Here are FREE magazine subscriptions for photographers. You have to be a photographer to qualify.
What’s the catch? No catch! These magazines get their revenue from advertisers.
Free Rangefinder Magazine Subscription
You can also read all their articles online at the website.
If you know of any other free magazines, please add it in the comments below.
When I was in a poetry class in college, my instructor told us that to be able to write well, you need to read A LOT!
Stephen King, who is probably the most prolific and published writer in the whole world, reads every single day. He probably reads a book a day or a book every 2 days. Whenever he gets on his car, he pops an audio recording of a book so even when he can’t read, he can listen to a book.
It’s the same with photography, you need to look at a LOT of photography to get better.
I try to look at photography websites everyday so that I can absorb different techniques and open my mind to new ideas.
Here is a good website with explanations of why he likes each photo.
I have a new favorite magazine… it’s called Rangefinder Magazine and it caters to wedding and portrait photographers. I just got my first copy and I am a fan!
You can read the latest issue of the magazine here.
Here is the sample wedding album we ordered from Graphistudio. We will be getting it in a few weeks and we are really excited to see how it looks.
We are going to start designing albums for other photographers so if you are a photographer but you don’t have time to design albums and you want to offer this service to your clients, just contact us for more information.
You can also see this album at our website at www.SilvasPhoto.com.
Google ranks websites through its relevance via Pagerank.
Knowing your Pagerank is important because it helps you keep track of your search engine optimization efforts as well as it helps you rank higher in the google index.
LINKS
Pagerank measures how many websites link to your site. More important than the quantity of the websites is the QUALITY of the websites that link to you. This means, the higher their pagerank is, the better your rank is.
You can submit to a lot of directories such as the search engines (google, yahoo, msn, aol, etc) and directories (dmoz.org) but don’t forget about portals specific to your website (ie, if you have a wedding photography website, submit to wedplan.net, wedj.com, etc.) as well as regional websites (specific to your country, state and city). Some website will call you on the phone trying to sell you higher placement, but in my experience, it really is not necessary. Just tell them, no thank you and just hang up. But expect a LOT of phone calls especially from the wedding industry.
Also, links to your website without a reciprocal link from your website to theirs are measured higher than if you link back as well.
A great way to increase your inbound links without having to reciprocate is by participating in message boards, classified ads and forums. Some forums allow you to create a footer so you can include your website in all your posts. Trying to mess with the pagerank by spamming and other similar ways is frowned upon and your website might get penalized because of this, so make sure that what you post is relevant to the topic.
CONTENT
PageRank is also judged by how relevant your website is with regards to specific keywords.
Make sure that you have a lot of text in your website. If you have a flash website, make sure you have a HTML site that is text-rich with your important keywords.
Create articles and tips that you can place in your website. It does not have to be complicated, just a simple guide for beginners will usually do.
BLOG
Funnily enough, the single thing I did that increased my google pagerank 2-3 points higher is getting a blog. Not just getting an ordinary blog, but getting a blog here at wordpress that is hosted on THEIR server. I’ve had blogs on blogger and blog.com before but they didn’t really affect my rank. I switched to wordpress because they allow bigger photos. Less than a week after I created my wordpress blog, my pagerank jumped for my 2 websites. I don’t have any proof that it’s due to wordpress, but I’ve been submitting my websites everywhere and only when I got a blog did it jump higher.
FIND OUT WHAT YOUR PAGE RANK IS
You can find out what your page rank is by going to this site and typing your url in their form. http://www.mypagerank.net/service_pagerankbutton_index
You can also install a pagerank button on your website by copying the code from mypagerank.net to your footer.
Here are some great tutorials about wedding photography. They are done by Becker and it’s in video which I don’t usually like because I can read way faster than a video plays but he has some really good tips for beginners and intermediate photographers as well about workflow and marketing and networking and almost everything about wedding photography. Best of all, it’s free!
http://www.thebschoolblog.com/
I’ve just also recently discovered Actions in Photoshop. A lot of wedding photographers use Kubota Actions by Kevin Kubota as well as Totally Rad Actions by the Boutwells to make their photos POP! Here is Becker’s post about actions.
http://beckersblog.com/index.cfm?q=sotc&x=1&y=1
http://homepage.mac.com/thebecker/iblog/B533212817/C1640960333/E20060125154844/index.html
Here’s some wedding photography techniques from master wedding photographer Yervant Zanazanian:
http://www.wedshooter.com/2005/12/20/soft-touch
Here is Jessica Claire’s photographer FAQ from her blog which gives a lot of detail about her equipment, techniques and workflow:
http://www.jcsphoto.com/photographerfaq.html
And here is her blog posts where she answers photographers questions.
Submitting to classified ads sites is a great way to get free advertising, reach more people who are actively looking for service as well as increasing your search engine ranking.
Make sure you have an actual working link from your ad to your website so that search engines can find your website.
I use gmail as my email address because it is very good in separating spam from valid emails and I can always tweak my filters so that I don’t get any emails with the word viagra or stuff like that.
Craigslist – Without a doubt, the MOST popular classified ad site in the USA. It is a very effective venue because lots of people look through craigslist everyday. Right now, I get more traffic from craigslist than from any wedding planning website. Lots of bargain hunters though, as with all classified ad sites.
It has a very simple, zen-like interface which you might find boring in the beginning but once you get used to it, it’s really refreshing.
You have the ability to incorporate some HTML into your post so you can embed images in your post as well as layout your post with tables. Javascript, video, flash and some attribute inside <style> tag are not allowed.
Being a very popular website, it is prone to spammers so expect a lot of spam from nigerian scams and other scams. The nigerian scam is discussed in detail in another post.
Oodle - This is a great way to submit to lots of different classified ads site at the same time.
Oodle is partnered with:
www.craigslist.org
www.backpage.com
www.kijiji.ca
www.gumtree.com
loquo.com .
classifieds.myspace.com
expo.live.com
www.adlandpro.com
www.usfreeads.com
www.adpost.com
www.TheFlyer.com
www.salespider.com
www.ozfreeonline.com
www.ClassifiedAds.com
www.freeadvertisingforum.com
www.sell.com
www.InetGiant.com
www.adquest3d.com
www.recycler.com
www.chooseyouritem.com
www.domesticsale.com
www.epage.com
www.classifiedsforfree.com
webcosmo.com
StumbleHere.com
iSell.com
base.google.com
