Whenever you see a lack of writing here on my part, it’s rarely due to lack of things to say. In fact, I probably have more to say than you’re willing to listen to. 99.9% of the time, a lack of update here is due to one of three things:
# Too much going on to find time to update.
# Lack of feedback or too much feedback from assholes and haters.
# A indecisive state of mind in regard to how I want my sites to progress.
Right now, it’s a little bit of 1, a little bit of 2, and a whole heck of a lot of 3. What I’m most confused about is one tiny thing: where do I put my photoblog?
On the one hand, I have a lot of readers of *revjim.net* and “revjim@livejournal”:http://revjim.livejournal.com/ that are there mostly for the photography. Therefore, it makes sense to keep the photoblog at *revjim.net* and use “Daniel James Photography”:http://djamesphoto.com/ simply as a place to sell photographs, host images, and provide information about my rates and services. However, this means that, since the only site worth visiting on a regular basis would be *revjim.net*, I’d have to make this site my primary outlet for announcing sales, projects, specials, casting calls, promotions, gallery showings, art fesitvals, and new products. “My Photography Site”:http://djamesphoto.com/ would then simply be a place to link to in posts, and mention on business cards and letterhead.
However, it seems like an even better idea to have constantly updating photographs at “Daniel James Photography”:http://djamesphoto.com/. If people visit for the photographs, they’ll also read about specials, promotions, casting calls, gallery showings, art festivals, new products, etc. So, I have a mind to move my entire photoblog over to “My Photography Site”:http://djamesphoto.com/ and just pimp it in occasional links, included photographs and sidebar text here at *revjim.net*. But I’m worried about making things too complicated on myself, my readers, and my patrons.
I’d like to hear your opinion.
I’m hip on all the photography being in one place.
I like it the way you have it now, where new images post here, and also link you to revjim.net. But I can see your point about having constantly updating images on your actual business site. Is there no way to link them all together, as you’ve done with LJ and revjim.net?
Anywhere, as long as you have an RSS of it! Syndication on livejournal would be a plus. As for the actual source of the post… I suppose it really doesn’t matter this day in age, with the ease of cross-publication. Probably the easiest thing would be to do it on your site, and have a link for comments back there.
I think you should use the professional site as a professional site and nothing else — blogging on one of those isn’t exactly ideal. You want it clean and as un-cluttered as possible. People may get overwhelmed and leave if there’s “too much” information. A display or perhaps a background “collage” of your work on the main page with contact info, portfolio, rates, and a link to your photo blogs from there would be ideal. IMO :)
I have to agree with one of the others, a link, as a one-off is probably ideal. You don’t overwhelm the people who don’t want it, its one click for the people who do.
I agree with Vita, with respect to you don’t want to overwhelm customers going to your photography site.
I don’t think that excluding the blog entirely from the photography site would be necessary, but it might be a good idea to have more static content on the front page with a link to the blog portion of the site, and maybe a “teaser” of the most recent entry on the front page.
With this scenario, I don’t think that this will be a huge burden on your readers or your patrons. I imagine most of your readers are reading via LJ or RSS, so interested people should easily be able to just add the Photoblog as a friend if they are interested. For your patrons who aren’t readers, they probably aren’t going to read the blog so as long as it isn’t taking up too much space on the front page, they are unaffected.
It’s all stupid. I hate you. You suck.
Er, no, wait, I was channelling option 2.
It’s always hard to separate/split info without having to have multiple places to update/track/etc.
You could always just have the 2 sites as normal, but use the LJ update plugin for WP and have them BOTH update to LJ. Have it prevent replies and include a link back to the comment page of the post. The real key for me is to have the entire post on LJ, not just a subset.
This way, the LJ losers (aka me) can stay current, and have easy access to updating, but then you have your separation of sites as is.
You can always choose specific posts to NOT mirror to LJ if it would be wierd.
The other option is to use revjim@livejournal only for replying to other peoples’ posts, and then LJ people can follow your WP sites via syndicated feeds.
OR, you can telepathically implant messages into people.