Determine the cost
The biggest question is, how much is it going to cost? Most of our photoblogs don’t make us any money (although that would be really nice) so we need to keep the costs under control. I will start publishing how much it costs me so everyone can get an idea.

A simple backup plan
Sure I have a plan, but it mostly involves an external USB drive, which never leaves my desk – I know! So using S3 makes sense as a solution for not only serving my images, but backing them up as well.

How I did it
Step 1. Get an Amazon S3 account
Super simple stuff here. Goto Amazon Web Services and sign up for Amazon S3.

Step 2. Get some software
I consider myself to be very technical, after all being technical is what pays my bills, so I decided to use some open-source software to interact with Amazon’s S3 service so I downloaded Cockpit. Let me just say that I very quickly changed my mind, since I would much rather be spending my time on my photography or working on my sites! I spent $20 on Jungle Disk and was instantly impressed at how simple interacting with S3 truly was.

Step 3. Move my images from my web server to S3
You’re going to need a “bucket” to store your files, and Jungle Disk makes this super simple. First, right click on the Jungle Disk application icon in your systems tray and then click “configure”. Click on “add bucket” and follow the wizard to create your first storage bucket.
Once you have your storage bucket created you’re going to have to move all your image files from your web host to your new Amazon S3 account. I used Filezilla for this and just moved everything to my laptop and then copied it all to my “network drive”. It’s that easy.

NOTE: Massive insane gotcha! For whatever reason, Jungle Disk does not support the ability to give access rights on your files to anyone other than you! Not exactly sure why they decided to do this. But check out S3 for Firefox – it’s the right price – free! and does exactly what we need. I will update with S3 for Firefox soon.  So to answer the obvious question – do I still feel that Jungle Disk is so great?  Yes, it’s a great application, but it doesn’t fit as well as I had originally hoped.

Step 4. Making your S3 bucket accessible via HTTP
I am not going to try to explain this, but Amazon has an excellent how-to article on Amazon S3 and CNAME’s so I strongly suggest that you check it out and follow the instructions on adding a CNAME to your DNS configuration.

Step 5. Update your photoblog
I am using Pixelpost so I needed to make a change to my image_template.html file, pretty simple stuff. Here’s what it looks like now.

<img class="center" src="http://images.behindthelens.ca/<IMAGE_NAME>" alt="<IMAGE_TITLE>" title="<IMAGE_TITLE>" width="<IMAGE_WIDTH>" height="<IMAGE_HEIGHT>" />

That’s it you’re done!

If you try this out with your photoblog, let us all know how it went by leaving a comment. Also, if someone tries this on something other than Pixelpost be sure to let us all know how it goes!

On an unrelated to photography and photoblogs note, if you’re a keener and want to learn all you can about Cloud computing, make sure that you check out the ESM blog.

Some ideas for add-ons might include,

Discounts on prints
Nothing helps to move product like a discount. Maybe a monetary incentive could be just what your work needs to get it introduced into the marketplace.

Limited print editions
Make ‘em feel special, this print edition is made available only to my fans, etc.

What I am really talking about here is the introduction of permission marketing to your photoblog. Build a deeper picture of who’s coming to your photoblog and what they are most interested in all while getting their permission to keep them in the information loop when it comes to whats happening on your site and with your photography. I think that many photographers who build their own photoblog have a “build it and he will come” attitude and that simply just dosen’t cut it anymore.

Anyone have any thoughts?

The biggest takeaway I got from Seth’s book was that in order to be successful now (and in the coming years) you’re going to have to be remarkable, and find ways to stand out from all the other folks doing the same thing that you’re doing. Not only that, but you’re going to have to continue to find ways to stay remarkable as your competitors mimic what you do.

So you may be wondering what this all has to do with photobloggers? Well have you seen how many photoblogs there are out there nowadays? The numbers are growing each and every day, so the only way that you’re going to stand out (and possibly monetize your photoblog) is to be remarkable. By remarkable I mean two things,

1. Your work had better be extraordinary, by this I mean more than technically sound – camera technology has erased that advantage – your work had better have a unique style, something that makes it stand out from the crowd.

2. When contacted by your fans, you had better make sure that the experience is top-notch otherwise, they will go somewhere else – fast!

I’ve talked about the goal of creating 1,000 true fans on the blog before, and I think that turning yourself into a “Purple Cow” may help you reach this goal.

Recently, Seth asked that if you purchased a copy of one of his other books, The Dip (another favourite of mine) and had finished reading it pass it on to someone else. I started to think that why not do the same for Purple Cow. So I figured why the heck not so I am offering up my copy to the first person who sends me an email asking for it. I’ll send it to you on two conditions,

1. You promise that when you’re done you’ll let me know and I will send you another name to forward it on to,

2. You write your name and blog address somewhere in the book for the next person.

Do you know of any “Purple Cow” photobloggers? Why not let us know and post about them in the comments of this post.

[UPDATE: The book is on it's way to Brendan O'Shea and it now travelling 15,000 KM to Australia!]

What exactly are the best methods for self-promotion? Well I have touched on a few that I have thought off before, but remember you’re talking to a self-professed “Build it and they will come” geek here (man, I love that movie and baseball) so I am not really sure. But I would love to hear what other folks have been doing.

BTW, if you haven’t seen the polls yet, make sure that you check them out!

Photographer’s (amateur and professional) who cling to the “old way” of doing things are sentencing themselves to eventual failure!

While reading my “digital newspaper” (a.k.a. Google Reader) I came across a few articles that I wanted to point out, and stress how important it is  for all photographers to read them.

The first one is from A Photo Editor and it talks about “The Future of Photography” and makes some great points about how the game is changing,

“What needs to change is instead of thinking about having a couple of fans with deep pockets you need to start adding a large number with shallow pockets”

I think that it is already clear that we’re operating in the long-tail of photography. The question is how do you move from existing on the far-right of the tail to somewhere closer to the left?

More disposable income + less reliance on traditional (i.e. Expensive) new sources = a new market opportunity for  photographers.

The second was a post about “A 1,000 True Fans” and it takes about how to move up the long-tail just enough to make a decent living from your creative passion.

“A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce”

Wouldn’t we all love to have fans like this?

I also wanted to point out a few books that in my opinion every photographer (or creative professional for that matter) should have already read, or need to read now.  I pay my bills by working in the IT field so I originally read these title for much different reasons, but a photographer who can apply the main themes of these books will have a distinct advantage over those who do not!

The World is Flat
Wikinomics
The Big Switch
The Long Tail

Just to help prove my point, check out this article about Scott Schuman a.k.a. The Sartorialist who at the ripe old age of 15 (correction: 30)has created himself a nice little niche by using a Google blogspot blog.  All I can say is what are you doing?