My first Google booking...I'm shocked.

urbanaries

Ok, after reading all these confounding keyword discussions I decided to poke around Google and look at their ad options. I signed up for AdWords and put a low $30 a month limit on it.

That was 24 hours ago. Just got off the phone with a young man who hired me to shoot he and his girlfriend next Thursday. WHOA!!!

:huh

Frog Lady

hot damn, technology at work for you! good on you:D

C.

saurora

That's awesome! Made back that $30 and then some!!!

urbanaries

saurora wrote:

That's awesome! Made back that $30 and then some!!!

yeah hope its not beginners luck!!!!

Michael Ray

urbanaries wrote:

yeah hope its not beginners luck!!!!

No, not at all...

It's called marketing!

I spend 150.00 a month. It pays.

MR

JDub

I took marketing in high school, glad I did!! Marketing is vital!! And a website if you can design one. I design them for clients as well, and you would be amazed at how much more business flows in after they have a website. I have to try that Google thing though!! See what happens.

Nikolai

Very interesting!

urbanaries wrote:

Ok, after reading all these confounding keyword discussions I decided to poke around Google and look at their ad options. I signed up for AdWords and put a low $30 a month limit on it.

That was 24 hours ago. Just got off the phone with a young man who hired me to shoot he and his girlfriend next Thursday. WHOA!!!

I'm gonna try it! Even if my $30 last only a month and bring me no business at all - oh well, it's a small price to learn.
Thank you for sharing!

urbanaries

Nikolai wrote:

I'm gonna try it! Even if my $30 last only a month and bring me no business at all - oh well, it's a small price to learn.
Thank you for sharing!

Sure! Good luck to you! I'm probably raising my monthly budget soon....just booked a wedding meeting, they sounded ready to book. That's two gigs in five days my ad has been running. It may be a key component in transitioning out of weekend warrior status!!! ????

3rdPlanetPhotography

That's great... I jumped on board as soon as I seen your thread. It's been over 24hrs for me but I can say that people are seeing the ad. I had a click through as well. What worked for you on keywords? Are you willing to share that? Great Job!!!!

urbanaries wrote:

Sure! Good luck to you! I'm probably raising my monthly budget soon....just booked a wedding meeting, they sounded ready to book. That's two gigs in five days my ad has been running. It may be a key component in transitioning out of weekend warrior status!!! ????

urbanaries

3rdPlanetPhotography wrote:

That's great... I jumped on board as soon as I seen your thread. It's been over 24hrs for me but I can say that people are seeing the ad. I had a click through as well. What worked for you on keywords? Are you willing to share that? Great Job!!!!

I hope no competitors see this!!!

no rocket science, just did all my services, and attached to both photographer and photography.

example: maternity photographer, maternity photography, pregnancy photography, etc etc

Michael Ray

Lynne

Let me make a suggestion to you...

Try adding Indianapolis to your keyword phrases. (unless you're trying to sell stock) That way people typing in "Pittsburgh maternity photographer" won’t click on your site. That will help your budget go a lot further. Also, I would not list those words separately as keywords. Some people make that mistake when they first start out.

Good luck

urbanaries

Michael Ray wrote:

Lynne

Let me make a suggestion to you...

Try adding Indianapolis to your keyword phrases. (unless you're trying to sell stock) That way people typing in "Pittsburgh maternity photographer" won’t click on your site. That will help your budget go a lot further. Also, I would not list those words separately as keywords. Some people make that mistake when they first start out.

Good luck

actually, my top hitting keyword phrases are "indianapolis photographer" and "indianapolis photography." Beyond those specifically, I'm somewhat confused. In Google's adwords settings, I've chosen my ads to show only the indianapolis area. So, am I advised to still put indianapolis in the keyword combinations, or is that redundant? Example, someone IN the indianapolis area that types in maternity photographer, theoretically would my ad appear? Conversely, if I add "Indianapolis" to "maternity photographer", would I be missing locals who didn't add Indianapolis to their search phrase?

Michael Ray

I wasn’t aware that you put that limit on your exposure. I’m not that familiar with your specific market, but in mine (as a commercial photographer in Pittsburgh) I get a ton of work from outside the city. It’s usually people located outside the city looking for a photographer to shoot someone in Pittsburgh. That way they save on air fare, not sending their regular shooter.

Something to think about.

Another thing you might want to do is investigate the "-term" option. The option that prevents your name from coming up when your search phrase is listed with another word that you don't want to be listed with. For example, you might not want your ad to appear if someone enters "industrial indianapolis photographer".

Nikolai

Results Thus Far
Two days of the ad running. About 250 impressions, zero clicks.
I should've had it done before Xmas :bash

Michael Ray

Nikolai wrote:

Two days of the ad running. About 250 impressions, zero clicks.
I should've had it done before Xmas :bash

What are you complaining about. It didn't cost you anything so far.

What are your search terms?
What kind of photography do you do?
Where do you live?

urbanaries

Michael Ray wrote:

Also, I would not list those words separately as keywords. Some people make that mistake when they first start out.

Hello Michael, I've read this several times and am not sure what you're getting at. Can you give me an example?? Thanks!

Nikolai

Michael,

Michael Ray wrote:

What are you complaining about. It didn't cost you anything so far.

What are your search terms?
What kind of photography do you do?
Where do you live?

You probably misread my post. I'm not complaining, I'm simply reporting a progress.

And you're making a mistake saying it didn't cost me anything. I have spent several hours reading the guides (and adjusting the ad accordingly:-). For the record, my time is rather expensive.
I'm not even talking about $5 setup fee:-)

Frankly, I didnt expect any breakthrough results immediately. Initial post brought this thing to my attention, but it would be naive to expect that everyone who posted an ad would immediately become buried with service requests. I'm going to monitor the results and see what are the potential reasons of success/failure.

Cheers!

Nikolai

Got my first "clickthrough" :-)
And, what do you know - smugmug was down the whole day... :-(
I guess that person will not be requesting my service any time soon.
Oh well, there will be others, I'm sure.
But my first $.59 went straight to the silicon garbage can...
So I've decided to pause my ad until SM is back up...

3rdPlanetPhotography

When was SM down? I don't think I've been down at all. That I know of

Nikolai wrote:

And, what do you know - smugmug was down the whole day... :-(
I guess that person will not be requesting my service any time soon.
Oh well, there will be others, I'm sure.
But my first $.59 went straight to the silicon garbage can...
So I've decided to pause my ad until SM is back up...

Michael Ray

urbanaries wrote:

Hello Michael, I've read this several times and am not sure what you're getting at. Can you give me an example?? Thanks!

I'm suggesting that you don;t list the words "photography", "photographer", od "maternity" as individual words without being part of a phrase.

photogmomma

urbanaries wrote:

Hello Michael, I've read this several times and am not sure what you're getting at. Can you give me an example?? Thanks!

Hi, Lynne! I have a bunch of information for you about adwords, but it needs to come from my husband. He used to work for a company that did adwords (bought and sold for other companies) and he understands them VERY well....

My feeble knowledge says that you should add as many as you can. I think I have about 40-50. Don't forget, you only pay when someone clicks so having more than you think you'll need is a good thing! They include things like:

crested butte photography
crested butte photograper
crested butte photograph
crested butte photo
crested butte portrait photography
crested butte ski
crested butte wedding
crested butte vacation
tippiepics
andi tippie


I also have them turned on for EVERYWHERE. I live in a resort area so it's more likely that people from out of town will want to search for here.

I have also been told by my DH (darling hubby) that you shouldn't pay too much. Certainly no more than $1 per click, but generally around 50¢. If you go too high, there is a possiblity that you're not getting your money's worth.

I haven't gotten too many clicks, but I'm not too worried. I'm in a small town and probably won't ever. I think I also need to tweak things.

I'll see if my hubby ahs more to add! I hear the kids freaking. Gotta run!

HTH!

urbanaries

thanks photogmomma! I think I got it down now. I had four inquiries about weddings this weekend. Its really exciting! Unfortunately two of them were on dates I'm already booked...how is that? I've only got seven booked this year. Ah well....a good problem to have I suppose.

I'm getting lots of click throughs on pregnancy photography, but no emails or phone calls. Maybe I need to work on my portfolio? I was pretty satisfied with that set, but maybe I need some objective feedback. Takers?

http://www.lynnehulbert.com/gallery/1972972

Elaine

Lynne,

You have a lovely group of maternity shots there! One thing I noticed about the site was that the arrows at the end of the nav bar scrolled in the opposite direction than I expected them to. Maybe I'm just backwards, but when I mouse-over the right pointing arrow, I expect to be able to see the pictures that are hidden on the right. Does that make sense?

The pictures are beautiful!

Elaine

PS - Here's an example of what I mean...
http://primedigitalphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/2006457

urbanaries

UPDATE: FAQ #85 fixes this, FYI


Thanks for taking the time to give feedback! I do know what you mean, , but I thought it was the smugmug way and I was the one who was crazy. Now I see someone else has it right? The "Filmstrip" is the style I'm using in those galleries...if there's some code I can put in to make it direct correctly, I'm all ears!

photogmomma

urbanaries wrote:

thanks photogmomma! I think I got it down now. I had four inquiries about weddings this weekend. Its really exciting! Unfortunately two of them were on dates I'm already booked...how is that? I've only got seven booked this year. Ah well....a good problem to have I suppose.

I'm getting lots of click throughs on pregnancy photography, but no emails or phone calls. Maybe I need to work on my portfolio? I was pretty satisfied with that set, but maybe I need some objective feedback. Takers?

http://www.lynnehulbert.com/gallery/1972972

Yeah, the way it scrolls drives me crazy - that's why I don't use it! No hints on how to fix it, though. Sorry!

I think you have some gorgeous photos in there. My only comment is that very few of them show faces or more than just bellies. I think you need a little more variety. I'd probably pick 3-5 belly only shots and mix them up more with the full body/upper body/hubby shots. They are all very well done, but I think showing variety is a good thing! And mixing 'em up can make it more interesting. Make sense?

For some reason, I'm not very fond of #12. It looks to me like she's in labor, not laughing! ! I think maybe because of how she's bent over? I don't know if it's possible - or worth it - to try rotating her a bit more to the left and PSing out the door frame? It's almost a cute shot, but not quite. But then again, it might be me.

#1, 2, 6 and 19 are awesome! (19 is a little soft, but I still just LOVE the look you captured!)

Gorgeous shots overall!

urbanaries

photogmomma wrote:

Yeah, the way it scrolls drives me crazy - that's why I don't use it! No hints on how to fix it, though. Sorry!

I think you have some gorgeous photos in there. My only comment is that very few of them show faces or more than just bellies. I think you need a little more variety. I'd probably pick 3-5 belly only shots and mix them up more with the full body/upper body/hubby shots. They are all very well done, but I think showing variety is a good thing! And mixing 'em up can make it more interesting. Make sense?

For some reason, I'm not very fond of #12. It looks to me like she's in labor, not laughing! ! I think maybe because of how she's bent over? I don't know if it's possible - or worth it - to try rotating her a bit more to the left and PSing out the door frame? It's almost a cute shot, but not quite. But then again, it might be me.

#1, 2, 6 and 19 are awesome! (19 is a little soft, but I still just LOVE the look you captured!)

Gorgeous shots overall!

great feedback Andi...I had never evaulated belly vs. face shots before, and your perspective is very helpful! Also in #12, I love it because she's laughing but you're right that the angle isn't helping. I'll take a 2nd look!

BTW - here's the code to change the filmstrip http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=236809#post236809

photogmomma

urbanaries wrote:

great feedback Andi...I had never evaulated belly vs. face shots before, and your perspective is very helpful! Also in #12, I love it because she's laughing but you're right that the angle isn't helping. I'll take a 2nd look!

BTW - here's the code to change the filmstrip http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=236809#post236809

Thanks a ton! Maybe I'll try using it now!!

I get on another message board for moms and it KILLS me how many people take headless shots. Of course, theirs are cut off at the neck, which drives me crazy. I like belly only shots a lot, but think a good variety is really nice!

BTW - I truly think you're under selling yourself with your prices. You have amazing work, Lynne, and I really think you could charge more - easily!

urbanaries

UPDATE:

To date, I've received seven emails/phone calls from prospective wedding clients via Google. Two were for dates I was already booked for. One signed a contract and put a deposit down last Saturday, at our first meeting. I have a meeting scheduled this Friday, and that bride has already referred me to her pregnant friend, who I'm designing a "first year" package for.

I'd say I made my $30 back. My first month isn't even up yet...six days left!

This success has put the pressure on me to finally raise/standardize my prices! Every day someone contacts me with my old (CHEAP!) prices, I'm locked in to one more booking making very little profit.

HiSPL

Congratulations! When my wife and I decide to really "open up shop" we'll be using this for advertising. These testimonials are very encouraging!

dragon300zx

I just got my first booking off of yahoo from generic search results. Maybe I should try this advertising stuff too...

JimM

The company I work for specializes in optimizing websites to show up in the search engines. I average about 5 leads a month for my very small target market (and I am only using some of the techniques I have picked up from the experts in our company, I am in sales not development). This Internet marketing stuff works for our clients and on a smaller scale, it works well for my part time photography business too!