Learn how to grow your email list to keep a steady flow of traffic and business coming through to your website. With these steps your email list will grow faster and stronger each day giving you more and more people to market to.

Add a “share with a friend” option on any articles you publish, blog posts or anywhere else you leave your message. If you aren’t sure how to do this, there are many plug-in widgets available online that will enable this feature for you easily depending on what application you are using. For example, if you are using Word Press you can check the plug-in section and add a plug-in to support this requirement.

Add a sign up form on your home page and include it in any side menu’s that are consistently shown on every page within your website. If you are offering something of value such as a weekly emailed tip, news and announcements or something informational, people will want to sign up and this is an easy way to let them opt to sign up themselves. As an added bonus you may want to offer an initial sign up incentive when they register their email address such as a special discount or e-product giveaway.

Start your own informational newsletter. People who are interested in the service you are providing are often happy to receive information they can use to research and find out what’s going on with your business and your products. Newsletters can be managed with a subscription based service such as Constant Contact or through your own email sign up database that you create to collect the email addresses on your home page, mentioned in the previous tip.

If you are attending a trade show, place a box in your booth to collect names, emails and addresses as a process to register for something you are giving away during the trade show. For example, if you are attending a pet show, you might offer a pet pampering service as a giveaway and collect names of potential pet owners by allowing them to register for this item.

If you are a business that receives customer or prospective customer phone calls, always ask them “Can I add you to our mailing list?” before ending each phone call. This way even if you didn’t land the sale on that call you will continue to be on their mind and have an additional chance to sell them later on through email.

Join in on the social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace to take advantage of unlimited contacts. These social networking websites will allow you to develop closer relationships to your customers by “talking” on your social website through such tools as your Facebook wall page. Social networking websites also make it easier to gain new friends, which means adding more and more people to your email list.

Promote a contest on your home page or blog about a special prize or giveaway when they subscribe to your email list from your website. This is great incentive to get more and more people to sign up directly as well as get them to refer their friends to your website as well.

Resources:

• Lucrative List Building: How Everyday People Are Building Huge, Highly Profitable Opt-In Email Lists from Scratch to Make Millions Online
• Opt In Email List Building: How to Build and Run a Successful Opt In List

You may not think that branding is important to a small business, but I am here to tell you, branding is crucial to every business no matter what size you are. Yes, even for you home based businesses. Everyone should develop a brand identity for their business early in the stages of business development. You may be thinking that branding is the same things as advertising, but there is a huge difference. When you advertise, you are trying to show what you have to offer and of course beat out your competition. When you are building a brand, you are defining your business and getting your clients to see you as the only possible solution to their needs. This is done through name recognition and having a consistent look to identify yourself as the provider of a particular service or product. There are so many fly by night companies out there, but what companies do we know that have stuck around? Walmart. Target. Sears. JC Penney. Borders. People like to shop where they feel safe and where they know if there is a problem, they can come back later and still find you. Having your brand identity developed will build that credibility you need to ensure your clients trust you to do business with. Not sure where to start? You can follow some basic guidelines to get headed in the right direction.

Define who you are – To build a brand to gain your client’s and prospective clients’ loyalty and trust you must start by identifying everything about your business that your client’s will see on a regular basis and then use that information consistently. Start a branding notebook to keep track of everything to ensure that you maintain consistent information. Using your notebook will help you to keep track of where you are in the branding process but there are other areas to consider as well. In your notebook answer questions such as:

-What is your business’s slogan or tag line?
-What do you specialize in?
-Who is your target market?
-What words do people use to describe your business?
-What is your unique selling position?
-Have you had a logo professionally designed?
-What need do you fill that others don’t?

Develop your physical identity – Your brands packaging or what I call a physical identity is also another integral part of the branding process. As a small business this is especially important because we don’t have the customer base of the large retail chains to back us up. Your packaging will be the foundation for your product delivery and may be a determining factor in your brands perceived value. But packaging is more than just tissue paper and boxes with your logo on it. You must also consider your business cards, letterhead and even your website. Every part of your packaging has an impact on your brand. You must use your company choices such as logo, colors, slogan, etc. on a regular and consistent basis in all marketing efforts and packaging. Determine the most professional way to do something and do it. Find out if your choice will strengthen or weaken your brand identity. And most importantly, how will your customers feel about your decisions. In the end, they are who matters most.

Solve a problem – Focus on a particular niche in your industry that is unfulfilled by your competitors and fill it! Become the absolute best and ONLY solution to a problem that your customers are facing and your identity and income will soar! Over time as more and more customers find out about you and the solutions you are providing, you will be seen as the expert in your field and the one everyone calls to when they need their own problem solved. Effective marketing and communication with your customers about what you can do for them will help to simplify their decision making and realize that you are the only real choice for them.

Get up close and personal online – Blogging is the new revolution in the marketing and branding world. It allows you to get in your customers homes for practically nothing. They come looking for you! You can use your own blog to build your brand identity and maintain customer loyalty at the same time. Through your own blog you can utilize various marketing tactics to continue building your brand identity. You can hold “give aways” on your blog for merchandise featuring your logo, offer free advice to build credibility and use it as an online presence to distribute information about your company. Many blog readers become faithful readers for as long as you are providing them with good information (and not just a sales pitch) that they want to hear!

Resources:

• The Brand Called You: The Ultimate Personal Branding Handbook to Transform Anyone into an Indispensable Brand
• Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team

I recently wrote an article on ehow.com about learning photography in an online format and thought I would pass it along here. You can view it on ehow at http://www.ehow.com/how_5735442_learn-photography-online.html but here it is in it entirety.

Would you like to learn about photography online? You can learn about the technical and creative aspects of photography as well as business information practically all online. There is so much information available in the public domain that learning about photography online is now easier than ever.

For the very beginner photographer, checking out some of the distance education programs available in the photography industry is a great start. As a past New York Institute of Photography student, I highly recommend their programs for someone starting out. It is a “learn at your own pace” program and allows you to soak up the information as much as you want before moving on to the next topic. You can also check out the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and your own local colleges.

Watch for workshops either local to you or within a day’s drive that you can attend. These photography workshops are usually led by actual photographers with real world experience and can point you in the right direction to learn more about photography.

Join some of the photography communities available online. These communities have online forums filled with professional photographers that are helpful and willing to guide you. You can also find technical and create articles about photography as well as resources you can download. Some of these communities are free while the more advanced ones sometimes charge an annual access fee. Check the resources below for some popular photography communities.

Check out some of the educational videos for photography available on YouTube.com. Simple go to the YouTube.com website and use the search field on the home page to find “photography tutorials”. Look at not only the videos in the search, but also the related videos that will display down the right side to find even more useful videos.

Browse through the work of other photographers whose work you admire. There are some very talented photographers and most all of them have websites online. You can start with Google.com and just search for “portrait photographers” or any other type of photographer that you wish to learn more about. Looking at other photographers work will allow you to study their technique, their posing and their lighting.

If you haven’t done so already, take a look through Amazon.com at some of their photography books. While many do have to be ordered and received at your home to read, some are now available through Kindle. Either way, order what works for you and research everything you can through books.

Resources

• HomePhotographyBusiness.net
• Tutorial DVD, Learn Photography, Film & Digital
• Learning to See Creatively: Design, Color & Composition in Photography (Updated Edition)
• Portrait Photography Secrets (DVD)
• The Basic Book of Photography, Fifth Edition
• Pro4um
• Photo.net
• School of Photography
• New York Institute of Photography

Have you ever walked through the grocery store and noticed in the cereal section a large selection of generic cereal in bags rather than those highly branded, colorful and well designed boxes? Which ones are priced higher? Which ones seem better? Which ones seem cheap?

This isn’t the case only for cereal. If you are delivering your finished portraits in a plastic or paper bag with no protection from being bent or scratched and absolutely no elegance about it, you are generic cereal!

Your portraits are a highly customized and highly valued work of art. Not only should your packaging include the same high standard as your portraits, but it should remain consistent with the image of your studio.

When my clients receive their finished portraits, they are given a very nice looking package that makes it seem like Christmas. Each of our orders is packed in a chocolate brown box that is tied up with leopard print ribbon and displays our gold foil logo on the lid. Inside, their portraits are safely packaged and protected in our signature leopard print tissue paper. Of course, doing all this extra packaging is an added expense, but it is one that my clients’ appreciation for a high-end product far exceeds. And for my business, it is part of our branding. Leopard print and chocolate brown colors are our thing and you will see it throughout on everything we do.

Suppliers for packaging are available all over the Internet but I am especially favorable to Bags N Bows. They have a large selection to match any branding need and are priced reasonably.

Remember that it is not only the larger chain stores that must brand their company. Small business owners like photographers can take advantage of branding to create loyalty and remembrance among clients and prospects. The important thing to remember is to be consistent in all of your marketing efforts. Everything should work cohesively; letterhead, business cards, web site, packaging, and yes even the décor of your studio.

Ah the age old question “How much should I charge?” I know it’s a confusing question and one even those who have been business for years probably have to rethink constantly. But never fear! There are some guidelines and tips I have for you to help you on your way. Keep in mind these are just suggestions and my way isn’t the only way, but through experience and with the advice of those who have been in business longer than I have, I think you will find this information helpful!

The first thing probably comes to mind is that you should be researching your competition to find out what they charge. The fact is, most likely your competition is under pricing themselves as well. Not only that, they probably have no clue about what the market is really willing to pay for fine photography products and services. Sure it might be a good idea to know what your competition is charging but don’t base your prices on it. Base your prices on you!

Now, I am not about to tell you that you should be charging $xx for an 8×10 or $xx for a 5×7. Because we are all in different markets, all at different levels and our prices should be different. Suzy Photography who is in a retail location might need to charge more than Sally Photographer who is home based and doesn’t have the expenses that Suzy has.

Start a base line. What’s the first thing a client always asks when they call for the first time? How much is an 8×10, right? Well forget about your expenses for a minute. What do YOU think your worth? $20? $40? $100? Ok, now double it! Yes, I said double it! Why double it? Because we always under value ourselves. We are our own worst critics. Of course this really pertains more to those photographers who are new to the business and haven’t established a good client base, who might start a mutiny against you for raising your prices so drastically. For those of you who have been in business and do have a steady client base, you may not want to double your 8×10 cost, but you should definitely take a look at it and see if it is REALLY where you want to be and not just what you chose based on costs or worse…fear. Keep this in mind: If at least 2/3 of your clients aren’t complaining about your prices, then you are too low!

From the baseline price of an 8×10 you can then determine how you want to structure the rest of your print products. A word to the wise: what is the cost difference to you from your lab between a 5×7 and an 8×10? $1? $2? So why on earth would anyone give such a huge discount to their clients for a 5×7? My advice to you is to keep your 5×7 and 8×10 prices relatively close to each other. If your 8×10s are $60, then charge $50 for a 5×7. I can guarantee you will get a lot more sales for 8×10 prints with such a small gap in price.

As you move onto wall portraits, you are in a whole new area of pricing. Wall portraits require more work. They are larger prints and may require heavier retouching, finishing sprays, mounting, and more attention to detail. Therefore, they should be priced significantly higher. Wall portraits are your more elite products and the items that clients have to push themselves to invest in. At a minimum they should start no lower than three times your 8×10 print size. And each size as they go up should again have a significant price difference.

As you are coming up with your prices, think about this. If you were to take two photographers of the same skill level and put them side by side in front of a brand new prospect and both of them sell the same product but one charges $25 for an 8×10 and the other charge $100 for an 8×10, which photographer would this prospect “perceive” is the better photographer? Of course, anyone would think the $100 photographer MUST be better to charge that much more. It’s human psychology to think so! The higher the price something is the more valuable it must be. So by charging low prices, then doesn’t that very act reflect a lower perceived value to our clients?

The last thing to consider is your pricing for the future. You must raise your prices every single year! I recommend taking care of this in December, over the holidays when you are relaxing from a crazy holiday season. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING gets an easy 10-15% increase every year and applies to all sessions as of January 1st. 10-15% is nothing. It’s slightly more than sales tax. It isn’t scary and it’s only once a year.

Remember that your prices will reflect your perceived value and your work deserves to be treated as a very valuable product!