goldengod

It’s 11pm PST and it’s beginning to look like I’m not going to get the article on fall photos finished today. Which is too bad, really; you’d have loved it.

So to buy myself a little time, I’ve decided to highlight a site I recently added to my RSS reader: The photography business blog for what appears to be yet another microstock site! I know, exciting. It’s called Photopreneur: Half photo, half…. uh… preneur?

What’s Awesome About Photopreneur

• Quality Photo Business Content - Think John Harrington, but without as many “I Told You So” posts about Getty’s stock prices. The site has reasonably good photography business advice adapted for the small, ADD brains of todays forward-thinking youth. I have half a dozen posts open in tabs that I want to link, but that’d be tacky. Just ignore the lame filler for today about photography schools and scroll down to find the juicy bits.
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• Solid Way of Launching a Site - Running a blog in your niche for a while before your company’s launch is a win-win-win situation: You win by starting to rank for SEO keywords. You win by contributing to an active photography community online that will reward you via participation and silly posts like these. And you win by having an established audience when your site launches!
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• Clean-ish Design - It’s simple, plain, and very readable. Other than a notable exception that I’ll get to later, I really like the design.
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What Sucks About Photopreneur

I’m going out on a limb here posting about what I don’t like; hopefully they don’t check their site stats and also aren’t violent biker dudes. I’m going to chance it….

• “You must be logged in to post a comment“ - That, dear reader, is the sound of me leaving. As simple as that. I’m interested in having a discussion, but not ten minutes of fiddling with my inbox for a temporary password interested. The fewer barriers to entry, the more participation you’re going to see.
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• “We are strictly volunteer here .. but it’s GREAT exposure.” - Woo! I’ve always wanted to work hard and not get paid for it! Apparently it’s not that great exposure, because I didn’t see any author attribution on any articles.
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  Either no one is writing but the staff, or “GREAT exposure” is code for “We strip your byline!”No, you don’t have ads but you’re using the blog as an SEO tactic to launch your microstock thingy. I’m assuming it’s a for-profit microstock thingy, though.
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  Don’t try and take advantage of people with one hand while offering good business advice with the other. Working for exposure isn’t good business for photographers; you wouldn’t ask your mechanic to do it, don’t ask me.
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• MyBlogLog Widget - I’m sorry, but if you’re going to have the Web 2.0 equivalent of Geocities in your sidebar, I’m going to make fun of you. That’s just the way it works. If you’re that attached to tacky looking community widgets, perhaps you should consider hosting your site elsewhere.
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Long story short: I will be leaving this site in my reader, on a provisional basis. It’s a cool site and I enjoy the readability of their photography business content, but it has some irritating habits that they either need to fix or make up for with some seriously good chocolate.

And PhotoPreneur staff? If you’re not a bunch of scary bikers, hit me back in the comments. I’d like to hear what you’ve got to say about my smartassery.