It has been a month sense I’ve started and finished my photography website. There are a couple of bugs that still need to be dealt with, but that will take no time.

I have been thinking of updating my photography business website ever since I switched my focus to portrait work. However, I didn’t want to do it because I knew it was going to be a ton of work and it was going to drain my soul. But I just had to get it done. I had to push through my not-wanting to’s and just get it done.

The Start of It All

The website is at www.photosbyoaks.com. I didn’t know really where to start. I knew that I wanted something simple and where my potential clients could go and get the information they needed and contact me for business. I knew since it being a photography website I needed photographs also that would give them a reason to want to do business with me. However, I wanted all of my different types of businesses on the website so that I didn’t have to make multiple websites.

The next best thing was to contact my friend Adam. Adam is a great programmer and better business person who has been working on websites for quite some time. His business, Pure Adapt, even designed my website a couple of years ago. He gave me some good advice on how he went about developing a website and thought that writing everything down on paper and then implementing on the website was going to be my best option also.

I stapled 30 sheets of paper and had a vertical margin on the left side of each paper and went about writing and drawing my website. The process took a couple of days to complete. I beat that goal and got it done in four days. Once that was completed I started the part that I dreaded the most, the copy. I did the easier sections of the website first to build momentum and finally worked on the front page copy. That took me a week and a half to iron out.

The Front Page Copy

This was by far the hardest writing I did in some time. It felt harder than writing the novel. The reason why was because the intense dedication I had to put into getting the stuff figured out and constantly writing and editing. Just thinking about it now still makes me go crazy. But it got done. I locked myself in the room for a couple of days, which paid off.

I finally finished up the copy and was time to go about setting everything up on the website. I pasted everything on, did my edits and showed the website to a couple of people. My best friend thought it was garbage and gave me constructive criticism and a family friend helped with editing the copy of the website. That took me another week and a half to complete and I was able to add some more photographs to the website.

Now What?

For the most part, it is completed. I will talk more about how I implemented all three facets of my business on the website at a later date. The thing to take away from this is that I understand now why people pay so much money for a web design. I understand what is involved in getting the finish product completed through the clients mind and what I can do in order to make sure my services are completed and executed in a respectable and professional manner to my clients.

Like I’ve been saying in the past couple of post, I have some stuff down the road that will help me stay focused. Let me know what you think about the website.

Again, this couldn’t have gotten done without the guidance and criticism from five people: Shannon, Adam, Ben, Michelle and Don. Thanks yall!