Today I finally had the chance to refresh and simplify my ImageMaven web site. The main look hasn't changed much, but I've combined a few of the pages so that there are only five menu selections: Home, Portfolio, Stock, Blog and Links. I purposefully haven't gone the route of the "large image" portfolio sites that most photographers now use. My site might be butt-ugly in some people's eyes, but the fact is I rank high on search engines and I'd hate to screw all that up by investing in a Flash generated site. Yes, I know Flash can be optimized for SEO, but I don't have those skills at this time, nor the time and money to invest in that right now. Truth is, my client base is not typically art directors. Sure, I sell some stock to art directors now and then, but most of my income comes from established corporate clients and the images are used in-house for very specific technical things. For the rest, I shoot a bit of travel, plus I just shoot what I love and flog everything I can through my PhotoShelter Personal Archive using rights-managed and royalty-free licensing models.
My role model in this is Dan Heller, SEO expert and sucessful stock photographer, who also has a butt-ugly web site (sorry Dan). His site is however, highly functional, and that is the most important thing. I originally wanted to sell stock directly from my site like Dan does, but I'm no web programmer. I just tinker with html and Dreamweaver. That's why I chose the PhotoShelter Personal Archive route for self-serve selling. It's cheap and efficient. Sure I give up 10% on every sale, but with all that back-end support I consider it a small price to pay for all those features. By the way, PhotoShelter is SEO friendly.
I have finally learned over the years that shooting what I love makes me happiest, along with a couple of good corporate contracts, some teaching, some family portraits and some work for artists to keep me afloat financially. PhotoShelter and Dan's expertise have helped me realize this, plus, as my mom says, "Do what you love and the money will come."
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