[danieljamesphotography]

Hello,

Although i currently run my own photography business i'm trying to work out a way to work part time or possibly even full time doing something else photography, publication or website design related. The simple fact of it is i would like some spare income to start saving up for a house/flat and with the business being only 6 months it's obviously not turning over £30,000+ yet and i cannot take a wage yet. I was just wondering if anyone out there could suggest some ways for me to branch out for a part time photography job or freelance work i could do or anywhere to try? other than places such as Monster, Fish4Jobs etc.

thanks

[WOODY]

AS YOU HAVE ONLY BEEN RUNNING YOUR BUSINESS FOR SIX MONTHS, I WOULD SUGGEST FINDING WAYS TO GET MORE CUSTOMERS.OTHERWISE IF YOUR TAKE ON ANOTHER FULL TIME OR EVEN PART TIME JOB, YOU WILL HAVE EVEN LESS TIME TO BUILD UP YOUR NEW BUSINESS. ALL NEW BUSINESS'S STRUGGLE IN THE FIRST YEAR.

I WOULD SAY PUT AS MUCH AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN IN TO ADVERTISING AS YOU CAN.
WHAT SORT OF PHOTOGRAPHY DO YOU COVER? TRY CONTACTING LOCAL BUILDERS TO TAKE PHOTOS OF SHOW HOUSES, CARAVAN RETAILERS, CAR SHOWROOMS, THE LIST IS ENDLESS REALLY, IT ALL DEPENDS HOW MUCH YOU ARE PREPARED TO PUT IN TO MAKING YOUR BUSINESS A SUCCESS.

[Summerleft]

Have to agree with Woody on this one, I was in exactly your position 6 months ago, just coming up to the end of my first year.

I wouldnt suggest paid advertising its just a waste of money but getting the word out , postcards in shops, freelance photographers handbook get contacting the editors in that, freinds and family are the best form of advertising IMO

Make sure you hve good Search Engine Optimization on your website, go on forums, have your site in sigs of those that allow it, tell everyone you meet what you do. We all know the first year is the worst year lol but we also all forget that when we are in it.

Had a quick look at your website and it doesnt feel very user friendly but I do like the design, Im getting a lot of dead end links with the images, and they all seem to link differently
No where near enough text for Search Engine Optimization , how are you ranking in the search engines? etc

I know this isnt what you asked in your OP but hope it helps

[danieljamesphotography]

Originally Posted by Summerleft

Had a quick look at your website and it doesnt feel very user friendly but I do like the design, Im getting a lot of dead end links with the images, and they all seem to link differently
No where near enough text for Search Engine Optimization , how are you ranking in the search engines?

thanks but to be honest i've had good reports back about my website, can i ask which links are dead? it's a new version and some areas aren't online yet granted. We did rank on the first page of searching 'daniel james' but now dropped 8 pages somehow, typing in daniel james photography and we're at the top, not a big achievement i know but still.

Any suggestions on improving the Search Engine Optimization?

[Gary Bagshawe]

Basic search engine optimisation

[danieljamesphotography]

Originally Posted by Gary Bagshawe

Basic search engine optimisation

thanks for that, im now aware that when i did the new version i didn't implement the meta tags etc and that would account for the huge drop, i've since fixed this so it should climb again with any luck

thanks for the help

[Summerleft]

You need to keep adding or altering some text on a page to keep your rankings, also text with text links on the home page are great.

I'm not saying your site doesnt look good, it does but its the navigation and Search Engine Optimization thats could be stronger

Your last 3 images in portraits are white square/red Xing

Error on page on all model images and first 4 music images are red Xing also your close button image isnt showing.

very nice images of the selfridges building but if I click on them it takes me to an plain image page where I have to use the back button to get back to your site same with abstract, Last 6 images not showing on achitechture.

Sorry If Im sounding picky, just trying to help

[fuzzymisfit]

just tried the old search engine (google.co.uk) to find the site...as u mentioned;

return the result of:

'http://www.illusionsofgrandeur.net/index.html' << which only has a white page.. i presume this is an old site ? as the layout/look/navigation looks like the ones in the site thats 4 links down

'http://www.danieljamesphotography.net'<< which i presume is the new site?

if it is u need to look at using the control panel of your website hosting ( possibly cpanel or something like that ) to add a permanent forwarding to forward anything frm the old site to the new one...so basically it would look like:

'http://www.illusionsofgrandeur.net' >> 'http://www.danieljamesphotography.net/'

meta tags are a must for google, and so is text content as summerleft said..but the main rankings in google come from external links back to your site...( i used to work for a web development company & google was the word of the day & its all to do with rankings!!) its not common knowledge but the more links u have bouncing back to your site the higher u will climb too...

u could also try adding:
<meta name="revisit-after" content="2 days">

telling the spider to revisit after 2 days

and change the robots to follow any path not just from index:
<meta name="robots" content="all">
( i think thats right try googling it )

just my 2p worth, it might help it might not, google is a black art

Adrian

[danieljamesphotography]

Originally Posted by Summerleft

You need to keep adding or altering some text on a page to keep your rankings, also text with text links on the home page are great.

I'm not saying your site doesnt look good, it does but its the navigation and Search Engine Optimization thats could be stronger

Your last 3 images in portraits are white square/red Xing

Error on page on all model images and first 4 music images are red Xing also your close button image isnt showing.

very nice images of the selfridges building but if I click on them it takes me to an plain image page where I have to use the back button to get back to your site same with abstract, Last 6 images not showing on achitechture.

Sorry If Im sounding picky, just trying to help

sorry but i don't get these errors when i try to view it, can you tell me what OS and Browser you're using please so i can look into it.

thanks

[Gary Bagshawe]

You may well be able to view the images on your own pc as the browser may just be loading the images direct from your pc instead of from the server. Check your server to make sure that the images are actually there and that they are being called from the correct folder etc.
Actually (I dont want to upset anybody) but you don't need to keep altering or adding text to your pages to keep your rankings.
HTH

[Summerleft]

Are you sure, I thought Search engine web crawlers constantly check for new content on your web site hence updating affects how your site ranks in natural search results, thats why Blogs are so highly recommended, maybe i could have worded my earlier comments better.

[Gary Bagshawe]

Have you ever thought about sending photographs in to stock picture libraries?
Correctly submitting your photos to newspapers - Presented by Pixalo
Submitting Photos to Alamy - Presented by pixalo

[Gary Bagshawe]

Originally Posted by Summerleft

Are you sure, I thought Search engine web crawlers constantly check for new content on your web site hence updating affects how your site ranks in natural search results, thats why Blogs are so highly recommended, maybe i could have worded my earlier comments better.

I have sites that have not had the content updated for around 3 years and they still rank on the 1st page of results.
You can use the robots tag to tell them when to re-visit etc
the robots will visit frequently anyway but will visit more often if the content is updated by the minute or day etc ( bbc news etc ) but this will not affect your rank.