16 November 2017

Building a successful photo blog - tips

Oh I hope this is worth the 45 minutes I'm going to listen to this #hangoutonair with David Hobby, Patrick Smith and Alain-Christina Seraphin. My mind is a bit like a sieve(I wrote this post in 2012 and have just got around to posting it) so I'm going to jot down highlights so that I can come back and review. I just checked the link and I'm glad that I did as it is long dead however I did find David Hobby here.

The first 8 minutes the guys chat about how they got involved. David has been exposing (not in the way you think, please and thank you) himself since 1996. In 2006 he was on flickr which he thinks is a decent community gathering place - now you have twitter, goggle plus, and much more. It becomes a vortex for you and gives you ideas - so keep exploring. 

Posting regularly: Patrick does it on and off; David suggests you don't want to post 5x a day as you aren't going to be able to keep it up. Go for consistency - Go for quality. Take some time to think ahead about what you want to blog - don't do it on the fly. (Coming up to 8 minutes)

For Patrick it is a visual diary - he tries to post once a week. Uses it for searching out his own work. The more I post, the more hits he gets. David has a lot of followers so he is much more regular in his postings.

I'm hoping to find their sites fairly quickly so I can check them out. Here is one site that is still up and running (the video I'm watching was posted July 17, 2012) Strobist It looks like a cool site as it is the entry point to all kinds of educational pieces on photography and lighting. Oh cool, it looks like he has some training videos on www.Lynda.com which I am currently a paying member of. I am no longer a paying member of Lynda and Strobist still offers some great info. 

Meeting people in real life: David has participated in meet ups and Patrick has bumped into people at places like camera stores. Both of them have had gear swaps which sounds kind of cool as you can try out gear with a virtual friend and find out if you like the equipment. (coming up to 13:30)

Oh dear I'm now at the 23:01 as I went off to check out David Hobby's blog site, twitter feed and I'm listening to the tail end of the RSS reader and someone doing scrapping. So I need to come back and listen to that.

And thankfully Patrick listed his blog.  Some great photos - he is a pro. And he continues as the photos are current as of 2017.

Now at 28:00 - they are talking about cameras - I'm still stuck in the world of point and shoot. My fav is my Panasonic Lumix.

Oh good question - how many blogs do you have?? They have anywhere from a 1/2 dozen to a dozen. So I'm not totally out to lunch - but they suggest you put the energy into one or two. That is SO SO true.

Oh but hang on now I'm suppose to own a niche - ie. a cancer blog or a blog with a very specific type of cancer (right now I'm reading a book called Anti Cancer - all I know if that I will continue to believe that I am a healthy, strong person with no diseases).

Advertising revenue: Started with AdSense then processed into Amazon affiliates (2006) and then someone called me and asked me to be their only advertiser - I had to learn fast - so that is where he is now. The bigger problem is writing about something that your friends and others want to read.

These guys are way ahead of me. I'm a casual blogger and this is my first virtual hangout even if I joined in and watched in 2012. It would be cool to do one of David's seminar.




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