Please welcome my guest!

I very rarely have guests post to my blog, but I made an exception for my good friend Nicole! She is an amazing photographer and author. Her most recent eBook, The Inspired Photographer, is now available over at Flatbooks. I am really excited about her latest work and asked her if she wanted to write a post on my blog to coincide with the launch of her book. I hope you enjoy both her post and her new book!

Nicole S. Young (a.k.a. "Nicolesy")

Hey everyone! My name is Nicole S. Young (a.k.a. "Nicolesy"), and I’m a photographer and author. Like many of you, I got to know Trey through Google+ (as well as dozens of other amazing people). To celebrate the launch of my brand-new eBook over on Flatbooks, Trey graciously allowed me to write a guest post here on his amazing blog.

My eBook is titled The Inspired Photographer: Twenty Ways to Seek Inspiration & Ignite Creativity. I think we all need a dose of inspiration now and then, but don’t always know how to find it, and that’s exactly what my book aims to do. But I’m not here to talk about inspiration, I have my eBook to do that for me. Instead, let’s talk business!

The Oregon Countryside, © Nicole S. Young (All Rights Reserved)

Last week I was a guest on Trey’s Variety Hour and the topic was “Business and Marketing for Photographers“. We had some really great conversations, and I felt that it would be a good topic to carry through to a blog post so I could give some more insight and get a little deeper into some of the things we discussed. Among these topics, one of the biggest ones was regarding mailing lists and newsletters. We really only scratched the surface on talking about this, so I thought I’d go a little further and share some of what I’ve learned over the years. So here are some of the top five things I think are important in regards to Mailing Lists, Newsletters and Marketing.

Mailing Lists, Newsletters and Marketing

Create Your Mailing List … Now!

If you have any intentions of selling products, services or doing business with a group of people, then you will be happy that you took this step when you did. I never thought I would have any need to contact thousands of people at once to share, market to or educate those who find an interest in my work, but I found out very late in the game that yes, I do! Photography may just be a hobby for you, and that’s fine. It was for me, too, until I discovered that I could make a living doing it full-time. Getting to where I am today was definitely an evolution; it didn’t happen overnight and it definitely was not a part of any "big plan". Building my business has been a series of baby steps, and compiling a mailing list is one of those steps in the process that is now an essential part of nearly any business (whether or not you think you need it).

Do Your Research

First of all, you need to choose a mailing list company to work with. It’s a good idea to use an email marketing service provider, mostly because these companies are much more trusted and email servers are less likely to bounce newsletters coming from their websites. Plus, many of them allow you to integrate into eCommerce websites, such as PayPal or eJunkie, as well as plug-ins and forms for blogs or social media sites, and the more popular the company the more likely you will have that capability. I use Mailchimp, but there are several others out there (Aweber is another popular one, and a quick Google search will give you more options).

One question you may be asking is, "What will it cost?" Many of the main sites allow you to start out with a free account, and then you only start paying as you start getting more and more people on your list. The way I see it, if you have a significant amount of people sign up for your newsletter, then you probably have enough people to make the list worth having it and should be able to find a way to make it pay for itself. Just do your research to find one that suits your business and marketing needs best.

Getting People to Sign Up

There’s no magical formula to getting names on your list. The thing is, you want people on your list who want to be there! It’s definitely a big "no-no" to add people to your list without their permission (that will probably just end up getting your account flagged over time). Buying names and lists is also not a good practice, you’re just likely to get the wrong groups of people and they’ll flag you (and you’re likely to end up getting booted from your account). The bottom line is that you need permission in order to send people your newsletter.

Here are some of the ways I recommend enticing people to sing up for your newsletter:

• Give something away for free. I started out by creating a free eBook to give away when people sign up, and will likely transition that to new products over time (such as free Lightroom presets, etc.). Find something that has value, can be digitally delivered and fits your business model, and mention it on your blog, social media, etc. People like free stuff, trust me!
• Add sign-up forms to your website or Facebook page. Sometimes all it takes is someone finding your website, liking what they see and wanting to keep in touch.
• If you sell something, give them the option to sign up for your mailing list. Most email list services have plug-ins or apps that you can use to integrate with your eCommerce site or your blog. If so, add a check-box that allows your customers the option to sign up.

Follow the Rules!

When you start sending out newsletters, you want to be sure that you follow ALL of the rules. Many of these will be available on your service provider’s website (Mailchimp provides PFDs filled with lots of good information to their users), but it’s up to you to be sure that you follow proper procedure. And, there is a legitimate law called the CAN-SPAM Act that all businesses sending emails need to follow; I highly suggest giving it a read-through to ensure you are following the rules. Just so you know what I’m referring to, here are just a few that stick out in my mind:

• Physical Address. When sending newsletters, you need to have a physical address posted somewhere in your email (usually at the bottom). If you work from home and are not comfortable sharing your home address, consider getting a PO Box you can use in place of your residence.
• Email Address. You need to have a legitimate email address that the newsletter will be sent from. Chances are you won’t want it to be your personal email address (such as Gmail or Yahoo). If you don’t have one already, set something up with a more specific domain. For example, use something like "newsletter@mydomain.com" (where "mydomain.com" is substituted for your own domain name). And if you need to set up a domain name, try a website like GoDaddy to get started with personalized business email addresses.
• Offer the opportunity to "unsubscribe". When sending messages, be sure that you include an easy-to-find "Unsubscribe" link somewhere in the email. The last thing you want is people to leave, but I would much rather have people on my list who want to be there. I know that I personally can’t stand it when a business does not give me this opportunity, or they make it difficult to follow through with unsubscribing. Don’t be that business.

This is not a complete list of rules to follw, so be sure to read the CAN-SPAM Act (or appropriate guidelines for your country) for more information.

Be Social, Professional and Consistent

A recent blog post by Seth Godin really struck a chord with me. He mentioned that, when writing copy (or advertisements, if you will), "… the best approach is to write for just one person." When you are doing any type of marketing or advertising, people need to know that you are authentic, and you are relating to them as an individual. We don’t always want to be lumped into a large mass of people. I know that I wouldn’t want someone to think a certain product appealed to me only because I was a female photographer, such as "You’re a woman, just like all the other people we sent this email to, so you will like our stuff." No way! I want them to say something like "We know you are unique, and you have style. Check out our new line of bags and see what you think!" OK, that was a little cheesy, but you get my point.

Another thing you’ll want to do is find your balance on how frequently you send out newsletter campaigns. There’s a fine line between too much and too little; too much could mean you are annoying the people on your list and get frequent unsubscribes or Spam notifications, and too little could mean that you send emails so infrequently that people forget who you are. I like to send out newsletters one to two times per month. Oftentimes it’s because I have a new book, eBook or product release to announce, or I want to share educational information, such as a video tutorial on Photoshop. What works for your business will be different, just be sure that what you send it has consistent value to your readers.

With that said, no matter how much you try to make things as beautiful, professional and balanced as you can, you will still get unsubscribes, people will not open your email and people will not click on your links. Just so you have something to compare to, here are the stats I have from my most recent newsletter campaign:

• Opens: 47.2%
• Unopened: 52.4%
• Clicks: 11%
• Unsubscribers: 0.7%
• Complaints: 2 (0.0%)

It will take some time for you to grow your list and come up with a good rhythm, the key is to start early. Good luck!

Nicole S. Young is a photographer and author soon to be living in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can find out more about her on her blog, as well as on Google+ and Facebook.

Filed under the categories: Travel

Free $50 Credit at Gelaskins – comment to win

Did you know Gelaskins is selling some of my work as skins for your phones/laptops/tablets? Cool! I want to give away a free $50 credit to a random commenter below. Luke will make a random selection and get back to you soon!

Daily Photo – The Forbidden Wooden City

How long did this full model of the Forbidden City take to build? Can you imagine doing something like this for a school project? And it seems so… flammable!

I took this photo inside the city planning museum in Beijing. Across the street in Tiananmen Square, there were tens of thousands of people, but this museum was totally empty. If you ever do visit one of these Chinese mega-cities, I think they all have these strange “City Planning” museums – they all are filled with really cool models like this.

Filed under the categories: Beijing, China, Travel

The Free HDR Tutorial

Thanks for the continued feedback on the new HDR Tutorial here on the site. I’m reading everything! Also, I’m glad you like that new little video I put on page three!

Daily Photo – Deeper into Milford Sound

Milford Sound has lots of interesting mountains besides the main ones that everyone shoots. The main corridor of dramatic mountains and sea is so alluring that it pulls your eye over there every time. The only way I can ignore it is to actually look through my camera at other areas. I think that’s the only way I spotted this!

Filed under the categories: Milford Sound, New Zealand

Another international trip

Since I’m in the middle of yet another international trip, I thought I would share this video I made on a previous one – you may remember this! There’s also a making-of on YouTube as well that you may enjoy.

Daily Photo – And on the way to Paradise…

On the way to Paradise, New Zealand is Glenorchy. Be sure to stop here and take a walk around their new boardwalks that go out through the wetlands. You better set aside 2-4 hours, like all the “little” walks around here!

Some days have the water at a pretty high level, and you can sometimes see nice shapes like this one here.

Filed under the categories: Glenorchy, New Zealand, Travel

Mid-day Update – Flickr News 1 TB free?

I saw that Flickr is now giving 1 TB of storage of hi-res photos to ALL users. Wow that’s kind of an insanely high number! I’m not sure how existing pros account holders (like me) think about this, but they get grandfathered into infinite, which is a lot more that 1 TB, so that is nice. The new re-design looks nice too. Here’s my Flickr page.

I wonder if they are making this move because it “sounds” good when they know that the vast majority of users will never use that much data. So, it may not be that much of a financial hit on them for the storage space. Google recently upgraded their full-rez photo allotment too, but not nearly that high. But, on the plus side, the Google one allows infinite uploads of photos smaller than 2048×2048, which I think most photos are nowadays. My friend Thomas Hawk also has a nice article about this news from Flickr on his blog.

I still use SmugMug (see SmugMug Review) as my main place for hi-rez photos and my portfolio. Still, however, I spend most of my time on these other social networks, none of which do as good of a job as displaying my portfolio of work.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I still can’t upload full-rez images on Facebook… Sad emoticon.

Did you get the free Lightroom presets upgrade?

We recently added a free bonus package to the Lightroom presets for free. If you already bought them, then this is a free upgrade! Now, we started selling these in the “old” store, which let us send out an email to everyone. But if you got them in the New StuckInCustoms Store, then your account has been automagically updated! Just login and you can re-download the package that will have all the new goodies in there!

Daily Photo – Tom with the Horse

The first time Tom and I took photos of horses was on Oahu. This was our second horse-encounter here in New Zealand! He got up close with his fisheye while I backed up with the 70-200 f/2.8 to get this shot.

I really like those mountains behind Tom. I want to get a shot of them this winter when they are all covered in snow!

Filed under the categories: Glenorchy, New Zealand, Paradise, Queenstown, Travel

On This Week in Tech Today

I’ll be on with Leo Laporte, Om Malik, and Dwight Silverman today (Sunday) at 3 PM PT, 6 PM ET. You can watch live at http://live.twit.tv/ . If you’re around Petaluma and want to say hi, stop by! I’ll be sharing some new photos from travels and the Glass. We’ll probably also talk about stuff from Google I/O and other random tech geeky awesome stuff…

HDR with Google Glass?

I think I figured something cool out, although it is an absolute hack. But, that’s okay. I mean, if you can get the light, then you get the light. If you think about it, using Auto-bracketing on a regular camera (like a DSLR) to get an HDR is kind of a hack, since that’s not even the purpose of auto-bracketing. Today’s photo below shows the hacked effect working from a Google Glass photo. I have a lot more testing and research to do, and I’ll share it soon. It’s different than the usual HDR Tutorial (which was just re-written from the ground-up less than two weeks ago, by the way!).

An All-Glass Album

I made an All-Glass album over on Google+. I’ve been experimenting a lot with taking photos with Glass. And before you ask, regular visitors to the site (hi!) know that I post-process unapologetically. To me, the first photo is just a sketch. As long as you get enough light and color with an interesting composition, the rest of the light is yours to bend to your will. But yes, all these photos were taken with Google Glass. Some were taken on the San Francisco PhotoWalk a few days ago!

Daily Photo – Running down to the Beach

I was going down to the beach when I decided to get some quick photos up here with Glass. It didn’t take too long. Man, I sure do wish they were RAW files, but sadly they are just JPGs. It’s not the end of the world, but still… it’s a little limiting. Anyway, as you can see, the waves were crashing in and the weather was wonderful… I guess that makes up for the lack of RAW files!

Actually, maybe one of you smart people can tell me why tiny cameras like this and iPhones and Androids can’t make RAW files. I don’t know the technical reason. I assume it has something to do with sensor size and how much light it can collect, but some of that hardware stuff is beyond my ken.

After I got down there, I took a photo of the Natural Bridge, which you can see in the album above.

Filed under the categories: California, Santa Cruz, Travel

New Speech at SmugMug

I’ve been using SmugMug for years (see my SmugMug Review!) – and they invited me up to give a talk. Since I’ve given many hardcore tech-talks, I decided this time to tell a few traumatic and embarrassing stories about when I was growing up and how I ended up in the world of photography…

Daily Photo – A Tropical Sunset

I did a lot of snorkeling out in that bay. This whole area of Virgin Gorda is called The Baths, and it has some of the best beaches in the world. There are basically no waves of any consequence. So, if you’re just learning to snorkel, it’s a perfect environment. The kids had a lot of fun here too… lots of private little alcoves and caves!

Filed under the categories: Caribbean, Travel, Virgin Gorda

This is embarrassing

I believe this French newspaper article is speculating that Google Glass is too geeky for the public, and they chose to put my photo right next to a naked Robert Scoble in the shower. This may be a new internet-low for me… not sure where the link is!

Daily Photo – Bathwater Warm Pool at Sunset

I didn’t actually get in this water, but I was imagining that this was exactly the same as my body temperature. It just kinda looks like that, doesn’t it?

I took this photo at the Disney resort on Oahu. I didn’t even stay here… just stopped by for a few hours with Tom to take photos! It’s very pretty there… certainly worth a visit.

Filed under the categories: Hawaii, Oahu, Travel

Seeing in 3D Again?

Did you miss the Hangout Show #76 when I talked to Thomas Hawk about this? We both see out of one eye, and we talked a bit about it towards the beginning of the show. To see that episode (or others you may like), go to My YouTube Channel and go find that playlist for “Trey’s Variety Hour” — then show #76 should be close to the top!

Daily Photo – Another Max Patte Statue

The Hills Golf Course is covered with these amazing sculptures! I think they have a good thing going here, and I hope they keep adding more and more statues. With all these statues and whatnot, it reminds me a bit of a miniature golf course for grownups! These statues are not on every hole, but they are elegantly placed here and there. Also, they seem to all be set up for really good photo ops as well.

Filed under the categories: Arrowtown, New Zealand, Queenstown, Travel

Are you taking more photos per week in 2013 than 2012? How about 2010? My guess is yes. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a pro or just a casual photographer — it’s really crazy how much visual data we are all generating. It’s awesome, but I know you already have the same problem I do. It’s hard to organize and edit all those photos!

When I started taking photos with my iPhone a few years ago (I’ve since switched to Android) I started taking 10x more photos per week. And just wait till more and more people get Glass; the number of photos will go up another order of magnitude. I’m taking about 100 pictures a day with it, mostly because it’s so much more convenient than pulling out my mobile phone! And, if you’re a photographer, you’re always seeing awesome little compositions that you just can’t ignore. I’m COMPELLED to take a photo!

No matter how good your workflow, you just end up with an ever-growing burden of photos. Pros have this problem, but even we have workflow issues!

So, along comes this exciting new announcement from Google – that they are using their massive server farms to intelligently organize and post-process photos for us. It looks really smart! I can just upload (which is automatic if you turn that on with your mobile phone) dozens or hundreds of photos, and it automatically puts the best photos in the front. It knows which are the best by analyzing human aesthetics in other popular photos! If I don’t agree with its suggestions (or post-processing!) I can undo those bits and make them my own. But it’s like having an assistant that does all the organizing all for me – and an assistant that gets smarter all the time.

Displacing Lightroom?

I think if you’re a casual photographer, this is a compelling new option! It’s free. It’s smart. And it will only get smarter. I notice that one problem casual photographers have with Lightroom is that things still get unorganized. It takes a workflow (and perhaps an understanding of “collections” in LR) to select the best of the best photos. Beyond that, it takes a little while to post-process the photos. It’s a bit faster if you know how to make presets and stuff, but this is still beyond the ken of casual photographers. Not everyone is a hardcore Lightroom geek, no matter what Adobe might think. It’s still a scary product to a lot of people who are just looking for a way to organize all the new photos they are taking!

The other reason casual users will like it is because the photos are automatically backed up on the cloud. That feels good because you don’t have to worry about syncing up your home library on Lightroom with the cloud. It’s confusing! Adobe still hasn’t given users an easy way to do this. People are very scared to lose their photos in a hard drive crash, and hardly anyone (especially casual users) have a good backup situation in place.

For pros that do serious post-processing and hardcore organizing, I think Lightroom is still a smart way to organize your pro photos at home… But, for all those “other” casual photos that pros take… (see the next section!)

Why it’s good for Pros:

Your first instinct might be, “Hey, I’m a pro. I use Lightroom and have a pretty good workflow. I don’t need Google’s server farms to make any decisions for me!” Well, I think you are right for your “Pro” photos that you do for clients or for your own master portfolio. But, pros also take a lot of “casual” photos. These include quick photos of your family, mobile shots from your phone, fun party shots, a casual dinner with friends, and this sort of thing. Not every photo a pro takes is a serious major undertaking.

Now, if you’re like me, then you take TWO kinds of photos. You take serious portfolio pieces and you take casual family and walking-around photos. And then you kind of have a workflow for EACH kind of photo. And for me, this has been a problem (well until this Google announcement). I have ended up with a pile of family photos that sometimes builds up over time in my Lightroom because I just haven’t had the time to go figure out the best ones and post-process. I feel bad about it — but it is a real problem!

So, in the future, I’ll still keep my pro workflow for my portfolio pieces with my usual Rambo workflow using several Adobe products (if you want to see my whole workflow, see the newly updated HDR Tutorial). But for my family and casual shots, I’m just gonna upload them to the Google Cloud and have it pick out the best ones AND post-process them. This will 1) save me a ton of time 2) unburden my mind from tasks-left-undone and 3) quickly deliver pictures to my whole family, thus increasing the circle of happiness that keeps everything zen.

Why it’s good for casual photographers:

I probably get more questions from casual photographers than pros about “How do I organize my photos?” It’s a big problem actually. The process of getting the photos off your devices, onto your computer, then selecting a few to share online is rather complex. Now I think the workflow is much simpler. There are still two situations:

1) Shooting with just a mobile phone (Android or iPhone): If you have Google+ activated and up and running, your photos can just go automatically to the cloud (private just to you by default). It will take your hundreds of photos, post-process them all, and then automatically choose the best ones and push them to the front of the album. It might make a few mistakes, but it’ll be pretty dang good. And if you don’t like the post-processing, you can undo it… But I have a feeling that people will really dig the automatic skin-softening. That is almost a universally adored feature!

2) Shooting with a compact camera or DSLR: The easiest path is just to download all the photos to a folder on your computer (put them in Lightroom, if you want) and then just upload the whole lot to Google+. Let Google figure out the best, or at least make a first pass at it. Give it a run a few times… It’s a drastic change to a workflow, yes, but I think this is a smart way to do it.

Why this is bad news for Adobe

I know some of you may disagree that “casual” photographers don’t use Lightroom, but I’ve talked to thousands of casual shooters that DO use Lightroom. It’s arguably the best way (hitherto) to organize your photos. All you need to do is take a few thousand photos a year, and you have yourself an organizational problem! There are millions of “casual” photographers that fit into this category. This is, in fact, Adobe’s biggest growth area — new photographers that are needing a way to organize and post-process their photos. They still continue to grow with pros, although you could make an argument here that that area is slowing because most pros already use Lightroom or Aperture! There’s just not a lot of room there.

But now, these casual shooters have a free way to organize and post-process their photos with this new Google server farm. Even better, the photos are backed up onto the cloud, which you don’t get with Lightroom. Google will be able to snipe away millions of users who would have previously chosen to go the Adobe route.

What I want to see next from Google:

I do like the post-processing already. I think it makes good decisions for the most part, but I’d like to have even more control on the web. I know they just bought Nik, so I can only assume that we’ll get some of those handy “Snapseed” controls soon, and then in the future, maybe some of the other cool effects from the whole Nik suite of tools. The other thing I’d like to see is the ability to upload RAW files. Once we can upload RAW files, then we’ll have even more power to post-process photos. Again, I don’t use the Google post-processing farm for my pro-portfolio pieces. I still do all that RAW processing locally.

It will be a long time before the web is fast enough for me to quickly upload a set of RAWs and process them all online. Pros will keep our hardcore processing local for quite a bit, I think. However, I am at peace with the idea that there are two kinds of photos in my life – those that need massive at-home client processing, and those that the web can organize and process for me.

Filed under the categories: Travel

Remote Vision, Ravens, and Glass

Here’s a snippet from the latest tutorial for you. This is the part we filmed when we were up close to the North Korean prison here in New Zealand. I talk a bit about expanded visual consciousness…

Daily Photo – Entering the Dungeons

Here’s the dungeon from under that French chateau that we visited several months ago.

I can’t imagine actually living in a house with a dungeon. I mean, it would be pretty dang awesome, but you would also feel like you’d have to put the place to good use. I guess I have a few enemies that I could capture and put down there, but that seems a bit extreme. Maybe just have parties and stuff. Or maybe a studio for processing down there. It’s hard to say… it all seems a bit dreary.

Maybe when I get some miner-bots, I’ll minecraft up a design under my existing house and send them on their way. I can carve something out down there. Well maybe I better do it beside the house so my bad designs don’t make the whole house collapse.

Filed under the categories: France, New Zealand, Paris, Queenstown, Travel

Huge PhotoWalk in San Francisco Tonight!

Hope to see you there! See the event info here! We’ll be giving away Google Glass, so good luck to all of you attending.

New part of the HDR Tutorial – mini-masking tutorial

If you have seen the new and improved HDR Tutorial, then you may see this new video below on page 3! This describes how to do masking, which is a very common question for people that are getting started in Photoshop.

Daily Photo – The Night of the Aurora

I think these happen a lot down here in New Zealand! I’m hardly an expert though… I’m very last-minute about all these things and only know about them once they start happening. Some people are real aurora experts and track them like storms. There are websites, apps, and all sorts of things. I gotta get my act together so I can plan for these events better.

I was having so much fun with the landscape orientation… but then I decided to go vertical for a few shots, and I am glad I did!

When I show people these photos without any explanation, they never ever ask me what that yellow-green light is in the lower part. I don’t know if they just assume it is the aurora, or maybe they think it is light from a city, or maybe they think I added it in post. I just don’t know… but I do like to see people’s reactions, especially when they are confused. I don’t know why I enjoy confusing people with these sorts of photos, but it is just kinda fun. I think it is fun because I am also confused by how this kind of light can even be possible!

Filed under the categories: New Zealand, Nikon D800, Queenstown, Travel