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Networking with Moo
Working in a retail setting, more times than expected, I come across customers with the same deep interest in photography as I have and simple questions about a product are often forgotten and replaced with us asking each other “what style of photography do you practice” or “do you have a website”?
I enjoy nothing more than networking in person, so to remedy the embarrassing act of scribbling long URLs on a scrap of paper to share each others work, I ordered a free sample pack of Moo business cards that I can use for future encounters.
Having a business card adds credibility to your craft or business and when you have the advantage of them being unlike any other piece of paper with your contact information on it, people will remember you more.
I would even consider handing these out during our next travel since I always have the luck of meeting great people that up to this date, I still keep in contact with.
I chose some more recent travel photos from St.Lucia, Barbados and Puerto Rico to use on the cards. They’re incredibly easy to make and order especially if you have a Flickr account and at this point who doesn’t. They come beautiful printed in full color on both sides with high quality card stock. For $6 shipping, I say give the sample pack a spin.
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The best part of not having a job is that you don’t have to conform to other people’s expectations. You can be weird if you want to be, and no one will fire you for it. The funny thing is, weird is one of the best niches to set up your small business in — there’s too much regular out there already.
– Everett Bogue, the author of The Art of Being Minimalist talks about 27 Reasons Why You Should Never Have a Job. Suggestions that are not necessarily applicable to everyone but fantastic for those that have a business that allows them to live them first hand which is almost a lot of people that I follow on Twitter. -
The Value in Your Photographs →
For the most part, it’s fair to state that a lot of things in life are available for a cost and when you take into account your personal work, we always find it difficult to place monetary worth on it and that’s because a fair cost is in the eye of the beholder.
Customers make purchases on things they see both value and a fair price in and when it comes to photographs, there’s so many elements to take into account so that you at least generate a decent profit from a print but Jack Hollingsworth beautiful words about the intrinsic value of a photo is one that I deeply admire -
I have always believed (and still do) that, ultimately, it’s the customer and not the photographer who determines a photograph’s value. A photograph, in and of itself, isn’t valuable or worthy just because a photographer claims it to be. That photograph becomes valuable and worthy only when it directly solves a customer’s problem. So on the one hand, it’s the customer who determines value.
It’s easy to get caught up in the idea of trying to monetize from something you love doing but even more of a perspective changer when you realize that people are willing to pay money for it even way before you put it up for sale and that’s because they see value in it.
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The Twitter You Didn't Know →
Twitter’s usage has grown immensely and from that, the questions on some user’s mind is how does the company actually generate revenue from that popularity. What is it’s revenue model? Martin states that “just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there”.
Twitter had a revenue model from the beginning; their product was actually developed around the model itself. Twitter has (or had) a relationship with telecommunication carriers that provide us our SMS on our mobile devices; for every text message they charge you for, Twitter gets a cut because of the influx in text messaging they’ve created in the market place.
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Dear Developers, Please Stop Whining →
Paul from Tapbots and his reaction to the whole “bitching lately about the Top 100 list and $0.99 apps” discussion in the blogosphere. His advice in making a successful app is conceptually very simple:
- Create a quality product
- Price the product properly
- Market the product
