New to the Business Aspect.

[Steve5D]

I have fixed the website, Tell me if it is any better! I think its a whole lot cleaner haha
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What's the point of not only having a comment section, but having it on your home page?

On your pricing page, you direct people to contact you for pricing of "other events and such that are not listed", and then you offer pricing for "Other Events".

You quote pricing for weddings, but I don't see a single wedding photo in the gallery.

Self portraits? How are you going to shoot someone's self portrait? I've been doing this a long time, but I'm gonna' need to have that one 'splained to me.

For your pricing, I would lose the "X amount per hour" and just roll it into your price.

A lot of those photos need to come down. The one of the old pickup truck? The truck obscured by a post? Why does that make me want to hire you?

A Jack Daniel's emblem? On your professional website? Why should that impress a potential client?

The site still needs work, and it needs a lot of it. At the very least, have separate galleries. If you're going to offer something, have a gallery for it. Senior portraits? Great; have a gallery. Weddings? Same thing. Sports? Wildlife? They should all have separate galleries on your site. One humongous gallery makes people lose interest in a New York minute. As someone who wants his website to generate business, this should concern you.

 

[xxWesxx]

Thank you for the input! Ill start trying to work on it now!
-Wes

 

[Vince.1551]

I have been photographing for about 4 years now, and im wanting to start getting jobs. I have done many things such as making a facebook page, website, Google+ , and Craigslist ads. Nothing seems to work. Am I doing something wrong? Am I not industry good? Any advice? Thanks! -Wes http://facebook.com/groups/wesleyhatfieldphotography WHP Home

First off you need to ask yourself these questions:-

1. There are tons of people who did what I did so what makes me special that people would choose me?

2. Do I have a good portfolio to present?

3. Do I have any professional photographic distinctions to substantiate my credibilities.

4. Probably the most important, am I generating enough referral leads?

Business don't come overnight. You need to build it over time by building referral sources and effectively marketing your brand (which is yourself). Try to identify your core competence and sell on that.

Good luck ;-)

Ps. Don't wait for business to knock on your door just because you hang a sign saying "Open for Business".

 

[Tamgerine]

I'm going to go ahead and say it now: stop wasting your time working on this website. Your time is better spent doing something else. It's clear you're not a web designer - that's fine. That's why we hire people to do our web design, or our accounting, or our auto maintenance - because if people like you and I did it we'd screw it up!

I don't want you to consider this as an insult that you're a bad web-designer. I want you to consider this as a repositioning of your time into something more worthwhile.

Think about the time it would take for you to learn everything you need to make an excellent website - HTML, Flash, CSS++ (is that a thing) whatever. Now ask yourself, why would you spend ALL that time learning web design if you don't want to be a web designer?

That time you'd spend learning to make an excellent website? That THAT time and put it into learning how to market yourself, improve your photography, or go out and network with actual people! Things that would actually benefit your business more than learning to build websites - something I assume you don't want to do for other people for money.

Time is a finite resource and you need to allocate it efficiently - the most time on things that will bring you the most value.

There are many affordable and good-looking options for websites. You don't need a 7k+ designer right now. You can easily have a website or purchase a template for less than 100 dollars a year.

If you truly do not have money to run your business like it needs to be run, why are you in business? Either find the money (like any business has to) or settle for a terrible looking website that is probably driving AWAY customers rather than attracting them.