Photographers taking the leap from amateur to professional face the tremendous challenge of building a clientele base. It is almost impossible to make the change from amateur to professional without creating an online presence for your portfolio. Many potential clients do still use the phonebook or word of mouth to find photographers, but it is much more compelling for a client to be able to evaluate your work themselves. Creating a website to showcase your work is the best way to reach new clients in an unobtrusive way. Potential clients can review your work on their time and save you the trouble of scheduling meetings for clients who are just beginning to shop for a photographer. There are a few great website resources available that will help you create the online presence you need to establish a profitable client base.

Livebooks (www.livebooks.com) is one of the most widely used photography website creation tools available and offers a variety of tools to meet your stylistic needs. According to their site, you can have your new website up and running in just three steps. First, you need to choose a template from the hundreds of pre designed website templates available. Second, you can start uploading your images or video. Livebooks offers multimedia uploads so it can accommodate a diverse portfolio. Finally, submit your URL and your site is live. Livebooks is reasonably priced at $39 a month and has upgraded features like a mobile interface for compatibility with mobile devices and drag and drop site management tools.

If you are looking for a free website, you should consider using WordPress.com (www.wordpress.com) as your content management system. WordPress was originally designed as a blog format with its basic features supporting this function. Over the past few years, more businesses are utilizing the free accessibility of WordPress as a great starting point for creating their first website. Photographers may find they can not upload a full portfolio of images, but you could utilize the free stylistic templates to highlight a few images instead of an entire portfolio. WordPress offers each site a free URL, which includes the WordPress tag in the URL name. For a small charge you can have the WordPress tag removed and own the URL outright.

You have many software options to choose from and even more factors to consider when choosing a content management system. Mobile compatibility is a key factor as more clients will use their on the go devices to find vendors. Cost should also be considered as pay for websites often have more sophisticated platforms, high end designer interfaces, and customer support options. Finally, you should determine if search engine optimization is important to you. If you are hoping clients will find your website through search engines, this feature is vital. If you are referring clients to your site directly, it may not be as important. In any case, you should primarily consider how you anticipate using the site as well as anticipate how clients will use your site when choosing between the many photography website options.

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