Website Idea for PhotographersWriten by Joann Brooks
Stock photo websites are gaining in popularity like sliced bread caught on in the early 1900s. If you love taking pictures as much as internet users love to browse stock photos online, then this website idea is for you. Simply take as many photos as your heart desires and put them on a website that is nicely organized and categorized with an intuitive menu and navigation system that makes it easy for browsers to find the photo they want. Make the site entirely free. Don't try to charge people to browse or submit their own photos unless you want your site to take 20 years to take off. If you make your site freely accessible others will link to your because you have a free resource. If you make it something people need to pay for, they will turn away and you'll lose that prospective partner and eventual customer.
If you're all set and gung ho on this website idea , but you don't have the faintest idea of how to get started programming and designing such a site, then allow me to make a few suggestions. First, find a web host that offers something called Fantastico. Then, use Fantastico to install a free open source php script called Coppermine. Then, go out on the web and search for free Coppermine themes. Finally, submit your photos in bulk via FTP, add descriptions to each photo that you upload, and you're off to the races. You'll then want to submit your free stock photo website to as many directories as you can. Or, simply hire a directory submitter who will do all that painstaking data entry for you and have your site listed in 500 directories in just a few days time. Then, it's a matter of collecting photos from website visitors and categorizing them on your website. You're site will grow with time and you'll need to upgrade the transfer and bandwidth that your host supplies you as time goes on. However, with many hosts offering terabytes of storage and bandwidth these days for less than $50 a month, this is not a huge expense.
This idea might also be for you if you're a web designer needing a website idea. It's not only an idea for photographers. There are many people who take up photography on the side and if you know something about creating websites because you are into web design then it's a perfect match for you. Most photographers don't know the slightest thing about creating a website that is search engine friendly, and functions in a way that makes it easy to add photos in batch mode, etc. You will have an edge rather than be at a disadvantage because you will know the ins and outs of web design and developement.
Stock photo websites are indeed one of the coolest things on the web today. Never before have photographers been able to share and distribute their art in such an efficient manner. It's an exciting time for online photographers and why not get in on this expanding area to market and solicit your work. Eventually you can find a way to make this website idea worthwhile for you, but for now keep it free so that you don't drive traffic away, but instead build up a user base. There are plenty of ways to make money from a website like this, and if you search the other articles here about Google Adsense or Yahoo YPN you can learn how this works.
Joann Brooks is a web developer and freelance writer who likes to write about website ideas. Visit http://www.websiteideas.org for more great website ideas.