Your Questions About How To Do Business Online Tips

Jere answers:

Check our your local Chamber of Commerce. They should be able to provide you with information about small business workshops. Also, the Small Business Development Center representative will have information about starting a new business, as well as information about marketing and business planning.

Good luck!

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Jere answers:

My experience with Indian stock photos at http://www.picdif.com has taught me that stock photgraphy has no limitations as such, except for the technical quality and composition of photographs.
But I will still give you some of the most important tips for you to consider before you get into stock photo business.

1. You can start shooting photos mostly against white background, as they are going to be used by a pan audience for different purposes, white backdrop offers a better option to cut the subject out and put against a desired background.

2. For mid long shots of characters or portraits, try to keep the subjects within the frame. Often photographers get tempted to compose it tighter to make the frame look better. But that would generally be a mistake for stock photography. For the buyer will then have not much choice to crop it the way he/she wants. For example if you have photo with your subject in the frame cropped from left hand side, then generally the best composition with that photograph will be, when its left aligned. This might be a disadvantage for you. Leave both edges clean for alignment options to remain open.

3. If you are starting out, try and shoot subjects that can be resold time and again. Photos that can ne applied well for a range of advertising needs. Not necessary though, but subjects like smiling faces, fitness, business shots, children expressions are a few of the topics which can be easily used for different advertising concepts. You don’t have to follow this as a strict rule, but it can help you sell your photos right from the start. Later on, you may diversify.

4. If you are shooting with characters, try and arrange for props beforehand, that you can easily shoot with the same character using the same shooting setup and lighting. This will save you enormous amount of time and you can churn out various concepts in one photography session itself.

5. Always shoot different compositions of the same frame on the go. For example, Mid-long, long, mid-closeup, and extreme close ups. This will save you a lot of time and money. You will eventually generate stock for various categories in less amount of time. The idea is make your sessions as worthwhile as possible.

6. While shooting with people and faces, always try to shoot various expressions from the same person within the same frame. Suppose you are shooting a model with a smile, you can make him/her frown, scratch, show anger, love, get ecstatic, pull out hair, scream, shout. Your imagination is the only limit.

7. Never let show any brandname or an existing brand identity show up in a photograph ever. It will simply get rejected. It can even happen by mistake. E.g., you are shooting fitness stock photos and you want to shoot a model with a sports drink, even the little exposure of the label or the brand in the photo may make it a complete NG. You may instead take out the label and shoot it. So avoid revealing exisiting brand names, logos.

Jere answers:

Technically, starting an online business isn’t difficult since there are lots of tools out there. You don’t need to know how to program to run an online business. The hard part, however, is all about marketing or, in lean startup-speak, product/market fit.

I’m an entrepreneur and am a fan of the Lean Startup philosophy. Google it. It helps you build your business in a efficient and resourceful manner by focusing on learning about your customer. It’s nice to have a store but there’s no point in sinking time and money into setting up an online store if you’re not sure how to get customers!

Anyhow, there’s lots of resources on the web for lean startup. If you’re more interested in an online class, LaunchBit is running a class for brand new web entrepreneurs in January. Check the link below to see if you want to sign up. I recommend it.

Jere answers:

Michael H is right. However, you may be required to register your business based on your city/county or state regulations since you’re selling products and you may be required to impose a sales tax (again, based on your own location). Registering your business is fairly inexpensive and simple. In most cases, it involves going to your local courthouse, signing a form and paying $20-50. Registering your business name will allow you to accept payments as the business name, do your banking and file your taxes properly.

I also second QuickBooks. It’s one of the most widely used software platforms for very good reasons. It helps out a LOT from day-to-day to year-end accounting.

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Jere answers:

I believe so, if you’re going to sell something to the outer public in the U.S, you need the license so your stuff can be confirmed as legal.