That was a long title – but here are 5 things to make sure you do when starting your business as a photographer. A lot of this advice comes from the mistakes I made when I first started out – eek!

1. Nail your focus (besides having a technically correct photograph! – thanks Brandi for the comment). In portraits, your focus should always be on the eyes unless you are intentionally focusing on something else. If you’re having trouble telling where the focus is landing, consider getting a larger screen to edit. It has made a huge difference for me to upgrade from a 13″ screen to a 27″ screen. You’d be surprised to see how many photographs you can run into while perusing other photographers’ work where the focus fell on the nose or the shirt.

The focus on the photograph below (left) falls around the baby’s mouth. This photograph was NOT delivered to the client.

Nail your focus!

2. Have a system for your accounting. Even if you just made your first $100, have a system in place for your income and expenses. You don’t want to have to dig up old receipts or wonder how much that client gave you when it comes to tax time. Trust me, it sucks.

There are several different options of how you can organize your income and expenses. Here are just a few (if you know of more, please add some in the comments):

• Quickbooks. This is what I use for my photography business and love it.
• StudioCloud. Free studio management software.
• Tave. Another studio management software.
• The Easy Accounting Solution for Photographers
• Biz Books. (Thanks Amy for the tip!)

Not accounting properly sucks!

3. Your branding is important. Invest in your branding. If you’re going to set up shop, hire a designer to help you create your logo. I think this was my biggest mistake when I was just starting out. I created my own logo, not understanding the importance of branding and consistency, and changed it year after year. With so much talent out there, having a presence you can be proud of is one of the things that will set you apart. Here are some logo designers from a previous post.

4. Nail your exposure and composition before trying Photoshop actions. There are some great Photoshop actions out there (namely My 4 Hens, Paint the Moon, MCP Actions). I have a collection of Photoshop actions myself and use them in my workflow. I think sometimes however, we take a photograph that would not really stand on its own and try to apply a bunch of actions to it hoping it might make our photograph look better. Your photographs should be able to stand on its own first with good exposure and composition.

Original vs. Action-ified. Hey that's not bad!

5. Set goals. Go 4 Pro recently asked readers what their personal definition of success was. What’s yours? Where do you want to go with your photography business in 6 months, 1 year, or 5 years? My first two years in business I photographed almost 80 weddings before I burnt myself out. Now, I have a much better idea of how much work I’d like to have and what I have to do to achieve that. Do you want to work everyday? Every weekend? How much time do you want to set aside for your family? When you set goals, you focus on what you want to achieve and how to achieve it without compromising other facets of your life.

Do you have advice for photographers who are just starting out? We’d love to hear it in the comments!

WordPress as a blogging platform allows so much flexibility. Here are 6 must-have WordPress plugins that will change your life. (Okay, maybe not really, but it will definitely make life easier.)

1. FASTER IMAGE INSERT. We photographers blog many photographs in one blog post… MANY. The fact that WordPress only allows you to insert one image at a time can get quite annoying. The Faster Image Insert plugin allows you to check the images you want to post and INSERT ALL. Totally amazing.

2. LINKWITHIN. We use the LinkWithin plugin on Inspire Me Baby. The plugin basically shows related posts along with an automatically generated thumbnail. The goal is for your readers to spend more time on your site and decrease what Google Analytics refers to as your bounce rate.

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site.

3. APRIL’S FACEBOOK LIKE BUTTON. There are many, many Facebook plugins for WordPress. I just happen to like this one because it is easy to use and install. There was an article on Mashable.com that said that the Facebook “like” button increased traffic to blogs by 50%. A Facebook “like” button = more traffic? Yes, please.

4. SEXYBOOKMARKS. There’s no escaping social bookmarking. SexyBookmarks embeds social media icons on the bottom of your posts allowing your readers to share your blog with everyone. Not sure this is a must-have as much as it is a “nice to have.”

5. WPTOUCH IPHONE THEME. Make your blog mobile friendly by installing this plugin that detects when your reader is using a mobile device. It converts your blog into a mobile friendly theme for the iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm mobile devices.

6. AKISMET. This plugin comes installed by default with WordPress. You need to activate it with an API code. Akismet will filter spammy comments on your blog eliminating the need to approve comments before they are published. In order to encourage comments on your blog, commenting should be easy for your reader.  There really should be no reason for them to have to wait for you to approve their comment before they see it live.