Five Ways to Make Money in a Popular Photography Niche

I’ve read articles by a number of photography business gurus arguing that if you want to make decent money from stock photos or prints, you need to find a niche that isn’t already saturated with images. They advise photographers to shoot model-released lifestyle photos or still lifes, for example, and to stay away from travel and nature — because everyone shoots travel and nature.

That might sound logical enough, but is it true? In four years of marketing my work, I have sold pictures through stock agencies of heavily photographed locations such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Gateway Arch, the Mall of America, and the San Francisco skyline. And I don’t even spend a lot of time shooting iconic locations like these.

You know what I think? I think you can still make money selling the photos you want to shoot — if you know how to market yourself.

Here are five tips for selling your photos in any niche:

1. Keyword your images thoroughly.

I have looked at a lot of images on many different sites, and the one thing that amazes me is how poorly most photographers keyword their images. Take the Golden Gate Bridge, for example. If you only include the most obvious keywords — like the name of the bridge and the city — how can you expect anyone to find your images among the thousands on sites like Alamy, Corbis or Getty? I include more than 30 keywords on my Golden Gate Bridge images — including words like “iconic,” “landmark,” “sunsets,” “mountains,” “landscapes” and “coast.” That puts me ahead of the majority of photographers adding images to these sites.

2. Provide detailed caption information.

I’ve found that nature photographers often like to keep their specific locations secret, so they might label an image in general terms such as “Zeus’ Lightning Rod, Colorado Plateau.” Unfortunately, this is a good way to keep your images a secret from the public — because photo editors want details. You need to provide location specifics, as well as any relevant scientific information, if you expect to sell your work to textbooks or guide books, for example.

3. Focus on a niche within your niche.

I live in Southern California and have spent a lot of time photographing scenic locations in my area as if they were the Yosemite Valley Overlook. As a result, I have generated a healthy revenue stream from shoots that have cost me little in the way of travel costs. A recent print sale of Southern California scenic locations, for example, has netted me several thousand dollars.

My original motivation for focusing locally was pragmatic: I was out of school with not much money in the bank. I knew that photographers generally ignore the region — even though there are more than 15 million people here. That’s a nice market for prints and stock.

4. Optimize your Web site and make your archive available to search.

The Internet has opened up the photography market to new buyers around the world. People who haven’t traditionally purchased through photo agencies are now searching online for pictures — and are often buying them directly from photographers’ Web sites.

Most of the direct sales I’ve made in the past two years have involved the use of PhotoShelter at some point in the process. Usually the buyer finds my Web site, then searches through my archive. Or I’ll send a lightbox after some consultation and complete the sale off-site, negotiating via e-mail or phone. Customer service is the key to selling direct.

5. Protect your rights.

While the Internet offers new opportunities to market your work, it’s also made it easier for people to steal your images — so you have to take steps to protect them. If your photos are floating around in cyberspace without watermarking, or downloaded off some subscription plan, then you have lost the ability to manage the use of your work.

Even if you take precautions and license your photos on a rights-managed basis, however, people will sometimes use your images without permission. And in those cases, you need to stand up for yourself.

For example, the other day, I walked into a grocery store near my house and saw a large painted mural of one of my images. It had been painted to match my photo to the smallest of details. Given that I had never licensed the image, and that it shows up on the first page of Google Images for that location, I am pretty certain that this is an unauthorized commercial use of my image. I am still exploring my options on this one — but let’s just say that I plan to do something about it.

8 Profitable Niches To Make Money From!

The niches that I mention here are some of the most profitable niches out there. I also say that these niches will never get saturated. You can keep making money from them for your whole life!

Weight Loss Niche

A huge industry! There are millions of overweight people, and most of these people are lazy. They don’t want to follow strict excersises and diets, they want to lose weight as fast as possible. And to do that, they will spend money on weight loss products… Lots of money!

Gambling Niche

A niche full of addicts is always going to be profitable. You can’t gamble without spending money, so you don’t have to worry about sales pitches and stuff here. All you need to do is direct people to the right gambling websites (with your affiliate links of course).

Internet Marketing Niche (& Make money online niche)

People are always looking for ways to make money online. And most of them will buy products along the way to help themselves make more money. You have to understand that more than 75% of internet marketers fail to make a living online.

Beauty Niche

Anti aging, acne care, facial beauty, skin care, teeth whitening, etc… They all fall into the beauty niche. Needless to say, this niche is highly profitable. The most people that spend money in this niche are women. All women care about their beauty, it’s in their nature, and it’s not going to change.

Dating Niche

You wouldn’t believe how many people are getting frustrated because they can’t get a date. There are plenty of dating products that you can promote to this audience. And you can also promote online dating memberships. Who knows, maybe they find their luck on an online dating site…

Investment Niche

This niche is very profitable since people have to spend money to invest (obviously). Just provide some good info and promote investing programs that have an affiliate program.

Technology Niche

Mobile phones, computers, playstation, camera, video cameras… what else? The technology niche is massive! Almost everyone shows interest in this niche. And when there’s traffic, there’s money to be made.

Adult Niche

Many of you may think that this niche is saturated. Well I don’t blame you. We all know that adult videos are one of the most things that get shared for free on the internet. You can pratically find any video that you want for free. But, don’t forget that the internet is huge… Some people would much rather pay for videos than search for them on forums and tube sites to get them for free. If money wasn’t being made from this industry, then every adult industry that you know of will close for good. Trust me, this niche is still profitable and it will remain profitable forever!

Don’ forget that these niches have sub niches…

Example:

Internet Marketing Niche

That’s the main niche, where you’ll find everything that’s related to internet marketing. Then there are plenty of other sub niches such as SEO traffic, affiliate marketing, PPC etc… You get the idea.

From these 8 niches, you can literally pull out 1000s of sub niches, and most of them are highly profitable.

How to utilize ads on a blog to increase the revenue

The trick is to have a combo: a good topic and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. These drive traffic to sites and, in turn, attract advertisers. Right now, the widest form of blog-advertising is through Google’s Adsense. Google places a couple of their text-ads on a blog (on request) and pays the blogger according to the number of people that view that ad and the number of people that click on it.

The beauty of Adsense ads is that you don’t need traffic to get it on your site. Once traffic starts coming on to the site, cheques begin to be mailed to your postal address by Google

The blogger need not be an expert in a subject, he only needs to be in touch with the happenings in his field, and be consistent with his postings.

So what is it that will drive traffic towards your blog? “The way to make money (from your blog) is to focus on a niche subject. If you go deep into the subject, you will get dedicated readers. There are number of people who earn an average of Rs 10,000-15,000 a month. On the other hand, some bloggers are earning a couple of lakhs a month.

The revenue of AdSense is mainly depends on the five factors:

1. Traffic
2. Ad Positioning
3. Ad Design
4. Relevancy (between reader intent, the content and the ads)
5. How much are ads paying

How to get success by authoring multiple blogs

As a blogger you'll have three major enemies: time, motivation and inspiration. Making small gains with an individual blog isn't hard to do (and can be managed in a very short period of time). So let's muse around the subject of having multiple blogs.

Taking a single blog to stratospheric levels of attention is very, very difficult; think John Chow, Shoemoney, Darren Rowse, DoshDosh, etc. These sites pull in tens of thousands of unique visitors a day and that's a difficult level of attention to achieve and maintain. However, it's not that difficult to build a website that achieves 500-1500 uniques a day. Now do you see where I'm going?

Can you write on multiple topics?
Most bloggers I know have at least 2-3 areas of interest and that's a good basis for being a strong writer in that field. While you may aim to be the next Darren Rowse it's unlikely that you'll get there just by running one website (hell, Darren runs loads and makes most money from his Photography website I believe). So if you think you've got enough to say on more topics, it'd make sense to try and author multiple blogs.

Authoring multiple blogs is very, very hard
Time becomes a big factor here. You may have been managing fine writing consistently high quality posts for your primary blog but adding a second (or even third) website to the equation complicates things. You can't neglect your primary blog but without spending sufficient time on your other startups you'll never get anywhere.

Success will come by weighting your effort properly
You need to evaluate what topics bring you the most attention for the least amount of time. Sure it's great to have blogging integrity but writing good posts that no-one cares about is a bad use of your time and a sure way to fail. You need to work out which material is the easiest to promote given the time it took to write.

Example from Seopher.com
I used to use this website as my technology based blog and I slipped into a lot of Linux related topics. It was very obvious from my Linux writings that the reviews were the least lucrative posts to write: with a simple distribution method and lots of niche attention. Not only that but they deliver consistently good search engine traffic throughout the year. Therefore I've recently started Distro-Review which allows me to focus entirely on reviews. I know the attention they receive, I know how to promote them and the effort-to-traffic ratio is pretty good. A review can take 3 hours or so but the traffic can last all week - that's much better than Seopher.com experiences.

Immediate gains
If you know the niche well then you should be able to publicise your content quite quickly and get the new site out into the open with decent content. I've done that with Distro-Review and the first week has been excellent. I launched the site on March 1st 2008 and it received 5,000 visitors in that first week. So it goes to show, if you know the niche you can make it work.

It really is a case of knowing how to balance your time properly. If you're like me you work throughout the week and you'll probably have other responsibilities too (relationships, kids, whatever) so you need to work out which posts give you the best attention for the time they took - these are the ones to focus on where possible. Or you could just pay someone to write for you, that works too. Check back soon for a post about hiring writers.

When is the best time to publish posts on my blog?

This is actually a fairly easy question to answer, you just need to look at the numbers. The best time to post on your blog is when the most number of people are going to be around to read it.

Obviously the habits of your readers will depend upon your demographic and niche; a blog based on being a young parent will be busy at different times of the day to a blog about hacking. Here is a rough guide to what you can expect from a fairly typical site.

Looking at Seopher.com
I've taken this month as my sample (November 1st - 25th) which constitutes a reported 70,227 pages served. To work out the best time/day to publish, I just need to aggregate this information into the right format.

What day of the week should I post?

This is the most important one to consider; a person's mentality changes throughout the week, so you'll see more traffic on some days than others. I've taken the logs from Seopher.com and charted them by day:

What we're seeing is the number of pages served on each day throughout the week. The weekend is famously less busy than weekdays for blogs so I'd recommend against writing then. Mondays tend to show an increase as users get back to work and check out what's new on the Internet. Tuesday slows down and then Wednesday to Friday picks up as apathy sets in.

So there is your answer - Wednesday to Friday are your best hopes. Unless you post on a daily basis, in which case this next graph is useful for you:

What time of day should I post?

This is an important factor for those who publish on a daily basis rather than a weekly. Different hours of the day have differing levels of popularity - surprisingly posting when 90% of the US is in bed is a bad idea. True, the Internet is always on and active - because when it's night where you are, it's day somewhere else. But most blogs tend to cater for a US audience and this one is no different.

Here is the same concept; pages against the hour they were served:

So as you can see, the early hours are much quieter than during core business hours. Between 23:00 and 04:00 the number of pages served dropped to around 2,100. However, this figure increases dramatically once people are awake for their working day.

Rather inexplicably the most pages are served at 07:00, I would have expected the most to be served between 12:00 and 13:00 (the average lunchtime) or maybe between 09:00 and 10:00. Rule of thumb here dicates that publishing your content sometime before midday would make sense, to ensure the working world can read it on their lunch break.

The rule of thumb set by email marketers

Whenever doing email marketing, the rule of thumb is to have your email campaign land on Wednesday afternoon for maximum impact. This way you're hitting the tide just right; users are at their most receptive on this day - they're not pre-occupied with wasting time before the weekend starts nor are they trying to catch up at the start of the week. Wednesday 11:00 - 14:00 is typically the best time for email marketing, so I'd imagine it's not a bad idea to publish your latest content at a similar time.

The graphs for Seopher.com seem to back up this statement.

So there you go, just have a look at your statistics (using Google Analytics, AWstats, Mint or whatever else you might use) and collate your own to see when your visitors are visiting; that way you can publish at a time that's ideal for your demographic.

I appreciate the irony that I published this on a Tuesday.

Target .edu and .gov Sites for Backlinks

Dailyblogtips came up with nice tips on how to gather .edu and .gov backlinks. Their tips however, can be use to gather backlinks targeting any specific keywords not just for .edu and .gov sites. Whether your blog has relevant content or not with the site you wanted to have a backlink, their tips will work.

One thing I learned new from their post is that...

It is widely accepted that .edu and .gov backlinks carry a larger weight for search engine algorithms. Despite the fact that google has never admitted it (sometimes it even neglected) most SEO and online marketing would confirm that .edu and .gov links outperform other extensions in terms of search ranking juice.

So, why don’t you try gathering .edu and .gov backlinks?

Ultimate Methods on How to Increase Your Blog Popularity

I recently come across the quarterly State of Blogosphere report of Technorati's David Sifry and many interesting findings were highlighted. One that got me most was the relationship between authority (how many blogs linking to ur blog) and blog posting frequency. Essentially, what are the common characteristics of successful bloggers?


Sifry finds that there is a direct relationship between authority and blog posting volume. In the low, middle, and high authority groups, there isn't much variation in posting frequency or blog age (number of days a blog has been in existence). To get to the high authority group (500 or more blogs linking), it simply takes persistence. It's how long you've been around not how much you post (averaging about 18 posts a month).

However in the very high authority group (more than 4000 blog linking), there is a sea change in behavior. Posting volume doubles, and blog age is about 4 years.

The above data clearly tell us that to be able to increase our blog popularity we should do two things: post often and post persistently. These two are some of the characteristics of successful blogger. They are also the ultimate method to increase your blog propularity. I hope you get this point.

I am very happy to report to you this blog whose aged is 60 days old and having an authority of 39 owns more authority than the 1,111,882 blogs whose average age is 90 days. This is all because of you readers. Thank you very much.

Remember, post often and post persistently. These are the ultimate method on how to increase your blog propularity.

How to make good pots

For sure you may have heard about the importance of good content online and for sure you may have encountered blogs stressing the importance of good quality post. Content is king - that's what websites say. Go for quality post - is a common advise you get from most bloggers. But do these things matter to you?

If you want to become a successful blogger then the whole idea of good content and quality post will matter most to you.

But what do you think makes a good post? Can you squarely answer the question? If yes and you practice the art of making a good post then you are on the right track to succeed. Unless you can define what makes a good post you can never make one. That's it. You can never make one good quality post if you cannot articulate what makes a good post.

So, what makes a good post? I have lists some of the things I believe that makes a good post. See if you can agree with me or if you can add more.

• It is on-topic within the bound of your blog's theme.
  
• An original message
  
• A useful topic, easily broadened to be useful to a large number of readers
  
• It has good, clear title and informative subject line
  
• Include "hot" links for more details
  
• It is timely, about current information
  
• Long length is alright but shorter messages are better than long ones
  
• Picture inclusion is a plus, if you can use video, even better
  
• Short paragraphs read well
  
• Keep the action going and doesn't slow down the rest of the plot
  
• One that allows your character to interact with others
  
• One that provides other members with an opportunity to carry on from it - one that stimulates interaction
  
• Employ simple language with no useless jargon
  
• Focusing on something that people have previously taken for granted and causes the reader to look at the world differently all day long
  
• Makes others want to post as well
  
• It says something in agreement to someone else and adds a bit
  
• Have links that are either authorative on your topic or that capture some obscure, but highly useful piece of related knowledge
  
• Get to the point quickly
  

The above lists are the things I believe that makes a good post. I'm sure the list is not complete and you may have your own definition on what makes a good post. If you have something valuable to add, you are welcome to place it the comment area.

Remember, unless you can define what makes a good post you can never make one.

Good luck!

Target Popular Bloggers to Link to Your Blog

Do you love fishing? Do you love to catch bigger fish? These questions are almost the same as asking: Do you love catching inbound links or do you love popular bloggers to link with you. If you do, then why don’t you go target the bloggers well-known in your industry to link to your Blog?

Wall Street Journal made mention on how to target bloggers well-known in your industry to link to your Web site.

Here's a new catchphrase in search-engine optimization these days: Link baiting.

The term may sound shady, but link baiting is an aboveboard tactic that calls for generating new or particularly interesting content on a Web site in hopes that a popular Web site links to it. Having well-ranked Web sites link to yours boosts your site's search-engine results, because most major search engines -- including Google and Yahoo -- consider the number and "quality" of links when generating their rankings. And, having your site linked to a popular site likely will prompt other sites to link to your site as well.

Suppose, for instance, you'd love to have a blogger who's well-known in your industry link to your Web site. You notice this blogger frequently highlights interesting strategies for funding a start-up business. So in hopes of piquing that blogger's interest, you add well-written, interesting content to your site about new trends in start-up financing. Then you conveniently shoot an email to that blogger with a link to the post.


Just remember, authority sites won’t squander reader equity to link to unworthy content. So, work for high quality content whose theme favors the readers best interest of the Blog you are targeting.

Learn 17 lessons for Successful Blogging

The best teacher in life is experience. This is also true in blogging as successful bloggers have their fair share of success and failure experiences. New bloggers like me do not have the kind of experiences they have. But we can be smarter, we can learn from their experiences.

Those who do not learn from others or from their own experiences miss the fullness of life and invite so much unnecessary misery. If you want to be successful in blogging you need to learn from successful bloggers. And if you want to be more successful you need to learn from the mistakes of successful bloggers.

So what's the highlight of today's post? It's the blogging experiences of Online Marketing Blog as they learned the ins and out of blogging in their over 3 years of existence. Here are the 17 leasons they learned from blogging:

1. Blogging has been their single most effective marketing initiative.
2. Blogs can serve as a very effective platform for connecting online social networks and offline interactions.
3. One of the most effective ways at getting into the media is to become the media in your industry via a blog.
4. Finding your "blog voice" is important. People will visit and interact with your blog based on whether your regular communication patterns resonate with them or not. If you're all over the board, you'll hold some people for a while, but not long.
5. A rushed blog post that is not well thought out can quickly cause the wrong kind of attention or misinterpretation.
6. As your blog grows in popularity (RSS subscribers and visitors via links and search engines) the more you have to lose or gain with the quality of your posts.
7. The whole transparency thing is great in theory, but is only as effective as your ability and willingness to articulate.
8. Don't do it all on your own. Invite guest bloggers and include other bloggers from your company.
9. Don't blog when you're mad, really tired and especially not if you've been out on the town.
10. Blogs can be excellent conduits to connections and friendships with people that you may never meet in person.
11. Blogging is forever. Once you hit publish, it's out there. There's no taking it back.
12. The feedback loop to blogging can get addicting and like other addictions, can have serious side effects. Consuming a large part of your productive and free time without a corresponding return on effort is one of those side effects. These effects can be abated by having a clear blogging strategy and following blogging guidelines.
13. Blogs can be exceptional tools to boost visibility on search engines as well as social media channels.
14. Poorly configured, badly optimized and infrequently updated blogs are nothing more than spam magnets.
15. It's just as important, and maybe more, to link out from your blog as it is to get incoming links.
16. Widgets and plugins can be very effective if not necessary enhancements to default blog configurations that will assist in building community, making administration easier and for blog optimization.
17. Online Marketing Blog has been a very effective tool for building credibility and opening doors to connections with search engines and people in the search marketing industry that would otherwise might not have happened.

Want to be a Problogger?

Do you consider yourself a problogger? Do you have any tips to share in this matter? Daniel at Daily Blog Tips has put up ten points that every problogger should have. This includes:

1. Time
2. Expertise on a topic
3. Passion for the topic
4. Writing skills
5. Technical Knowledge
6. Blogging Knowledge
7. Web Design Skills
8. Business/Marketing Knowledge
9. Creativity and Innovative Ideas
10. Network of contacts


To the above list however, I believe time is one of the main issue specially for people (like me) that get into blogging while still having a full time job. It is really a tough job trying to make a fulltime income from blogging part time. Basically, you cannot really quit the job to blog full time if you are not making enough.

But who say’s we are here for an easy life? If we want to be a successful problogger then go work hard and smart. Remember, problogging takes time, time for you and for me to learn, perfect our skills, experience and enjoy.

Increase Your Traffic by Sending Your Traffic to Other Blogs

Am I kidding? Definitely no, in fact I am on my very right mind telling you this: If you want to have more traffic
to your blog then sends your visitors to visit other blogs, websites and even to your competitor blogs.

You may be thinking that the above is the foolish thing to do but I am here telling you that this is at par with other effective blog traffic strategies.

If you blog about what your competitors are saying and if you place their links within your post then you are doing brilliant service to your readers. Readers will lover your blog more. It appears to them that your blog has more authority in the industry your blog belong.

The more you send people away to more valuable resources, the more valuable you become to your target audience and the more your readers will stick with you. Also, blogging about other bloggers position yourself to get your blog cited by them at some point. Thus, will increase your traffic coming from them.

Easilest way to may money

Firstly know this,

As everyone Google Adsense is the Biggest Money Making Job on Internet. Thousands of People are earning more then Rs.50,000/Month. Google is the King of Internet. If you search any keyword in Google like “Jobs”. Then you’ll see some ads in your right side “Sponsored Links”I will not given full describing as every one know wat is adsense all about..

So,Firsty u need website or blog to use adsense..

Google Adsense = Website+ Good Content+ Online Traffic= $$$$.

You’ll need an website, You can get it from Blogger.com, You’ll get your website 100% Free.

To make your website. Simply follow these steps.

Open Blogger.com

Then Click on “Sign up” or “Create an Blog”.

Enter your Email id, Password, Display name( your name), Enter Image verification code. And Click Next or Continue.

Now select your template, You can choose any template. And then continue.

Your Blogger will be Ready. Click on make an post or click on post.Now this is the Most important part, Adding Content.
You’ll need to write and Good post about any topics. Which are listed here.

Making money online
Shopping
Loans
Credit Card
Games Data
Entry Typing
Jobs Work at Home

You can also select any topic, which is better for you. If you don’t have any idea. Then you can choose more topics from http://articlerich.com

You’ll find many articles in Articlerich.com. You can copy any article and paste it into your Blog.
Now click on “Publish Post” to submit your post. You can also click on preview to take an look of your posts.

You’ll also get an confirmation email from Google to verify your Blogger account. Simply click on that link to confirm your blogger account.

Your blogger user name will be also your Blogspot address. When you click on publish post, Then you’ll see an option like “Open in new window”.

Click on thatto get your Website’s Address.
After clicking on that, you’ll see your Website.
Simply write down the address of your Website.
It will seems like that– http://xxxx.blogspot.com (it’s only an example).
So, You’ll get your Website. And if you have any problem, Then please check all the steps from beginning.