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Creating a photography website in 2024 involves using modern tools and techniques to showcase your portfolio professionally. Start by choosing a platform like WordPress, Squarespace, or Wix, which offer user-friendly templates designed for photographers. Select a clean, visually appealing theme that highlights your work. Organize your site with galleries, categorized by themes or projects, and include high-resolution images. Optimize your site for mobile devices to ensure it looks great on all screens. Add essential pages like an About Me section, contact form, and blog to engage visitors. Implement SEO best practices to increase visibility in search engines. With these steps, you can build a stunning photography website that attracts and impresses potential clients.
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How to create a photography website
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Hey guys, welcome back to the YouTube channel. Today, I will be showing you guys how you can create a website
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for your photography practice. So check the link in the description box to get started
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Now, we're going to be using Wix and Wix is amazing for building
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your own websites, may it be photography or anything else. Now, all you have to do is go on over to Wix.com and it is
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linked in the description box and you will enter your email address and it's free to sign up and you can start building
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your website. Now, I am on a premium plan of Wix. So I have logged on to my account over here and I will click
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on create new site. And once I click on create new site, it will ask me a couple
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of questions of what kind of website I want to build so you
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can answer these questions. I'm going to skip them for now because I am going to directly
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head on over to the template gallery. So after that you can enter your website name
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You can change this later on. So I'm going to skip these questions. They're just moving forward
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I'm just going to go ahead and go into the template gallery. Now you also have the other option to get a custom built site
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Now this actually works via the Wix AI. It asks you a couple of questions and depending on your answers
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of those questions, it gives you a template to get started with
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but we're going to go with the general template gallery and you can see that there are a bunch of different templates
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You can pick out from on the top, right? You have a search bar where you can search for a specific
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niche of templates. Then you also have these categories over here. So in the creative section you have photography and I'm just
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going to click on photography over here. So you have multiple different templates and you can customize
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these to make these your own. So we're just going to get started with a template that I
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find to be, you know, nice and something I might want to get
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started with. So I really like this template over here and I will just click
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on edit over here and while our template is loading in a couple
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of seconds, I'm going to discuss the pricing of Wix with you
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guys because I'm on the premium plan of Wix. I'm on the business unlimited version and there are two basic
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sections of Wix website building. So first off you have your basic website plans where you can
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create a basic website. You can connect your domain, you get free SSL certificates
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as well as 3 to 35 gigabytes of storage space and 30 minutes
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to 5 hours of video hours and lead capture forms as well
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But if you want to create a business site, so if you want to
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accept online payments on your Wix site, then you have to go into the business and e-commerce plans for a business that
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might be, you know, if you're a photographer and you're taking deposits, if you want to take, you know, online deposits from
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your customers or clients, then I would recommend go with the e-commerce plans
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If you don't offer, you know, if you don't take advanced payments
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and you don't mind not having e-commerce options where people are able to book you in advance and pay at the time like a
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deposit fee or a security fee, then you can go with a website
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plan. But for most website builders, I would recommend the business unlimited
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Currently, there is a 50% discount to check the link in the description box down below because you can get started with
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the business unlimited version only for 12 euros and 50 cents. So that is my personal recommendation
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After that, you also have to take into account your domain name. So with any kind of premium plan on Wix, whichever one
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you might choose, you get a free domain name for one year. So you can choose out a domain name
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So you can choose out a domain name. You can go into the Wix.com slash domain and check the availability
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of multiple different domains and you can register your domain within the initial subscription of Wix that you're getting
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Now, after that, the renewal of your domain is going to be anywhere between 12 to 17 dollars after one year of your subscription
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and you can easily connect your domain name with your basic website. Now, moving back to our website editor
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So this is the Wix website editor and it's adding all the components. So this is our template
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Now, the first thing I want to do is I want to select the text on the top left and I will change the text to my own photography
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name. So it's Sarah's Photo Studio. And then I'm just going to add Sarah Austin Photo Studio, and
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then I'm just going to reduce the size of this column over here
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And for most people, I would recommend, you know, adding their own background
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They can enter their own background just to, you know, you know
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display their services. Now, after that, this is like the basic homepage. On the top left
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you can click on manage pages. So this will show you all the pages that are present within the
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template. Now, if I click on pages and menus on the left side
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I have multiple different pages. So I'm going to click on the portfolio one or even in the website
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editor. You can just click on portfolio. And now this is showing me the portfolio section
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So from here, you can just simply click on add elements and you
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can click on images and add your own portfolio images. And you can see in the portfolio section, there are, you know
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subcategories, which is family, portraits, family, maternity, commercial, and if you have multiple different categories, you can
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enter that. If you don't have, you know, multiple different categories of your photography, you can go into menus and pages
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and remove any page that you don't want. So let's say I only do family or portrait photos so I can remove
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the commercial and other sections. So like so, but I'm just going to keep it simple
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I want a one page portfolio and I'm just going to delete all the
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sub pages. But if you want to create a sub page, simply click on add page
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and I'm going to use a blank page. Once you've added a blank page, go into your menus and sections
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pages and menus, then you're going to just click on the newly added page and make it a sub page by dragging it to the right
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side. Now, this is going to be a sub page of the portfolio section and I'm going to click on over here to click on the
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settings and I want it to appear on the menu. If you don't want it to appear on the menu, you can remove it
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and then you can rename the page. So portraits, that's the page that I want to have
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Now, after that, you have your services in this template you have in your services section
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We have like a submission form as well. And then the services we have portraits, we have family bookings
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we have maternity. And for this, I'm going to show you guys later on how you can
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edit it. But for now, I really like this template because it has bookings
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and all those applications added. So if you don't have bookings in your template that you selected
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simply click on add elements or you can just click on over
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here into the add app section and go into the Wix apps market
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From here, you're going to search for bookings and you have Wix bookings over here and you can add Wix bookings to your
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website. Now, I'm just going to click on save and publish and
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you can connect your own domain name here. This is a sample website. So I'm not adding a domain name currently, but after I have
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published my website, I can go back into the my site section
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of my Wix website. Then I can click on select an edited site and this will open
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up the back end dashboard of my Wix site. So I can go on ahead and enter multiple different categories
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or booking sessions. However, you run your business. So usually with photography, I like to do basic portraits
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Then I have party events, party coverage, where I do videography as well
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So for that, you can click on booking services and you can
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add your estimated price as well and click on show availability and show people the available slots you have
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So what are your working hours? If you don't work on a specific time, then you have the calendar
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So you can choose how further along in the future you want to
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get booked in and you can click on add sessions and add a specific
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block time or you might not be taking bookings and you can
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choose a staff member, give it a specific time. What is going to be a specific time where it's not going to be
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available for new shoots or new sessions. Now, I like to go on ahead into my booking calendar and in my
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basic booking calendar, you have your basic schedules, you have your services and all the services would be listed here
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You have locations, staff as well. Then you have your addresses, session availability and your other
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events as well. So you can really manage everything within this calendar
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But after that in the booking services, I like to delete all of
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the template services. So you can click on manage category and click on delete and delete
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your services. Now, I'm just going to click on over here in my booking services
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I can click on start from scratch and create my own booking of
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the kind of service that I provide. So this is going to be a appointment only service and I named this
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birthday shoot. So the tagline is event and portraits and I can then enter the
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description of what kind of services I'm offering within this birthday shoot
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I like to be as detailed as possible. So my customers will have as many questions as you might think
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So, you know, sometimes they just want to know like a very basic thing you might have left out
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So I'm just adding, you know, some keywords and then on the top. I like to add a phrase like these are the things included in this
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specific shoot type and this provides a basic easy to skim through
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summary that I'm going to enter the duration. So the duration is custom and it's going to be four hours and I like
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to add a five-minute buffer time and then if you want you can choose
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how people pay for this specific service so it could be per session
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with a plan or per session or with a plan. So this is going to be per session and let's say I have a fixed
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amount that I charge for birthday shoots. It could be anywhere. So I'm just going to write a basic amount and then you can enter
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what kind of payment preferences you have. So I have a online deposit and rest in person kind of policy because
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I don't like to take bookings without a online deposit. People can cancel people are very last-minute
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You don't know anything. So I like to take a $50 deposit and then after that you have your
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business address if you want to add locations or if you have multiple
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different people working in your photography studio, you can enter the staff member names as well and people can choose who they are
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booking and be booking calendar for each staff member will show up
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in the booking section as well. So now I can click on save you can add some sample images
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So for the images section you're going to go on ahead and enter your
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sample videos or bookings of the kind of service you're providing and that is all you have to do to get a professional photography website
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So now if I go into my Wix website editor currently, this is what
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it's looking like. So if I go back into my homepage, this is what it's looking like in
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the basic desktop version. And if I click on the top over here, I can even see how it's looking
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like on the mobile version so you can really customize the appearance
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of your website and make sure it doesn't look too crowded on the mobile version click on publish over here
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And once your website is published you're going to open it up just to you know, do a double check on how it's looking like how you know
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all these services are looking. This is our basic homepage then I can click on my services over here
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and you have our birthday shoot if I click on book now currently, I haven't you know enabled the bookings but I can click on book
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now to get bookings as well. So I hope you guys found this video helpful
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Make sure to click the link in the description box down below to
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get started with setting up your own photography website and I will
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catch you guys in the next video
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