Do you own a photography business? Then you know how important it is to represent yourself and your brand while attracting new customers. Displaying your photographic work is a useful branding tool. There are many options for creating an online gallery of your work. Honestly, self-hosting your photography portfolio, as it may seem difficult to create, is the best option. Check out the top reasons why you should have a portfolio on your own website by our friend Viktor from webcreate.me.
Anyone can create a unique work sample
Photography is visual communication and web design. To show the results of your work to potential clients and provide additional information about the author, you need to create an online portfolio and approach it as a method of personal brand.
Although it may seem difficult at first, the truth of the matter is that you can create an attractive portfolio using WordPress and adjust it to your needs. Many photographers have amazing sites that they created with WordPress themes. Well-designed portfolios in such a competitive industry put your work in the eyes of clients on a higher level. At the same time, every online tool you use to promote your personal brand online will pay off sooner or later.
What advantages do you get from self-hosting?
Let's start with something very obvious from the rows written above. You will improve at least one more skill. As a photographer, you probably don't think about CMS systems and website creation. But if you decide to give it a try, it will enrich your skills and gain more knowledge about how websites work.
If you think it will be a waste of time, let's correct this error. By studying some simple WordPress tutorials, you will be able to choose the best WordPress hosting, install WordPress, add a WordPress portfolio theme, and customize the layout or appearance of your website. WordPress at the same time is a smart solution, as you don't need to waste time looking for a reliable web designer or spend a lot of money outsourcing it (unless you really want something special). At the same time, it is very easy to maintain a WordPress website yourself - most updates require just one click of a button.
Speaking of personal branding, the unique benefit of having a self-hosted wallet is an option for choose your domain name. This makes your website seem trustworthy, trustworthy and professional not to mention the biggest advantage of personal marketing.
This comes hand in hand with your very own email address that underlines the professional perspective. Email addresses are included in many hosting plans (or can be purchased separately) and allow you to better manage your mailbox.>
Good hosting companies at the same time offer numerous features and apps within the accommodation itself. This can include instant access to FTP, automatic backups, easy-to-install apps, malware scanning, built-in caching, test sites, and more. You can see reviews from some of the best WordPress hosting companies on R Marketing Digital's blog and hosting page.
At the same time, many of the free online galleries only offer limited space. As a photographer, you know how important storage is, as it can be a big problem when you want to upload and share your high-quality images. Most hosting companies offer basic plans that are affordable, but only offer a few gigabytes of stores, but this can be updated for a small fee. It is entirely up to you how you manage the size of the hosted files and how much space you will choose.
How can your personal brand benefit from a self-hosted portfolio?
Throughout your career, you will most likely experience many tricks that will make your life easier. Why not share them on the blog? Blogging as a personal marketing tool it comes with several benefits.
If you write unique blog posts, it means a greater opportunity for people to reach out to you on organic search. Organic reach is free and it is the traffic of a target group that might be interested in your services.
For search engines, it indicates that your website is trustworthy. Typically updated content and more indexed pages can mean you have a better chance of ranking.
Once you post useful content, people link to it, share it and new traffic from different sources can lead to your site. Your effort pays off in a really effective way, since you don't need to spend a lot of time and money promoting your work, since your readers will share it on social networks. The good thing is that the post is still available, so you can reach new people at the same time many days after the post (or even years if you update your content to keep it relevant).
If you're not into writing long 'how-to' posts very often, you can mix it up with a thematic selection of your photos by writing short descriptions using keywords. The power of blogging to you means that the content you create helps your target audience, so you will become a trusted source.
As we mentioned, blogs are good for ranking in search engines. In addition to the benefits of blogging, you can optimize your self-hosted website by using your own meta-titles, changing permalinks, etc. Google shows results that are more relevant, so be sure to really optimize your posts before publishing so that you can increase your chances of ranking higher in the results.
If you host your portfolio yourself, at the same time you can earn extra money from your WordPress blog by placing ads and controlling the income that would go to someone else's pocket.
A simple contact form at the same time enables you to respond to the demands of potential customers. If you can respond using Live Chat, you are in a perfect position to negotiate and establish collaboration.
Full control over your website with photography plugins
This wins over all. The ability to manage, change and customize your website without restrictions is the main benefit. WordPress at the same time offers tons of plugins that you can use to add interesting or unique functionalities to your website. Here are a few you might consider.
WordPress Picu Photo Test Gallery
Picu is a WordPress photographer plugin that makes the image selection process with clients much easier. Once the photoshoot is done, instead of uploading the images to Dropbox or a similar service, the photographer uploads the images to a collection within WordPress on their own web server and sends them to the client from there.
Afterward, the customer receives a good email with a link to the collection. The gallery is very intuitive and allows the client to very easily select which images they would like to edit. Once the client approves the selection, the photographer receives an email notification. The list of file names can be copied and pasted into Lightroom or any other image editor of your choice to filter the selected images and start processing right away.
At the same time, Picu collections can be protected with a unique password at the same time, so customers must access a password to be able to view the images and start selecting.
With the use of a custom shortcode, it is possible to display a list of collections anywhere on the site, as an example to build a "Client Area" page with all the collections or individual pages for each client with the respective collections.
The main plugin is available completely free on WordPress.org and can be enhanced with premium plugins that can be purchased at Picu.io.
To you
Wonder no more and let your photographic art impress as many people as possible. Creating an online portfolio can be easy with WordPress. Stay ahead of the competition and create your own platform to showcase the best of your work and improve your chances of getting hired.
Do you have any other tips for creating an online portfolio? Or maybe a question? Just leave a comment below, we'd love to hear from you!
