Name of your website?Graf Nature Photography
Your name?
Mark Graf
Your Location (city, etc)
Sterling Heights
Please give us a short summary of your website?
It is a collection of my nature photographs that I offer for fine art prints and stock usage. I have an online gallery that is categorized by subjects and keywords, as well as a nature photography blog where I write about composition, inspiration behind certain images, environmental topics, Photoshop techniques, or whatever else comes to mind.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Primarily to get my work seen by others, and from there it turned into a side business making print sales, sales to offices and hospitals for art decor and creating tranquil atmospheres. It also acts as a reference for when I contact photo editors. It is much more efficient to have your work online than to be submitting slides or CDs with images.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
It was launched in 2000.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
It is a play on my last name and being a photographer... hence grafphoto.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
I think it is easy to navigate and find images that someone may be looking for. It is a self-designed site and I have tried to keep the theme fairly simple, but visually interesting.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
To continue to grow with making my work known.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
The more time you put into marketing obviously has a benefit. I have worked for years now in optimizing my search engine rankings. It is showing in the results. My traffic to my site continues to increase month to month, and with that comes increased sales.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would probably redo a lot to be more CSS oriented and develop a better shopping cart system than I have now.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Not sure on that one, I suppose I might have to seek help in processing orders, prints, etc.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Some issues with my site consuming excessive resources with my shared hosting plan which I resolved. Migrating my site between temporary and production servers resulted in some corrupted databases which was a real pain to restore. Backup, backup, backup!!
What has been your biggest challenge?
Developing a unique style to my art.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
My blog draws in a lot of traffic, and working my search engine rankings has also helped. Exchanging links with other photographers and photo related sites.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
It needs to be fed constantly, otherwise it will stagnate and die.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
Going on 7 years, and don't have any end in sight yet.
Do you have a blog?
Yes, I find it great to create some two way feedback on topics surrounding nature photography and where I get some feedback on particular images or ideas I am working with. The blogger community is just great, but it does take up some time.
What is your website address?
Graf Nature Photography
