Why Online Backup ?

Posted By admin on December 27, 2010

Have you ever been through a hard drive crashing and wiping out all your work. It is horrible, absolutely horrible. It is not a case of IF a hard drive fails, it is a question of WHEN it fails. Trust me, it will happen to you (I sincerely hope it doesn’t), this happens to everyone. You’re working away and all of a sudden BANG! All your work gone in a second.

Failing hard drives is not the only problem, those who run a small business, usually have all their computers, back ups, DVDs, CDs in one place of work. What about fire & theft. All could go in an instant. Can your business recover from this. Just like you have various insurance policies in place, Online Backup is your insurance policy for your most prized assets i.e your digital files. Lets take a closer look at this problem and some simple and affordable solutions for you.

Are you a serious photographer? Backup your data online now.

Digital photography means you need to process all your images on your computer. While that may provide you with the benefit of minimizing your storage costs, there’s always a chance that you might end up with a corrupt or irrecoverable data. However you can minimize the chances of losing images simply by creating a back up strategy.

Backing up is very important as it can prevent you from losing very important data. Every now and then we see some photographer who has lost important data due to a crashed drive, theft, fire or natural disasters.

There are tons of ways to back-up your data. So we are going to go through the basic foundation of backing up your data. This theory will help you in understanding the need of back-up and let you decide how to manage it according to your own needs.
The first thing is to get organized. You could create a back-up by simply dumping your files somewhere else, but it would only make it harder for you to look through your data. The best thing to do is to come up with a naming plan. Name your folders in such a manner that they are easy to locate on your backup. The best example is to name your folder by date. Year-Month-Date format followed by a keyword is generally the best idea as it will list the folder by date. For example, if I shot Tom’s birthday today 22 December 2010, I’d name my folder 2010_12_22_TomsBirthday or 20101222_TomsBirthday. You can further create subfolders etc according to your needs.

Storage medium can be a tricky thing. CDs and DVDs fade, literally, over time, whereas flash drives have a high rate of becoming corrupt. External hard drives last longer but are not everlasting. The best bet could be to invest in an online storage space. Tons of websites offer storage space, it comes in different packages so you can choose the one which best suits your needs.

If you are using a physical hard drive or flash memory, you need to ensure that you are completely safe from theft and physical damage. So it is prudent to keep more than one copy of the back-up and ensure that the storage medium is in two difference places, like one at your home and one at the workplace etc. A thief is highly unlikely to grab one hard drive and leave the other one. Similarly fire would destroy both sets of hard drives if they are kept in the same place.

Online backup is a brilliant way to ensuring that you are safe from everything. With online backup you don’t have to worry about corrupt hard drives, multiple back-ups, storage equipment costs, theft, fire etc.

Online backup is basically uploading your precious files on the server of the service provider. Mostly all you have to do is install the software to get started. Most of the software lets you select the files you want to back up and then encrypt, compress and transfer the files to a protected location. This data is encrypted and can only be accessed by authorized people, making it a safe method for many professional photographers as well as the occasional hobbyist.

The only costs attached to online backup are the starting costs and the monthly subscriptions. Here is an analysis of three well-known online backup service providers for photographers.

PhotoShelter

PhotoShelter is specially built for photographers. Primarily an online backup program, PhotoShelter is also a photo gallery. It provides the facility to display your photographs in a gallery and promote and sell them. There are four plans for PhotoShelter, i.e. basic, standard and pro. Each of these plans has different features. The Basic plan has a monthly fee of $9.99 per month and a startup cost of $50 with 10 GB of storage. While the Standard and the Pro plans have 35 GB and 100 GB storage at costs of $29.99 and $49.99 respectively. Both Standard and Pro plans have no startup costs.

Photo Shelter – Sign up now!

Mozy

Mozy is a simple back-up service. You download and install their software and select the files you want to backup on their servers. It uses a 128-bit encryption to transfer the file to its servers, once there the file is encrypted with 448-bit Blowfish encryption making it impossible to hack. Mozy has two package plans Home and Pro. The Home package has a flat rate of $4.95 a month without any startup costs for one PC with unlimited storage capacity. The Pro package offers different rates for servers and desktops. The cost for servers and desktops are $6.95 and $3.95 for the license plus a $0.5 for every GB of storage space used.

iDrive

iDrive provides very similar service to Mozy. It initially offers a free 5 GB of storage volume on their secure servers. iDrive has three package plans, personal, family and business. With personal package you can only backup the images from one computer, whereas the family plan offers up to five computers and business plan has no restriction for the number of computers. Personal plan gives 150 GB of storage space for $4.95 per month or $49.50 per year. Family plan gives 500 GB of storage for $14.95 per month or $149.50 per year. The business plan has four volume based packages.

It comes in 50 GB, 100 GB, 500 GB and 1000 GB of volume. The prices are $9.95 per month or $99.50 per year for the 50 GB package, $19.95 per month or $199.50 per year for the 100 GB package, $49.95 per month or $499.50 per year for the 500 GB package and $79.95 per month or $799.50 per year for the 1000 GB package. iDrive also gives you the option of purchasing additional storage volume of 1 GB for $0.5 per month.

Hope this post helps you choose the right plan for your business. Always be safe.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: Backup

Top 10 Tips to Organise Your Photography Business

Posted By admin on December 19, 2010

Every business in the world needs paperwork to organise a business. Even in professional photography one needs to create invoices, quotations, bills etc. However, day to day running of a photography business can leave you with almost no time for the organization of your paperwork. This can leave you in quite a mess at your workplace which, quite frankly, doesn’t look nice especially if your clients visit often.

Organizing your workplace is indeed a tiresome job. Nobody wants to be stuck handling paperwork, not if you could be spending this valuable time with your family or behind the camera. Organizing your business can not only save you time, but can provide you with a true and fair view of where your business actually stands and where it is headed in both near and far future.

Here are the top 10 tips that can help you organize your studio in a fashion which looks better and is more convenient.

Use file cabinets or hanging / suspension folders.
Even in this modern era of “soft copies” there are tons of things that a photographer needs in hard copies. Correspondence, portfolios, equipment manuals etc these are all hard copies and can create a mess unless you use a file cabinet or hanging folders.

Always use separate files
You should always use separate files to keep specific documents and reference to them as it looks better than one bulky file. You also save a lot of time and reach your desired document with more ease as compared to searching through one file.

Clear out assorted folders or miscellaneous folders
Everyone has at least one folder labeled “Misc”. This is the folder where you put everything you don’t know where to put. There is a good chance that you could do with clearing out the whole folder. If you haven’t required something from the folder in one whole year, it is highly unlikely it is of any value.

Go digital
If you are a digital photographer, you are likely to have your images on a computer. However if you are a non-digital photographer (which is highly unlikely), you could always use a scanner to transfer your prints onto a PC. As we all know, hard drives take less space than albums and catalogues.

Reference your work
You are likely to have a lot of images on your computer and it can be a tedious job going through them to find a specific shot you are looking for. It is always a good idea to make a referencing index of your work which allows you to see where specific files are. Such a list can be very useful for saving time when you search for files.

Use spreadsheets and database management software
Spreadsheets and data management software (www.fotosf.com) are an amazing way to organize your contacts, equipment lists, things to do, sales, purchases, jobs, etc. Such software can easily be used to fit your business needs and can help you save time over trivial jobs.

Keep a diary to track your appointments
A diary is the best way to make sure you fulfill any appointments that you have made. Diaries or journals also help to ensure you meet your deadlines. You can also program your diaries with reminders and alarms to keep you on your toes. Syncing your diary to your smart phone helps photographers who are out and about on-location quite a lot.

Maintain proper accounts
Proper maintenance of accounts enables you to properly allocate expenses to specific jobs. That way you can work out a more accurate cost of a project and also exercise better cost control.

Maintain short-term and long term budgets
Maintaining proper budgets can help your forecast your state of affairs and later compare the actual figure with budgets to properly assess your performance. It is a good method for self assessment and provides information for you to make proper decisions.

Label your equipment and designate a proper place for everything
Write serial numbers for your equipment & software and designate a proper place for everything. Make a file of this information. This file can be used as a reference to find out where a specific piece of equipment is. You must know each and every piece of camera, lens, computer, software & accessories to help insure your equipment for the right amount year on year. Never guess and insure for your business assets.   These tips can increase your efficiency, effectiveness and profitability. You can either do this manually or automate the whole process by using a dedicated photography studio software like Foto SF Lite which costs only £60 / $90 (approx.).

Download a Free Trial by entering your Name & Email on the right hand side bar.

Why have a Facebook Fan Page

Posted By admin on December 4, 2010

We’ve all heard of Facebook unless you’ve just arrived to planet Earth from the outer space! Facebook is the ‘buzz word’ these days and rightly so for some very good reasons. Facebook is changing the way businesses can promote and interact with their prospects & customers, build customer loyalty and bring in new leads…. ALL FOR FREE!

One evening I was watching TV and saw the Fosters advert on which they advertised the Facebook Fan Page rather than their own website. It was something like www.facebook.com/fosters. This intrigued me and I asked myself why are they not advertising their own website but diverting them to a Facebook page. Most big brands are now promoting their Facebook Fan Page rather then their website! Do you get a strong message that something is changing on the web.

The need to leverage social media for business is a complete no-brainer. If Facebook was a country, it will be the third largest country in the world (population wise) with over 600 million. This figure is growing at warp speed on a minute-by-minute basis.

On average, each one of us spends about 51 minutes per day on Facebook. CNN recently reported that Facebook traffic has overtaken Google for the 1st time ever. This is huge.

Why is Facebook important to a small business or any size of business ? Well, with such a massive audience spending so much time on Facebook, it would be foolish not to put our brand in front of the audience. It is easy to build relationships with your prospects. The other most important factor is FREE TRAFFIC a website can receive from FB. I have realised the potential of it and using it to bring more traffic to my website/s and also building relationships with prospects / customers.

I check my Google Analytics stats pretty much on a daily basis to see how much traffic I get to my site/s. One day I noticed this:

I was pretty amazed and pleasantly surprised. Facebook directing so much free traffic to my website. It was at this point I realised the power of Facebook. I had not done anything special. This was just from my personal account. I did not even have a Facebook Fan Page! I soon created a Fan Page and am now actively using Facebook as one of the social media tools for free traffic. You can see Twitter is also one of the top traffic sources for my website.

The above image is the Welcome page for our Facebook Fan Page. The URL for this page is:

www.facebook.com/sfphotoschool

This page now brings in regular & daily traffic to our website. Please do visit and ‘LIKE’ our page. This is just another platform to put the message across and build our brand on the web.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and opened up your eyes to the power of Facebook. If you have a fan page and would like to share your experience with others, please pen in your comments in the box below. I would love to hear from you.

SPECIAL FACEBOOK FAN PAGE CHRISTMAS OFFER

Our sister website Search SF has this money saving offer for you. We’ll create a brand new Facebook Fanpage for you for only £175 + VAT (normal price £245 + VAT). Saving you £70.00. This is offer is for a limited time time and expires on 24 Dec 2010.

Your Facebook fan page will be set up for getting new leads for your business on a daily basis and will compliment your website. You’ll also learn how to use Facebook & email marketing to build a strong & profitable relationship with your prospects & customers.

You cannot afford to miss out on this great offer. Contact us now on 01525 383683 or by email on info@sfdigital.co.uk and see how you can realise the power of Facebook for your business.

To Your Success

Filed Under: Business, Offers Tagged With: Facebook

Nikon Introduces Christmas Cashback Offer

Posted By admin on December 2, 2010

To celebrate the festive season customers purchasing the new Nikon D3100, body or lens kit, are now able to claim £40/€50 in a new Christmas cashback promotion from Nikon.

The Nikon D3100 cashback offer will run from 1st December 2010 until 31st January 2011 (inclusive) for customers in the UK and Republic of Ireland, and claims must be received by 28th February 2011 (inclusive).

The Nikon D3100 is the most easy-to-use D-SLR to date, offering a range of high performance features that are designed to make taking quality images fun and easy. The camera’s Guide mode gives you step-by-step instructions of how to change the camera settings, so you not only get the picture you want but it helps you to understand how it was achieved so you can develop your photography skills. The D3100 is Nikon’s first DSLR to offer full HD movie mode so you can get creative with your photography and switch between shooting stills and video at the click of a button. And, with an HDMI port you can connect your camera to the TV and relive the festivities with friends and family.

Simon Iddon, Product Manager for Enthusiast products, says: “The D3100 is the ideal gift for people wanting to capture festive memories this Christmas and learn how to improve their photography skills. I am delighted that we’re able to introduce this cashback offer on our award-winning model and hope that it will make it even more accessible this season.”

For terms and conditions and information about how to make a claim please visit: www.nikon.co.uk/cashback. Offer subject to availability.

Filed Under: Business, News, Offers Tagged With: Nikon, Special Offer