Market and Sell your photos online | MorePhotos : eCommerce Software for photographers

Meet us at
Imaging USA
January 11-13, 2009
Phoenix Convention Center, Phoenix, Arizona
www.imagingusa.org

"It is cost sensible, allowing a photographer to continue to increase their profit while providing additional services." Kathleen Hawkins
Others Agree!

Now Serving the USA, UK, Aruba, Australia, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, Cayman Islands, Dominican Republic, England, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Samoa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, United Arab Emirates

Now Available in the following Languages: Spanish, German, Portuguese, Czech. Coming soon in French, Italian and others.

30 day Money Back Guarantee... (Includes Program Fee & Setup Fee)

Meet us at upcoming
Conventions and Tradeshows!

Marketing Tips

Posting your images on your website is the biggest marketing thing you can do. Once you post the photos, your customers will bring their whole family, friends, and even co-workers to your site to check out their photos. This provides more exposure than an endless marketing budget.

Remember:
Post for only a short period of time:
14 to 30 days – portraits and sporting events
Or 30 to 60 days- senior portraits and weddings. This allows more time for couples honeymoons and more site hits for senior portraits.

Offer a discount the first week or so:
For example, 10% off any order placed in the first 7 days. Give them a reason to go to your site right away and get a good deal.

Add some specialty items:
Chances are your customer has a zillion 4x6 prints. Do they have a stretch canvas, metallic print, or canvas bags, sports posters or magazine covers? Give them something to get excited about.

Give your customers a reason to bring others to your site:
Wedding Photographers- Tell your couples that for every $100 the guests order online, you will add an extra page to their wedding album. You will increase exposure of your site and orders – the photographer that shared this idea with us gets $700-$1800 per wedding, and then sends a nice thank-you note with a coupon for a family portrait that he reports gets great return.

A lot of photographers think posting online and an in-studio sales presentation is an either or situation. We feel they are missing one of the main reasons to post – MARKETING!

Take this approach instead: Continue to present their photos to them in studio, don’t even mention the web until they are walking out your front door. Then say thank-you for your order and by the way, I will post these images on my site for two weeks so you can show your friends and family. What did you just do? You essentially handed them a stack of brochures and told them to pass them out to all the people they know. (But without the cost and confused look on their faces).

There are many other ways to use your website to help and here are a couple:
Mr. and Mrs. Smith: You are great customers and you and your family have done so much for my company. From now on, use this code number: SMITH15, and you will receive 15% off all online orders from now. Thanks again for your business.

Hi Mrs. Miller, I love your facility and the gardens out back are wonderful for pictures. I was the photographer last weekend for the Smith’s wedding and wanted to come in and introduce myself and let you know I took some great shots you may want to put in your photo album that you use for your brides. Here is a code number to give you some free photos at my site www.example.com. All I ask is if you like my work, you will recommend my services.

There are other ways to use the code and gift certificates:
Code Numbers can be used with % off or dollar amount off and will stay valid until disabled.
Gift Certificates are used as a given dollar amount. Your customer can make separate purchases and the system will keep track of the amount left for you.

Keep in mind your website is not any different than another storefront:
Treat it like one, and you are in business to make money and be successful. With that said, try not to do only the cheapest things. Otherwise your customers will be only the cheapest. That will make it very hard to overcome.

To get more exposure in the marketplace:
Once you secure a job, the web is the best way to get your customers to market for you. Post their work, make a show of their images and show it online only for awhile… If they want to watch it or show it off, they go to your site.

Rules to live by:

80% of clients go with the first person they speak to, so be sure to:

Answer your phone. If you cannot get the phone, call back asap.
When you do answer, always be excited, even if you think it could be a sales person. You never know how some customers start the call.
Once you have them on the phone or in person, assume they are going to use your service.
When meeting with clients be at your best, be prepared, and dressed for the job. Don’t look like you just got out of bed.
Have samples of many types of products you offer. Not just one album, but some framed work, stretched canvas, or metallic prints. Try to offer them something they haven’t seen before.
Spend some time and/money on a good logo.
Packaging is powerful. When a client orders from you, how are the photos delivered? Do you include a thank-you note and a coupon or a portrait setting? Cultivate your clients! Give them a reason to come back to you. It is much easier to create more business with the people that have already ordered from you than to start with a brand new one.

This is the main fault of having labs drop ship for you. You don’t get to cultivate your clients as well, but you also get the pictures to them faster and cheaper. With the MorePhotos system, you can add that fuzzy letter with a coupon and still drop ship the order directly to your clients. Ask a customer to come back to you and they probably will.

Credit Cards are Vital:

Accept Credit Card. The cost of having a merchant account is very inexpensive. You will pay $10 - $25 a month, depending upon whether you offer real time processing. With real time processing, when your clients makes an order on your site, their credit card information is verified in real time, thus saving you from re-entering the numbers, following up with the customer if they entered a wrong number, etc. The funds are transferred directly to your account and are available in about 3 days.
By accepting credit cards, you are allowing for higher end sales. Let’s say your highest end package is $9,000 and the event is 9 months away. What if you could say, I can run your credit card for a $1,000 / month and you will be paid up before the date, plus collect all your bonus miles, Amazon points, etc? It’s a much more realistic sale than expecting them to have $9,000 in their account to write a check immediately.
If a customer calls and wants to book your services, accepting a credit card for the down payment seals the deal. If you ask them to write a check, they could go to lunch with a friend who tells them about another photographer that is much cheaper… you may have just lost a job.

Online Advertising Resources

One of the things the search engines like is finding links from multiple places to your website. It gives your website more legitimacy in the view of the search engines.

MorePhotos provides free listings on any or all of the following sites:

Write a testimonial for us and we will post it on MorePhotos.com along with links back to your site.
You can buy equipment or sell your old equipment on ProfessionalPhotographySupply.com.
If your a wedding photographer, we will list your company and website by State and the regions where you do business on WeddingDetails.com.
If you shoot parties, we will list your company and website by State and the regions where you do business on PartyDetails.com.

VtalkRadio Interview

MorePhotos sponsers VTalkRadio interviews for our customers. Customers that use this service find that their websites have higher standings in the search engines.

You can show your expertise with a radio interview on your website. Your interview will help your website visitors better understand your products/services and your expertise. You will receive a professional keyword rich text transcription of your interview for inclusion into your website. Once the interview is placed on your website, and your site is spidered, the major search engines will "feed" on the keywords from your interview, giving you the competitive advantage.

We will provide you with the code to publish the radio show and content on your website.

Click here to listen to some VTalkRadio Interview Examples.
Click here for more information.

INeedHits

Since 1996, they have been helping businesses boost their website traffic and generate more sales with their affordable search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine advertising services.
Click her for more information.

Google Advertising Programs

Google AdWords

Advertise to people searching on Google and our advertising network
Reach people actively looking for information about your products and services online
Easily control costs - pay only when people click on your ad
Google advertising network includes AOL, ASK.com, EarthLink and NYTimes.com

Yahoo! Advertising Solutions

Help potential clients find your web site on the Internet. Use Yahoo for sponsored search, local advertising, search submissions, product and directory submissions.

LookSmart Advertiser Resources

Advertiser Solutions

Our Network serves over 500 million queries per day. Scalable solutions reach targeted audiences through a high quality network - with valuable distribution partners and highly competitive CPC prices. LookSmart offers extensive reach and access. Extend your reach with diverse advertising and targeting options with performance-based advertising solutions.

What is Pay-Per-Click Service?

Sponsored Search

This is a service where you Bid on keywords people search. Ranking is ordered by bids.
Top 3 (Premium) Listings for keywords are displayed on other Search Engines.
Service requires a minimum $20 monthly spend.
Has a very extensive reach on the web. Their listing are displayed on America Online, Lycos, and AltaVista, Excite, Hotbot,
DirectHit, Ask Jeeves, Go.com, and Yahoo.

Self-Registration - Search Indexes

Below are FREE search indexes that you can submit your web site to. Please note, however, that the search engines specifically say they WILL NOT GUARANTEE that your site will be listed by using the free submission service. They will only guarantee a listing if you use their paid services.

Google - Search Index - Free
http://www.google.com/addurl.html

MSN Search - Search Index - Free
http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

Yahoo - Submit Your Site for Free
http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html