Farenell Photography wrote:
Blogs are so 2008.

Seriously though if you wanted to blog, it'd probably be best to attach it to a person's official website.

That is a joke right?  I mean I'm just making sure and all.

Farenell Photography wrote:
Blogs are so 2008.

Barry Kidd Photography wrote:
That is a joke right?  I mean I'm just making sure and all.

It was called sarcasm, perhaps you've heard of it?

Unless a person has something consistently interesting to say (however undefined & vague that is), the blog is changing. Its been superceded by the ease of picture/video uploading sites like Tumblr or Instagram or Vimeo; or in different, quick thought uploading formats like Twitter or Facebook. Once you factor in people's shorter attention spans, the long-format blog is dying if its not already died out.

Just even looking towards my own experience, there's only so much content one can yap out & do it on a regular basis. & if you don't do it on a regular basis (again, however undefined that is), you lose your audience particularly if you're using a 3rd party hosting site. It simply become "yet another blog" in a sea of god-know-how-many-other blogs.

-JAY- wrote:
wordpress

I switched to hostgator recently... my blog performance SIGNIFICANTLY improved over godaddy. I made no changes, yet response time went from 30+ seconds on page load times to instantaneously. (Note, I have most major IT related certifications, and know how to configure a blog / website - godaddy sucks for blog apps)

With wordpress, 1/8 of my pages show up on the 1st page with relevant searches in 6 months.

thnx, will try. Keep getting asked if I blog, especially with all the events I do so I thought I should start one. Light diagrams that explain what was used how and why for what shoot and slideshows are hard on facebook.

Farenell Photography wrote:
Blogs are so 2008.

It was called sarcasm, perhaps you've heard of it?

Unless a person has something consistently interesting to say (however undefined & vague that is), the blog is changing. Its been superceded by the ease of picture/video uploading sites like Tumblr or Instagram or Vimeo; or in different, quick thought uploading formats like Twitter or Facebook. Once you factor in people's shorter attention spans, the long-format blog is dying if its not already died out.

Just even looking towards my own experience, there's only so much content one can yap out & do it on a regular basis. & if you don't do it on a regular basis (again, however undefined that is), you lose your audience particularly if you're using a 3rd party hosting site. It simply become "yet another blog" in a sea of god-know-how-many-other blogs.

Yep, I've heard of sarcasm and I assumed that's what it was.  At the same time blogs are far from being dead and there are few things that can bring the kind of attention to the average guy like a blog.  I'm talking the average user here.  Not the Intstagram hero with 2.78 million followers and such.

I'll use myself as an example since I really only know my own story but rest assured that there are lots of other people in my shoes.

Our blogs are our own personal social media platform.  It is, in most cases linked to and part of our websites.

Now, I'm an old school photographer but I'm smart enough to know and have learned that there is nothing about old school that will do anything for us these days other than land us squarely in the poor house.  Because of that I do my best to stay up to date.

With that in mind I did start a little web site in 2006, I think it was 2006 but either way the date isn't important.  It was a static site that I used to display photos, and upload zip files for printers and other clients to download.  Basically the site was just taking up space on the web and getting me little or no results for new business.  At the most I was getting about 1000 visitors a year to my site and most of those were myself just checking in on it.  In truth besides having a place for clients to download their photos and a dedicated e-mail address the thing was a loosing battle. I was still getting ALL of my clients the good old fashioned way.

About two and a half years ago I decided to give this blogging thing a spin.   That's when things started to change.

Blogging allows us to add new content to our sites.  "Big G" loves new content and frankly they reword those that have it.  When you share properly key warded post with images, alt tags, video and even external links "Big G" spreads the love even more.

Now, anyone and every one knows damn well that the higher you place on Google (And other search engines) you better your chance at gaining at least some new business.

These days I have many post that rank on Google's page one for a global search.  I have a few that have a #1 ranking globally.  Basically that means that if someone, anyone, in the world searches for certain topics they will find me there at the top (Unfiltered search that is.) Google does filter search by preference of it's users these days but even then I tend to get high ranking.

I have many more pages that rank #1 and on page one for local and state wide searches.  In the end this means that those pages get looked at.  Every time one of those pages gets clicked it slightly raises that page in Google search in regards to other pages that are similar.  It also slowly helps raise my home page, or over all website in Google ranking.

Now 2 and a half years, 64 post, 594 keywords and long tail keywords later my sad little unseen website has slowly crawled to a point where I have and hold the #1 spot on Google for my primary long tailed keyword for the state that I live in. It ranks #1 out of 2,730,000 returns.  (corporate photography pa) I've held that number #1 spot for about a year and a half.

Now, I don't always get the job.  I don't always land the client but I am seen, found and I'm at a point where I can be selective about who and what clients I take or don't take once again.

It's true that most of my business is still word of mouth/referral but that doesn't mean that I am going to turn down good work that comes to me from the web when it does.  These days I average about one paying client for every 3000 - 4000 unique visitors to my site.  That may not sound like a lot but each one is a client that I didn't have yesterday.

For now I tend to get about 150 -250 unique visitors to my site each day.  That number can go as high as 2000 or more a day for a week or so after I cover a popular event in the area.  The most I have ever had is just under 8000 in a single day. That number however far and away out strips any other day I've had and can be counted as a spike and nothing more.

Anyway.  I'll happily take my number one spot in Pennsylvania for my line of work. I'll happily take what new clients I get in exchange for a few words of text and dropping a few photos on my antiquated out dated blog as well. It was after all my blog, along with a bit of creative internal and external SEO that got me there.  Not Facebook.  Not Twitter.  Not IG.

I am not making a killing.  I am not raking in cash hand over fist but my business is growing rather than declining like it was just 6 or 7 years ago.  I keep my family fed and a roof over their head and it is partly my blog that allows me to do that. 

The problem with blogging isn't that it's old and out of date. The problem is that people have high hopes and when it doesn't pan out instantly they give up.  Just like anything else the fault is in the user not the platform. 

Success in blogging and in return success in reaching high ranking on "Big G" have nothing to do with luck or for that mater even talent.  It simply requires using proven, well established technique that can be done by anyone who tries so long as they put their mind to it.

My Two Cents

-JAY- wrote:
wordpress

I switched to hostgator recently... my blog performance SIGNIFICANTLY improved over godaddy. I made no changes, yet response time went from 30+ seconds on page load times to instantaneously. (Note, I have most major IT related certifications, and know how to configure a blog / website - godaddy sucks for blog apps)

With wordpress, 1/8 of my pages show up on the 1st page with relevant searches in 6 months.

I agree with hostgator - I switched a client's Joomla site from 1&1 (who is absolutely terrible) to hostgator circa 2010 and had a very good experience with them.

ontherocks wrote:
might be easier to use a hosted solution (wordpress has one or there are ones like tumblr, blogger).

If you don't want it on your own server, I'd go with Tumblr as a first choice (because of the social aspects built in), then Blogger.  I find Wordpress.com sites to be a pain, and they nickle-and-dime you for every feature. 

But if you're running it yourself, Wordpress.org is fantastic.