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Nature and Wildlife Photography Career
When most people think 'wildlife photography career' they immediately think of selling their images. Yes, this is an option for you and there are a few stock photo sites that you can submit your images to such as
123rf
All the above photo sites are free to join but they do not market your images. You will submit your images and then you will have to wait until they contact you. If you would prefer a more proactive stock photo site then you should consider Global Eye because they will market your images and generate sales and leads for you. They do, however, charge a small joining fee BUT you get 100% of the sales price of your image - there is no 50% commission payable on each photo! If you're still wondering how the business works, what's required and how to get started, get a copy of the free Stock Photography 101 report as it answers all the big questions from photographers looking to get into stock and not quite sure how all the pieces fit together. And if you're wondering just what your photos are worth, or how you go about determining prices when a client comes knocking on your door, here's a free
Stock Price Calculator
photocrati
If you want to just own a website and sell a few images in order to make some extra money to supplement your income then selling images to stock sites is for you - but if you want to create a photography business that will allow you to give up your current boring job then read on...
A wildlife photography career was our dream yet both Jennifer and I used to have nine to five jobs with most of our bosses leaving much to be desired. A wildlife photography career was our goal as this was our hobby and passion but we were stuck in a corporate world where we got to go to the national parks once a year - on our annual vacation. Can you relate to this? We thought so! In 2005 we realised the power of the world-wide-web and decided to create a web site to see if we could make a wildlife photography career from our hobby. We knew nothing about HTML and not much about creating a web site. We hired a designer who created the following web site for us...
• It was created in 'flash' - not a good idea if you want all the search engines to find you! • The pages were not centered but left-justified, leaving a lot of barren white space to the right of each page • The site had about a dozen pages - not very impressive to visitors or search engines • And lastly the designer would take from a few weeks to a month or two to make changes. And then some of the changes were not what we wanted, leading to more waiting - all of this is what drove us mad! So much for our wildlife photography career! Then in 2008 we heard about SBI! (Site Build It!) and how many people were able to give up their day jobs as they were making a good living from the internet. We were skeptical and procrastinated for the whole year. We tried to find other ways to build a website but by the end of the year, and after much research, we realized that SBI! was the way to go for our dream wildlife photography career. We could create our own website without having to rely on unreliable designers and we did not need to know anything about web design or HTML! And any changes we wanted to our web site could be done in minutes! With SBI! you create your wildlife photography career and not just a website.In December 2008 we paid our annual subscription and within a year we had created over 120 pages and our Google PR ranking had jumped from zero to three and within two years our ranking had climbed to a four.This page ranking (PR) is Google's impression of the site in terms of not only number of visitors but the importance of the information provided and the length of time visitors stay on each page. The beauty about SBI! is that they have a template that you populate with your information - you then preview the page, click 'analyze', and if it meets the search engine spider and human visitor criteria, you then click 'Build' and viola! - you have a page that is live on the web. You then repeat this with each page and follow their ten-day program to success. We are selling our images, the web site is making money for us and we are now able to visit the Kruger Park, Kgalagadi, Etosha the Pilanesberg and any other national park a few times each year. We wish we had started with SBI back in 2005! Keep in mind that creating a business with SBI can work for a wildlife photography career as well as many other careers. You need to take what you are passionate about - be it wedding photography, sport photography, travelling to certain places, dogs, cats, health, sports, finance or anything else - and then provide information to other people who will benefit from your knowledge. You can also sell a product or service - the sky's the limit. SBI! Owners Explain in Their Own Videos How It Changed Their Lives...click
here.
Back in 2005 our web site cost us about US$500,00 and we ended up with a 'dead' website. The designer designed the site as best he knew and then left the rest to us - we would need to notify the search engines, market our site to the directories and so forth - with SBI! this is all included in the annual or monthly subscription - they do this for you or show you exactly how to do it.
Imagine Visitors Building Your Wildlife Photography Business. For Free. Why? Because They Want To!Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr have cornered the market on "user-generated" content for personal profiles, videos, short messages and photos, respectively. Only one type of content remains for visitors to upload...Full Web pages! For your particular niche! SBI! already delivers sites that attract high volumes of targeted niche traffic and become profitable, growing small e-businesses. SBI! 2.0 now also enables your visitors to create unlimited Web pages for you... free. Why would they do that? For the same reason as we saw earlier... because they want to. Remember, a website without traffic is pointless as it is visitors that will ensure your site grows and becomes successful - with SBI! their primary goal is to get you the maximum numbers of relevant visitors and to encourage your visitors to build your site! With our SBI! website we get the same number of visitors in one week that we got in twelve months at the old website! This frees you up to focus on your passion! So don't be like us and procrastinate only to regret it later, be proactive and start your new career with SBI!
A one-year subscription costs just US$299,00 and they often have special offers such as getting two sites for the price of one. You may also want to read our interviews with Todd Gustafson , Nigel Dennis and Daryl Balfour who are professional wildlife photographers and they explain to us how they got started. All of them started their careers before the advent of the internet so had to rely on the quality and uniqueness of their images to win photo competitions or to catch the eye of a publisher so that they could publish their first book or magazine article. The one thing the above professional photographers all have in common is that they are prepared to work hard to build their businesses. Most started their wildlife photography career by selling their images and publishing books. Times have changed and their book and photograph sales have decreased but they looked for other income avenues such as photo safaris and creating their own websites where they blog, publish newsletters and market their various products and services. In addition to a website you should write articles like the ones we write for Ezine@rticles.com and you should write articles for quality websites such as Digital Photography School and for quality magazines such as PhotographyBB. Here are three of our PhotographyBB articles that you can download:
Procrastination and Excuses will be your downfall and your Wildlife Photography Career will never take off...A photographer friend of mine wants a wildlife photography career and so he was watching how I was building my online SBI business. He was very interested and then said "It looks like too much hard work!"This is just one of many excuses some people will use in order to procrastinate, yet for motivated people who are ready to work, SBI! OVERdelivers. The internet now enables amateur photographers to display their photographs and market themselves to millions of people.
Some photographers are making a living via their SBI websites by selling their photographs, selling mousepads and calendars containing their photographs, while others are selling ebooks that provide advice on how to take better photographs.
A wildlife photography career is not impossible as there are many ways for you to earn a living from your hobby via a website. You have the cameras and lenses, you have the photographs, now all you need is a business and SBI! provides that online business for you! Check out these case studies of ordinary people, like you and me, who have built very successful online business by using the SBI! model. We have a successful wildlife photography career based on our passion, equipment, skill and SBI! So, what are you waiting for...!?LET TODAY BE THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!
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