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Top Five Marketing Tools For Photographers

The Blog: Blogs are everywhere, they take all of ten minutes to set up, free of charge, and your work is instantaneously exposed to millions of people around the world. A website is just a portfolio, a blog can serve as a journal of your work. Post photographs, thoughts, news on what your shooting, what you’re working on, where you’re going. The personal nature of a blog can build a following that wasn’t possible just a few years ago.

The Book: Publishing on demand is a photographers dream. Sites such as blurb.com offer very reasonable rates and no minimum purchase. Blurb also offers a storefront to sell your book. You set the price, their commission is minimal. While selling books is a great idea, margins are thin, and revenues depend on volume. However, handing a potential client a professionally bound 40 page book, chances are your going to look pretty good.

The Exhibition: Photographers often think that their exhibition will generate income, that touring a show is a way to make money. This could not be farther from the truth. An exhibition is two things, a time suck, and an ego stroke, neither of which are money makers. That said, an exhibition can be an amazing promotional tool, and does have the potential to generate income if the infrastructure is in place. Selling books, catalogs, prints, and posters at the exhibition and through your website can produce a steady cash flow. An exhibition is really just a big PR campaign, use it.

The Card: May sound old school, but it still works. Hand them out like candy. Make them cool. Check out Creative Bits for ideas. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

The Street: You meet some interesting people when you’re on the street making pictures. Carry business cards, a couple 4×6’s, postcards, a small catalog, anything that you can put in someone’s hands. You never know who you’ll meet.

Tags: blogging, photographers, Top Five Friday