Name of your website?Silvas Photo Video : Weddings, Events, Portraits
Your name?
Brian
Your Location (city, etc)
Charleston
Please give us a short summary of your website?
We are a Wedding, Event and Portrait Photographer and Videographer. We also offer baby portraits, family portraits, child portraiture, maternity, senior portraits and other portrait photography. We also have baby portrait plans for baby's first year. You can visit it at http://silvasphoto.com
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Launching a website is an absolute necessity for photographers and videographers simply because it is a very convenient way for clients to view our portfolio online. Most of our clients look at a lot of photographers and videographer's websites and narrow down the candidates simply by looking at the website. Then they meet with 1 or 2 that they think would fit their need.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
We launched our website last August 2007. Our current website is what they usually call a blogsite which is a combination of a blog and a website. You can find out what we're up to by reading our blog or you can browse through our photo galleries to view our portfolio.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
We are a photographer and videographer team and Silvas is our surname.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
We specialize in a blend of traditional elegant photography and modern fashion photojournalism.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
The goal of our website is to help clients learn more about us and what we do even before they meet us. The website has a lot of information about our work so our clients can see if we are a good fit or not.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Running your own business does require a lot of time and a little bit of money in the beginning, more than a regular 9-5 job, but the returns are great. We are hoping in a year or so, we can work less and earn more just because we have invested so much time into it in the earlier years. Once you have a system up and running, then it's just a matter of maintaining it.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would have a professional web designer design a flash companion site to my html blog site. At this point though, I am pretty happy with how our website works because html still beats flash at search engine optimization.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes. We are a small company but we have an efficient workflow and can handle a lot of work. The more business, the better!
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
The business side of it has been pretty costly and not in a fun way (as opposed to buying gear which is costly AND fun). Becoming an LLC and all the paperwork that comes with it and having to figure it out online with the plethora of (mis)information.
What has been your biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge has been learning about all the small aspects of having a website in addition to learning about the photography and videography. There are so many aspects to creating a website like the actual web design, the backend programming, search engine optimization, online marketing and it seems like there is always new things to learn and new ideas to try out. It's pretty fun though.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Online marketing, branding and search engine optimization. Mostly guerilla marketing methods that cost little to no amount of money because we don't have a marketing budget per se.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
A website, after a certain point after you have created it, has a life of its own and grows by leaps and bounds in ways that are usually unexpected. After more than a year of tweaking the website a little here and there, it's now sooooo different from the original website that I had created.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
I've had the site for a little more than a year and hope to keep it up as long as I have my photo and video business. With our business, we don't need a huge amount of traffic, we just need to be found by the right people, our target market.
What is your website address?
Silvas Photo Video : Weddings, Events, Portraits
