How Many Websites Should You Have?
If you’re considering expanding into other genres and markets to add additional revenue streams because your current genres or markets aren’t working for you, or you want to get out of what you’re doing and into something related, you need to think about how to market your new work.
Should you add a section to your website? Should you build a whole new website? Should you create a whole new brand identity and start from scratch? These are important considerations but I think the answers are pretty easy, albeit not necessarily straightforward.
You have to show the work you want to create. You have to put it front and centre in your marketing. Nowadays, that begins with a website, but it extends to your print portfolio, as well. Right now, let’s focus on your websites.
Here are three criteria that you need to consider to help you determine whether or not to create a new website.
1. Does the new work fit with your existing work?
This is pretty straightforward. If you tend to shoot architecture and you want to expand into shooting interiors for decorators and designers, that’s a natural fit. Same for food and still life. editorial and advertising, maternity and boudoir, headshots and portraiture, weddings and families, beauty and cosmetics, etc.
As a rule of thumb, consumer photography fits with consumer photography. There might be times where you want to establish a different brand to target very different clients, such as if you’re a boudoir photographer who now also wants to market headshots to real estate agents and lawyers. In that case, you might want to consider creating a whole new brand or DBA and create a website to match.
I talked extensively about brand creation in episodes 4-8. It was one of the things I talked about early on because it’s so crucial to your business.
Commercial work can get a bit trickier, which brings us to our second consideration...
2. Do you live in a small market area, as opposed to a larger metropolitan area?
If you are working primarily at a fairly local or regional level creating images for local and regional clients, then you could put almost any type of commercial photography on your website.
You don’t need to specialize, or have the appearance of specialization, if you live and work in a market where it makes more sense to market yourself as a generalist. Just don’t say you “specialize in” and then list a dozen different genres. That’s not specialization.
If you live in a larger metropolitan area, you can also still be a generalist, but it’ll be more difficult to land larger contracts. In an area where there is a much larger talent pool, companies have their pick of the crop. An industrial pipe-fitting company isn’t likely to hire someone who mostly has food and beverage images on their website when they can select from a dozen or more talented photographers who specialize in industrial photography.
Also, if you live in a large urban area and are working with advertising agencies and publications, those art buyers and photo editors are going to hire people who are specialists in their field. If your portfolio is mostly healthcare and you want to transition into food and still life, then it might be a good idea to create a second website that only shows that work.
Alternately, you could keep your same website, create new portfolios for your new work, and just unlink your old portfolios from your navigation. This will allow you to keep the Google results of the existing portfolios while directing future clients to current work. Don’t delete the pages, just hide them from your website’s navigation.
3. Can you afford an additional website?
This is the most important consideration. If you cannot afford to create a second or third website, then don’t even consider it, work with what you’ve got. There’s no need to go any further because you should not be spending money you do not have.
I hate going into debt for anything, especially on something that’s unproven. I’ve done it before and I hate it. If you can’t afford it — I don’t care if it’s $200 or $20 — don’t do it. Don’t spend money you don’t have.
It’s a real pet peeve of mine when people tell you you have to spend money to make money. That’s just not true. You can build a business on cash. It might take longer and you might have to be more creative, but you can do it.
Summary
So, let’s recap. Here are the key criteria to consider when deciding on whether to add an additional website for new areas of photography:
Is the new work a natural fit with your existing work?
Do you live in a metropolitan area with a lot of competition?
Can you afford the expense of a second website?
You’ll notice I left SEO off the list of key considerations. There are some people who are evangelical about having everything on one website for the benefit of SEO. From my experience, it doesn’t matter how many websites you have. I currently have two photography websites, one for my commercial work and one for my consumer work, and both rank on page one of Google for multiple keyword phrases I am targetting, so as long as you’re following the SEO tips I’ve outlined in previous episodes, having multiple websites shouldn’t be a problem.
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