Photography is a dazzling art form, one that appeals to both beginners and experts. This aspect alone makes photography blogs popular, as they can target such a wide audience. If you want to start your own photography blog, it’s easier than ever, but many people start with choosing a branded name for their blog, so I’m going to help you brainstorm some photography blog name ideas.
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It’s also a surprisingly difficult decision. People often end up feeling stuck. There are tons of options out there, but many of the “best” ones seem to be taken already. Just about every idea you have has already been thought of.
On top of that, it can feel difficult, if not impossible, to find a name that is going to showcase your style and brand perfectly.
Surprisingly, while the name of your blog matters, it’s not nearly as critical as you might expect. The name mostly just influences the very first impression that people have of your site.
Your long-term success doesn’t come from your site name, but from other factors, like the content that you create and your own voice. If you have great photos, it doesn’t matter if your website is called Frog Photography or Green Belly Photography. That’s why we’ve developed this post. In it, we step you through some simple ideas for finding a blog name that you like.
We go beyond this first step too and talk about other early aspects of starting a blog. By the end of the post, you should be able to purchase a domain name, get started with building your site and have a rough idea of how you could earn money from it whether you are trying to promote your photos or sell photography products.
- 50 Photography Blog Name Ideas
- How To Choose A Good Blog Name
- Keyword VS Branding in Your Domain Name
- How To Buy A Domain Name
- How To Build & Make Money From Your Photography Website
- How Much Do Photography Bloggers Make?
- Display Ads
- Affiliate Links
- Final Thoughts
- Should You Start Your Own Blog?
- How To Choose A Good Blog Name
50 Photography Blog Name Ideas
- Macro Design Studios
- Macro Photography Lab
- Camera Wealth
- Free Travel Photography
- Micro Photography Guide
- Camera Moon
- Natural Lighting Photography
- The Camera Master
- Camera Lens Center
- Easy Income from Photos
- Beautiful Lasting Memories
- True Boudoir Photography
- Image Mysteries
- Outdoor Food Photography
- Perfect Photo Company
- Phone Photo Lessons
- Watching in Awe
- Best Photo Adventures
- Photography Families
- My City Photography
- Kid’s Photography Center
- Income from Images
- Photo Mom Hub
- The Flawless Photo
- Do Say Cheese
- Photo Adventures USA
- Photography App Solutions
- The Beautiful Shot
- Photo Gear Zone
- Your Perfect Photo
- City Photography Space
- Click Away Pro
- Photography App Shop
- Picture Rookie
- Explore Your Focus
- Future Photo Space
- See Behind the Camera
- Photo Studio Guide
- Kid’s Photography Blog
- Watch in Wonder
- I am in Focus
- Images Beast
- Phone Photo Tutor
- The Photographer’s Lens
- In Focus Guru
- Beautiful Home Shots
- Simple Moments in Time
- The Photo Gorge
- Photographing Newbie
- Photo Blog Academy
This might seem like a decent list of names, but it didn’t take very long to generate. You might also notice that the names don’t have much personality behind them. Blog names don’t tend to, at least not on their own.
How To Choose A Good Blog Name
The personality of your blog comes from what you put on it, not from the name that you choose. Even so, this doesn’t mean that you can run with any old name. Some choices will work better than others.
In particular, a good blog name is unique, short and memorable. You don’t have to meet all three of those criteria but it’s worth trying to hit at least one or two of them.
One of the best places to start is to think about your blog itself. What is it that you’re going to focus on? What areas make you stand out from other people?
For example, a photography blog for beginners might have an entirely different name and feel than one that is developed for experts at photoshop. The same is true for a site that is designed to teach photographers versus one that showcases photos.
The site digital-photography-school.com is a good example of how a site name can be targeted. The purpose of the site is very clear from the name alone. The same is true for the site expertphotography.com.
Another important point is your audience. It’s always important to avoid confusing people who visit your site.
Ideally, your site name should be easy for people to remember and to find again. For this to work, it’s best to avoid misspellings in your domain name, along with numbers and dashes. Avoiding unusual domain extensions is important too, like .xyz or .blog.
These aren’t hard and fast rules, of course. You may notice many sites breaking one or all of those ideas (like onemorecupof-coffee.com). Even so, making your site easy to remember does give you an advantage.
A final tip is to check what is already out there. Your blog name shouldn’t infringe on any copyrighted brand. Doing so is just asking for trouble.
Keyword VS Branding in Your Domain Name
Keywords are a common tool for blogging, helping to increase your visibility and the traffic you get from search engines. Keywords are relevant in your site name too.
Not only can including a keyword help your site to rank, but it can also signal the topic of your site to readers. Both aspects are important, especially as there are many other blogs online.
The most noticeable type of keyword name is an exact match domain. This is where the entire keyword is included in the domain name, without alteration. A domain name like photographytipsforbeginners.com would be one example.
Exact match domains were once very powerful for ranking. That’s why you’ll often see small and highly targeted sites around that take advantage of the pattern. This domain style isn’t as powerful anymore, but domains may still have a slight ranking advantage.
Keyword blog names don’t need to be long. There are some short examples out there, like photographyblog.com. Of course, shorter keyword domains are harder to find, as most of the good ones have already been taken.
Likewise, you don’t need to include a full keyword phrase in your blog name. Some sites just use one or two related words, like outdoorphotographer.com or photofocus.com.
Doing so still provides some of the advantages of using a keyword, but you’re not stuck with a very restrictive blog name. This style of keyword also provides more chances to express your own angle and personality.
A branded name is one that doesn’t target a keyword at all. Doing so gives you almost unlimited options for what to call your blog.
Some branded names include a related word or phrase, while others don’t. For example, the name of the site 1x.com is a reference to zoom level. Likewise, the site lightstalking.com has a name that suggests photography, despite avoiding the word entirely.
The most common type of branded name is where people simply name their blog after themselves. This approach doesn’t work well for people who share their names with someone famous or those who have a common name. Still, for everyone else, it is a strategy to consider.
Branded names are a little difficult, as the name often doesn’t reveal the topic of your site. They can be challenging to find too, simply because you don’t have a keyword to act as a starting point.
Even so, it’s often easier to find a punchy memorable name with a branded approach than with a keyword.
How To Buy A Domain Name
Once you have decided on a blog name, buying your domain is the next step. This is a very easy process and many companies provide domain name services.
Whenever possible, it’s worth focusing on a company that specializes in the area, like Domains.com, GoDaddy or Namecheap. Specialist sites are often easier to use and more reliable than ones that attempt to cover many different areas at once.
Namecheap is my personal recommendation, as I have had nothing but good experiences with the company. Their interface is easy-to-use too, which makes them perfect for beginners.
If you’re considering another company, be sure to check the fine print and the pricing structure carefully. Some companies have hidden fees or prices that suddenly jump from one year to the next.
How To Build & Make Money From Your Photography Website
The next step is a critical one – creating your website. As part of this, you need to decide which service you’re going through and where your website is being hosted.
The two most common choices that you’re run across is either a drag & drop website builder, or a self-hosted WordPress website. There are many different website builders to choose from.
Some of these, like Wix or Weebly, are well-known in their own right. Others are linked to a particular service, like GoDaddy’s website builder.
Each website builder is different, but most use some type of visual editor. This style means that it is very easy to make changes to your website using a WYSIWYG editor. You’re often able to see the outcomes of settings changes as you make them, which is very useful indeed, and great for newbies.
In general, website builders make it easy to create beautiful sites. The problem is that you often don’t have much control. Even on a paid plan, you might not have all the SEO tools that you might like or you may not be able to change some aspects of your site’s code.
The lack of control is a serious issue once you start trying to do more complex things with your site.
To make matters worse, you don’t have the freedom to switch from one company to another. Most website builders use their own coding, which isn’t compatible with other hosts. If you get six of Wix down the road, you can’t just leave Wix. You have to hire someone to re-code your website to WordPress.
WordPress works differently. It remains the most popular content management system available and can be used across many different hosts. It also provides much more control than any website builder.
As part of this, there are many plugins that make WordPress easier to use and more effective, like plugins for creating galleries, optimizing images, and much more. It’s also the most widely used content management system in the world, so you always have tons of support, paid and free, available to you. That also means hiring out work like coding and writing is cheaper, because there’s more competition among freelancers.
The final thing to talk about with website building is how you’ll make money. Two good methods for beginners are affiliate marketing and display ads. The techniques both tend to be possible on website builders and WordPress blogs, but they’re easier when you’re using WordPress.
How Much Do Photography Bloggers Make?
While the photography blog field is alive and kicking, relatively few bloggers provide income reports. One indication of success in the field comes from Marc Andre, who sold one photography blog for $216,000 and another for $500,000. However, he provides no details about how much those sites were makin when he owned them.
Another interesting example is 40 Aprons. This is actually a food site, but Cheryl also focuses on food photography. She provides coaching in this area too, which is the source of some of her income.
In January 2019, the blog made $36,925.41, which is a very impressive figure. Her expenses for that same period were less than $1,200.
Display Ads
Display ads operate as the name suggests. You end up hosting ads on your website and then earning from these. Google AdSense is the most common example of a display ad network, but there are various others that you can use instead.
The biggest advantage of display ads is that they are fairly passive. You do need to do the initial setup work to get them on your site, but that’s mostly it.
This means that you don’t need to make sure that your content matches the ads on your site at all. You could avoid talking about products entirely. The style might be perfect for a blog where you are showcasing good photography, as you may not have many products to promote.
Of course, display ads have their limitations too. One is that it takes some planning work, along with trial and error, to work out the best balance between income and user experience.
Another aspect is that it takes a lot of traffic to make much at all from display ads. This can be very disheartening when people start their blogs, as the amount they earn might be much less than they hoped for.
Still, as the examples in the previous section showed, it is possible to earn a large amount from display ads. Some blogs earn much more this way than they do through affiliate marketing (although many others earn more with affiliate marketing).
Affiliate Links
So then, affiliate marketing is the another common way to earn from a site. The process involves using affiliate links for products that you choose.
Those links take customers to a place where they can make a purchase. If they do buy something, you receive a commission for the sale. When done well, affiliate marketing ends up being as useful for the customer as it is for the person who developed the site.
Affiliate marketing is more involved than display ads, as you need to sign up for the affiliate programs and place the links yourself. It’s also important to actively promote the products. There are various ways to do so, with product reviews being an especially powerful choice.
Affiliate products you could potentially promote for a photography blog are endless, and depend on what niche you are going after. If you are targeting beginners, then basic stuff like tripods, lenses, lighting, and photo editing software are obvious things to promote. If you target outdoor photographers, you might want to even promote camping gear, waterproof bags, hiking boots, GPS equipment, or 4G hotspots.
For studio photographers, you could promote online business courses, bookkeeping software, and social media promotional tools to help them grow their business.
The key is to focus on helping a specific group of photographers, so whatever products they need to solve a problem could put money in your pocket!
Building a successful affiliate marketing business takes time and effort, but the end result is well worth it. You can end up with a sustainable business, one that relies on multiple companies for income.
Affiliate marketing also offers more income for less traffic when compared to display ads. This is because a single customer might buy multiple products. Product prices can vary too, giving you the chance to earn a decent amount from a single customer.
Final Thoughts
It should be very clear from this post that the name of your website doesn’t mean much at all. Make a decision in the next few minutes, then rock it confidently. Taking action is what gets results, and the person who get any old name and starts their photography blog now will have much more to show in a few months than the person who waits around for inspiration.
Should You Start Your Own Blog?
Honestly, the sad thing is that most people who want to start a blog get a domain name and a website set up, but never really do much beyond that. They are leaving a serious amount of money on the table!
If you want to actually make something of your site, and earn the kind of income that could allow you to quit your job and work full time online, then this members-only training site is what I recommend. If you’re serious about making some moves, they’re your best shot at building some fat traffic to your brand and profiting from your blog!
What’s up ladies and dudes! Great to finally meet you, and I hope you enjoyed this post. I started my first online business in 2010 promoting computer software and now I help newbies start their own businesses. Sign up for my #1 recommended training course and learn how to start your business for FREE!