PixelatedImage Blog

I’m really excited to be announcing the release of the first collaborative book to come out of Craft & Vision. Hot on the heels of VisionMongers, my manager Corwin Hiebert has written Growing The VisionMonger, 10 Things a Manager Can Teach You About Running & Growing Your Business.

If you want to learn about f-stops and focal lengths, ask a photographer. If you want to learn about managing your business, ask a manager, and Corwin is a great manager. He’s not only the guy holding my own little world together but he performs management tasks for my friends Kevin Clark and Dave Delnea. He’s freaking great at what he does and he’s  neurotic about doing thing excellently and with efficiency. In short, he’s my secret weapon, and while not everyone needs or wants a manager in their back-pocket, using a the expertise of a manager is a sure way to grow your business.

Whether you’re a Weekend Warrior or a Working Stiff, there’s solid meat in here for you. And there’s action points with each of the 10 topics for both. If you made a New Year’s resolution to get serious about your photography business, this is a solid place to start. And for $5, it’ll leave you plenty of budget for that new logo and a retainer for your new accountant.

Still only $5, Growing The VisionMonger is available on the Craft & Vision website HERE or for immediate download with the fancy buttons below.

A Happy New Year from all of us at Pixelated Image Communications and Craft & Vision. May this year be the year you chase down your dreams.

A short post this morning as I’m swimming (drowning?) in the business and task-management end of things. Consider the brevity a chance to catch up on other reading

My learning curve feels endless and steep these days. New software, new business models, new cameras, shooting film and remembering what it’s like to get a bunch of crap back from the lab. I spent yesterday morning at my lawyers signing final incorporation documents and spent this evening with my accountant trying to not be a knucklehead about all the changes that incorporation means. It just doesn’t end and I feel like I’m drowning in it. But oddly it’s energized me. I’m busy but I’m reading, playing, and learning in the small gaps my schedule allows me.

I am also up to my neck in Vision & Voice, and writing the draft of Volume II of The Inspired Eye. But in all the stuff I’ve been thinking and writing about re. the creative process, I should add this: learn something new. When the rut starts feeling too deep, or the inspiration seems more like boredom, learn something new – anything, just make it new. If all you have is 20 minutes, sit down with Lightroom and try duplicating an effect you saw earlier today, or learn one of the plug-ins you haven’t had time to sit down and figure out. Don’t have time to learn? Then play. Just mess around with it. You’ll be surprised how well we learn when we’re actively trying to avoid learning and are just playing. Find 10 minute blocks to play.

Whatever you do, one thing is sure either as a creative, a business person, or a creative business person – to sit still is to stagnate, to not move forward is to move backwards, and the antidote to both is simply to learn something new daily. Make it intentional, carve out the time somehow, but learn.

This is a picture of my cat, Brie, on my – excuse me, on HER – office chair. Because nothing sets up a discussion of professionalism like a cat on a chair.

Ok, so you know I’ve got my reservations about the word “professional” when it’s set up against the word amateur. But the word “professionalism” where it applies to a high standard of excellence, that I can get on board with. In fact I’m constantly amazed at the lack of professionalism in creative industries. And I know I’m not the only one. I had an editor at a major photography magazine recently bemoan the fact that the photographers she works with can’t get things in on time. I’ve had other editors express total shock when I’ve replied to emails within an hour or two. Still others yet are amazed that I’ve replied to an image request on time and with well-delivered, clearly marked files that were to spec.

Seriously?

Frederick Van Johnson recently asked me why I feel like vocational photography is hard. One of the reasons I gave is that the point where craft and commerce meet is not an easy one to balance. I don’t even recall if I put it this way in VisionMongers or not, but if I didn’t, I should have. So in case I missed it, a recap: being a successful working photographer means far more than making photographs. I’ve barely shot a frame since the end of September – almost two months ago. We have times when it’s more important to stock the shelves, and this is one of those times for me. And then January will come and I’ll be shooting almost everyday for a couple months. But in the in-between times it’s not photography, it’s business. Consider these, among a great many other things, as a place to begin with a self-audit. Do you:

You reply to clients on time every time? If you’re too busy to do that, you’re too busy. If you wait 24 hours to reply to an email you’ve waited too long. If you only answer the “important” ones within 24 hours then you’ve made progress but are making assumptions about which ones are important. I’ve had many a client come from “unimportant” emails. They are all important. This is top of my list because I’m struggling with this now that the books are out. I lose track of the odd bit of fan mail, but even those are important. Don’t neglect your audience, whomever they are.

You meet client needs to the letter, then give them more? Files on time, well delivered, to spec.

You never, ever depart from the core of your brand? Know who you are, what you stand for, and never deviate.

Your outgoing emails, invoices, and every piece of collateral, is well-designed, consistent with each other and with the visual conventions of your brand, not just a logo?

You begin every day assuming your service or product can always be better and you take every opportunity to make it so?

You approach your market with the aim to serve them not exploit them?

That’s a short list. Be the best photographer you can be, and getting better. But you also need to be the best business-person you can be. Don’t like it? That’s one of the benefits of not bringing your craft to the world of commerce.

I’m not even sure who I’m talking to out there. If it’s you, it’s not too late. I do know why I’m telling you this – because it doesn’t take much for me to wow clients. And while that’s good for me, it bodes very badly for those among us who are setting the standard of mediocrity so low. I mean, c’mon, it’s hard enough to do this and keep your head above water, I know it is. I get emails all the time about these challenges. Don’t mulitply it with customer service that makes you look ragged around the edges and drives customers to someone else – who might be “less talented” but is more inclined to serve the customers you don’t have time to serve well.

Here’s one more that my manager made me change for this very reason: my invoicing. He literally forced me to sign up for Freshbooks and it’s changed the way I do invoicing. It’s amazing, and it’s very professional in the way it looks, and makes your business look. It’s also easier for your clients. Take one small step today, and everyday. Today, consider cleaning up your invoicing. Next week clean out your inbox – by replying to them or deleting them and starting fresh, but an inbox with 1000 emails, that’s only going to intimidate you and you’ll never, EVER, empty it. Clear it, create some rules to keep it ordered and end every day with it clear. Then standardize your letterheads and all outgoing email signatures – do one thing every day that begins with the assumption that your service needs work. A complete overhaul is intimidating, few of us have time for it, but one action-item a day gets the job done. Set the time aside. Raise the bar.

Last call on the BIG FAT BUSINESS CARD GIVEAWAY THING. I draw a name this evening sometime, so now’s your last time to get in on it.

Last week my new book got rolled out on Amazon.com, which means two things. Thing One: I can now talk about it. Thing Two: I guess I need to start writing this sucker now. Just kidding. Almost done, promise.

VisionMongers: Making A Life and a Living in Photography is due out in November/December. Amazon lists it at December 25 just to be safe but it’ll be out before then.

If you were asking me about it, and I know you want to, I’d tell you it’s a sketchbook of ideas about the pursuit of professional photography. But it’s more than that. See, I think the lines between so-called professional and so-called amateur are getting so blurred as to be almost meaningless. Same with the actual definitions of those words, so I approach this from a different angle; that of vocation and the notion that some of us do this not to make a million but because we simply can’t not do it. We feel called to it; by God, or our talent, our need to express ourselves, or just that persistent voice inside our heads that we can no longer ignore. So this is a book about following that call – it begins with passion and vision, taking inventory of ourselves, picking a niche, familiarizing ourselves with our market, and then taking our vision to market with the best marketing savvy and business acumen that we can. Within The Frame talked a lot about the balance between the artist and the geek, VisionMongers discusses the balance between craft and commerce.

Throughout the book are stories about other photographers from other niche markets, people like Chase Jarvis, Zack Arias, Gavin Gough, and Ami Vitale. These case studies look at the unique journeys each of us have taken to pursue our calling as photographers, and the commonalities among them.

I’m writing it, and nearly done, because I love what I do and can’t imagine doing anything else with my life. Every day I get emails from people who want to do this, make a living with their vision and their cameras, and wanting some advice. The thing is we all have a different journey, different passion and vision, and a different path to get here. So this is no road map, no book of secrets – because there are none -  just a book of solid ideas about how to make a life and a living in photography, though specifically for the freelancer/entrepreneur, which these days is the bulk of us. I wrote this book to help others find the same joy and purpose in vocational photography as I’ve found, whether that’s full-time, part-time, or as a moonlighter.

The book is available for pre-order now, out in November. You can find it HERE on Amazon.com. Most importantly, the book will be the same size as Within The Frame, so they’ll be symmetrical on your shelf, which is in itself a great reason for buying the books. 

This is my friend Eileen. We shot these to meet her need for new headshots and my need to play with my 5D Mk2 back in December. When it comes to undeniable awesomeness and perseverance, this chick’s got it in spades.

Monday’s post got me to thinking about the whole “becoming a professional photographer” thing and the strange way in which this stuff is really all so elementary and simple, and yet at the same time so hard and complicated-feeling. I’m 45,000 words into a book on the subject so my mind is filled with this paradox. But at the heart of it one of the questions people seem to be asking, is “Am I good enough?” It’s a good question, even an important one, and one I think we all need to have a long hard look at before we make the transition. But it’s not the most important one. Because talent alone doesn’t make it. The question is “Do I love it enough?” or, to re-phrase it: “How badly do you want it?”

A while back Chase Jarvis said something like this – there are two things you need to succeed: to be undeniably awesome at what you do, and to persevere. He’s bang on about that.

But for those of you dogged by the constant doubts about whether you are good enough, let me remind you of something – we’re all getting better, day by day if you work on your craft you are getting better, closer to being “good enough” which is a standard most artists always feel they fall just short of. Why? Because as our vision slightly outpaces our ability to express it, we’re always following the carrot, always feeling that our best shot is our next one, not our last one. Furthermore, and this is going to sound so cynical, the industry is full of mediocre talents who are making a solid career out of this. Why? Perseverance. I don’t say that to encourage the mediocrity, but to encourage you that if they can do it, so can you and I. And if you add “undeniable awesomeness” at whatever level you define that, to perseverance, then you can make it.

You may never be able to answer the question “Am I good enough?” to your own satisfaction, but one client at a time you’ll begin to hear the answer. Keep at it. Don’t let fear hold you back.

Whatever the next step for you is, take it boldly. These are not times for the timid; there’s no reward in tiptoeing through life only to make it safely to death.

A quick shot taken with my iPhone on the way to Tampa last week to spend time with Scott Kelby and the gang – a trip which in fact would also brilliantly illustrate the sermon below. Mostly I just included it to make up for some of the posts with no images from last week.

I spent the weekend with one of my closest friends and his family; a rare chance to see them afforded me by a speaking gig for the government. And there’s a lesson or two in here that I think are worth unpacking, if only for myself. So let me set the stage for you and tell you this was a great gig. I flew an hour to get there, presented 2 ninety minute presentations for 2 wonderful crowds, was paid very well, and then had a nice chat with my client about doing it a couple more times before the year is over. I really enjoyed myself, enjoyed this client more than most, and got paid – did I mention this? – very well compared to a day of shooting.

How did this come about? Glad you asked. My friend is as close to me as a brother. He’s a fan too. And when one of his co-workers told him she was going to Kathmandu during a period I would be there, Troy told me I should connect. We did, had a lovely afternoon and some chai overlooking the Boudha stupa in Kathmandu and we parted ways, she to the orphanage she was volunteering at, and I to my work. A couple months later we both returned to our lives in Canada and she put me in touch with a friend of hers who uses speakers a couple times a year. It was a good fit and one thing led to another. I spoke about my journey and told my story. I showed a lot of photographs.

The lessons?

Lesson A
Conversations Lead To Opportunities. For all the clever talk about marketing and positioning and branding and quarterly mailers, hands down the most powerful marketing tool I have is one fan or friend telling another person about me and seeing where the connections occur. It’s not magic and it isn’t leveraging friendships to make a buck. It’s genuine connections and openness to every opportunity that comes your way. You can’t control it, and have no idea where it will lead, but at the risk of sounding repetitive – the single best thing I ever do for my business is to love, respect, and make time for people.

Lesson B
Explore your full set of skills and passions. These days many journalists are finding that they need to diversify into multi-media to keep working, but they aren’t the only ones. Making a life in photography isn’t just taking photographs. Selling prints isn’t taking photographs, but many photographers make money that way. Teaching technique or writing articles isn’t making images but it’s a good way to remain in the community and industry you love while still making a living. And public speaking, in my case to government employees about my unique journey and the power of vision to change a life, isn’t making images either – but I love it. I’m good at it. It pays bills. And it – here’s where it loops around – introduces me to more people and more opportunities. Sure, you’ll wear a number of hats – that’s a given – but the more intentionally you wear those hats and don’t ignore any of them, the more intentionally you can find work that only a photographer with that combination of hats can do.

Within a few months I’ll be announcing my next book, and without giving it all away it’s a book that discusses making a life and a living in photography – this stuff is at the heart of it. People want steps and formulas, checklists for success, but those don’t exist because at the beginning and end of it all is one person talking to, and serving, another person. The ways in which we find each other and connect are endless. But it begins with knowing what you love and what you’re good at, then opening yourself to every opportunity that comes your way and seeing where it leads.

Sunset on the Malecon, Havana, Cuba.

Hey, folks. Hope you’re having – or had – a great long-weekend. I’ve got a real grab-bag for you this morning before I fade off into a couple days of potentially inconsistent presence here again.

I had a nice exchange with one of my readers this past week about the Photographer and The Blog series I did a while back. She asked if content was still king in light of competing claims that relationships were king. Good question, indeed, and as I’m a fan of good questions, I took some time to let the whole issue percolate, and it raised a more fundamental question:

King of What? No doubt about it, the internet is full of some potentially powerful tools for the photographer – both to create an audience for our work and to find clients, build community and participate in a culture of learning. So, is content the king of the whole darn thing? Or just one piece of it? The more I thought about it the more sure I became that while  – to really belabour the metaphor – there can only be one king per kingdom, there might be multiple kingdoms, and I think it looks like this:

Relevant Content is King of the Pull. Great content is still the king of the castle when it comes to pulling people to your blog. People that don’t know you and have no reason to come to you will come for great content. And great content will keep them there too – so long as it remains relevant. But is that all you want? You’ve attracted people but in order to engage them and build a community, you need something more.

Relationship is King of the Keep. Relationships and a growing community will keep people, and engage them on deeper levels in ways content alone can’t do. Pulling people in to your blog with content is fine, but connecting with them will turn them into fans, and a growing community to which they feel connected in some way will mobilize them become part of the effort to build and grow that community.

If you are looking to merely draw people in, content still works. But if you want to build something bigger (and, I would say, better) then you need to connect with people, engage them with your heart as well as your mind. Why does this matter? It might not, depends on your goals. But most people want to draw readers to a blog for a reason and more often than not I think that same reason might be better served by great content and a level of connection and relationship with the reader.  Not unlike a great photograph, in fact.

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In other news. By the time you read this I’ll be up and heading to the airport en route to Tampa to spend a couple days working and playing with Scott Kelby, RC Concepcion, Brad Moore, Scriv, and the rest of the gang down at the intergalactic HQ of NAPP. Very excited to be back down there among some of my all-time, no-holds-barred, favourite people. They have this great culture of creativity down there, one that just seems full of energy and laughter. And some great restaurants too. Sun. Food. Friends. Could you ask for more? I think not. So, things’ll be light around here.

The Within The Frame Podcast, Peachpit TV. I’m hoping the first of the Within The Frame Podcasts is out by then, and I can point you to that. The podcast is a critique-based opportunity for me to discuss some of the concepts in the book; if you want in on the action, join the Within The Frame group in Flickr HERE, and be sure you also go HERE to give us consent on your images.

Amazon.com Reviews. Hey, do me a favour? My book, Within The Frame, is really gaining momentum and I’m getting some truly gracious emails about it. If you’ve read it, please don’t stop sending the emails – they’re really encouraging – but if you could take a moment to post a comment or two on Amazon.com, I’d be super-grateful.

Within The Frame, Downloadable Bonus Chapter. Also, be sure not to miss the downloadable bonus chapter of Within The Frame. It’s called The Travel of Art, and it’s a gear-focused, geek-out-on-travel-stuff look at my process for traveling – everything from what I take, to how I take it and keep my gear and me safe and healthy. Read the last two pages of the book, the details are in there on how to access that bonus material..

This one’s primarily aimed at those who’ve picked up the camera as not only a means of making a life but of making a living. I’m not going to powder-coat this for you – it’s tough out there. I get email after email from college students, all of them looking the same-ish

Dear Mr. duChemin (that part always creeps me out), I am a college student and now in my final year have decided that you have the perfect job EVER and I want to do it too. Please tell me how I can do this so I can travel the world and take photographs and become fabulously wealthy with very little effort.

Ok, they aren’t quite like that. But some of them come close and I never quite know how to answer. I want to be encouraging; I think they’re right, I do have the best job ever and I don’t for a moment take it for granted. But if you’ve been around these parts for long you know it took me a long and winding road to get here. Lots of ups, downs, victories and defeats. I could be brutally honest but while I want to disabuse people of the notion that this is an easily-gained fairy tale life, I also don’t want to discourage them from fighting to live their dream. Anyways, I’ve been thinking about this stuff this weekend and this is one of the things I keep coming back to.

You need to do an inventory and become very aware of what’s in stock and on offer. Approached as Brand You, the questions are: What makes you unique? What differentiates you from other photographers? What unique spot in the marketplace do you occupy? These questions then get answered by asking yourself other clarifying questions, all of them aimed at identifying your inventory.

What do you love?
Love kids? Generally we shoot best that which we love best. And spending your days shooting things you love is a great way to make a living, it can energize you, prolong your sanity, and improve the quality of your creative work. Better work, marketed right, can mean better prices.

What Past Experiences Have You Had?
If you’ve done a PhD in Marine Biology you’re uniquely poised to be a marine or conservation photographer. Expertise is not only profoundly saleable but it likely points towards a deeper passion. When stacked against another photographer who shoots food you have a distinct advantage if you spent years as a chef in Paris, and that advantage makes you more saleable than the photographer who just shoots food for the money.

What are you good at?
I love writing. Writing is not photography. But writing about photography allows me to give back to the industry, establish an area of expertise, and develop another area where I can both express myself, work in and for the industry, and contribute to my income. It might not be writing for you. It might be re-touching or composite work. It might be video work. Live lecturing. Cleaning sensors. Multiple income streams can free you to be choosier about your work and gives you a fighting chance when the bottom drops out of one thing. It also provides an outlet for creatives with short attention spans, allowing them give their best work without getting drained.

Alternately, why not look at things in reverse. So long as you’re looking at the shelves and counting your inventory, where are the empty spaces? What are the areas you don’t like, the areas you’ve experienced the least amount of success or creative satisfaction? Those empty shelves likely mean one of two things – an absence of passion or an absence of talent or skill.  You’ve got two choices in this regard; use that knowledge to define the gigs you don’t want so you can focus on your strenghts, or put your energies into shoring up the weak spots and stocking those particular shelves.

The truth is, there are hundreds of thousands of photographers out there, skilled and otherwise. It is not generally your singular ability to wield a camera and pick an f-stop that clients want, it is your unique passion, individual vision and style, and your unique skillset, that will determine which clients find a match in which photographer. Knowing the ongoing state of your inventory, selling that particular stock, and doing something about the empty shelves, these make it all significantly easier to put your craft on offer in the marketplace.  Hitting a dry spot? Just starting out? Close shop for an afternoon and do some inventory. It’s easier to sell what you know you have.

As a follow-up to last week’s series on blogging for photographers, here’s a list of the blogs I look to as a standard. They’re mostly personal blogs with solid traffic, unique voices and good content. A number of you sent suggestions that included your own blog and I encourage everyone to go back to the comments on that post HERE – to see more suggestions both in regards to blogs and to hosting and blog platforms. Some excellent reader feedback there. So please don’t take offense if your blog isn’t in the list below, this is a pretty cursory list of solid, more established blogs that I hope will inspire you as you build your own blogs to reflect your purpose and passion. Being on this list means something, but not being on it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Hope that makes sense.

M.D. Welch – http://www.depth-of-field.com/blog/

Scott Kelby – http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/

Matt Brandon – http://www.thedigitaltrekker.com/blog/

Gavin Gough – http://www.gavingough.com/blog

Joe McNally – http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/

Moose Peterson -http://www.moosenewsblog.com/

Chase Jarvis – http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/

Strobist – http://strobist.blogspot.com/

Tewfic El-Sawy – http://thetravelphotographer.blogspot.com/

Drew Gardner – http://photography-thedarkart.blogspot.com/

Bruce Percy – http://www.brucepercy.com/blog/

Zack Arias – http://www.zarias.com/

David Nightingale – http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/index.php

Kirk Tuck – http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/

Jessica Claire – http://www.jessicaclaire.net/

Jasmine Star – http://www.jasminestarblog.com/

Guy Tal – http://guytal.com/wordpress/

Kathleen Connally – http://www.durhamtownship.com/

Dane Sanders – http://blog.danesanders.com/

Did I miss someone that you think is an absolute must-have on the list? Doesn’t surprise me. The Internets are a big place. Drop it into the comments.

As far as hosting goes I want to plug ETWebHosting again. (Click here to go to their WordPress hosting page) They also own DomainSmarty, so the process of registering your name and hosting it are seemless – I don’t like complications and doing it all in one place with a company that has brilliant customer service is my kind of service. The company is owned by my buddy, we’ve travelled around the world together, he’s photographer friendly, and unlike most of the companies I’ve dealt with or heard horror stories about, his company doesn’t speak geek to us mere mortals.  If you’re a pro, or plan to be, having a dedicated name for  your blog – like, for example, Moose Peterson’s MooseNewsBlog.com – is way better than moosepeterson.blogspot.com – it’s just one step closer to projecting a fully professional image. Of course there are exceptions. David Hobby’s Strobist site is as plain jane as it gets and the name is still strobist.blogspot.com, but his content is so good and so well known that it trumps other considerations.

I also want to encourage you to spread the word about your blog. If you take the time to write consistently, then take the time to publicize it. Connect to others, share the love, get on Twitter and direct traffic to your great content and images.

If I can answer questions related to blogging as a photographer, I’d love to. I know that some of the other readers will have some excellent feedback to, so drop the questions into the comments and together we’ll do what we can to get you blogging and doing it well. Now take a moment and visit a few of the sites above.

So if I didn’t dissuade you from blogging yesterday, and the lame photo above doesn’t turn you off, here’s a few suggestions for plunging headlong into blogging. Taylor Davidson left a comment on Tuesday’s post citing anecdotal evidence that many blogs don’t make it past the 3 month mark. Don’t let this happen to you. This is a short list, and it applies to long-term bloggers looking to breathe new life into their blog with an overhaul as much as it does to new bloggers.

1. Don’t let the name fool you, blogging is just writing. You are self-publishing a daily or weekly column, nothing more. So unless you’ve got a photoblog with no words, bone up on your writing skills.

2. Content Is King. Seriously. In fact it’s more like Grand Emperor. Unless you are a celebrity to whom people are drawn like desperate flies, people will come for what you write. If you’re hysterically funny, many will overlook what you write and come for how you write it. But most of you will draw an audience based purely on content. You must have something to say. And unless you lead a profoundly interesting life, or a boring one about which you write incredibly well, people simply won’t show up to read it. Unless it’s your mother and I’m betting even she has limits.

3. Skip the freebie webhosts, like Blogger, and go straight to Wordpress.com or Wordpress.org. Just save yourself the grief and do it right the first time. I wish I had. I reserve a special place of loathing for Blogger. Typepad is fine, but you pay for it so might as well go straight to Wordpress. Wordpress.com is a paid and hosted kind of deal, Wordpress.org is free for the downloading, but you need to install it on your server and update yourself, so there’s a certain degree of geekdom required. If you’re looking for great hosting, I can’t recommend ETWebHosting strongly enough. Sure, you can get free hosting out there but you get what you pay for. I’ve been using ETWebHosting for years and their reliability and customer service is fantastic. If all you want to do is get a blog up and running, then spend the few dollars/month and get a Wordpress.com blog.

4. Find a name you can live with for a long time. Getting the word out and the momentum going is tough work and will take you time to build a readership. Blogs are spread virally, so once your URL is out there it’s best if you can let it do its thing without changing it up.

5. Find a niche. Not everyone needs one, but it helps. Strobist is a great example. Another way of looking at it: play to your strengths. If what you most want to do is post a combination of images and narratives and leave off with the gear talk, do it. If you want to focus solely on macro photography, do it. Follow your expertise or your passion.

6. Don’t take it too seriously. It’s just a blog for gosh sakes. Enjoy it. Know your audience but write what you want to write – it’s your blog, not theirs.

7. Be consistent. If you want consistent and growing readership, and not all people have that as a goal, then writing consistently is important. Doesn’t have to be everyday, but if you decide to post every Wednesday, make sure you show up or your readers won’t. But make sure you have something to say. Better to post actual content people care about and only post once a week, than to post junk every day.

8. Use social media to support your blog. If you’re already on Facebook or Twitter, be sure to let those people know when you post to your blog. This draws in people from that outer circle of your immediate circle of friends, people that otherwise wouldn’t know about your blog.

9. Interact. Part of the payoff of blogging is meeting new people, making connections, and expanding your world. Reply to comments, link to others, and in general keep the love flowing.

10. This one’s yours. Got a suggestion for successful blogging, specifically for photographers, then this is your spot. Actually the comments are your spot, so consider this symbolic.

For tomorrow’s post I’d love to assemble a list of photographers who are blogging and really doing it well. Could be a blog like mine with lots of words and opinion, could be strictly a photoblog like David Nightingale’s Chromasia, but if you’ve got a favourite, throw it into the comments and I’ll compile them.