Album season is upon us, and we are excited to be launching into some new promotions that are aimed to equip you with helpful advice, as well as plenty of deals and discounts!  Why?  Because we are here to make your life easier.

We’d like to introduce our featured Partner of the Week, SnapKnot!

SnapKnot is hands-down the best wedding photographer directory on the web.  Brides use SnapKnot to search for wedding photographers by city and price-range.  Advertise yourself or your studio on SnapKnot and gain instant exposure to countless potential clients!

For this week only, receive a special savings! Sign up for a new SnapKnot Diamond account, and get two months for the price of one! ($49.95 value) Make sure to use the following code at checkout and remember this deal is only available until Friday 5pm PDT. Use code:  AE50

Tomorrow we’ll be hosting a guest blog from SnapKnot founders Mike and Reid.  Be sure to check back tomorrow for some great advice on how to make the most of your Photography business online!

Cheers!

If your website is wordpress based and you would like to display your albums on your own domain, you don’t need to go through the normal process for masking your domain.

Instead, check out the photographer connections plugin from Photography Blogsites.

I set up my own Photo Blogsite trial to test it out, here’s what the site looks like with my customizations and sample album presentation masked via the plugin :

All I had to to was to enter my albumexposure username and the plugin did the rest!

I had fun setting up the rest of my photo blogsite too, the theme I chose had a neat gallery view (all photography blogsites are HTML5) and I imported a blog post too:

If you’re looking for a website that’s easy to setup and customize, I’d recommend checking out Photography Blogsites, and if you’re already on a wordpress based site, check out the plugin.

AlbumExposure users can also save 10% on a blogsite with the code ALBUM10.

Cheers!

We wanted to do something fun at WPPI this year for all of you and find a way to involve those of you who can’t make the show as well.  We love giving things away, so we teamed up with TOMS Shoes, ShootSac and  The [b] School to bring you:

We’ll announce details of what the prizes are and how you can enter the Walk, Shoot Share giveaway on Sunday night before the show, it’s going to be fun!

If you’re going to be in Vegas next week, make sure you stop by our booth, #1571 and say hello, we’d love to meet you!

Here’s us at our booth last year :)

WPPI 2010
By AlbumExposure  |  View on Facebook

Check out the Ultimate Photographer’s Source Book, a great resource that’s full of tips, tricks, discounts and freebies for taking your photography business to the next level.

If you order by Sunday January 23rd, you’ll also save $40 off of the retail price!

Spoiler alert: we’re in there ;)

If you’re in the UK or Europe and planning to attend SWPP, make sure to visit our good friends Folio Albums.  They will be showing off their amazing products at the convention and will have a special treat for those interested in adding AlbumExposure to their arsenal of studio tools.

Since we integrate with Folio via our Send to Print feature, you can create a seamless workflow and sell more albums with ease!  Give it a go and make sure to tell Stewart hello for us when you cruise by their booth.  Cheers!

Today’s entry is a guest blog from Jared Bauman of Shoot Dot Edit.  We asked him to share about the benefits of post production and how services like these, combined with AlbumExposure, can make your life easier and improve your bottom line.  Hope you find it helpful. Cheers!

As a wedding photographer, album proofing was always a huge issue for our studio.  The back and forth emailing made design changes a huge strain, and our display method didn’t match our studio’s brand.  AlbumExposure was a huge advancement for our studio, and really did embody simplicity and elegance.  In the end, AlbumExposure provided high quality proofing, and simplified our entire album process.

Garrett and I created ShootDotEdit for some of the same reasons.  ShootDotEdit is a post production company that provides high quality image editing services for photographers.  For our studios, editing had become a huge strain.  It took time, energy, and resources.  Not to mention the fact that at the end of the day, we are photographers …. and not editors.  We were mediocre at best when it came to editing.

“Why should I let go of my post production?”  That’s the question we hear the most, and it’s a completely valid one.  Letting go of your post production is not an easy decision, because images are the reflection of the art each photographer creates.  Many determine that letting go of the post production is letting go of the creative process, and letting someone else determine the final look and feel of the image.

So why let go of the post production?  Well, in the end, editing is not a part of your business.  You’re a photographer – not only is that what you love to do, but its what you get paid for.  And, beyond that, editing is not the main component involved in why your clients book you.  They book you because you’re you and because of the images you take.  Have any of your past clients asked what color temperature a photo was?  ;)

We understand the importance of quality, turnaround time, and customization, because we’re professional photographers as well.  Both Garrett and I have successful wedding studios in Southern California, so we understand the integral demands on today’s wedding photographer.  Like proofing with AlbumExposure, ShootDotEdit  focuses on quality and ease of use.

Partnering of AlbumExposure and ShootDotEdit made a lot of sense.  If you’re interested in giving it a try, feel free to take a 20% discount off all jobs over $100 submitted by 1/20/2011!  Use promo code:  “AESDE”

Jared Bauman

CEO / ShootDotEdit
ShootDotEdit.com

For those of you who came to WPPI and stopped by to see us, thanks so much, it was great to meet you!

We’re going to be announcing the winners of the Missing Piece Raffle next Tuesday, so stay tuned to find out if you’ve won great prizes from KISS Books, The [B] School, Fast Track Photographer, Shoot Dot Edit, Black Box Merch, Dedo Frame and more!

Until we draw the winners, we’ve also extended the WPPI Show Special for those of you who were scanned at our booth.  More details are in your email.

Cheers!

We can’t wait for WPPI this year, and we’re really excited to be exhibiting alongside so many other great companies.  We have some special surprises planned with some of our friends, and some great show only offers while we’re there as well.  It’s going to be a lot of fun, so stay tuned!

If you’re not already planning on attending (or even if you are), below is a FREE PASS to the tradeshow. Please feel free to share it with as many people as you like!

Need a last minute gift idea for a photographer or album designer in your life?  Only for our existing paid subscribers, give a gift subscription for a year of AlbumExposure for $75, %50 off the regular price!  Plus, we’ll also set you up as the referrer, so you’ll collect residual commission in the future.  Just send an email to support [at] albumexposure.com and we’ll get you set up. We’ll even prep a fancy email to your recipient if you would like :)

Not an AlbumExposure member yet?  There’s still something for you: enter the promo code “HOLIDAZE” when upgrading and you’ll save $10 :)

Happy Holidays from us at AlbumExposure!

Today we’re pleased to announce that we’ve partnered with Triple Scoop Music to bring you a special offer:

10% off all Triple Scoop Music for AlbumExposure users!

If you’ve upgraded, you’ll see the link on the songs page once you log in, and you should also receive it by email today.

We’re big fans of Triple Scoop Music and think that they’re dong great work making legal, affordable music available for so many people for all sorts of uses.