Outsourcing development of your photo site

I am not a coder, nor am I a designer. What can people like us do to develop our own website? Well I've "created" several websites ranging from the very simple (like this blog) to marginally more complicated (like a ning social networking site), to some that require a little more knowledge (like Joomla sites), and finally to sites like my stock photo site in osCommerce that is so complicated I have had to outsource most of it's development (I do not have the required skillset for this kind of thing).

There is alot to be said for building a site within your skillset. It allows you to tackle issues that you want to tackle when you want to tackle them. You are not dependent on others. This is huge - depending on outsourced coders is a messy business in my experience (more on that later). Of course, the downside of working within your skillset is if you are like me (and have limited coding knowledge) you end up working with only the simplest tools and these often do not have the functionality or flexibility you may often want or need. If you are a skilled coder and are building a site then hey, the world's your oyster (provided you have some business skills). But for the rest of us it can be difficult.

In my case I had many ideas about how I wanted my stock photo site to work. None of which I could find in an easy to work with package. I'm not saying there are no good packages out there - but when I was looking and for what I had in my mind, I couldn't find anything. I went with osCommerce. Very flexible but very difficult (for a non-coder) to work with. I was (and still am) in the hands of hired coding guns. (Note: - if I had the whole thing to do over again I would seriously consider a simpler option. At least just to start and test the concept. Just a note for those thinking about creating their own photo site.)

In getting a coder one first has to find a site to work with. There are quite a few sites out there where one can find coding freelancers "getafreelancer", "rentacoder", "elance" etc. I happen to like rentacoder. Once you decide whom you want to work with you then sign-up (on some sites this can be onerous - they are very careful about credit cards), post a project, put up the money (sometimes it goes into an escrow account), and start reviewing the bids when they come rolling in.

Review the bids carefully - many coders seem to just bid on everything - even if they don't have the skills. Also I toss out the ridiculously cheap bids. They will often create situations where you get poor work done and you just waste time (at least that has been my experience). Getting a good coder is partly luck but you can increase your odds by reading their reviews and asking them some key questions.

After you choose the right person or team and start to move the project forward I would suggest being pretty strict about timelines as well. It's great to be a nice guy and provide all sorts of leeway but it often gets you into trouble as things start to slip. No-one wants to be a jerk but it's your money and your project and you have to move it forward. And things will slip! They almost always do - so stay on top of it.

Some freelance sites allow you to choose what countries you want to choose your coders from (filters the countries to which your bid goes out to). I have found that the good folks in eastern europe tend to provide quality work for reasonable prices. Again, just my experience - I guarantee you there are great coders all over the world but I've worked with some great folks in eastern europe.

Finally, if you find someone good, treat them well and hang on to them. If you lose a good coder (who already knows your site) you will waste significant time and effort in replacing them.

Pricing your photography

Well, it finally happened. I had someone come to me with an order that did not fit in any way into the photo pricing tables I have built into my site. My knowledge of stock photography pricing oustide of my tables is limited. My tables are good - I was fortunate to get them from professionals - but they do not cover everything. Additionally this customer was interested in multiple usage of some night sky photos - ranging from banner ads to brochures to prospectus'.

I sought advice from others in the industry who indicated I should cost each use individually (as best I could), add them all up, then present the customer with the total. This is what I did but I could not help wondering that if someone buys an image for multiple uses should I be offering some kind of discount? I did not offer a discount and did not get the sale (alhtough in this case I do not believe these two things to be related - read on...).

After searching the Internet and talking with folks about "potential discounts" it strikes me that this is an industry with few defined rules. The answers seem to be "No", or "Possibly, but only a small amount and this depends on x, y, and z". In this particular case however I was pretty confident that if my costs were "near" their budget then they would have asked for a discount. As it turns out my costs were significantly higher than their budget (thus the reason for the loss of the sale - I was not willing to provide a large enough discount to get near their budget).

This entire experience just highlighted to me that this is an area one must brush up on when entering the industry (I guess that is pretty obvious in hindsight). I still view this as a positive experience as it indicates that selling photos online has potential.

I recently visited a bookstore and after perusing the photography section I came across the book "Pricing Photography: The Complete Guide to Assignment & Stock Prices". I did not buy it but I am considering doing so. It appears to be one of the few books that tackles this issue and provides some insights into how much photos should cost and how to deal with folks asking for bargains, etc. The book can be viewed on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.ca/Pricing-Photography-Complete-Assignment-Prices/dp/1581152078

If anyone has used this book I would be interested in hearing your input/comments.

Also after grinding through Google searches for hours I have found a few free stock photography pricing resources online one may find useful:

http://photographersindex.com/stockprice.htm
http://www.editorialphoto.com/resources/estimator/estimator.asp
http://www.sethresnick.com/price/price.html

I also ran into a few Photo Pricing software tools. While I did not purchase any I did try a few demos. So far the demos are so limited in functionality that they are useless and do not provide a good insight into the potential of the tool - although I have not tried fotoQuote and I've heard it is not bad (but it is not cheap at 140USD - although maybe ok if it really helps nail down a few sales). They have a demo as well which I have not gotten around to trying:

http://www.cradocfotosoftware.com/fotoQuote-Pro/index.html

Setting up Google Webmaster Tools on your Photography Site

I am a great proponent of both Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, having used them both on several of my sites (including my stock photography website). I recently wrote an article on setting up Google Analytics on your Photo Website. This article will discuss how to setup Google Webmaster Tools.


But first - Why use Webmaster Tools?

Why would you want to use Google Webmaster Tools? Well, it gives you very valuable insights into how the most “influential” search engine in the world is viewing and interacting with your site (if you are interested in traffic you need to be considering this). Following are a few of the application’s offerings:

- Learn when Google last looked at your homepage.
- See if Google is experiencing errors or problems in trying to crawl your pages. Also, what kind of errors these may be and on which particular pages.
- Find out how many of your pages are in the Google search index.
- Learn which other sites link to you (important for ranking well)
- See the top Google queries from which users reached your site. Also see the top Google queries in which a page from your site appeared in the Google results.
- Do sitemap XML sitemap submission.
- View, both graphically and numerically, crawling stats such as the number of your pages crawled per day, number of kilobytes downloaded per day, time spent downloading a page – if you have a site which is growing these are important to watch.
- Opt in to Google’s Enhanced Image Search (Appear in Google Image searches – possibly good for photography sites in my opinion)
- Etc.

If you have built a photography site that, for example, uses a lot of flash and has very heavy pages, the above data may surprise you and ultimately help you identify and fix issues and drive more customers to your site (even if your site wasn't constructed this way the information you get from the tool will be very helpful).


Google Analytics vs Google Webmaster Tools

What is the difference between Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools? In brief, Analytics lets you see how users are interacting with your site while Webmaster Tools lets you learn how Google sees your site. The tools really complement one another. A more detailed description of Google Analytics can be found in my Analytics article if you want more information.

I really feel that webmasters will benefit from having both tools operating on their website. Once you start with the two tools you will wonder how your photo site got along without them.


Installing Google Webmaster Tools

Create an Account

You must have an account with Google. It is free. If you have an account, great, if not then go to the Google homepage www.google.com and check the upper right of the page:

Click “Sign in” and either sign in if you have an existing account (bear in mind this will tie your Webmaster Tools to this account), or if you don’t have a Google account click “Create an account now” and sign up for an account. Note: (If you have installed Analytics then you do have a Google account and you do not need to sign up for another one to install Webmaster Tools.)

Sign-in & Add Your Site

Once you have an account go to:

www.google.com/webmasters/tools

and sign in using your email and password. You should see a page similar to that below:

Simply type your site URL in the box. Example: www.yourdomain.com then click the “Add Site” button.

Verify Your Site

Google will then ask you to Verify Your Site (this helps them ensure that you are the owner of the site).

Click on the “Verify your site” link to take you to the page below where you will choose a verification method from the dropdown (both options “Add a meta tag option” and “Upload an HTML file option” work equally as well). The verification step indicates to Google that you have access to your server and can edit your files (and you are therefore an “owner”).

If you choose the meta tag option:


Note: Click on the above image if the text is too small to read.

After you have added the line of code and saved your homepage, go back to this page and click the ‘Verify” button on the bottom of the page. You should get another page that has this message on it:

If you going to try to become verified using an html file it is not a dissimilar approach. You simply create an html file with a filename Google gives you – like: googleec9d264a22d3a543.html and you upload this to your site root directory, then click the “Verify” button. Personally I like the meta tag verification technique. You don’t have to create a file, you just cut and paste – but they are both pretty straightforward.

Once your photo site is verified you are done! Google will now start gathering and displaying (to you) Webmaster Tools data about your site.

Signing-in in the future

Also, when you sign in from the Google homepage in the future…

…you will go to your Google Account page and see the products you have successfully signed up for under “My Products” – you can click through to them from here (see below).



Note: If you have clicked on Webmaster Tools (above) you will be taken to a page (below) where you click on your domain name in the Webmaster Tools Dashboard to see the Webmaster Tools main menu:


Google Webmaster Tools will provide you a host of information about your photography site. Errors Google may be encountering spidering your site, top searches driving traffic to your site from Google, what your rankings are for related queries, external and internal links, etc.


Video on What Google Webmaster Tools can do for your Site

I’ve searched far and wide for a decent Google Webmaster Tools video and oddly enough they don’t seem that easy to find (Google Analytics seems easier). However I found this one (link below) and this is actually quite good, if a little laid back.

video

Setting up Google Analytics on your Photography Site

I frequent a few photography forums. On several of them I’ve noticed people asking for reviews of their personal websites (I’m one of them). Often, somewhere in the comments somebody says “you should sign up for Google Analytics” and/or “you should sign up for Google Webmaster Tools”. I have used both of these tools quite a bit on several of my websites. They provide you a window into information that you didn’t realize was really (freely) available before. After using these for a while you will feel that without them you are flying blind. Needless to say I am a proponent of the tools.

I thought that since a large number of photographers are building sites and a large number of the people reviewing those sites are recommending the Google tools, why don’t I put together a few blog postings showing folks how to get their site setup with these tools. Perhaps many of the people designing and creating their websites already know but I’m willing to bet that some do not.


What is the difference between Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools?

First though - what are the two tools and what is the difference between them (and why are they such a good thing to have)? In brief, Analytics lets you see how users are using your site while Webmaster Tools lets you see how Google sees your site.

According to Google, Analytics is described as follows:

“Google Analytics shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance their visitor experience. Improve your website return on investment, increase conversions, and make more money on the web.”

For example – what kind of browsers are your users using? (you want to make sure your site performs as expected in the most frequently used browsers for your site). What kind of connection speed do the users have? (are folks still using dialup to access your site?). What countries are they coming from? How often are they returning to your site?, etc. This list goes on. These are great things to know and they can change your approach and strategies.


Google describe Webmaster Tools as follows:

“Your Google Webmaster Tools account provides information about your added sites, Sitemaps, their latest updates, and also allows you to add new Sitemaps for crawling by Google.”

This definition is a little hard to understand I think. I feel that Webmaster Tools gives you insights into how Google sees your site. Why do you care? Well, you want your pages to be in the Google search index and you want them to rank well so you can get more traffic. Webmaster Tools lets you upload sitemaps to Google, it tells you what issues (if any) the Google spider may be having when trying to crawl your site (and grab your pages), it tells you how the spider “sees” your site in terms of keywords and frequency, and a number of other things.

I really feel that webmasters need to have both tools operating for their website but it may be that folks will get more out of Analytics first. As such I will focus this writeup on how to install Analytics and then do Webmaster Tools in my next blog installment.


Installing Google Analytics

You must have an account with Google. It is free. If you have an account, great, if not then go to the Google homepage www.google.com and check the upper right of the page:



Click “Sign in” and either sign in if you have an existing account (bear in mind this will tie your Analytics to this account), or if you don’t have a Google account click “Create an account now” and sign up for an account.

Once you have an account go to:

http://www.google.com/analytics/

and sign in using the email and password you used to create your Google Account. After entering your email and password you should see page like the one below:



Just click on the “Sign Up” button. This will take you to the New Account Sign Up page.



Fill in the information, then continue to the Contact Information page and fill this in as well. On the next page accept the User Agreement and this will take you to the Add Tracking page. This is the page that contains the code you need to add to your website in order for Analytics to work.

Click on the “New Tracking Code (ga.js)” tab – see below – and copy the code in the box.



As Google says you have to paste this code immediately before the tag of each page you are planning to track. Hopefully you use a template for your site and you can just insert this in the homepage – in this case you only have to past this into the template once (because it will then appear automatically on all of your pages). Or, as some folks in the forums have pointed out "insert the js code into an include file, perhaps something already existing like a copyright footer" - this accomplished the same thing.

Example of pasting the code below:





After you have finished pasting the code save the page. Back in Google you can click “Continue” from the Tracking Instructions page. You will then be taken to a page with a “Check Status” button. When you click this button Google will go look at your site and see if you have added the code correctly to your website's homepage.

Upon successful validation Google will show the following:



That’s it! It usually takes about 24 hours before Analytics starts to show any information so after 24 hours or so log back in and browse the features. They are reasonably self explanatory and there are many.

I often review information like:

- Traffic sources – where is my traffic coming from. What is increasing, what is decreasing, etc.
- What is the bounce rate?
- What Keywords are driving traffic from what search engine?
- Which pages on the site are viewed most?
- Occasionally I look at what countries are driving traffic and also do a content overlay to see what links users are clicking-on on my homepage.


Analytics Video
I’ve found a great video put out by Google on what you can do with Analytics. It is really worth the 9 minutes it takes to watch it.

Environmental photos and pollution photos are popular

In a previous posting I talked about what photos sell. Actually I asked the question "what photo themes sell and how do we find out"? No-one really seemed to know if this kind of information was in the public domain and I have not yet figured out where to find it. In the absence of this kind of "big picture" information (believe me I haven't stop digging), I have used Google analytics to better understand what people are looking for on my site.

If you haven't used Google analytics you should. It is free, extremely simple to setup, and provides you with more information about what is happening on your website than you will likely need. Couple this with Google webmaster tools - another freebie that provides you insights into your indexing and ranking on Google - and you are well on your way to understanding how both Google and your customers see and use your site.

In reviewing my traffic and most popular pages I have noticed that most of my traffic is coming from folks looking for environmental and pollution related photography. Granted that I have a lot of this material. But I also have quite a bit of other stuff and the extent to which the traffic to the environmental and pollution photos outranks the traffic to other photos is quite significant. Some of my more popular photos are garbage polluted stream and smog in Vancouver, BC. These are not the prettiest photos by far, but yet they are getting a large part of the traffic. I am also now finding a lot of folks are looking at the Science Photos on the site.

I suspect that some of the newer iceberg shots that will be going up shortly will also become very popular (the photographer (Dave) has recently returned from a iceberg photo shoot). Given the trend I'm seeing with respect to environmental related shots, I think anything to do with global warming and other environmental issues will likely attract attention. I expect icebergs, glaciers, air pollution pictures, water pollution pictures and other similar themes will do well.

Why purchase from one of the smaller stock photo sites?

Are there any benefits to customers (buyers of rights-managed stock photography) in frequenting some of the smaller, photographer or family-run stock photo sites? Well, in my opinion there is. The larger sites certainly have the advantage of very large numbers of photos and, as a result, typically a wide range of themes. However, if you know what kind of material you are after there are some distinct advantages to accessing some of the more “personal” stock photo sites.

The ability to contact the photographer direct...
For example, if you wish to speak directly to the photographer to clarify anything related to the photo, try doing this with an agency. You likely will not be able to, and if they act as the middleman in your correspondence it may not be handled in an expedient manner – you are probably on a deadline and getting “we can’t do it” or a “we will send a message for you but have no idea when we can get back to you” will not be good. With a stock photo site that is run and operated by the photographer for instance, you have the option to interact with them directly. If they are on the ball they will answer your question promptly – either by email or even over the telephone.

Small sites often have the freshest content...
Probably the greatest reason to use smaller, often niche, stock photo sites is the freshness of content. When a photographer sends his material to a stock photo agency it can take up to three months for them to get this material on-line. However the photographer will often have his latest material up on his own site within days of taking the shots. If he has managed to capture some great material then it will be exclusively on his site for several months before making into the mainstream stock photo agency sites.

Higher quality photo editing...
Something else to consider is the touch up work done on the photographs you are purchasing (all photos are touched up in one way or another). Are you getting quality work here? The key is who is doing the work – is it being done by the photographer or the agency? An interesting question. I would argue that the best work will be done by the photographer. He is the artist and he takes pride in his work and also has a keen eye for exactly what the shot should look like. If the photo is on his site then you can be pretty sure that he has done this work himself. With large agencies I believe some ask the photographer to do the “photo tuning”, but with others I’m pretty sure they have this done in-house by someone paid by the hour to change the lighting, colour, etc. Give me the photographer’s version any day.

Some photography websites are too heavy and complex

I'm a member of quite a few photography forums. I've noticed that a lot of people post their sites on these forums and ask others for comments, suggestions, insights, etc. I happen to think this is a great idea and I suspect that these folks do get some good advice. One overwhelming item that I've noticed cropping up over and over again is the complexity of design and the size of the pages on some sites. These items often go hand in hand. I've seen some folks with 2 MB homepages and others that have some kind of Flash homepage that takes 30+ seconds to load. Additionally funky navigation (which many seem to feel is cool) can also interfere with the ability of search engine spiders to follow the links on your site and place your valuable pages in their searchable index (this depends how the nav is coded - sometimes it is ok sometimes it is not. There is a great little tool for checking page spiderability at http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/spider-simulator/).

This seems to be the age-old (or at least 10-12 years old!) dilemma of "artists" building websites. If an artist builds the site they can sometimes be so engrossed in making it look amazing that they forget about the usability. Whereas a purely technical guy may make the site very functional but it often doesn't look like much. I suppose a marriage of the two is best. I would strongly caution photographers from building websites that use copius amounts of flash (some can be ok if used correctly) and from creating very heavy (read page weight) pages. If a user can't load your pages in at least 5-8 seconds then you've likely lost them (faster is, of course, better). This can also be a function of your hosting company so try and make sure you get a good one - this is not easy (from my experience) but it can be done. You also may be thinking that page weight is no longer an issue because everyone uses broadband these days. Well, yes most folks seem to be using broadband now - but not everyone - I still have people visiting my site with dial-up. Also, even broadband can get a little slow when there is congestion. Ultimately, having someone being able to view your site - even without much in the way of fancy designs or features, is better than not having them look at it at all.

Sounds straightforward but it can be a little tricky when your business is related to images (which often make page weight a problem). The trick here is to ensure you optimize them for the web and you don't place too many on a page. There is a tremendous amount written about optimizing images for the web so I won't delve into that here. I also believe programs like Photoshop have some kind of "optimize image for web" features built in (at least I think they do - I don't presently use Photoshop).

Better ways to do image processing?

I am interested to learn what image editing software other photographers or webmasters are using. I have picked up different programs along the way but I may not be using the most efficient way to process images. I do not use Photoshop (I can hear the gasps now).

I use Lightroom to do cropping (if necessary), reduce image size, convert to JPEG (for small images) and convert ARGB to SRGB (for web images). I do not use Lightroom to modify colors/exposure/etc. This is the realm of the photographer (read “artist”). I believe the photographer has a much better eye for such things than I do. I receive photos that have already been adjusted.

For thumbnails I use a little program called Easy Thumbnails and for watermarking I use another freeware program. I suspect there are easier ways to do all this photo manipulation. Perhaps Photoshop does all this? I’m actually not sure. It would be interesting to hear what some others use to handle all these tasks. I’ve seen some output from Photoshop’s “save for web” feature and they look pretty good in my opinion. My getting a decent quality preview image for the site requires some trial and error – and, as a result, time.

What kind of photos are selling?

Probably one of the most important things for selling photographs is actually having the kind of photos people are interested in. I am wondering where any of this kind of industry information may be available? Granted if you are a wildlife photographer and you learn that photos of cell phones are popular it may not help you much, but if you learn that certain animal photos are much more in demand than others then this information could make a substantial difference to your sales.

I can already hear the artists groaning. I'm guessing that some will feel that this is not in the spirit of "art". Well, that may be true but if you have a web presence you are likely trying to earn some money at the same time as being an artist. Approaching this strategically can be a good idea - provided one doesn't feel too compromised I suppose.

I have recently posted breadfruit photos and sugar cane photos and the like on my site. I think that these are an example of putting up what one has but not necessarily putting up what the market is looking for. It is great for the site to have alot of breadth. I'm happy if people can find all manner of photos but at the same time I really should be focusing my limited time on photos that have the most selling potential. If I had unlimited resources then putting up all manner of photos wouldn't hurt but I don't have unlimited resources. As such I have to focus on "the low hanging fruit" - a lesson that was beaten into my during my 8 year stint in ecommerce (I'm sure there are quite a few other lessons that didn't sink in but that's another story). Seems I need to start practicing what I preach.

The gist of this ramble/discussion is if you know what photos sell, and if you are sales focused, then take those photos and get them up on your site. Not exactly rocket science. However, where can one get this information? I'm sure the big boy stock photo agencies have all sorts of metrics for their sites and business but I suspect they don't publish the information - or maybe they do? If photographers know what to shoot and agencies are better able to sell these photos then perhaps this information is in the public domain? If it is can someone please let me (and probably quite a few others) know where and how to access such information?

Scanning slides

I am now getting the photos from the photographer (Dave) in digital format. He has - in the last year or so switched over to a digital camera. It strikes me that digital is the way to go - at least from my point of view. I'm not sure if there are any purists out there that still feel slides are better for one reason or another.

However, much of the photographers previous work is in slide format. I suspect this is the case for many photographers. The agencies - it seems - used to do the scanning and photoshopping. Although I suspect some photographers in the past did this work themselves and as such have digital copies of their work going way back.

I am wondering what the best way is to get slides into digital format? I recently asked this questions on a photography forum and was told that today one can buy a Nikon scanner for about 1000 bucks which will do a professional job. Also, I was pointed to a site - http://www.scancafe.com/. Some folks have indicated that these guys do a very good job and the prices are also good. The only thing that would concern me here is that you have to send your slides to India (concerned about sending them anywhere for that matter). Isn't it a bit risky putting all your hard work into an envelope and sending it half-way across the planet. Also, at the other end what is to stop folks from making copies of your work? Perhaps I'm being a little paranoid? Would be interesting to hear what others have done with their slides or indeed if anyone has had any experience with scancafe.