Archive for Starting a Business – Page 5

Starting a Photography Business: Part 31 – Who am I?

By Ruth Bayley
Monday, April 25th, 2011

Before I start to meditate, I always ask myself, ‘Who am I?’ along with ‘What do I want?’ and ‘How can I serve?’  The answer to, ‘Who am I?’ is never I’m a photographer, it’s a much more heart based answer that I give and it goes to my very core.

Yet ‘Who am I?’ has been on my mind a lot this last couple of weeks as I’ve launched the business.  What with marketing, and thinking about the business every moment of the day, when the weekend has arrived I’ve struggled to make it a proper weekend; free of doing work on the computer or out taking pictures.

And being in the vibrant season of spring it’s so easy isn’t it to pick up a camera and whizz out to capture the new colours, and life unfolding?  There’s so much going on that I want to have my camera with me.  A couple of weekends ago I decided to have a complete break from my camera, however I ended up taking it with me on a walk, as I knew better than to leave it behind, and got involved in quite a long shoot.  I got some really lovely images, which a week later in the same place the opportunity had gone; the blossom was past its best.

So I was right to have taken the camera, but the walk had suddenly become about work; taking from different angles, waiting for the sun to come back out to get the shadow effect on the leaves.  Last weekend I took the Sunday to go to a local castle, where there is a beautiful lake and picnic beside it whilst reading a book, I had a complete day off and it was so reviving; it was wonderful. Read More→

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Starting a Photograhy Business: Part 30 – Mentors

By Ruth Bayley
Monday, April 18th, 2011

Well this past week I’ve been slowing down a little and stopped chasing my tail. I’ve reigned in my time spent on social networking, written yet another timetable for day to day tasks, which, yes, unlike new year’s resolutions I am sticking too!

The freeing up of some time, meditating more, and generally just looking after me a bit better is starting to pay off. My concentration is heightened and I’m starting to get back to working through my list of goals for the year.

Setting up a mastermind group was a big one, and if you haven’t started one yet, do consider it. Ours is working really well; the support is great between us. We come together regularly and have a catch up, brainstorm, share business products and courses we’ve found useful and also do a little bit of business with each other. Oh, yes ok then, and we have a bit of a chinwag, but building relationships is what’s it’s all about.

This week, in fact just yesterday, I set about achieving another business goal. I have contacted an international businessman to ask him to be my mentor. Like the mastermind groups, it’s straight from the book of business coach Jack Canfield. The mastermind group helps you to support each other and set goals, whereas a mentor helps you by passing on advice, probably giving you a swift kick up the backside when you dilly dally on projects, but ultimately, you have someone to talk to who has been there done it and can help you to avoid the pitfalls.

The idea of a mentor is to speak with them for around ten minutes a month, enough time to ask any questions that might be bugging you and get a reasonable response. Read More→

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Starting a Photography Business: Part 29 – Half Time

By Ruth Bayley
Monday, April 11th, 2011

This past week I’ve answered a few business questions and I wondered if it might be useful to you if this week, I did a recap of some of the important areas to think about when starting out.

  • Research. After the initial idea of your business do some research on all areas; suppliers, web design. Go to the library or buy some books on web design, understand what keywords and meta tags are. It’s like taking a car to a garage if you have basic understanding of what’s going on under the bonnet you can’t be easily fooled.
  • Websites. When you look at website companies please make sure that on the admin side you will have boxes where you can add your keywords and meta titles for that page. If there aren’t any I’m sorry to say you’ll be wasting your money on their services, you need to be able to add and alter words, at will, to make your site as productive for search engines as possible. When you are up and running check your keywords are the best ones, monthly with Google’s free tool
  • Chamber of Commerce. Go to your local chamber and fill your boots! They will give you free impartial advice on everything, from whether to be a sole trader or a registered company. You’ll be able to ask about your tax obligations, business plan advice – if you need one and copyright info though keep an eye on this one yourself too. In the UK the government is doing another review of online copyright laws www.bjp-online.com, a trade journal, is a good place to keep up to date with the news. Read More→
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Starting a Photography Business: Part 28 – How Can I Help You?

By Ruth Bayley
Monday, April 4th, 2011

At the weekend I went to my local drug store come beauty and perfume shop and when talking to the shop assistant, as I made my purchase, she told me that the shop is moving to a retail park out of town; which will make it far more difficult for their day to day customers without transport to get to.

It got me thinking more about something that had already been on my mind; how can I meet the needs of my customers?  Here is a company that isn’t thinking about it’s customers in town, as when it moves it’s closing the town shop; making life difficult for their regular customers.  I started to have a serious think about my business and other businesses in general, where do we make life difficult for people because it’s easier for us?  Or because possibly, there is a greater profit margin in it?

In essence, how I can best serve the community in which I’ve become a part of by being a photographer?  How do I make a product that people can use, and one that everyone has access to?  So that people don’t have to physically come to me to get this product, they can have access to it right from the computer in whichever country they are in.

Is there something in your business that you are doing that is mainly for your convenience that isn’t working because your customers aren’t receiving the benefit of it?  I think more and more as social media becomes an important way of building a community, and a customer base, and we establish a good rapport with people, we can begin to ask them what they need and how best we can provide it.  My customer is the best person to tell me about my business, what could I be doing differently? Does the photo arrive with my customer by courier on the day my supplier tells me it will? Read More→

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Starting a Photography Business: Part 27 – I’m here are you?

By Ruth Bayley
Monday, March 28th, 2011

I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you for your support and kind comments that you made as you took a look at my site this last week. I was touched and humbled by your emails, tweets and FB messages. I have passed on all of your comments on the ease of the site navigation, and the design, to my web designer at SmartDeCat, as apart from my sign up box, and inclusion of four photos on the homepage, the design is one of their templates.

It’s been really exciting launching the site, there were a couple of butterflies on Monday as it went live, and then it took a while for it to sink in that you are now able to see it, which is fantastic! I’ve kind of had to keep pinching myself this week to realise that it’s really happened, but the fact I don’t have to go to the site via the admin page tells me it’s real. A few months ago my web designer said it’s been ages since he’s been to the front of the site to see what his customers see, and I have to say I thought this was a little odd. Hmm, well actually my ego thought this was a little odd, wouldn’t I be on my site every day to look at my beautiful photos? Why of course I would!

Well actually I’ve not! I’ve found a far more addictive thing to do; watch the footfall of visitors across the site, it was, and well still is, really addictive. The software lets me see how many people are on the site and how many visits each page has; it was a bit like when I first got a Twitter and Facebook account, where I felt the need to check it every two minutes. Read More→

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Starting a Photography Business: Part 26 – Cut the Ribbon!

By Ruth Bayley
Monday, March 21st, 2011

I’ve just cut the red ribbon, popped the champagne corks and flung open the doors for the first time, to welcome you to, Ruth Bayley Photography. If you’d like to come in and have a look, please mind you don’t trip on the ribbon at your feet.

If you’d like to open a separate browser with the link and gather round, I will proudly give you the guided tour. http://www.ruthbayleyphotography.co.uk/

Well here we are then! Welcome to the much changed and right up until a few hours ago, still fiddled with homepage! I just couldn’t resist tweaking the text. If you refresh the homepage, the large photo on the right of the page will randomly change to keep the site looking fresh. It also helps to promote different styles of photos, and clicking on them will take you straight through to the photo and the collection it resides in.

This page is laid out as clearly as possible, and here, I have to confess, I break the quota of words that Google likes a site to have per page. It’s really not practical or at all pretty, to squash in 250 words. I can confidently tell you this as during my meltdown stage a few weeks ago, the page did contain that many words and it looked pretty messy.

My beloved, and much wanted sign up box, is to your lower left, clicking here will take you through to sign up for regular email updates and also give you a free gift of photography tips. My original design for this box was well, I have to say, a little boring, so the designer at SmartDeCat did a little bit of magic and came up with this lovely image, which by coincidence, virtually replicates a photo I have in the ‘Waterscapes collection’ of birds flying in a diagonal line over mountains. Read More→

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