Pricing.. The Basics

Posted on 31. Mar, 2010 by David Wolf.

This video covers SmugMug pricing. This is part one of two. Part two should be done shortly.

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SmugMug Help is Here!

Posted on 22. Mar, 2010 by David Wolf.

My wife (an instructional designer) and I have been toiling for some time coming up with outlines, organization and flow for a new series of video tutorials we’re creating. We’ve released the first one which covers everyone’s favorite topic: Categories, Sub-Categories and Galleries.

I’d LOVE to get some feedback on the video; the first one is always the toughest! So, watch the video and leave some comments below. These videos will be free forever. We will be offering a DVD once we have the entire series completed. It’ll be in a format that’s easily transferred to your iPhone to watch on your commute, etc.. But, that’s a bit down the road.

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Cool stuff is coming.. Soon!

Posted on 26. Oct, 2009 by David Wolf.

Just a teaser… I’m going to be launching something really, really cool.. Very, very soon. So, keep checking back and it might be here pretty quick!

Want a hint? It’ll be a place to learn about the business of Photography.. It’ll be a unique blend of a few really cool topics.

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Want to Book More Weddings?

Posted on 19. Sep, 2009 by David Wolf.

I get asked all the time by Photographers.. “How do I get more bookings?”

It’s actually pretty simple to get more clients–get more eyeballs on your website. Eyeballs on your site typically translate into more people inquiring about your services, and that translates into more bookings. The real question you need to ask is, how do I get more eyeballs to my site?

Intuitively most people know the way to get more eyeballs on your site is to advertise–in some way. Trouble is, Google Adwords gets to be expensive and it doesn’t keep people coming back to your site. They don’t “know” you. So, how do you get people to start to know you? How do you reach new people in ways you haven’t done before? The answer is through the use of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Social Media.

In my 5-hour webinar, I’ll show you how to make your websites be found on Google; how to get new eyeballs on your site, and keep people coming back. And, most importantly–how to turn eyeballs into clients!

Book more weddings and you’ll make more money. It’s easy when you know how.

Register before September 26th and you’ll save $500!

Why take a workshop from me? I’ve been doing computers professionally for over 13 years. I am a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Systems Administrator. I am also the world’s largest SmugMug customizer. So, you know I know a thing of two about the internet I’ll show you techniques that are fresh and new; I’ll give you the real facts about:

• Keywords: More is not better!
• Keyword Density: What you think you know can hurt you.
• Link backs: It’s not always about quantity. Quality counts more!
• Build a brand: I’ll show you how!
• Use Social Media like Facebook, Twitter and more to enhance your brand, strengthen your message and reach more people.

You’ll learn how to get clients, and keep them. Target your advertising dollars to exactly the right people. Get on the front page of Google!

Not convinced? Robert Evans and Candice Cunnigham two of the top wedding photographers in the country were at my last SEO workshop. They loved it! But, don’t take my word for it, listen to what Candice had to say about the workshop:

Peter Garr, the LA SmugMug user group leader also attended my last workshop. He had this to say:

Still not convinced? Well, until September 26, 2009 we’re offering 33% off the normal registration price of $1500. Registration also includes a 30-minute private consultation with David Wolf, the owner of SmugSchool.com and WolfSnap.com. Registration is easy. Register for our SEO and Social Media Webinar on October 18th starting at 10:00AM PDT today and save $500. Hurry though, while the results of this webinar will last a lifetime, this price won’t! Seats are limited. Register today.

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Make a Homepage Slideshow in 30 seconds

Posted on 11. Sep, 2009 by David Wolf.

Ok, so, I asked on Facebook what tutorial people would like to see me do. I got “Slideshows”. So, here’s how to do a slideshow in 30 seconds. It’s so easy, even a caveman can do it!

You may also want to add this:

#bioBox .photo {display: none;}
#userBio {text-align: center !important;}

to your custom CSS box in the Advanced Customization screen.

Remember.. You need to surround the code you got from the “Show Off” screen with:

<html>

and

</html>

or it won’t work! Oh, one last tweak.. You’ll probably want to add some text so your Google results don’t look strange. Here’s what to do:

<html>
<div id="bioText">
Your text here
</div>
**INSERT YOUR COPIED SLIDESHOW CODE HERE**
</html>

Then… add this to your CSS box:

#bioText { display: none; }

Enjoy!

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Flash Frozen Photography – Smugization

Posted on 07. Sep, 2009 by David Wolf.

Recently I had the pleasure of redoing a site on SmugMug that had previously been done by some “other” customizer. In this post, I intend to go over a bit about the methodology we employ when we create a unique and custom SmugMug website. But, first.. This is the site before we touched it.

There was a lot wrong with the site. The color scheme was jarring, the nav bar was almost unusable, and overall, the site was confusing to most visitors. In fact, you can actually see in this detail photo, just how completely useless the nav bar was. The word “Home” is actually there… Hard to see.

However, even more challenging was that we had to keep the logo essentially unchanged because Kathy Rappaport, the owner of the site, had invested a lot of money into letterhead, business cards, flyers, pamphlets, etc.. all of which had the logo printed on it. Kathy wasn’t willing to reprint everything she had!

Anyways.. After working on the site for a while, we came up with a design that worked with her logo, while allowing us to have a much more modern look. This is what we came up with:

Of course, a SmugMug site is more than a homepage. So, in this case, we added a ton more functionality to the site too. From a gorgeous contact form, auto-reply functionality, services, a blog, etc. All the individual components tie together nicely, and have the same visual look.

I invite you to explore Flash Frozen Photography yourself. Are YOU interested in getting YOUR SmugMug site customized? Contact us today!

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Find Your Path to Internet Success: SEO Unleashed Webinar

Posted on 07. Sep, 2009 by David Wolf.

I’ve been offering a few free SEO (Search Engine Optimization) webinars in the past few weeks — all of which have been leading up to the ‘main event’. But, a lot of people don’t quite understand what SEO is or why it’s important. In fact, probably a fair amount of people look at the price and are immediately turned off. But don’t be — let me show you why my webinar will make you money!

Paying for ads is expensive

Whether it’s in the Yellow Pages, on wedding websites, or magazines, paid ads are expensive and do not guarantee a return on your investment. You can easily spend thousands and have absolutely nothing to show for it!

Word of mouth advertising is free

Everyone knows the best source for new business are clients you’ve done business with before. The bride who absolutely adores you and tells all her friends is worth her weight in gold. Frankly, you just can not buy that type of advertising! Google can be just that friend. In my webinar, you’ll learn exactly how to get Google to index your site and refer people to your business–for FREE!

People want to hire you; they just need to find you first!

You’re good at what you do. Once you get a new client, you can keep them happy and deliver the goods. But how do you get new clients? That’s always the challenge. I’ll show you multiple ways to extend beyond Google to find and attract new business. We’ll teach you the skills you need to succeed in a heavily competitive market.

Using SmugMug?

We’ll show you exactly what to do to get the maximum benefit from “Nice-Names”. We’ll give you code to make your site attractive to Google. You’ll finish the webinar with specific skills and tasks you can do right now to improve your rating.

No matter how much business you have, you can always have more!

We’ll show you how to:

• Keep in constant contact with your clients
• Get a higher placement at Google
• Use Social Media to reach your market
• Enhance your SmugMug site to maximize search engine indexability
• Keep from getting DE-LISTED by Google! If you follow advice given by others, your site could be delisted! That means Google won’t index it at ALL! Possibly, forever!

After our 5-hour webinar, you will have the tools, skills and know-how to make your site work better!

We cover WAY more than SmugMug!

We’re going deep in SmugMug, WordPress, social media sites, Google and many more sites to give YOU the inside information you can’t find anywhere else. You’ll learn:

• How to make people care about your blog
• Build community
• Keep people informed
• Reach new people who have never heard of you before–and sell them your services!

I promise, even if you think you’re an SEO Guru, you will learn something from this webinar. This webinar can change your life!

Register for our SEO Unleashed webinar today!

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Categories, Sub-Categories, Galleries and Photos

Posted on 07. Sep, 2009 by David Wolf.

One of the most commonly asked questions I receive pertains to the three-tiered hierarchy of SmugMug. Namely, Categories, Sub-Categories and Galleries. It’s almost universally mis-understood, and mis-used. So, I’m going to try to explain the relationship of all three levels of the hierarchy.

Let’s start with Galleries. A gallery contains photos or video. That’s it. Nothing else other than photos or video can live in a Gallery. You can not nest a gallery inside another gallery.

Galleries may be placed inside a category and/or a sub-category. What does that mean? Well, if you imagine that I have a gallery called “Paris” (which contains photos from a recent trip to Paris, France), that gallery might live inside the “Travel” category.

So, my hierarchy will look something like this:

• Travel (Category)
  • Paris (Gallery)

So, when a visitor arrives at my SmugMug site, they will see the category called “Travel”. By clicking on Travel, they will be shown a list of all the galleries (but, not the photos) inside the Travel category. Our gallery, “Paris” is one of those galleries. Clicking on Paris, will open the gallery, and the photos can be viewed.

But, if I want to further sub-divide my Paris trip, I would also use sub-categories.

A sub-category subdivides the category. So, in this case, I could have “Paris” as my sub-category and have Galleries named “Art work”, “Architecture”, and “Food”. So, my hierarchy will now look like:

• Travel (Category – No photos here)
  • Paris (Sub-Category – No photos here)
    • Art Work (Gallery – photos here)
    • Architecture (Gallery – photos here)
    • Food (Gallery – photos here)

I can also have galleries directly under the Category; so it would look like this:

• Travel (Category – No photos here)
  • Flags of the World (Gallery – photos here)
  • Paris (Sub-Category – No photos here)
    • Art Work (Gallery – photos here)
    • Architecture (Gallery – photos here)
    • Food (Gallery – photos here)

Ok, confused yet? Here are the rules.

Categories can have Galleries, Sub-Categories, but NO photos

Sub-Categories can have Galleries, but NO Categories or photos

Galleries can have photos but NO other galleries, Sub-Categories or Categories inside them

Think of it like this. Imagine a book shelf in your home. It has 3 shelfs. Those are “Categories”. Next, on each shelf you can have either photo albums (galleries) or boxes (sub-categories). Inside the boxes can be photo albums (galleries). The photos only go in a photo album. So, on the first shelf, you have two photo albums and a box which has three photo albums inside it. The second shelf, you have two boxes (each with two photo albums), and the third shelf has 3 photo albums. All these configurations are perfectly valid. But, I can NOT have a box inside a box, or a box inside a photo album, or a shelf inside a box or photo album.

So, as a hierarchy, this would look like:

• Shelf #1
  • Photo album #1.1
  • Photo album #1.2
  • Box #1.1
    • Photo album #1.1.1
    • Photo album #1.1.2
    • Photo album #1.1.3
• Shelf #2
  • Box #2.1
    • Photo album #2.1.1
    • Photo album #2.1.2
  • Box #2.2
    • Photo album #2.2.1
    • Photo album #2.2.2
• Shelf #3
  • Photo album #3.1
  • Photo album #3.2
  • Photo album #3.3

And that, above, is as complicated as you can *ever* get. Three levels. Shelf, box, album.

Was this helpful? Did it suck? Let me know below

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The Friday Roundup

Posted on 04. Sep, 2009 by David Wolf.

For a site that’s been around for about a week, it’s gratifying to see the number of people that are already falling in love with what we offer. In fact, we’ve gotten a ton of positive reviews on our free webinars.

But, don’t keep all the goodness to yourself. Let others know! This type of site only works when lots and lots of people come to watch the webinars and read the content of the blog. The more readers/attendees, the more stuff we’re able to do for free.

Anyways; this week at SmugSchool…

• Our kick-off event was a 2 hour intro to SmugMug. Almost 100 people attended. An amazing turnout considering we had only advertised the webinar for less than a week prior to the event!
• SEO Primer was our 2nd webinar, and lasted for an hour. A respectable 60 or so people showed up to it at 10AM. I actually wonder if the date/time had something to do with the lower turnout, or if people don’t understand just why SEO is as important as it is! Great feedback though and a number of people already signed up for my full SEO Unleashed workshop on Sept 16.
• We just recently announced that Nikolai, the creator of Star*Explorer will take our stage and talk about his uploader for SmugMug. I’ve used it since I got my first SmugMug account. He’ll be with us Sept 17 at 6PM Pacific.
• It was my Birthday on Sept 3, so I gave everyone a birthday present Now, my whole family was sick yesterday (really.. I’m being honest. This isn’t a marketing gimmick!), and they said, “When we’re better, we’ll celebrate your birthday properly!” On the day my family actually celebrates my birthday, I’m going to be giving away another birthday present to my followers. Here are some ways to ensure you don’t miss the birthday gift!
  1. Make sure you’re following me on Twitter
  2. Post comments to this article
  3. Add yourself to my mailing list
  4. Keep checking this blog daily!

And a special mention:

• Peter Garr has thoughtfully donated about 20 photos for us to use on the site and during webinars. His wedding photos are gorgeous!

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Star*Explorer: Super Fast SmugMug Uploader! (Windows only)

Posted on 03. Sep, 2009 by David Wolf.

On September 17, 2009 at 6 – 7 PM (PDT) SmugSchool welcomes Nikolai Sklobovsky – the creator of Star*Explorer.

He’s going to show how to install, configure and use Star*Explorer, a super-fast SmugMug uploader!

• Create hundreds of albums with a single click
• Automate image retrieval
• Replace corrected images
• and much more!

Sign up today to learn all about Star*Explorer, and how it can help you with your SmugMug workflow from Photoshop and Bridge.

While this Webinar is FREE, you must pre-register to attend! To register for the Star*Explorer Webinar, hosted by SmugSchool, click here.

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Showing off SmugMug

Posted on 03. Sep, 2009 by David Wolf.

How cool is this? One of the newer features of SmugMug…

Super easy to do too. But, looks so nice!

We’re going to cover how to do this, and some ideas of how to use it, in our upcoming Advanced SmugMug webinar. It’s only $20!

BTW.. The reason I charge for some Webinars is because the software I use to host each Webinar is actually fairly pricey; so, in order to cover my costs, I ask for a few dollars to take certain courses.

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Happy Birthday to Me! (But, the gifts are for you)

Posted on 03. Sep, 2009 by David Wolf.

SEO Unleashed is the most anticipated Webinar SmugSchool has offered yet!

Don’t miss learning the secrets no one wants you to know. We’ll give you code for your SmugMug site, show how to SEO your blog, understand Analytics, and so much more!

With over 13 years of professional experience working with computers, and as the leading SmugMug expert in the world, I’ll show YOU how to do stuff that no one else can do. You will profit from my knowledge, and use Social networks to attract new business.

This is a FIVE HOUR live web event. This will be the best, more informative, more eye-opening webinar you’ve ever attended. We’re going to help you unleash your web sites’ potential and help you to MAKE MORE MONEY!

My background:

• Over 13 years experience as a professional network engineer. I am a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator
• I personally built Wolf Snap Designs and SmugSchool from the ground up into the businesses they are today. I spent almost NO money on advertising to do it! Almost all my business came from Organic searches and word of mouth; things that YOU’LL learn to do too!
• We are the largest SmugMug customizers in the world. Lots and lots and lots of happy clients.

Every Webinar we’ve done so far has had GLOWING reviews.

Our SEO Unleashed Webinar event costs just $1500.00 to attend. Consider for a moment what you spend on advertising in the phone book, flyers, etc.. Then, realize that after taking my webinar, you’ll be able to obtain fresh clicks, new leads and placement on Google for *FREE*. This webinar will SAVE YOU MONEY!

But wait! There’s more! Sign up before 11:59pm PDT September 3, and as my birthday present to YOU (no, really.. Sept 3 IS REALLY my birthday!), take $500 off the registration fee! That’s only $1000.00 for a full 5-hour webinar! I’ll even give you code that you can copy and paste into your SmugMug website to improve your ranking and Google description immediately!

But, this offer expires 11:59pm PDT Sept 3. One minute later, and you’ll be spending an extra $500 on this webinar.

One more thing… Sign up before the deadline on Sept 3, and we’ll let you transfer your registration to ANY OTHER DATE we schedule for our Webinar! So, if the weekday webinars don’t work for you, you can choose to transfer to a weekend webinar. It’ll have the same content, just a more convenient time.

Don’t delay. Sign up today!

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Recording the Webinars… I’m trying!

Posted on 02. Sep, 2009 by David Wolf.

Probably the most common question I’ve been asked is if I’m recording the webinars to play them back later. I’m trying to do that! But, for a variety of technical reasons, it’s actually quite difficult to do. I’m confident that I’ll have the technology working soon, and I’ll be able to offer re-plays of the webinars. But, for now; you’ll need to show up!

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But Wait, There’s More!

Posted on 02. Sep, 2009 by David Wolf.

Our first two webinars have been fantastic! We’re getting RAVE reviews! There’s bigger and better Webinars coming!

• Sept 8 @ 6PM PDT you won’t want to miss our Advanced SmugMug Smuginar! We’ll be going over advanced usage to make SmugMug bend to your desires. It’s only $20! Register today!
• Sept 9 @ 10AM PDT we’re repeating our totally excellent SEO primer! You won’t want to miss it! Register today — it’s FREE!
• Sept 9 @ 6PM PDT we’re going to be spending 2 hours going in detail over the Easy Customizer. We’ll show how to create transparent logos, and lots of other customization tricks. It’s only $50 — and money WELL spent! Register for our Easy Customizer Webinar now!

We’ll also start doing some WEEKEND webinars! Starting at 11AM PDT on Saturday; these should fill up quickly! So, make sure you register as quickly as possible for them! New topics coming soon to SmugSchool:

• Using Social Media sites to promote your business
• Keeping in touch. The art of mailing list generation and constant-contact.
• and much, much more! Make sure you’ve subscribed to our mailing list which can be found at the bottom of the right hand side of the site.

Want me to cover something I didn’t mention? Let me know in the comments below.

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Discounts!!

Posted on 02. Sep, 2009 by David Wolf.

Lots of cool discounts!

The SmugMug icon over that’a way —>> contains a coupon code pre-programmed into the link that will save you 20% off your first year! That’s a crazy good deal! Sign up today!

Dreamhost is the hosting company I use. By using THIS link (or clicking on the ad box over —>> ) you’ll get a free static IP address for LIFE! Why do you care? Run your site with an anonymous FTP server. It lets you share photos and files with others EASILY! But, you need an IP address to do that. If you bought it as an extra service, it’s crazy expensive. Use the link to get it FREE! You also get *unlimited* bandwidth and *unlimited* storage — FOR LIFE! It’s a great deal.

More discounts are coming. So, keep reading! Oh, and subscribe to our RSS feed to get instant updates.

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