Greg's small business success story.
How to earn when you are clever.
Media selling for newbies.
Although this article is not about photographing, let me introduce
myself.
My name is Greg Madisson and I am a well-known photographer from
Southern Spain.
Luckily we live in the 21st century when a person who produces
something is able to
sell that easily. I am talking about photobanks and photo-auctions;
there are
tons of them and a photographer, especially a talented one, is able to
earn some money.
As for me, I always hated being dependable on somebody's will and I
always dreamt to
open my own business. Even working with a famous photobank I felt I do
not have my own
business!
So I started thinking. What can I really do? The decision was -- to
open my own website.
I had a blog at Myspace.com already where I posted my photos (their
smallest versions mostly)
and I knew something about running a website. That would be a piece of
cake I imagined.
I am good at design so I made the presentation of the simple website
myself and my younger
brother helped me with moving that to html. The next thing was
registering a domain name and
purchasing hosting for my knew marketplace. That was really less than
$15, I was inspired!
What to do next? I found a problem. How to sell full versions of my
photos? Which payment
way to choose? How to program or at least setup all huge solutions on
my small website?
I was frustrated. Will my poor business die before being born?..
It will not I said and started searching! I found a couple of
companies who could help but their
rates were terrible. One imagined I would be happy to give them 60% of
my earnings! Ha! No way!
Another one wanted a serious setup fee, which was no good for me.
The third found company was Ubscribe.com (http://www.ubscribe.com/).
They had their system in
beta-mode (and still have now as I know) and first I was worried. They
promised to help me for free
and their rate was really good. But I have nothing to lose!
Their manager Andre was helping me by phone when I had any questions
and I am really grateful to him for
his help, I really had tons of stupid questions! Their technicians
even cleared up html on my page
and helped me setup everything on their side and even on mine! I felt
lucky. That was totally free.
The last thing I had to worry about was promoting my website (a
professional photographer homepage).
I have just put address of my page to all photobanks I worked with --
to my signature, to my personal
details, etc. That worked, I had 20-30 visitors a day and even got
first 2 sales! Andre from
Ubscribe.com contacted me personally with a congratulation. Oh how
happy I was! Whoa, it goes!
Next part was ordering links to my page at different companies.
Adbrite.com helped me much with that --
they allow to do this easily.
What do I have now? I popular website which I plan to make a photobank
to help young talented people follow
my steps. When I have a new photo, I create a new service and a
billing routine at Ubscribe.com (which is less
than a minute), upload my photo and I am almost over. After that I
press a button and here I have a new page
generated -- I add that to my site and my photo is ready for new
customers!
I believe everyone who owns any media materials (music, video, text,
any services) or wishes to sell in the Internet,
can follow my steps and use my experience to succeed.
I will have one more article soon, about promoting in the Internet for
newbies. Of course, if I got responses from
you, my readers, about this one. And if you like it!
That's it I think. If you guys have any questions to me about this
article or whatever else,
please contact me by email: gregmadisson@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
you for your time.
Greg.
P.S.: Special Thanks to
- Ubscribe.com (http://www.ubscribe.com/)
- Especially to Andre, you helped me really and I appreciate this,
man!
- Adbrite.com (http://www.adbrite.com/)
- Shutterstock.com (http://www.shutterstock.com/)
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