Open Door and Water Outlet on a Red Wall

Minimalism as Simple Geometry 

Photo By © Prakash Ghai
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A Minimalist Photo of an Open Door and Water outlet on a Red wall.

These days I am on the hunt for better SEO techniques. I read quite a few articles on it in the past, and I was enjoying a decent page 2 google ranking of my website for the term "Minimalist Photography".

Not only that, about 30-40 images from my website were appearing in the google image search index for the same term. But, the benefits of the major part of my self-taught SEO work(which took me about a couple of years to master), was lost in a week.

The reason being, I switched my website's URL to a global TLD or Top-Level Domain Name. A TLD is basically ".com" domain name. I was earlier using Google's blogspot sub-domain i.e prakashghai.blogspot.in and that was not allowing me to target my website to international audience. The .in extension and the .blogspot subdomain both were stopping me.

Another reason for which I switched over to www.PrakashGhai.com was, that it was a shorter and simpler name to remember.

Well, after the domain name and re-optimization of my website for SEO, I realized that I was making another big mistake. Since, I am an artist, I title most of my posts with an artistic title(followed by an artistic write-up for each post) and post a subheading like "Minimalism as Simple Geometry". But that is not what I should be doing. The heading of my post should be SEO Optimized and should contain keywords relating to minimalism and the content in the photo. See this post, for example An Artists Dilemma , The title of the post has nothing to do with the Photo and the Heading does not correlate with the Subheading (Minimalism as Simple Geometry).

Therefore, I am doing this post as an experiment, with an SEO Optimized title, to see if I get better traffic on it compared to my earlier post. But, since it is a learning website, I would like to retain the Sub-Heading style which categories each photo under the Types of Minimalism. I realize that I cant keep doing everything for SEO and page ranking. I am a photographer at my core.

But here is the thing that a SEO savvy friend of mine told me. "If you have a website, better do the SEO, otherwise there is no point having a website."

This brings Photographers to trouble. Already photography doesn't pay well and on top of that one must have a website, should know SEO and have good command over English language and be good at editing, promote himself/herself on various social media channels and what not.

The costs and the efforts that go in, are huge. I personally believe that If I would have put the same level of effort in some other business idea, maybe, I would have been making lots of dollars. When we talk of dollars, it is really difficult to make some via photography. If you are good at wedding photo-shoots, product photography or lets say even fashion photography, then all is OK.

But, if you are like me and you do photography for self-expression, self healing and for the sake of art and dislike commercial work because there, you cannot fully express yourself, then you are in trouble just like me. I have denied many commercial shoots, for I just don't feel comfortable enough doing them. I don't want my creative wings clipped, even for money. On the other hand, I want that I should also be able to sell my photos and finance my camera updates and travel expenditure via photo sales.

So, what are my options to do so. Well, below is a list of places where I have uploaded most of my work for sales. And I am selling photos profitably now, although the sales fluctuate a lot. 
 
a) Pixels.com - prakash-ghai.pixels.com
b) Shutterstock.com - http://www.shutterstock.com/g/prakashghai 

All these years I was only on Pixels.com. Here, you need to find buyers via re-posting your photos/artwork links on various social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, StumbleUpon etc

But recently I also joined ShutterStock. They already have a good customer/buyer base. Their website is ranked in the Top 300 websites of the world (source: Alexa.com). Shutterstock is a stock photography website where you can upload your photos and let buyers use them for commercial use a license. Everytime there is a download of your photo, you get paid.

I uploaded 21 images on it and in just 3 days, I already have decent downloads/sales.

• You too can become a contributor at Shutterstock and start making some money via your photos. Sign-up for a Shutterstock account here: Shutterstock Contributor (disclosure: affiliate link) The best part is that the photographer still retains the copyright.
• Once you are approved and your account is active. You too will be given a Referral Link/Affiliate link to share with your friends, just like the one I gave you above. Every time there is a download of a photo from a person's account whom you referred, Shutterstock pays gives you a cut.
• If, you are not a photographer but you are interested in licensing photos for commercial use, then Shutterstock is a great resource. Click here: Shutterstock.com (Affiliate link)  to explore the works of a bunch of talented people.
• Another good thing about the site is that, they also accept and sell, vectors, illustrations, abstracts, video clips etc.

Well, this ended being a long post. I wanted to share the SEO and Shutterstock experience with you all, so you too can benefit from it. I also wanted to tell you how difficult it is being a photographer. It is loads of hard-work. One needs to do so much day in and day out. I was earlier into the corporate world(but now I am in family business), and trust me photography is as tough as slogging in day-in day-out in a target based bank sales job. The only difference is, that in a sales job you still make decent money, but feel enslaved. In Photography, you feel good within but make significantly less amount of money(of-course exceptions are there.).

Finally, lets get back to the Photograph.

The photo is a colored version of my previous Minimalist Photograph "An artists Dilemma" as I mentioned in the beginning of the post. I actually wanted to post something on Shutterstock and was feeling a bit lazy. So I picked up an old Minimalist Photo and edited it.

Last time I could not get the Red to look like the Red I wanted to show. Therefore, I had turned the photo to black and white. I have written many times before, that it is not easy to show red as the actual red you see on a wall, via your camera. Maybe it is specific to my camera, maybe not. I face no difficultly in editing other colors by the way.

Note:

If you have some tutorial articles on SEO, then please share them with me under this post. Also share your success of making money with photography. It will be of great use to the readers and photographers in general.
Remember: "Success is sweeter when it is shared." I am pretty real, open and frank with all my work and photos and I expect to find and stumble upon similar humans.

Thank you.

Other Minimalist Photos with Red as a primary Color:

- Love Story

- Challenging Circumstances

- Low Hanging Twig of A Plant Against a Red Wall