Every time I turn on the TV or visit the news pages on the Internet, it seems that the word “recession” pops up constantly. If we were to believe everything we read in the news, we might be forgiven for thinking that the end of the world is imminent.

Sadly, I hear the same from some other photographers – “It’s the end of the industry“, “No one can make a living from it“, or “The professional photographer is doomed to extinction“.

Personally, I prefer to ignore most of this talk of doom and gloom. Yes, the economy has taken a dramatic downturn in recent times and there have been some major upsets in the financial world that have spilled over to affect us all, but do I really believe that the professional photographer’s days are numbered?

No, I don’t.

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Photography Business Ideas professional photographer, success

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that getting confirmed bookings for our wedding photography services, no matter how long we’ve been in the business, can be a very challenging and often frustrating task.

How often have you gone into a sales presentation with an apparently ideal prospect, who seemed keen and enthusiastic, only to come out of it feeling let down because they didn’t end up making a booking? It’s very annoying and frustrating, not to mention confusing and painful. It’s certainly happened to me more times than I can count, and I know it will undoubtedly happen again in the future.

As hard as it can be to deal with sometime, we’re in the people business, and being able to handle rejection is one of those “necessary evils” that come with the territory.

But what can we do to make sure that we keep rejection to a minimum? How can we raise our booking percentages and make each one of our sales presentations count?

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Sales & Marketing professional photographer, selling

Do you want the ability to track your web site traffic, see where your visitors are coming from, look at the keywords they used to find you, see where in the world they are, and analyze which sites are sending you the most referrals? If so, Google Analytics might be able to help.

I am certainly no expert at using Google Analytics, but I would like to share some of my experiences with it, and hopefully encourage you to make use of it on your own web site. This is not meant to be an exhaustive article on the subject, but is aimed at giving the basics as well as an insight into some of the useful features.

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Photography Website SEO google analytics, search engine optimization