SmugMug Development Lab

Whether you’re offering keepsakes to holiday portrait clients, or specialty items to art fans, we’ve taken the guesswork out of choosing which items to offer in your store beyond those gorgeous prints. How, you ask? With DATA. 

We’ve taken the most commonly searched-for items and terms to help you pick and choose just what you’d like to feature this holiday season. Beef up your photography packages, list these items front and center in your shop, and feature them in customer gift guides or newsletters for a gift that will delight your customers and their families.

Photo gift #1: Magnets.

We know that photo magnets are always a big seller for portrait clients. But just how popular are they? By using Google data we can find out, down to the sizes people commonly search for.  Here’s how many people search for photo magnets by month:

• 8x10 photo magnet - 6,600 monthly searches
• photo magnets - 4,400 monthly searches
• photo fridge magnets - 720 monthly searches

There are over 6,000 people every month searching for 8x10 photo magnets, so that’s an easy win right there. Try using a smaller size in your photo packages, and offer the more in-demand size to your clients as an upsell! Or you could offer discounts on orders including multiple sizes to capitalize on a diverse range of magnet options.

Photo gift #2: Mugs.

Another holiday classic, photo mugs are a popular search term. Here’s what they look like by the numbers: 

• photo mugs - 3,600 monthly searches
• photo coffee mugs - 1,000 monthly searches
• custom photo mug - 880 monthly searches

The word "custom" here is sneaky: It could mean someone is looking to upload their own image to the coffee mug. As a photographer that’s not going to build your business. But if you primarily do retouching work, it could be an ideal offering!

Like magnets, mugs are a popular item you can benefit from featuring front-and-center in your store. They work nicely as upsell items in your photo packages, too.

Photo gift #3: Stocking stuffers and wrappable wonders.

The numbers don’t lie: People love their keepsakes. Here are a couple other options that came up in our research:

• photo mouse pad - 1,000 monthly searches
• photo puzzle gift - 880 monthly searches
• photo collage gifts - 720 monthly searches

While these may seem like small potatoes in comparison with your first two options, we included the word “photo” in each of these for specificity. If we take that away, you get a bigger picture of the kinds of demand you can tailor your offerings toward:

• jigsaw puzzle - 165,000 monthly searches
• playing cards - 49,500 monthly searches
• mouse pad - 40,500 monthly searches
• coasters - 33,100 monthly searches
• coffee mug - 27,100 monthly searches
• postcards - 18,100 monthly searches
• keepsake frames - 18,100 monthly searches
• keepsake box - 8,100 monthly searches
• refrigerator magnet - 5,400 monthly searches

Each of these photo gifts offers an opportunity to sell your photos, you’ve just gotta get creative with your messaging: “A photo mousepad is a great way to make sure your favorite vacation memories are always with you at the office.” “Playing cards featuring your photos make great stocking stuffers, and will always spark conversation around the card table!” etc.

By including some of these popular items in your store, or featuring them as add-ons during the checkout process, you can inspire your customers to go the extra mile—and make an extra sale in the process.

Happy selling!

Being featured in the media—think local news, magazines, etc.—is one of the best things you can do to boost your brand. The increased reach of your photography brings customers to your doorstep, and strengthens your credibility in the process. And it’s easier than you think! In this article, we’ll discuss how to get your photos in the local spotlight.

Step 1: Organize opportunities by subject and season.

Almost all local magazines, newspapers, and news stations have seasonal features. From special bridal editions, to holiday events, farmer’s markets, sports spectaculars, and more, each feature is an opportunity for photographers to find their niche. 

To start, subscribe to the publications you’d love to be featured in, and keep track of themes they cover each year. Most publications have digital archives, which will make your job a LOT easier.

Keep an eye out for a theme where your photography would be a hit:

• Travel season and capturing memories
• Weddings and brides
• Holiday events and planning
• Best of Your City
• Cool jobs and employment trends
• Arts and city life

And keep in mind that every one of these is looking for subject matter experts, in addition to photographers!

Step 2: Tailor a portfolio to showcase your best.

Now comes the fun part: before you reach out to these media outlets, be sure you’ve got a pitch polished. First, put your subject-relevant photography front-and-center on your portfolio or website. Then start thinking of relevant skills you bring to the table to make working with you even more enticing for a media outlet. For example:

• Bridal photographers: You’ve probably got a pretty good idea of the trends! Fabrics, venues, colors, decor—talk up your knowledge of all that goes into making a great wedding shoot. ‍
• Portrait photographers: You’re an expert on how to make sure a holiday, seasonal, or graduation shoot goes off without a hitch. Poses, seasonal themes, and holiday decor  are just the beginning. ‍
• Food photographers: Chances are you’re up-close and personal not just with the food, but the chefs and restaurateurs behind it. Tout your bon appetit bonafides about ingredients, food styling, and more to attract future clients. ‍
• Event photographers: Races, parades, and farmers markets are just a few of the opportunities for an enterprising photographer to document–and as an expert, you’ll have the best suggestions for how to make the most of these events. ‍
• Fashion photographers: Fashion weeks are huge productions, and you’re on the inside when you photograph the events. Because you’ve been there, you can help to identify trends based on personal experience.

You can even supplement your expertise with blog posts that make clear you know the business, while also being helpful to visitors. Let’s use a fashion week as an example. 

If you know color theory and fabric history, you can showcase fashion week photos and walk through the current trends and why they’re on top. Then you can share accessible ways to incorporate these trends into a shoot, plus give tips for getting the best shots for selfies, social media, and family memories.  

This kind of content boosts your credibility AND your accessibility, making you the ideal person to work with a media outlet.

Step 3: Find the right people to pitch.

Now that your portfolio and pitch are polished, it’s time to reach out. Here are two strategies to get you started.

‍Strategy 1: The publications you know

You’ve already done the homework of finding publications who promote events around your photo expertise, so now it’s time to get in touch! Take that handy list of subscriptions you’ve got and start noting the names of the authors and the editorial team. If they list an email address, even better, but if not, no worries! Most publications have a general information contact to get you started.

Once you’ve got the contact info in hand, draft your email: Make clear who you are, why you’re writing, and what makes you the one for the job. Be sure to ask questions that show you’ve done your homework. Just like you appreciate someone who’s taken the time to look through your portfolio, writers and editors appreciate when you know their background.

Reference past themes you found interest in (and even authors by name, if you’ve found someone on staff with a solid publishing record on the topic), and get the details you’d need to participate in the future, like: 

• When they begin on the issue
• Who the best person is to submit to, or the best place to send ideas and portfolios to
• If they are currently looking for subject matter experts for relevant upcoming features

This gives you the ability to plan ahead, fine tune your pitch, and submit it when they need it so it does not go into a pile or miss the deadline. Timing is everything.

‍Strategy 2: The publications you *don’t* know

This may sound basic, but trust us: Go to Google and type “(Your City) + (Your Subject Expertise) + Photographers” and click on “News”.  This will immediately give you a list of media companies talking about your topic of choice in the city you’re located. Then hone this list by “date” (under “tools”) and you’re left with a list of the most recent articles, published in your area, about your subject expertise.

Chances are you’ll find a lot of publications you already took care of in Strategy 1, but you’re likely to find some overlooked opportunities as well. 

Step 4: Keep track!

For both of these strategies, it can be useful to make a spreadsheet for ease of reference—and to make sure you’re not repeating any pitches too soon. Here’s an idea of how yours could look:

• Column A is the publication name.
• Column B is the editor or author.
• Column C the email or contact information for the editor or author.
• Column D is the URL or date of publications for the article so you can reference it.
• Column E is when you last reached out to them.
• Column F is how that outreach went. 

However you keep track, just be sure you’ve got a solid way to remember who you’ve already pitched to, when you pitched, and if you heard back from them. This way you can make sure you don’t double pitch or repeat yourself.

Being featured as an expert in the media is one of the best ways to build trust for your photography business and grow your customer base. And as a bonus: once you’re featured, why not start a “featured in” banner on your website with publisher logos? Show off those credentials. You earned them!

Backlinks are a link from someone else’s website to yours, and they’re one of the best ways to grow your photography business. Why? They’re a vital part of SEO (search engine optimization) that helps your business show up when local people are looking for photographers and prints. And backlinks do more for your business than just SEO.

Being featured on another website helps build your brand because it shows that another business trusts you enough to send people your way. But getting backlinks can be tricky, so we contacted photographer and SEO expert Adam Riemer to share some of the tips he uses with photography clients to get good quality backlinks.

Before we share the strategies, it’s important to note that not all backlinks are good for your business. If the backlink is something anyone could get (like a link from a social media profile or post) it won’t help you with SEO. It’s also a good idea to avoid reciprocal, link-for-link schemes and paying for backlinks. These could get your site penalized which can devastate your growth potential. 

Penalized in Google terms means they take an action on your website so it can no longer show up in Google searches.  More severe penalties will prevent you from showing up for your own brand name, lesser ones will make it so you only show up for your brand name and not phrases like “photographer near me” or “landscape wall art”.  The penalties can be either algorithmic or manual with manual being the more severe.

You can find manual penalties by logging into Google search console.  Algorithmic are only detectable by using the traffic reports inside search console.  You’ll see a drop or no more traffic for your website for non-branded phrases.  Branded phrases are your photography business’s name or your own name as the photographer.  Non-branded are the larger ones that customers who haven’t learned about you yet use to find art, studio photographers, product and corporate photographers, workshops, and more.

When you build a backlink there are two rules of thumb to follow:

1. Is your target audience on the website?  If not, then the traffic coming through the link won’t convert, and you could have spent time focusing on traffic that will grow your business.
2. Is the website topically relevant to your niche?  The content within the pages where your backlink appears should connect with what you do. For example: A pet photographer might want to seek out backlink opportunities from local pet-focused businesses like vets, pet supply stores, and grooming parlors.

With these in mind, let's jump into building backlinks for photographers. 

Strategy 1: Speak at local photography events.

Local photography events tend to promote their lineups ahead of time, and if you’re on the list, this is a prime opportunity to reference your portfolio site and get a backlink. As a bonus, when popular photography and media websites reference your business, this signals to search engines that your site is also about photography, which can boost your appearance in search.

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Strategy 2: Teach at local schools and community centers.

Besides the reward of sharing your hard-earned skillset with a new generation of photographers, teaching can help you generate valuable backlinks, too. Check your local high schools, universities, and community centers for opportunities to guest lecture. When you get included in course descriptions and syllabi, make sure to provide a link to your site. If you want to get even more links, try generating resources for your courses that are hosted on your site. As educational institutions provide links to these resources for ease of access, you’ll get a helpful boost to your site’s SEO in the process. 

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Strategy 3: Get involved in charitable causes.

Like teaching, supporting charitable causes is its own reward. But as a photography business, you can also make sure you’re putting your business out there to be discovered. Look for opportunities to provide pro-bono photography services at local events, and when you do, be sure to provide links for the event’s sponsors, vendors, or contributing businesses pages. 

Because you’re a photographer, you have a distinct advantage for many charitable events—people will want the photos you took during the event, especially if you volunteered at a photo booth! This can be a great way to establish contacts for future customers as well. Just request an email address so you can send people their photos directly.

If you have the opportunity to specify, ask the event organizer to link to your homepage off of your company name so that attendees can see all the photos you took. Every little bit of name recognition helps when it comes to SEO. 

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Strategy 4: Give usage rights to media companies.

As journalists and bloggers create content, they’re looking for original artwork to accompany their articles. Offering images to news sites and industry blogs in exchange for citations and sources is a great way to get featured. 

For example, if you’re a bird photographer, offer your images to audubon societies and bird bloggers in exchange for backlinks. This builds your brand, gives you exposure, and drives leads to your site. Who knows, you may sell some prints, too!

Pro Tip: Linking your SmugMug site directly from your photograph can boost your discoverability . 

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Strategy 5: Help other businesses shine.

If you’re a wedding photographer, you see a LOT of behind the scenes action. From flower arrangements to food, to the DJ setting up these are opportunities to capture moments that show the hard work that goes into the entire production. If you have the time before or after your shoot, capture portfolio-worthy product and entertainment shots from other vendors.  

Next, let these vendors know you got some spectacular shots of them at work, and provide a business card or QR code so they can visit your site. If they like your work, propose a trade: they get updated photography, you get a solid backlink, and everyone wins. And this applies to all types of photographers! Wherever you’re shooting next, keep an eye out for other businesses that could benefit from your photography skills, and show them what you can do for them.

As a photography business, you’re in a unique position to generate powerful backlinks for your business, boosting your SEO, raising your profile, and strengthening your brand. Hopefully with these strategies in mind, you’ll be top of the charts in no time.