. I hope you'll read it.
Then finally, there's a contact form, which leads off to my email, and more images, with a side dish of more attitude. "This could be you."
Then finally, there's the footer, which everyone will probably ignore
It is here in the footer where I'm a bit more insidious, listing TFP terms, publishing a plain language model release, and being transparent with my contract.
Then, if people want, they can also follow me on traditional social media like Facebook and Instagram, which is where most of my business has come from.
However, if you're in Adelaide, South Australia, and my business happens to come from this yabbering about on HIVE ( as long as it isn't a wedding (unless you're willing to pay me literally thousands of Australian dollars) - then I'd be incredible ecstatic.
If you want me to do something anywhere else in Australia, let's still talk, and I'm bound to charge you travel fees or demand to crash on your spare couch, bed, or a warm pile of rags on the floor in a corner.
I'd say I don't take up a lot of space, but that would be a lie because I'm 6 foot 2, and 110 kg. Also, I'll eat all your food. But you will get some good photos, maybe.
So, photography lovers out there, am I doing this website / personal branding or marketing stuff right?
For so long I've tried to get my images to speak for themselves, but that hasn't been very successful in allowing me to amass great fortunes so that I might purchase professional level camera bodies, lenses, and a warehouse in which to put tens of thousands of dollars of lighting gear and props that I might lure clients into in a bid to get their money in exchange for images.
Am I doing it wrong? Or am I on some sort of righteous path toward photographic nirvana?
Please tell me.
Want more content from me?
Witness my futile efforts to play my Steam Game collection in alphabetical order.
Are you aware that I love photography? Check out my work in a collection.
If you want to see my Splinterlands antics and rants live, Find me on Twitch
If you prefer sleeping in your designated time zone, go watch replays on YouTube.
And then there's me who spent way too long scrutinising it because the letters were different colours and I was trying to see if it spelled out something else but it's too early in the morning and the coffee hasn't kicked in yet and I have to do boring things that I don't want to do aaaahhhhh.
I'll get sibling dearest to have a squizz as despite doing webdev as a business for a million years I was never actually any good at the marketing side of things (even though that was pretty much our entire business x_x) mostly because I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate iiiiiiiiiiiiit (major contributing factor to why I gave it up).
How long as it been up? Things can take a while to index on Google (assuming they haven't shadowbanned you for being one of those crypto crazies who will probably spread disinformation about the status quo which is the best type of system that can possibly exist and nothing else can ever dream about coming close so don't even waste any time or energy thinking about it or something). I only ever did basic SEO (I don't know what Drupal did but everything I made with it seemed to do reasonably well) so at a glance everything looks fine.
I'd say if you want more work, make the tone more professional. If you want work you're going to enjoy, keep the fun playful tone XD
I'm severely biased towards the fun playful tone, that blurb was actually fun to read as opposed to merely informative, but as I'm a defective outlier my advice on anything should never be followed
Site is looking good at any rate :D
See, I want to attract people who enjoy that playful tone. I want to be me, not some stuffy dude in a suit who sets up photos. I want to educate as I produce, and be as sarcastic as possible while doing so.
I built the site in Bootstrap, and its very bare bones as far as SEO / Marketing etc goes because I don't understand those things at all.
I wonder how many completely amazing people are out there that don't understand any of these things and are never discovered by "their" people.
As far as I could tell when I was doing it, SEO and marketing seems to need a dedicated person/team if you want it to be "effective".
What you're wondering is definitely a good question. And probably depends a lot on niche saturation as much as anything else.
Niche saturation is such a nice way of saying "too many other people do this shit" :D
Right XD
Cracked me up! I demand you've used those words in your 'about' tab:)
I know next to nothing about website dev or photography for that matter.
What I know - I can tell from your 'about' you like what you are doing, and a as customer - I find it very important. When the job isn't just a job beautiful things happen.
That's the good thing about my photography - it isn't just a job. It is a higher calling from the little tiny angel and demon that sits atop either shoulder. Certainly resigned to the fact that it won't make me a living wage, and that's okay. I have my day job for that.
I wrote this post stream of conscious, with no pre-ordained plan. I think a warm pile of rags fresh out of a dryer would make a wonderful sleeping hovel.
Glad to see you are back. Hope the visit to your parents was refreshing and removed you from your reality the way you had wished.
I am working in hybrid way as well, it is actually only way I can see to not go broke when you are starting your own business:)
I just imagined 5ft tall man curled up in a ball in a nest:) What a great idea for a novela
I am glad to be back, really:)
I've been at my corpo job for 11 years now. I don't see that changing any time soon. In fact, that number of eleven will probably increment by 1 each year until either I become a redundancy package walking out the door, or I cease to exist, or some other event unfolds that divorces me from that corporate bondage.
At least I've worked from home for the last 6 years. Even in the "before-Covid" times. So that's pretty neat.
I would consider you lucky then. I never was able to work for one company longer than 3 years. I wonder how people do that. How you do that?
I've had a different role (and career path in the company) throughout the time I've been there. From a grunt answering the phones and responding to live chat enquiries, to being a technical expert, to being a "complaint subject matter expert", to business analyst, to governance specialist to now being embedded in the Reporting and Insights team on what feels like an endless secondment.
That's actually sounds great. So it wasn't just one position all the way.
From 'help desk' to 'big desk'. I congratulate you!
I think it turned out really sleek for what you intended. Of course, your shots are awesome. I recognized some from your posts in the past... and saw some new ones too! I would say you are off to a good start! Well done.
Thank you! Its just a matter of time before I either give up entirely, or produce something incredible and amazing.
Have you ever played with the idea of making your photos into NFTs and listing them on Opensea or Rarible etc. Might not appeal to you but your work is good.
Cheers
Yeah, I tried that, but got barely any views, let alone any sales :D There's some NFT on ETH of my work, somewhere. It's probably very cheap, too :D
https://rarible.com/token/0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430:484353
Absolutely you should keep up the hard work as we have seen your pictures are so amazing your games are very good and will definitely see you succeed in the future.
Thank you
Most welcome.