How I multiplied my Flickr traffic 20x times

It's no secret any longer that Adobe Lightroom has transformed my photographic workflow and I love the power it puts at my finger tips. It seems each week I'm discovering a new way to put it to use and take my photography to better levels, using automation to reduce the need to perform hours of mundane tasks. 

The latest trick has been to implement publishing to Flickr - but not only that to deliver upto 20x the traffic views for my photos that had been the norm before I started using Lightroom. 

Here's an image of some stats at the time of writing:

At the start of this graph (start of Jan) I did a little manual test to see what effect was caused, and this explains the rise to about 35 image views per day. However, after this you can see the natural tail as traffic drops back down to its organic level of about 4 or 5 views per day. 

The I implemented my lightroom meets flickr strategy and the traffic rose sharply. The peak on this chart is 100 views, representing about 20 times the traffic of my previous normal levels. That's one heck of a turn around. 

So, what's the secret? Well, there are two:

1) replace the standard Lightroom Flickr "publish" plugin with a much cleverer version written by Jeffrey Friedl. His plugins are awesome and by far the most full-featureed and flexible I've found. 

2) Use the plugin to submit your images to relevant photo groups on flickr. This is something you can configure the plugin to do automatically for you when you upload an image. By posting to interested and relevant groups your images will be exposed to a wider audience and generate more traffic. 

However, there are, of course, a couple of cautionary notes. The main one is that different groups have different rules and you have to adhere to them. This might include, for example, a limit of one picture upload per day. Lightroom won't count this for you - you need to just tracj this yourself. 

Also, you need to be relevant to the group - so if you are posting to a group which accepts sunsets, but with no people and with the sun below the horizon then you need to be sure that your automation is able to control this - i.e. that your metadata is sufficiently rich and granular. There's always going to be a fine line over how much is enough and how much is too much metadata: so pick your groups with this in mind. 

After setting all that up, publishing to Flickr is just a one click process, and hopefully you can see the results I have, or better! ☺

How to get your music on iTunes

the digital age has made it possible to self-publish your own music on the route to rock-stardom. Here's how you can get your music on the apple iTunes store as well as all the main digital download stores such as Amazon, Napster and eMusic.

Without doubt the advent of MP3s and the digital download age has revolutionised music forever. It's now possible for anyone with a PC and the right software to create their own music and recordings and make them available to the world without the merest hint of a record contract or a large record producing organisation to both invest or constrain the artistic process.  

However, in the absence of a huge marketing budgets it is essential to get your music into all the major online record stores and all the online download stores in order to reach the widest audience possible.

In my opinion the best way to do this is through the tunecore service. For a ludicrously low annual fee in the region of $20 they will make your digital music album available to all the major music retailers across the globe, including iTunes, Amazon, Napster and many more. It's extremely easy to upload your music just once to tune core who will then distribute it on your behalf to all the stores you select. This is a process you can complete in one or two hours and within a matter of a few weeks your album and recordings will be available to buy and download to hundreds of millions of Internet users all over the world. Tune core takes all the hassle  out of hosting and distributing your files, as well as collecting and is shooting the royalties you earn.   On top of that they provided information and advice on how to be successful in the industry.. I cannot recommend them highly enough and I have my own music published through tunecore.

Click here for TuneCore