For my Photography business vrbuzard.com

For my Fine Art Photography cyc-lust.com

And for my personal blog on Cycling and Personal photography cycling-foto.com

Quite simply, they give folks like me the tools to help promote their work and get hired.

This is something that I have been wanting to do for years now but frankly was not able to make the commitment. Marketing is not a one time deal. This is a multi year plan I have. I expect to spend the first couple of year or two trying out different things. Different layouts, subject lines, etc… just to see what does best.(Truthfully, it’s always going to be an ongoing phase).

To give you an idea of how it’s going so far. last week I sent out my first email campaign. 2,900 (roughly) emails were sent out last Wednesday. It took about 36 hours for all of them to go out. At which time, it turns out that my web site http://voncommercialphotographer.com/ was down for a time (Turns out to have been a problem at the DNS level. Thank you to Network Solutions for fixing it quickly). Looking back, I think it would have been best if I had started the campaign on Tuesday morning. Rule: Never send emails out on Mondays or Fridays. I’m sure that many of mine were received on Friday morning. The email itself was ready to launch on the Tuesday, but I was a bit nervous about pulling the trigger for the first time. I was thinking about the saying “You only get one chance to make a first impression”, but decided to hit Send with the idea that if you wait for everything to be Perfect, you will never ship.

I decided to wait till Monday to log into Adbase to see my results.
98% Received
2% Bounced (Does not count against my service charge)

12% Opened the email
8% Clicked thru to my site (Thats 8% of those who opened the email)

On the average those aren’t great numbers. But to me, they are AWESOME. Remember this is my first campaign. My worst fear was that No One opened the email, or Zero people would Click Thru. New eyes looked at my site.

I’m already learning from my mistakes. The subject line was wrong. I didn’t include a Call to Action in the body (“Click here to see my site” type of thing) and of course when sending out that many, to hit Send on Tuesday. I don’t know if the site issues caused any problems. If the problem was a strictly after hours thing, then not too many people probably tried to Click Thru anyway. And then there is the whole “Is this even the right time of year for me to have sent this to the people I sent it too?”. That is something I can only learn over years of experience. You can’t learn who your audience is overnight.

With all that against me, I think my numbers aren’t too bad. They can only go up from there.

Next step will be to follow up with postcards in about a week from now

It’s kinda like telling a bird how to fly.

Thank You Aaron Johnson, What The Duck

I’m also in the process of adding portfolios here. Since this site is less about my business and more about me personally. I thought I would add in more of my personal assignments

Well I will just as soon as I can figure how. My first thought was to embed in slideshows from my Flickr stream but it turns out that you can’t embed anything in a WordPress hosted blog. WHich is funny considering that the photo above was embedded from Flickr (just can’t embed slideshows I guess)

The young lady above is Masha from a recent session

Thanks to fstoppers for turning me on to this

I agree with what she has to say. Basically, if you have to ask…then get out. Being a Professional Photographer has always been a tough business. Most small businesses are and most fail in the first year

Personally, for me when times are tough and I feel fed up, I do what I did when I was first starting out. I make photographs. I make photographs that I want to make. Recently that has been cycling.

Enjoy, I know I did
and as always, feel free to leave comments

If you can’t see the video above Click Here

Sorry for my absence but I recently came down with a bout of cycling fever. Namely the Tour de France.

Watching the riders race across the French countryside took up more of my free time them I had thought.

I’m back now and will get back to my regular posting schedule very soon

Recently release (in beta) is Model Release Pal by Xil3 Media (although I find it interesting that there is no mention of the app on their site).

I’ve been playing with it and honestly, I’m not too impressed. Obviously it’s a beta so this isn’t the final (at least I hope not) and maybe more functions will be added for the final release.

Model Release Pal (beta) by Xil3 Media

The one thing I like about this app is that I can upload my own current model release. You just copy over a PDF file into the apps contract folder and that’s it. According to the makers of Easy Release, their next version will have customizable text.

Just like the iPhone app, your subject can sign right on the phone’s screen. I’ve done this using my finger (not too good) but would like to try using a stylus (I used to have one for my old Palm Treo but don’t know where it is these days).

Thats pretty much it. The app doesn’t allow for any other info beside some notes. Fields for contact info as well as how much money (or other type of payment) was exchanged. Unlike the iPhone app, you can’t attach a photo (for reference) to the release

Finally after all is said and done, you finish your shoot, the model has signed the release. Now what? Well, you can Export the release as a Zip file attached to an email. What you get on the other end is a Zip file that has the original PDF release and a PNG file of the signature. Thats it! Personally I’m not too sure how legal a release that is accompanied by a signature is.

ApplicationGap states in their FAQ that an Android version is in development. Right after the iPhone release I emailed them asking about a Droid version. They stated if they got enough people asking for one, they would look into it (I reckon they did)

So for know, I’m not recommending Model Release Pal (beta). I think they might have done better waiting to have had an app with something other then a signature screen.