A key component of every marketing program I’ve ever presented has included talking about photographers using their own images for holiday cards and stationery. Think about it for just a second. There isn’t a better, easier or more subliminal way to use your images. You’re just there, soft sell, no pressure, just showing your work.
This [...]

There are thousands of you who have blogs today and even more on Facebook or Twitter. If it’s just a hobby you can stop reading now. However, if it’s part of your livelihood and meant to be one of your marketing tools, if you’re not consistent then you’re completely wasting your time! Consistency is such [...]

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, one of America’s leading portrait photographers put together a pretty terrific little book called Don Blair’s Guide to Lighting and Posing Body Parts. I wrote the book, but it was exclusively Don Blair’s words and images. 
Tony Corbell, now at Nik Software and Terry Deglau, now retired, [...]

Two years ago, in the very early days of Skip’s Photo Network, my now good buddy Scott Bourne wrote the following post. It couldn’t be more simple to understand. It’s ten points to help you be more effective in your use of twitter, blogging and podcasting. 
What prompted me to give Scott an encore performance was something I [...]

Okay, I’ll apologize in advance for the rant. This is about a challenge in just about every one’s marketing efforts. It’s an easy point to understand and even easier, at least for most of you to fix… Stop showing mediocre images!
I just spent an hour looking at images in the galleries of over a dozen [...]

All of us are bombarded daily with message after message from companies pushing us to buy their products. We’re caught up in a constant barrage of in-your-face testimonials and ads. They’re loaded with a subtle and sometimes not so subtle choice of words to suggest using certain products or services will increase revenue streams, magically improve sales, even modify [...]

Sunday we head to Las Vegas for DIMA, PMA and CES – three major events all in one city, which is one of the best things PMA has ever done. Virtually every major vendor in imaging and electronics will be in attendance…All in one city at the same time, saving us time and the expense [...]

Successful promotions don’t happen by accident. They’re the result of great planning, creativity, research and a lot of hard work.  Unfortunately, too many photographers, throw together promotions as if the community is waiting in line to spend their money on their services.  NOT!  It’s a tough economy and consumers today are the smartest in the [...]

This week I wrote a post for GoingPro about making mistakes that will run some time over the next week or so. What prompted the post was listening to the panic-stricken voice of an aspiring professional photographer as he went through the “what if” reasons for not being ready to go pro, even though his work [...]

So many of you are about to hit any one of several major trade shows and conventions and you’ve got a choice to make. You can fly around the show at random, unorganized and trying to see everything you can, or focus on what you need the most and make it a quality experience.
For me, [...]