All the updates fit to print

And I’ll leave out those updates that aren’t fit to print.

The Online Sale Conclusion

Well, I set the cutoff date for July 20th in order to make sure I could organize and plan in the event the Airstream could hit the road pointed to New England.  The goal was 300 sales of 8×12 prints, or less than 300 sales if folks got bigger things or multiple items.  Given the size of the readership here I thought it was a realistic goal.  Unfortunately we fell way short.

A few interesting statistics

During the period of my online sale we’ve got the following numbers from the website:

• Made less than 10 sales via my online gallery.
• Received one donation toward getting the Airstream on the road.
• Received over 40 e-mails in that same period of time for free advice on photography, locations, camera repair, and requests to do presentations at photo clubs.

So, with the sales and donation we made it to 10% of funds raised.  With July here printing has been minimal, as well as other work.  Bottom line?  No way the Airstream can hit the road, and if things don’t improve it’s going to be tough to cover all bills.  Not complaining, this is a pattern every July and August, and the big reason why I was pushing to get some online sales going.  I am surprised that less than 1% of overall monthly readers responded.  I received more requests for free help than anything else.

We’ll see about next year, but this year’s efforts can only be described in two words.  Epic Fail!

Blog Issues

A unique issue has come up when at home.  I can no longer access the blog from any computer or the IPad.  There’s something up with the network address translation on my router, or with Cable One.  What happens?

Trying to go to http://blog.richcharpentier.com I get an error screen.  Going to http://www.richcharpentier.com goes to my main site fine.  Attempting to click into the blog from my main site gets the same error.

I tested further with a few websites I know that aren’t “www” sites.  A teamspeak sever for instance.  Going to www.teamspeakcompany. com works.  Going to a specific server “ts33.teamspeakcompany.com” fails the same as my blog.

Now, this should affect readers out there.  But I’m wondering if it affects any other Cable One Customers.  Of course, if it does I will most likely not hear from Cable One customers…..  A hard issue to trouble shoot to be sure.

In the meantime, blogging from home is a no go.

Studio Marketing Education continues

While its slow I’m spending a lot of time watching video after video on marketing.  I’ve learned a few things, and some I’m really not fond of but understand how they work.  I’ll be doing new informational cards soon without any price information.  If people’s first question is always price and not quality then they’ll go to the $50 new photographer down the road.  It shouldn’t be about price.

Now, I need to learn how to sell that to customers and feel comfortable about it.

In the end I’ll need to do a lot of leg work.  Remove all pricing from the website, work up packages to show clients, and insist on design consultations to get folks in to talk about what they want, not just about price.  Yeah, it’s a learning process.

Okay, off to meet with my one client for the day!  The rest of the week is looking pretty open.