How to Promote Your Stock Photography Business?

Top 10 things you can do to promote your stock photography and vector portfolio.

1. Keyword your images and illustrations as well as you can, i.e. using scientific names, exact locations etc. In addition, use good titles and descriptions. This helps buyers and search engines locate your photos.

2. Create a concise and well thought out email signature that will be attached to all your outgoing emails and have links to your portfolio in it. This is also smart to do if you post in forums or message boards. These links are valuable tools for people to find your photos.

3. Submit your studio and photo links to Google. Just Google "submit URL to Google" to get the URL.

4. Submit your portfolio to related photography sites, directories and forums. You can do Google searches to find the best directories or photography resource pages for good sites to promote your artwork.

5. Create specific lightboxes or clipfolders that highlight similar images around a topic that you know photo buyers are interested in. For example you might want to create a clipfolder that relates to Christmas or New Years. Or create one that is for Sports or Food related. It is up to you. You can submit these clipfolders to search engines and also send them directly to friends, family and best of all photo buyers.

6. Add your portfolio or studio link to blogs or different websites you are a part of. On many sites you can use the "Add This" button to add your portfolio and photography to social networks that you belong to links

7. Use any websites' referral links to drive new photo buyers and new sellers to your portfolio to find extra ways to make money while you promote your work.

8. Create highly unique, not too posed photos and do your research on what buyers are searching for and buying on different sites. Look at the information agencies give you to know what buyers are looking for and where there are under-served markets. Check out what photo agencies are looking for.

9. When linking to your portfolio try using anchor links like "stock photography" or "buy photos." Wikipedia says The anchor text, link label or link title is the visible, click-able text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines. This will help Google and other search engines know that your studio link is related to whatever text you use for your anchor link.

10. Use http://search.twitter.com to find out what people are looking for with regards to stock photos and connect with them. Talk to buyers about what they want and then create it for them. You can then direct them to your site/studio so they can buy it.

These tips should lead to an improvement in the amount of traffic your photography portfolio receives and at the end of the day should lead to more sales.