Getting things organized, cataloged, choosing a name, choosing a domain host, choosing a web provider… and you haven’t even touched the business side of things yet!!
We’ll go into each of these in laters posts, but to start, I thought it would be interesting to create a short bullet list of the “minimum” that is needed enable a photographic journey. (assuming you want to make some side cash with this amazing hobby)
From personal experience, there are steps you can take early on that will make your life much simpler in the long run. But here are the “steps” that I took to get to a point where I could “turn” my photography passion into a business. (I’ll go into more detail for each of these in individual blog posts)
- Take photos – you will need these! 😉
- seems simple, but always have one camera with you. Anymore that is simple with the inclusion of cameras in phones that beat the digital capabilities of solid point & shoot cameras of just a few years ago.
- Review your “current portfolio” – you don’t want everything in a few steps
- for me, that meant sifting through over 55,000 digital images and thousands of strips of film and slides
- Choose your photo management and editing system
- although you can always change later, it isn’t as easy as it seems
- Get the “Business” started
- LLC, DBA, Licenses, COA, Sole Proprietor, EBT… if you don’t know these acronyms or how they might effect you… slow down!! you need to know this stuff to stay out of trouble later
- Choose your marketing approach
- you will need a website – tons of options, I have my preferences
- physical gallery?
- social media
- Build your website
- what to display
- how to display
- how to sell
- how to collect payment
- Build your social media accounts
- Pintrest
- WordPress
- … more based on market
- Build content
- good to have about 6 months of content
- new gallery images
- blog posts (technical and story)
- good to have about 6 months of content
- Continue shooting images
- Continue editing images
- Clean website
- Clean and prep social media launch
- GO LIVE!!!
Clearly, much of this is done in parallel and can be done at different speeds. If you take some time and pull up the typical photography website with images for sale, you will see what it looks like if not done properly.
If I had to put a number on things, this will take in the range of 250-500 hours of time and the costs can range from a low end of nearly free to well beyond the $1,000 mark just to get to the starting line!
There are literally hundreds of thousands out there and you “job” is to stand out. To become what they aren’t, to display your artwork with a story that can’t be ignored, to people that can’t ignore it.
Good luck and check back in frequently to see what is new. I’ll be looking at some new Breakthrough Photography filters soon as well as going into detail on the above start up points.
Robb…
RMBall Galleries 