Abaddon, Gehenna, Hades, abyss, affliction, agony, anguish, blazes, bottomless pit, difficulty, everlasting fire, fire and brimstone, grave, hell-fire, infernal regions, inferno, limbo, lower world, misery, nether world, nightmare, ordeal, pandemonium, perdition, pit, place of torment, purgatory, suffering, torment, trial, underworld, wretchedness (Thank you dictionary.com)
Yeah, that's where I've been. Quite honestly, I'd rather be shooting.
So let me explain. I've come to the conclusion that the underworld of the business world is marketing. Which is an odd thing to say for someone who bases her business on marketing. I love the whole marketing concept. It's fascinating to work an idea into reality. I love/hate Magpi Studio marketing. What can I tell you.
When I work with a client, marketing is a piece by piece concept. It's broken down into steps. And because I do photography and design, I'm not doing the broad end marketing that I have to do with the studio. This so called marketing for the studio at the moment is consisting of brochures, rack cards, updating the website (and trust me, e-marketing is not my favorite thing), creating a newsletter (oh, and if you'd like to sign up, please do so - just click here), getting a month to month marketing plan together, networking and who knows what else.
Now, you'd think I would have done all of this already. Yeah, you'd think. But running the studio part time didn't require as much work as when you rely on it for your next paycheck.
The worst of this has been the website. It's taken on a new design and I've added ArtLease and Animal Love Pet Photography (so yea, the Animal Gallery is back). The website, it's a time monster that hangs out at my desk. There's photo editing and formatting and PayPal buttons to make and insert and all the links to link, and then there are all those links to check and with the photos, everything has got to link properly. If you've been to my site, you may be able to tell I make all my thumbnails by hand (I don't use a program that makes those mini thumbnails that you can't tell what you might be looking at), carefully cropping so you can see what's in it without viewing the entire photo and make your choice as to whether you want to go further or not. I consider it a perk, but who knows. I just know that I hate when I go to a photog's site and there's this teeny, tiny little 1/4" box that's nothing but a blur. Frustrates me. But I digress.
Anyway, I had about 60 photos in the WIP (work in progress) file that needed all that attention. And it's not just editing and formatting, it's naming and file naming and centering and getting it at the right place - and yeah, I probably go the long way around this as I'm not a website making type person.
But, the updated website is viewable, lots of new photos, so go take a look and let me know if my efforts were worthwhile.
Thank you all for your patience in my absence. I have now ascended from the underworld.
And since I wasn't allowed to take photos while I was there - there are very strict regulations in the underworld of the business world - NO PHOTOGRAPHY! - I'll share with you the marketing piece I developed for ArtLease while I was there.
