Hi!

I've been studying Adobe Photoshop for about 2 years. I'm very good at it and have become very good at restoring damaged photos. I want to create a website to promote my business. I have websites that are the simple drop and drag that my ISP provides for me (Comcast). They are broadband sites and I can show my work on them but I need a site like this -

http://www.lilacdigital.com/

I have and am studying Dreamweaver 4. I am using "Creating Web Pages For Dummies" as my main source. It's going well but I would rather be spending ALL my time with my Adobe Photoshop CS 8. Any ideas on how I can speed up my plans to draw customers via the web without becoming an advanced web page designer just to create my business site? Maybe I could just make something simple that could be found the way I found the link I posted above, which was by searching "photo restoration" in google. Check this guy's meta tags. Lot's of keywords. Maybe I'll get addicted to web page creation later on but now I'm so hooked on Photoshop I can't tear myself away from it. I can do everything this guy (http://www.lilacdigital.com/) is doing. I'm doing it for people for free right now. I'd like to make a few bucks, and the web seems the best way. Must be hard to make the feature he has that let's you upload pictures to him I bet. Guess I may need to hire someone to do it for me. I suppose I need to buy a domain and pay for a host as getting google to publish my comcast web sites has not worked. Not good when the url starts out as -http://home.comcast.net/~ and followed by your email address.

Suggestions?

Jimi.

Jimi.

You just answered your own questions, so what's holding you back? :)

safeTsurfa,

Time factor. Anyone want to do it for me? I read a post where someone was talking about barter. I could restore some photos for you. I specialize in very old black and white photo restoration. The ones I've been doing would cost over $100.00 each if they were done at the site I posted. I have samples of my work. Or if you are serious and you are good, you could email me a photo that is damaged and I could fix it and email it back to you for free.

Any takers? Mostly I want a site that google could find using the keywords that the site I posted is using. I could just have a plain site there with the links to my comcast sites for starters. As I write this I'm working on 30 different Photoshop jobs. Just personal stuff. I haven't done any for money. Just myself and friends.

Jimi.

Jimi-
You should be aware of a couple of things:

1. Getting customers via the web is not such an easy thing. Google has an entire category devoted to photo restoration, with 240 entries. Check them out here. You have a lot of comptetition.

2. Not even the best web designer and a billion keywords will necessarily get you hits from google. Google rates sites based on how many related sites link to it. lilacdigital has 175 outside pages that link to it, which is why it is #1. You might start out at #241 in the list, and as you gain a reputation, move your way on up. But it's not something easily done.

3. The prices listed on lilacdigital are, from my experience, obscenely high. I have a few web clients who are photographers, and they do many of those touchups (teeth, blemishes, color correction, etc.) for free with a portrait or wedding package.

4. The work involved in putting a website together would probably not be worth a few photos restored, unless you happenned to find somebody who really needed alot done. Building a website is not hard...You should continue to learn how to do it yourself. Then you could have a graphic design/website building business that has real potential.

5. The file upload thing is not that hard. There are plenty of free scripts out there that do it. Just make sure you get a host that supports PHP, Perl, ASP, JSP, etc. (not all of them, just any one of them.)

Good luck,
-SN

SN,

Hey! Thanks for all the good advice. I am planning on doing more than just using the web for business. I already have a 9 to 5 so I can't do a whole lot of work anyway. I plan on getting a business license, buying a domain, and a host (if that will help me get it listed on google, etc). I know it's tough to get listed at the top. But to start with I'd like to just get listed. I plan on doing the work that Lilac does except charging only about 20 percent of what they charge.

So I'm just starting out with Dreamweaver. I already know how to resize photos, etc. for the web. Mostly I guess I'm trying to figure out what to name my business and what to name my domain and if there is anything I should do in naming both that would help me link everything together to get the most business (flyers, business cards, magnetic signs on vehicles, door to door advertising showing printed samples of my work, continually promoting my web site, etc). My wife says I'm getting bogged down in details, but I'm a detail man and want to learn as much as I can before I start paying for business license, domains, etc. I also want a domain for my personal web site. So people I haven't seen in 30 years could find me just by searching my name. After about 3 or 4 months nothing shows up in any search engines when typing in my real name, which I have used in my comcast websites, and have also played with the meta tags.

So I want to purchase 2 domains, one for business, one for old friends to find me.

Thanks for your advice. I've copied it and filed in on my computer. I just need to do more study on Dreamweaver, but I can't get unhooked from Photoshop. It's an addiction. I even have taken college courses on it. That enabled me to get a huge discount on Adobe Photoshop CS 8.

Thanks again.

Jimi.

SN,

An added note,

The work I do is not simple lighting adjustments, blemishes on one's face, brightening teeth, color corrections,etc. I agree, those are very simple and take only minutes or seconds. The type I'm doing are photos that are maybe 70 or 80 years old. Ones that have tears, speckles, holes, or even maybe 20 to 30 percent of the picture missing. Including half of a person's body or even their face. These would be for someone that had maybe one photo of their grandfather or something and it had severe damage to it from storage or whatever. These single photos take me from 4 to 10 or even 20 hours to fix. I have taken 2 X 3's and scanned them and fixed them and printed them out full page prints that look perfect.

Jimi.

SN,

If you have a cherished old black & white photo that has severe damage like maybe it stuck together with another photo and big sections of it have huge holes etc in it send it to me and I'll fix it and email it back to you for free. No one has seen my work except my Grandaugher and some friends. I love a challenge. Maybe you could help me with more tips, advice, links to tutorials, etc. in return. A good scan, jpeg is fine, around 2 Mb 3100 x 3900 pixels or so if it's a portrait. Or anyone else reading this post. I'm doing these for fun anyway.

Jimi.

Im sorry, i dont quite follow all this?

You want someone to make you a website which will be used to show off your talents, offer picture restoring and a few other things?

If you could just make this clear

cheers

Regards, Jamie McCoy

Jamie,

Yes,

To start with one that has a page like this (this is a different page than the first one I listed, same website though) These are the things that I do -

http://www.lilacdigital.com/pricing.htm

SN says it's tough to get listed in the top but I'd just like to get listed. This is for a business web site.

For my personal web site I want one that will be listed in google when a person searches my real name.

So I am going to buy 2 domains. And 2 hosts. I already have 6 comcast web sites. These are my personal sites where I can't get google to list them when you search my real name. I also have a yahoo site that a friend made for me and the only thing on it is the links to my comcast sites. He said that linking more sites together would help google find them.

So I guess I need someone to do a site for me, or work on the keywords, meta tags or whatever on the ones I already have so they will be listed. So if possible I could use my existing sites for both business and or personal, or start fresh with a new site for personal and a new site for business. These 2 would be seperate. I don't want personal to link to business. A very simple site will do, I just want help getting listed.

I hope that doesn't make it sound even more complicated. It's sometimes to express myself in posts.

Thanks for the post,

Jimi.

as far as the web page goes, wot features do u want it to have

login access
upload feature
mailto's

or do u just want a simple site which shoes examples, lists prices and gives your details where you can be contacted

Regards, Jamie McCoy

Jamie,

I want the upload feature, and basically very simple that does what you said, shows samples of my "before and after" work of damaged photos, and how to reach me, prices, etc. I'm heading to work right now but have bookmarked your site. Pretty interesting. I can probably learn quite a bit just from studying your site. I already have 6 web sites. I may be able to use one of them for the business web site. The others are personal and I just want them to be listed in google when you enter my real name. No luck so far. I'll email you later and if I send you the links maybe you can check out the meta tags if you have time? But from what I understand, it's hard to get listed when the URL starts out with -

http://home.comcast.net/~

and then my name. Maybe I need a domain that starts out with my name. Thanks for your posts young man. You are definitely advanced in web developement.

Jimi.

when you say my site, do you mean the link provided above

if so they are just my college 1s, mainly used for displaying information, not as such for showing my design quality

I have yet to work on an offical project, so most of the sites i make for college are completed within a few hours

anyway keep in touch i may be able to help

Regards, Jamie McCoy

Meta tags are overated. They were originally a way for website authors to do the search engine's job and organize contents (as well as pass technical information to the search engine and browser). Now they can be ignored because of the possibility of irrelevant keywords (in other words, they cannot be trusted so no one really does).

Google parses the entire webpage and extracts the majority of its unique contents into a massive index. Meta tags function mostly as accessories (the extent to which they actually are used by a search engine is very questionable, chief being Google). What matters are the contents of your website, how many sites are linked to it, and what words are in the anchor (link) tag which links to your website. The words "miserable failure" as a Google query are a popular example of just how much Google relies on this method.

In short, don't worry about the meta tags.

Sites within larger domains usually get a lower ranking in Google. For one, they are generally user homepages and don't contain many things of interest (thus their contents are generic and they may not be linked to by many places). They are still indexed. Try this as a search term in Google:

site:http://home.comcast.net

Next add some information which is on your website, say the words "Digital Photography":

site:http://home.comcast.net Digital Photography

Thanks to all for the info. Wow! I've got a lot of studying to do. By the way SN. How do you search to come up with -

http://directory.google.com/Top/Shopping/Photography/Services/Restoration/

I know you do it through google directory, but is there a simple way to come up with that great list through search keywords? Or did you come up with the keywords yourself? If it's complicated I can just spend some more time studying google through the info they have there. That's a great list. Gives me more ideas visiting those sites.

Looks like I already know enough to build my own site so I probably don't need help there. I just need to study more on the "getting listed" problem. Now, forget about the business site, this is what I'm focusing on today. I have 6 Comcast web sites, 4 or them have 50 photos each on them, and 2 are under construction. These are sites I'd like people to find when they search my real name. I've tried to get them listed and it's been over 6 months and no luck. Comcast may be blocking spidering. I've made a crude yahoo site -

http://www.geocities.com/steve_lomheim/

that contains nothing more than just the links to my main Comcast site, which I called Site #1, and that site contains links to the other 5 comcast sites. What should I enter in the comments box at -

http://www.google.com/addurl.html

to make google find this site (the yahoo site) when people search any of these words - steve lomheim, or lomheim?

I'm starting to get into this and haven't opened up Photoshop today which is a first in over a year. Maybe I'll get hooked on this now.

Also, if you visit the Comcast sites, please note that I've not worked on these sites in quite awhile and (especially pixelpros) have much better photos and samples that I need to add. The ones there are more of the "beginer" stage of photoshop. But ignore the photos, this is all about getting listed, not the quality of my sites.

Thanks a million for all your help.

Jimi.

By the way,

Someone will probably say "Add steve lomheim in the comments box." That's what I am planning on doing. But I'm really asking for any tips other than the obvious. I'm trying to learn more than just what a beginner like myself would do. But if it's that simple, great!

Jimi.

Jimi-
I typically do it one of two ways...For things that I know what categories they will be listed in, I just click on the "directories" link on google (or go to directory.google.com) and follow the links. (computers-programming-languages-php, for example)

In your case, I performed the same search you did...photo restoration. On the first few links that come up, Google links to a category that they think might be helpful. (shopping-photography-services-restoration)

Yahoo has a similar feature.

I was able to find you via Google and Yahoo, but only through cached versions of this page. Once Google crawls it again they might not even have that.

You're rather fortunate in that not very many people have your name, so you shouldn't have difficulty with too many hits. A movie came out recently with my name as the main character, so now nobody has a chance of finding me. I used to be in the top ten, and now I didn't even find myself in the first 100!

Put both steve and steven lomheim. You might also put in some keywords for your high school or anything else you might think people would associate with you.

Good luck,
-SN

How many keywords or comments can I put in? Do they need to be written in like this - steve lomheim, steven lomheim, onida south dakota, class of 73, you know with space and comma, or can you just start typing like - steve lomheim class of 73 high school track football onida south dakota augustana college uss coontz ddg40 usn naval station norfolk va.....etc. Can you put in 100 words or should you just use about 10 or so? Should I go to my comcast sites and put in the same keywords in all those too?

Thanks again for helping,

Jimi.

I put in (without comma's just one space between each word) lomheim onida south dakota sd steve lomheim sully buttes class 73 betty hine lomheim speedway indiana in keywords of steve lomheim web site homepage http://home.comcast.net/~slumhime

and added a hyperlink in this post that I also learned to do from archives of computing.net -

lomheim

I'll see what happens.

Jimi.

Jimi,

Have you thought about just buying a domain using your first and last name? I did and when people search for my name through Google, I am first on the list, actually I am the only one on the list. Almost every site I have designed, that my actual name is attached to, comes up in the search too.

Hypermart.net, http://www.hypermart.net, will register the domain name of your choice (providing it is available) for $12.00 for 1 year. They will let you have a FREE 30-day hosting (actual monthly hosting fee is $10.00), after that time they will notify you via email and offer you a hosting fee of $5.95. I have used many hosting services over the years and when I found this one I stuck with it. The best part is that they have a 24/7 customer service and tech help. I am not affiliated in any way with them, I am just offering some friendly tips. :-)

SDP

SDP

Thanks for the info. I didn't think of using my full name. I wanted to use just my last name.com, but my cousin has bought that one and doesn't use it (no host) but says he will one day and doesn't want to sell it. I'm thinking of using my last name.net. That would do pretty much the same thing wouldn't it? But would be nicer if it was .com so I think I will take your advice and use my full name.com. My business website is going to be more complicated and I soon will have to decide on a name for my business (for the business license) and business domain. And decide if it would benefit me (relating to google searches) if they were both the same name. I'm still thinking something very simple is the way to go. Something that I could use to promote the business both on the web, and also through every other physical way possible (flyers, email, door to door, magnetic signs for cars, business cards, yellow pages, etc.)

Thanks for the info and links, I'm going to check them out this weekend.

Jimi.

SDP's solution is a pretty good one...I should have thought of it. GoDaddy.com has 1 year for $8 or $9, and PowWeb has hosting for $7/month - with LOTS of space and bandwidth. I haven't used them personally but they seem to be legit.
-SN

SN,

You really should try Hypermart.net. They register for you for that low price. I have registered my own domains and all my clients through them. That is over 50 domains so far and I have been using them for 6 years. I would stake my reputation as a Web Designer on this company. I have watched them grow from a small freebie company to what it is today.

Extremely reliable. :-)

SDP

Jimi,

I use my full name domain as a portal to all my sites. My own sites that is, business and personal. So you can always register your full name with a .com and then register your business name later when you are ready.

Register your name before someone else does, no matter how unique it might be.

SDP

Jimi,

One more thing, if you are having trouble coming up with a domain name for your business try using this link to brainstorm your domain.

Brainstorm A Domain Name

I find it very helpful when my clients are having a hard time picking a domain name to use. Usually their first, second and third choices are taken.

SDP

Thanks again SN and everyone else! I just got into the computer room after a couple days off (from the computer). I've got plenty of info thanks to you all and now have a LOT of work to do!

Best regards to all,

Jimi.