Evening folks. Looking for some advice. I shot a couple events in the spring, and I'm looking to do more. Who do you use / where do you post to get gigs? I'm looking to do businesses, weddings, or events. I have an active CL ad that I renew every month or so, but that doesn't seem to drive much.

@penk CL?

craigslist

Google ads and Facebook ads can work

that's spending money i don't have,

and is a real shot in the dark

I've been doing about $50 a month on Google and have gotten two leads from it, though neither panned out (one because they wanted a service I didn't have what I needed to provide and one because it was a wedding 3 days after my baby is due)

and that was from under a month of having a listing

I still haven't decided if I'm going to keep going after I use my promotional $100 credit that I got for spending $50

I'll have to see how it goes

having a good website with portfolio is also very helpful

but really, either you wait for word of mouth or you advertise. For an actual business, it isn't at all atypical to spend 1/3 of every dollar that comes in on advertising

especially on low consumable cost work like photography

I'm trying to keep it below that personally, but the big thing is getting your name and pitch in front of people in the market

and for initial impressions, presentation matters a lot

there are tons of options, so it really has to wow them right away

and adwords is nice because it tells me things like on average, people spend a minute on my site and read 2.37 pages

and I can check to see what pages they are viewing

so like, I can tell that people reading my philosophy page almost always continue on

I can also tell that more people have viewed my contact page than have actually contacted me, so I should probably try putting up more means of contact

hey

hey JamWheel, how's it going

not bad, you?

alright, amazed I'm not passing out yet, I got 4 hours of sleep the last two nights

because of my own dumb fault

lol

you'll be fine, eventually

busy with work?

nah, was socializing with people, got deep in conversation and half lost track of time, half just didn't care

though I have been working through photo review for the wedding I shot a weekend ago

the good news is my conversion rate for good photos has gone up drastically and the semi-good news is I also shot far fewer photos, though that was partly because there was also just less going on that was note worthy

hah - i did a show on Sunday and spent most of the evening and the next day tooling around with images

I've been going through about 250 to 300 images a night on average for the nights I do rating and color correction

higher hit rates are always a good thing :)

have gone through about 600 with about 125 hits so far

that I would consider 5 star images

have another 900 to go

wow - not bad

i get a much lower rate at airshows, but that is partly due to the nature of the shooting

that'll drop a bit as I have a few portrait sections that have notoriously low hit rates if only because I only mark one of each series as 5 at most

I normally start in the areas I know had high hit rates

to get a selection of images to the client right away

for facebook posts and covers and such

yeh - i do the same

i got to witness this on sunday:

two... freaking.... Lancasters!

they held a service just before the display, with Lancaster crew veterans in attendance. a surprisingly emotional experience

@AJHenderson i find i get more hits if i am more relaxed. the more i prepare and tense i get the less panning hits I achieve

apparently those are the only two air worthy

@JamWheel yeah, getting hits is highly artistic dependent which kind of shuts down if you stress out

keeping your cool and being able to "feel" the situation is critical

in just about any kind of action photography

be it air shows, weddings, sports or street candid

@AJHenderson indeed they are, one flew from Canada to the UK recently - seeing the two was a very very special experience

btw, like the second shot pretty well. The first one to me is just a split second too late

or from slightly the wrong angle, just a hair too much overlap, but then again, I've never done airshow photography

i prefer this one:

interestingly, the first one went on explore on Flickr and received piles of faves. you never know what people will like :)

@JamWheel yeah, that one is even better than the previous

this one is quite atmospheric

i have no clue what gets a photo on explore on flickr - there doesn't seem to be any common formula to it - over 4k views on the first shot and 79 faves i think

the album from the show - if you want a peruse

flic.kr/s/aHsk2picVZ

$50/mo == 2 leads over how much time?

@JamWheel I like that one

@penk under a month

aj: fascinatin. i'll consier it. what i think i need to do is ramp up the word of mouth spread - which has gotten me a couple gigs. hate milking old contacts for new work though. but it's part of hte biz i guess.

@jamwheel - those are wonderful images. lancasters are sexay :)

two together like that, that's almost once in a lifetime.

sorry, got distracted by an issue in another room